[SOLVED] Can an operating system with good multi-GPU code or API allow non-multi-GPU games to scale well?

[joshua123033]

If an operating system gets multi-GPU code or APIs (e.g. Vulkan) coded into it, will games that weren't developed with multi-GPU code finally scale well? This was because I learned that not all games scale well with multi-GPU because the devs don't embed code for them. So instead of coding each game you own to support multi-GPUs, couldn't you add that code to your operating system so all of your games could scale well? I heard something like this is going on with Mac OS getting Vulkan support.
Also please don't come to me saying that multi-GPUs are dead (because most of the time they are in gaming). This was an idea and I would like to hear your opinions on it.
TL;DR if you took the multi-GPU code from good scaling games and embedded it into your operating system, could all games (even non-native multi-GPU games) scale well?

 

[tennis2]

Multi-GPU support is added by AMD/Nvidia within the graphics drivers. Both companies have mostly moved away from multi-GPU.

A game is built using an API. You don't just download an API (like Vulkan/DX12) to your computer and suddenly all games use it.

 

[joshua123033]

Multi-GPU support is added by AMD/Nvidia within the graphics drivers. Both companies have mostly moved away from multi-GPU.

A game is built using an API. You don't just download an API (like Vulkan/DX12) to your computer and suddenly all games use it.

Thanks for the quick reply. It was wondering this because I thought you could use the operating system (as all processes pass through it) as a sort of emulator so every game could scale well.

 

[joshua123033]

Multi-GPU support is added by AMD/Nvidia within the graphics drivers. Both companies have mostly moved away from multi-GPU.

A game is built using an API. You don't just download an API (like Vulkan/DX12) to your computer and suddenly all games use it.

Just an add up question, what is the whole "Vulkan or Metal on Mac OS" thing that's been going on? Could someone then explain what that is?

 

[tennis2]

Vulkan is/was something like a pre-amble to DX12. AMD had the API ready before DX12 was, so they went ahead and launched it. Doom was the shining example of what was possible in performance improvements when a game was carefully coded and optimized using Vulkan vs the stalwart DX11. Most of the Vulkan features got rolled into DX12 when it launched. Metal and Mantle are similar to Vulkan in similar ways (IIRC Vulkan was the first)

Similar to GSync vs VESA Adaptive Sync on the variable refresh rate monitor scene.

Being "closer to metal" is a fancy catch phrase for saying the communication speed between the system and the game engine is improved. (Consoles have employed "close to metal" APIs for a long time since there's only really 2-3 hardware configs that need to be accounted for. That's why consoles are able to do so much with so little) There are obvious benefits, but also some drawbacks. When a dev has to take more things into their own hands instead of letting the API abstraction layer take care of them, that means more time required to code. More time = more $$ = less profit. That's one of the big reasons why DX12 and many of its fancy features have been slow to adoption.

 

[joshua123033]

Thanks for the reply. Your answers were actually helpful!