Zombie Army 4: Dead War PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

[WYP]

Need to get the best PC performance in this co-operative Zombie fighting title. We'll show you the settings and API choices you should make.



Read more about Zombie Army 4: Dead War's PC performance.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Happy to see the nonbiased performance in this game. Just 2 modern APIs being used to the best degree possible and showing the barely different performance levels of competing cards.

It's also worth noting how Vulkan appears to be superior. The recent R6 Siege switch to Vulkan with Ubisoft stating better CPU performance, and having this game perform generally better with Vulkan, may actually be the fact that Vulkan is just simply faster right now overall. Plus it's also multi-platform. Seems like a no brainer currently(that is unless you want Ray Tracing).

 

[WYP]

Happy to see the nonbiased performance in this game. Just 2 modern APIs being used to the best degree possible and showing the barely different performance levels of competing cards.

It's also worth noting how Vulkan appears to be superior. The recent R6 Siege switch to Vulkan with Ubisoft stating better CPU performance, and having this game perform generally better with Vulkan, may actually be the fact that Vulkan is just simply faster right now overall. Plus it's also multi-platform. Seems like a no brainer currently(that is unless you want Ray Tracing).

The Khronos groups have done a great job improving Vulkan's feature set. That said, they need to figure out how to deliver a DXR equivalent. Right now raytracing is only available using Nvidia's extensions with Vulkan. However, I hear that talks are in progress for Microsoft and Khronos to help create a more universal standard, likely by having Khronos use a similar approach to Microsoft.

Khronos has made Vulkan a lot easier to develop for with recent iterations, so it will be interesting to see how things evolve. Right now, DX12 will have an advantage in the near-term if raytracing starts to see wider adoption.

 

[NeverBackDown]

While you aren't wrong, i'd argue RayTracing is less important than raw performance. Ray Tracing is a looooong way from being a standard feature. So i'd take the performance benefit, rather than massive performance penalties for an unequal graphical uplift.

And technically with the wrapper, Vulkan created to help port DX12 code over to Vulkan natively, you could in theory use the RT libraries already. Though I can guarantee it'd be more complicated without the official support to build more off of the ported code.

I don't doubt they are collaborating on a RT library. It's a complicated feature and reducing the effort for developers is key for them using it anyway. Leads to better implementations, shorter development time, and less money spent. Win-Win-Win for everyone. Though again I am definitely glad you are hearing of a collaboration. I would be thrilled for that!

 

[WYP]

While you aren't wrong, i'd argue RayTracing is less important than raw performance. Ray Tracing is a looooong way from being a standard feature. So i'd take the performance benefit, rather than massive performance penalties for an unequal graphical uplift.

And technically with the wrapper, Vulkan created to help port DX12 code over to Vulkan natively, you could in theory use the RT libraries already. Though I can guarantee it'd be more complicated without the official support to build more off of the ported code.

I don't doubt they are collaborating on a RT library. It's a complicated feature and reducing the effort for developers is key for them using it anyway. Leads to better implementations, shorter development time, and less money spent. Win-Win-Win for everyone. Though again I am definitely glad you are hearing of a collaboration. I would be thrilled for that!

Aye, but I'm talking a 3-4 year timeframe. IIRC, Vulkan 1.2 supports HLSL at up to shader model 6.3, which falls short of DXR. Shader Model 6.3 adds support for DXR.

Vulkan's lack of official raytracing support is why only one Vulkan game supports RTX, and it was delivered very late. Wolfenstein: Youngblood. This could also be a reason why id software decided to drop raytracing for DOOM Eternal, or a contributing factor at the very least.

I think the conversation is gonna change very quickly with regards to raytracing. By the end of this year, two consoles and both AMD and Nvidia will support it.

Another factor that's worth noting is that today's RTX series will always be Nvidia's worst-performing raytracing accelerated graphics cards. Future architectures will enhance raytracing capabilities (which will decrease their performance overhead) and increase their normal shading performance.

I believe that Khronos will discuss Vulkan raytracing at GDC, but it will be a while before it becomes a full part of Vulkan (likely with Vulkan 1.3).