VK-Z

VK-Z is a console application that can be used to obtain a detailed report about all the Vulkan-capable devices on a computer. In other words, it enables you to check out information concerning hardware limits, as well as the functions of the Vulkan API (entry points), and device extensions.

Created by Khronos, Vulkan is a next-generation 3D graphics and computing API mostly designed for video games or other applications with high graphical requirements. To put it another way, it can render complex realtime 3D graphics and other demanding content, but without putting a strain on the CPU. It can be used with high-end graphics cards and has been adopted by all the major manufacturers, such as nVIDIA, AMD, Imagination, Intel, or VeriSilicon, which included it in their graphic drivers.

Obviously, VK-Z will not be able to work properly without having the Vulkan drivers installed on your machine. Please be careful to install the drivers for your GPU type.

As previously mentioned, VK-Z only runs via the command console. Using the usual help option ('-h'), you can see a list of all the available commands. VK-Z can display all the instance extensions, along with their version number, along with detailed information regarding all the Vulkan-capable devices. You should be able to get a report about the device name, ID, driver and API version, the device type, and the memory heap count. Optionally, you can instruct VK-Z to display its Vulkan entrypoints and their status.

By default, all these details are displayed in text mode. Nevertheless, VK-Z also comes with an option to show the data as an XML file.

Other commands allow you to exclude the header and footer data when the information is shown in text mode. Exporting the report can be done by selecting all the text in the console and copying it to the clipboard.