How can I know if my GPU card driver supports Vulkan?

Question

I have 3rd gen Intel mobile CPU i5-3210M, with integrated HD4000 graphics.How can I tell what driver version (i915) I have and does it support Vulkan? What Mesa version I have in Kubuntu 16.10?

What happens if I run a game made with Vulkan API without Vulkan support in driver?

Solution 1

According to Intel: (Intel open source graphics drivers and vulkan graphics api) support for Vulkan is seamlessly built into Linux PC distributions.

Whether or not Vulkan or OpenGL support is built into a given game is up to that game's developer not to your hardware/firmware or software drivers.

As comment below points out the above "seamless" integration is for 6th generation CPUs. For IvyBridge (HD4000) and newer Vulkan support it is built into Mesa 13 Intel-Vulkan driver that can be downloaded here: (archlinux.org vulkan-intel) and is discussed in detail here: (Mesa 13). Note Mesa driver 13 was released November 1, 2016 and is a great improvement over version 12.

Solution 2

a Simple way is to look the unofficial vulkan gpu database https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org

The best way is to install vulkaninfo utility from your repository manager, like apt-get install vulkaninfo, emerge or pacman

It does depend upon hardware, though, most of the late decade gpu are compatible. Then, it needs support from drivers, o.s. and game.

I'm afraid in your case, i915, does not support Vulkan at all (see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Vulkan for more about i915 not being able to run Vulkan software)

Comments

[Admin]

glxinfo | grep version to see which mesa version you have. In my case on KDE 16.10 this is 12.0.3.

[Admin]

Thanks @Bruni. I can see now that I have Mesa 12.0.3 too. And in Mesa wiki website I read that version 12.0 supports Vulkan 1.0 postimg.org/image/rm37shrtl

[Hrvoje T]

'The Intel’s Open Source Vulkan driver for 5th generation Intel® Core™ processors and 6th generation Intel® Core™ processors (code-named Broadwell and Skylake) passes the Vulkan 1.0 Conformance Test Suite on these platforms and has experimental support for older platforms.'

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@HrvojeT So right you are. I've updated the answer for HD4000 models.

[Hrvoje T]

and also Mesa 12.0 according to Mesa wiki postimg.org/image/rm37shrtl

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

Yes Mesa 12.0 first introduced Vulkan support I believe. But the last link says how it was much improved under Mesa 13.0 which was released 6 days ago.

[talljosh]

On Ubuntu 20.04, it's apt-get install vulkan-tools, then run vulkaninfo.