Quick Look: Comparing Vulkan & DX12 API Overhead on 3DMark

Earlier this week the crew over at Futuremark released a major update to their API Overhead testing tool, which is built into the larger 3DMark testing suite. The API Overhead tool, first rolled out in 2015, is a relatively straightforward test that throws increasingly large number of draw calls at a system to see how many calls a system can sustain. The primary purpose of the tool is to show off the vast improvement in draw call performance afforded by modern, low-level APIs that can efficiently spread their work over multiple threads, as opposed to classic APIs like DirectX 11 which are essentially single-threaded and have a high degree of overhead within that sole thread.