RX 480 Trashes GTX 1060 Running DOOM in Vulkan

AMD’s RX 480 graphics card may be $50 cheaper than its NVIDIA rival, the GeForce GTX 1060, but it has proven to be the best performer in one particular set of benchmarks. When pitted against the GTX 1060 at running monstrous first-person shooter DOOM in Khronos’ low-overhead Vulkan API, the RX 480 boasts up to 25% higher frame rates at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p.

Earlier this month, id Software released an update for DOOM which introduced support for Vulkan. The developer explained that opting for Khronos’ API over DirectX 12 allowed the game to run on Windows 7 and 8-based systems. Following that update, PCGamesN put the RX 480 and GTX 1060 head-to-head running DOOM in Vulkan.

Running at 4K, the RX 480 boasted an average performance of 35 frames-per-second (fps), compared to the GTX 1060’s 28fps:

At 1440p, the RX 480 and GTX 1060 performed at an average of 69fps and 54fps, respectively:

Finally, the RX 480 hit an impressive average of 110fps, versus the GTX 1060’s 73fps, when running at 1080p:

The superior performance of the RX 480 against its NVIDIA equivalent is to be expected, explained by the origin of Vulkan, which was born out of AMD’s Mantle API. Mantle, and by extension Vulkan, allows developers greater access to hardware capacity than, say, DirectX 11. NVIDIA may be killing it with its high-end 10-Series cards, but will AMD’s Vulkan advantage give the company a boost in the mid-range market for non-Windows 10 systems?