The time has finally come. After weeks of waiting, the Cemu development team has made good on their promise to release a build of their Nintendo Wii U emulator, featuring the long-awaited Vulkan renderer. The build, which was private, and Patreon-only, is now available to the public, and can be downloaded on the official site. This is a major milestone for the emulator, as Vulkan allows for much better performance for users with AMD hardware, and has been a highly-requested addition.

# Cemu detailed changelog for 1.16.0c
# Patreon release date: 2019-12-13
# Public release date: 2019-12-20

# New in 1.16.0c (public release):

general: Fixed memory searcher tool not being enabled in the menu after launching a game

gfxPack: rules.txt can now specify a filter to selectively apply the whole graphic pack only for a specific vendor (vendorFilter=<amd/intel/mesa/nvidia>) or renderer (rendererFilter=<opengl/vulkan>)

OpenGL/Vulkan: Fixed channel order for R5G5B5A1 textures (fixes colors of Luigi sprites in Super Mario 3D World)

Vulkan: Fixed a bug that could cause polygon explosions under rare circumstances

# New in 1.16.0b:

Vulkan: Fixed transform feedback on Nvidia GPUs

# New in 1.16.0:

general: Added Vulkan renderer

general: Updated shader cache
- The file name now uses the game's titleId instead of the internal RPX hash
- Added zlib compression to reduce cache file size
- Cross compatible and shared between OpenGL/Vulkan
- Remains backwards compatible with pre-1.16.0 caches
- Vulkan has an additional vendor-specific cache for Vulkan pipelines. The cache is stored at shaderCache/driver/vk/
Be aware that an incomplete pipeline cache introduces stuttering despite already having a full shader cache

gfxPack: Introduced graphic packs version 4
Adds shader replacement support for Vulkan
Any pack that has not been updated for version 4 will show up with the indicator "may not be compatible with Vulkan"
Existing version 3 packs *may* still work with Vulkan, enable them at your own risk

general: Gamelist now loads icons asynchronously
general: Added a migration assistent that will detect if DLC is installed at the legacy locations (used by Cemu 1.15.10 and earlier) and ask to move it to the correct folder
general: The graphic pack window will automatically filter for the currently running game
general: Fixed a bug where crashlogs would be omitted from log.txt because Cemu closed before the asynchronous log writer finished
general: Fixed 'dump WUD filesystem' option not dumping any files

Source

 

[gohan123]

yuzu is next, I'm really happy for that because I don't like nvidia gpus so I always end up with amd, amd feel like they support their gpus way longer and adapt faster to newer technology.

 

[Essasetic]

although NVidia's drivers have notoriously been bad for Vulkan.

Haven't heard anyone say that. Especially because most emulators (with Vulkan and on Windows 10) outperform the AMD equivalent. Haven't seen anybody test Linux though and I am very interested in the gains it may get (especially with the mesa drivers).

 

[eriol33]

I am using CEMU with gtx 1650 laptop and amd ryzen 3550H, bayonetta hits 60 fps easily with vulkan, although the performance with openGL has always been like this, so I am not sure whether it benefits the nvidia gpu or not.

 

[Essasetic]

I am using CEMU with gtx 1650 laptop and amd ryzen 3550H, bayonetta hits 60 fps easily with vulkan, although the performance with openGL has always been like this, so I am not sure whether it benefits the nvidia gpu or not.

For performance: not yet (at least)
For caching shaders: yes, definitely it massively cuts down on stuttering when compiling shaders.

 

[ganons]

Do Intel iGPUs benefit from vulkan? Wandering how good it will be on a laptop.

 

[BaamAlex]

Do Intel iGPUs benefit from vulkan? Wandering how good it will be on a laptop.

This should answer your question.

 

[supermist]

Wow i thought i was the only one who was still using the 290. Damn this has been a good card, it still plays new games decently.

Seems to give me about 4 more fps lol. It is an older GPU.

 

[sj33]

Nvidia cards are still going to perform better with Vulkan than OpenGL, all things being equal. The move to Vulkan is both welcome and overdue, since it will only bring massive benefits and any card incapable of Vulkan isn't going to be powerful enough for cemu anyway. Vulkan is already the recommended renderer in RPCS3 and Dolphin.

Also good to see another developer opting for Vulkan over D3D12.

 

[urherenow]

Reading through the first pages had me slightly confused. Was sure that Vulkan was for video cards (AMD cards specifically), and saw mentions of CPUs and Nvidia. I have relied on discreet graphics since the '90s, so I somehow forgot that modern CPUs have a GPU part in them... lol. I'm on an old i7 4790 right now (which I know has video... just never used it), but exclusively use a Vega 64 to push my pixels

 

[sj33]

Well, lower-end Ryzen CPUs do have discreet graphics, but they're still on-board - they're no real replacement for dedicated graphics. And Intel's on-board solutions are even less-so.

Vulkan isn't going to magically make cemu run well on them, even if they may run a little better.

 

[leon315]

Currently, Vulkan performs worse on Nvidia GPUs than it does with OpenGL. But it also has benefits like faster shader compilation. But if you just want the best performance on an Nvidia GPU with already compiled shaders then stick to OpenGL.

i saw that red dead redemption 2 has options to switch VULKAN, I've got gtx1070, is it better switch off VULKAN?

 

[BaamAlex]

RDR 2 has nothing to do with cemu xD

 

[sj33]

Red Dead Redemption 2 runs slightly better using Vulkan. It’s about how well it has been implemented - cemu’s implementation is still experimental.

Let’s not blow the Nvidia vs. AMD thing up, usually it will be the implementation that matters most. In general, Vulkan is the way to go.

 

[gamemasteru03]

Nvidia cards are still going to perform better with Vulkan than OpenGL, all things being equal. The move to Vulkan is both welcome and overdue, since it will only bring massive benefits and any card incapable of Vulkan isn't going to be powerful enough for cemu anyway. Vulkan is already the recommended renderer in RPCS3 and Dolphin.

Also good to see another developer opting for Vulkan over D3D12.

Nividia cards actually perform worse with vulkan than with opengl in cemu. At least according to this video.

 

[sj33]

It's more to do with cemu's Vulkan support being at an early stage. The Nvidia vs. AMD issue where AMD has better Vulkan support is generally in comparison with DX12, not OpenGL. AMD have long had better support for both Vulkan and DX12 for many reasons including better async compute support. Nvidia won't ever really catch up there without massive changes to their architecture, they'll just brute force it.

As an aside, performance is about the same between OpenGL and Vulkan on my RTX 2060. Looking forward to Vulkan improving and replacing the OpenGL renderer entirely.

 

[atoxique]

That's all fine and good but WHERES METAL?

Nowhere becuase no one games on Mac lol

 

[Solotato]

yesssss now I can force my friends to play animal crossing amiibo festival on my switch via linux

 

[BeastMode6]

Seems to give me about 4 more fps lol. It is an older GPU.

Really? For me, it brought MK8 from unplayable to nearly perfect.

 

[supermist]

Oh that was just for BOTW. Only other game I tried was Xenoblade Chronicles X and that seemed to hold 30 FPS no problem.

 

[Disco]

It's more to do with cemu's Vulkan support being at an early stage. The Nvidia vs. AMD issue where AMD has better Vulkan support is generally in comparison with DX12, not OpenGL. AMD have long had better support for both Vulkan and DX12 for many reasons including better async compute support. Nvidia won't ever really catch up there without massive changes to their architecture, they'll just brute force it.

As an aside, performance is about the same between OpenGL and Vulkan on my RTX 2060. Looking forward to Vulkan improving and replacing the OpenGL renderer entirely.

Yeah, that's what I thought. RTX series are much better at async (DX12/Vulcan) than the older nvidia GPUs. I still have my good ol' GTX 970, it is still very good for mid/high 1080p gaming in combination with r5 3600. And in Cemu I get locked 60fps in DKC:Tropical freeze, Mario world 3D and Mario Kart 8 in openGL and with already compiled shaders.