February 26 2020

What is VulkanRT?

Table Of Contents

If you have a personality that is inclined to paranoia like mine then you probably don’t trust the efficacy of your antivirus. For people like us, it’s important to know what’s on our PCs so we can be fully protected from any spyware, malware, Trojan or any other virus trying to cripple our systems and steal our info.

While you were looking through your Program Files (x86) folder, you may have run into a subfolder named Vulkan RT. That name sounds particularly virus-like, doesn’t it? Upon opening the VulkanRT folder, you encountered more subfolders with numbers as their labels.

When you go into each folder, you find a collection of files including a text file, a word document, and some executables. You’re tempted to click on the uninstall file, but you’re afraid of the repercussions because you don’t fully understand what the VulkanRT is.

In the following guide, we’ll explain to you what the VulkanRT is. If you’re the type of person to put insulating tape on your webcam (like me), then this guide should put your anxiety at ease.

What is VulkanRT and Do You Need It?

VulkanRT stands for Vulkan Run Time (or Vulkan Runtime). In order to understand what the Vulkan Run Time is, you’ll need to understand what the Vulkan API is. You may have been fooled into thinking that they’re the very same thing, however, they’re not.

The Vulkan API and Vulkan Runtime share a relationship that’s very similar to the one shared by the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Alternatively, you may be more familiar with the relationship that Visual C# shares with the .NET Framework.

Why Was Vulkan Created?

Vulkan was created as a successor to OpenGL. While OpenGL was geared more towards creating and rendering 2D and 3D objects, Vulkan was built to render high-performance 3D graphics, while being system resource friendly.

It can also render 2D graphics as well. Vulkan is a relatively young project created by the same development group that created – Khronos Group. They’re basically the Illuminati of open source APIs.

Vulkan’s initial release was on the 16th of February 2016. This is 24 years after the initial release of OpenGL and two days after 2016’s Valentine’s Day. Which makes sense, since VulkanRT is a love letter to low-overhead game development.

Vulkan can be compared more to DirectX than it can to any other fully-fledged programming language. However, the biggest difference between the two is DirectX (Direct3D) is exclusive to Windows while Vulkan is a cross-platform API.

As a lower-level API, it supports a multitude of devices and operating systems, from Android to MacOS. However, do not let the phrase ‘lower-level’ fool you into thinking that Vulkan is only good for creating cheap, Indie or casual games.

For instance, the upcoming Doom Eternal will have Vulkan support. We have more examples of games that support Vulkan rendering further down this guide.

From this, you should understand why your PC needs the VulkanRT. It provides a sandbox or environment that helps your computer process and translates the Vulkan API’s objects. Just like the C++ Redistributable packages, Vulkan is easy to uninstall.

We do not suggest that you do this though as it may cripple some of your most treasured games. So do you need VulkanRT? Yes, you do if you want to play some of the latest games.

Is Vulkan a Virus?

Neither the Vulkan API nor the Vulkan Runtime Libraries are viruses. We don’t think that it’s even possible to create a virus using the API unless you embed it into a game or application.

 Either way, you do not have to worry about it. It may have been installed along with your graphics card drivers, GeForce Experience or one of your games.

Does Your Graphics Card Support Vulkan?

One of Vulkan’s and Khronos’ biggest supporters is AMD. In fact, Vulkan is based on AMD’s Mantle API, which AMD donated to Khronos. It should go without saying that you can expect Vulkan support from every high-end AMD graphics card. In truth, most AMD graphics cards with the GCN 1st architecture and upwards have Vulkan support for both Linux and Windows PCs.

However, none of AMD’s GPUs have Vulkan support for Android. Without AMD, Vulkan would not exist and yet, it seems that NVidia has embraced the API more. We don’t mean to pit AMD against NVidia but it’s important to know which company gives the best support for Vulkan, especially if you’re enthusiastic about Android devices or Linux Distros.

A key reason as to why NVidia’ Kepler, Fermi, and Maxwell have chips that support Vulkan on Android is because NVidia produces these GPUs and CPUs for mobile devices and smart TVs. For example, the Nintendo Switch uses an NVidia Tegra X1 based system on a chip (SoC).

This allows it to support Vulkan, OpenGL ES.3.2 and OpenGL 4.5. What this means is a lot of those awesome indie games on the Nintendo Switch have been made possible through the power of NVidia, Vulkan and other open-source APIs.

If you have any graphic cards with GPUs that are based on the above listed (micro) architectures, then yes, your Graphics Card does support Vulkan and that’s the reason why the VulkanRT folder is on your computer.

VulkanRT Exceptions

However, there are a few exceptions. Vulkan will not work if you’re using an NVidia graphics card with 2GB of onboard RAM (or less) on Windows 7. Update either your operating system or your graphics card. In addition to this, Vulkan is not supported on NVidia’s GTX 690 graphics card.

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, Vulkan is supported by both the PS4 and Xbox-One since they both use AMD GPUs.

Is Vulkan Better Than DX12?

At launch, not a lot of games supported both Vulkan and DX12 until Strange Brigade came out in 2018. It was the first game to be launched with Vulkan and DX12 support. Most DirectX games with Vulkan support received this feature through a patch or update.

Games like Doom 2016, weren’t initially released with Vulkan support but were improved and made better when the dev’s added later.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PC, one of the best open-world games of this generation, is the latest game to support both Vulkan and DX12. Users have a choice to toggle between the two. As an RDR2 gamer, you may be wondering which one is the best to play with.

Both Vulkan and DX12 were made to deliver considerably higher performances than their predecessors while balancing system resources. Vulkan achieves this through parallel tasking and efficient CPU core workload delegation.

In terms of performance, Vulkan will give you upwards of 5% higher average frame rates than DX12. However, when DX12 is coupled with an NVidia graphics card, it will give you more stable frame rates with less intense fluctuations.

Platform Support

Another reason why Vulkan may be considered better than DirectX 12 is that Vulkan is supported by more platforms. A game with Vulkan support is more likely to work on Linux out of the box.

To switch from DX12 to Vulkan in RDR2, all you need to do is:

  1. Launch the RDR2’s Settings Menu.
  2. Find the Graphics Page.
  3. Select and unlock Advanced Settings.
  4. Find the setting labeled Graphics API and change its value to Vulkan.

What Games Use Vulkan?

In this section, we’ll cover the most noteworthy games with Vulkan API support. If you have any of these games installed on your PC, then they’re the reason why the Vulkan Runtime is also installed on your computer.

List of Noteworthy Games with Vulkan API Support

These are just a few of the games with current Vulkan API support. If you’re interested in finding more, check out Steam’s Vulkan Games curator page. You can expect this list of games to grow. If you want to ensure that the project keeps growing without taking part in a bit of game development yourself, you can always add your support by purchasing games and expressing your interest by joining a few forums and online communities.

How to Uninstall VulkanRT?

If you feel like removing the Vulkan Runtime for whatever reason, you can simply uninstall it.

  1. Open the Windows Power User Menu (Win+X).
  2. Click on Apps and Features.
  3. Scroll down through the list of apps until you find Vulkan.
  4. Click on Vulkan and then Uninstall. 

After a few minutes, Vulkan will be uninstalled on your PC. You’ll need to reboot your computer for all the changes to go through.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, VulkanRT poses no threat to your computer’s wellbeing. It’s very light on resources and seldom causes any crashes. There is simply no reason to uninstall it. In this guide, we explored what the Vulkan Run Time and API is.

You should now understand the relationship that these tools share. If you’ve ever been interested in video game creation, we hope that this guide was the tipping point for you. Furthermore, we hope that this sparks a greater interest in APIs used for rendering graphics. Thank you for reading.

Gaming 101

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Mduduzi Sibisi