The Vulkan 1.3 roadmap could change the very silicon it runs on

Vulkan 1.3 being forged by a wolverine, chinese dragon and... a teapot?
(Image credit: Khronos)

Cross-platform 3D graphics API Vulkan has just announced a much anticipated update. With Vulkan 1.3 available across the breadth of supported platforms, game developers can now enjoy a more streamlined experience, along with a bunch of highly-requested extensions coming integrated into the core API.

If you're wondering what Vulkan is, it's the only open standard modern GPU API around today, and essentially helps developers make 3D graphics more efficient so you get higher frames per second, although there's more to it than just that.

Built by The Khronos Group, and building on DNA that goes back to OpenGL, the API is backed by 180 companies, including Steam, Stadia, Nvidia, iOS, Nintendo, and plenty of other big names across the games industry. Today, with the announcement of Vulkan 1.3, Khronos has "strengthened the ecosystem" for Vulkan, further strengthening its API as an impressive, open, and democratically governed alternative to Microsoft's DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. 

The current API is being used by developers in over 160 games, including Fortnite, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Valheim. In fact, our Jacob discovered that turning on Vulkan in Valheim improves the fps over using DirectX—not by a lot, but certainly enough to warrant turning it on in game.

When we last looked at Vulkan, a lot of its core functionality came in the form of optional extensions. Now, Khronos has made the decision to incorporate those features deemed most important into a new core specification. Features like dynamic rendering, additional dynamic state, and an improved synchronization API all now come as standard, in an attempt to "make that functionality consistently available across all supported platforms."

And as the API will still be supported on OpenGL ES 3.1 class hardware (also a Khronos group initiative), plenty of devices will be supported—of course, that includes our precious, high-end desktop beasties.

After lots of discussion around GPU vendor roadmaps, Khronos is going to ensure mid to high-end mobile and desktop devices will have more standardised functionality. By coordinating with the Vulkan Working Group, Khronons may even have the opportunity to affect the very silicon it inhabits. If everyone involved can get their priorities right, gamers should end up with better games thanks to hardware that doesn't fight the API's functionality.

Perfect peripherals

(Image credit: Colorwave)

Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio

Right now there are heaps of extensions—close to 300 of them, both from Khronos and supporting vendors. And because it's up to each platform as to when each function is shipped, it's been hard for devs to figure out what functionality is available for their platform specifically.

To alleviate the problem, Khronos will be introducing the Vulkan profile mechanism come February, which gives vendors the ability to specify precisely which features, limits, formats, and extensions will help developers reach their audience. That's just one more way Khronos is making the development process more streamlined.

You can read more about the Vulkan 1.3 roadmap on the blog, but the bottom line is less 3D faffing for game devs equals more time to focus on story, worldbuilding, and interesting mechanics. Plus with all this evolution going on, we're sure to see more games adopting Vulkan for a nice fps boost. 

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

Read more
A photograph of the opening slide of a Microsoft lecture on Cooperative Vectors at GDC 2025
AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all excited about cooperative vectors and what they mean for the future of 3D graphics, but it's going to be a good while before we really see their impact
Screenshots from Half-Life 2 RTX, showing the various new effects delivered by full ray tracing and enhanced assets.
Microsoft announces DirectX Raytracing 1.2 claiming 'game changing' performance benefits but it looks like the important stuff is already in Nvidia's RTX GPUs, even the old ones
Black Ops 6
FSR 4 may be a simple upgrade for FSR 3.1 games according to leaks, which hopefully means we won't see a repeat of FSR 3's poorly-supported launch
Cyberpunk upscaling
New modder tool makes it easier than ever to swap AMD's FSR 4 scaling for Nvidia's DLSS or Intel's XeSS and vice versa
A slide from an AMD presentation showing Space Marine 2 running at 3.5x the frame rate at 4K with FSR 4 and frame generation enabled
'Infused with AMD DNA': FSR 4 has been announced with a healthy dose of machine learning and support for 30+ games at launch
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor outfit locations
Epic talks shop about stuttering in games that use its Unreal Engine and offers solutions to the problem
Latest in Graphics Cards
A Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice on a desk and installed in a gaming PC.
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice SFF review
An MSI RTX 5080 in white installed in a gaming PC.
MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Ventus 3X OC White review
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Latest in News
A screenshot from SaGa Frontier 2, showing one of the protagonists wandering through a quaint fantasy village
One of Square Enix' most underrated PlayStation-era JRPGs just shadow dropped on Steam
The titular character from Princess Mononoke is depicted riding the wolf goddess Moro and carrying a spear.
Studio Ghibli AI image trend floods social media, cheered on by OpenAI and denounced by critics as an insult to Hayao Miyazaki
Marvel Rivals tier list - Wolverine
Marvel Rivals director says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'
Hogwarts Legacy potions professor holding a potion
An unannounced Hogwarts Legacy expansion and 'definitive edition' have reportedly been cancelled
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'