Ashes of the Singularity Revisited: A Beta Look at DirectX 12 & Asynchronous Shading
by Daniel Williams & Ryan Smith on February 24, 2016 1:00 PM ESTDirectX 12 Single-GPU Performance
We’ll start things off with a look at single-GPU performance. For this, we’ve grabbed a collection of RTG and NVIDIA GPUs covering the entire DX12 generation, from GCN 1.0 and Kepler to GCN 1.2 and Maxwell. This will give us a good idea of how the game performs both across a wide span of GPU performance levels, and how (if at all) the various GPU generational changes play a role.
Meanwhile unless otherwise noted, we’re using Ashes’ High quality setting, which turns up a number of graphical features and also utilizes 2x MSAA. It’s also worth mentioning that while Ashes does allow async shading to be turned off and on, this option is on by default unless turned off in the game’s INI file.
Starting at 4K, we have the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Radeon R9 Fury X. On the latest beta the Fury X has a strong lead over the normally faster GTX 980 Ti, beating it by 20% and coming close to hitting 60fps.
When we drop down to 1440p and introduce last-generation’s flagship video cards, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti and Radeon R9 290X, the story is much the same. The Fury X continues to hold a 10fps lead over the GTX 980 Ti, giving it an 18% lead. Similarly, the R9 290X has an 8fps lead over the 780 Ti, translating into a 19% performance lead. This is a significant turnabout from where we normally see these cards, as 780 Ti traditionally holds a lead over the 290X.
Meanwhile looking at the average framerates with different batch count intensities, there admittedly isn’t much remarkable here. All cards take roughly the same performance hit with increasingly larger batch counts.
Finally at 1080p, with our full lineup of cards we can see that RTG’s lead in this latest beta is nearly absolute. The 2012 flagship battle between the 7970 and the GTX 680 puts the 7970 in the lead by 12%, or just shy of 4fps. Elsewhere the GTX 980 Ti does close on the Fury X, but RTG’s current-gen flagship remains in the lead.
The one outlier here is the Radeon R9 285, which is the only 2GB RTG card in our collection. At this point we suspect it’s VRAM limited, but it would require further investigation.
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Kouin325 - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
yes indeed they will be patching DX12 into the game, AFTER all the PR damage from the low benchmark scores is done. Nvidia waved some cash at the publisher/dev to make it a gameworks title, make it DX11, and to lock AMD out of making a day 1 patch.This was done to keep the general gaming public from learning that the Nvidia performance crown will all but disappear or worse under DX12. So they can keep selling their cards like hotcakes for another month or two.
Also, Xbox hasn't been moved over to DX12 proper YET, but the DX11.x that the Xbox one has always used is by far closer to DX12 than DX11 for the PC. I think we'll know for sure what the game was developed for after the patch comes out. If the game gets a big performance increase after the DX12 patch then it was developed for DX12, and NV possibly had a hand in the DX11 for PC release. If the increase is small then it was developed for DX11,
Reason being that getting the true performance of DX12 takes a major refactor of how assets are handled and pretty major changes to the rendering pipeline. Things that CANNOT be done in a month or two or how long this patch is taking to come out after release.
Saying "we support DirectX12" is fairly ease and only takes changing a few lines of code, but you won't get the performance increases that DX12 can bring.
Madpacket - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
With the lack of ethics Nvidia has displayed, this wouldn't surprise me in the least. Gameworks is a sham - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fA_JC_R5skeeepcool - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
Finally!..I can't even grasp the concept of how low rez and crappy the graphics look on this thing and everybody is praising this "game" and its benchmarks of dubious accuracy.
It looks BAD, its choppy and pixelated, there is a simple terrain and small units that look like sprites from Dune 2000 and this thing makes an high end GPU cry to run at 60Fps's??....
hpglow - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
No insults in his post. Sorry you get your butt hurt whenever someone points out the facts. There are few Direct X 12 pieces of software outside of tech demos and canned benchmarks avalible. Nvidia has better things to do than appease the arm-chair quarterbacks of the comments section. Like optimize for games we are playing right now. Weather Nvidia cards are getting poor or equal performance in DX 12 titles to their DX 11 counterparts is irrelevant right now. We can talk all we want but until there is a DX 12 title worth putting $60 down on and that title actually gains enough FPS to increase the gameplay quality then the conversation is moot.Your first post was trolling and you know it.
at80eighty - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
there is definitely a disproportion in responses - in the exact inverse you described.review your own post for more chuckles.
Flunk - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
What? How dare you suggest that the fans of the great Nvidia might share some of the blame! Guards arrest this man for treason!Mondozai - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
"No insults in his post."Yeah, except that one part where he called him a fanboy. Yeah, totally no insults.
Seriously, is the Anandtech comment section devolving into Wccftech now? Is it still possible to have intelligent arguments about tech on the internet without idiots crawling all over the place? Thanks.
Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
Arguments are rarely intelligent.MattKa - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
If fanboy is an insult you are the biggest pussy in the world.IKeelU - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
"Trolling" usually implies deliberate obtuseness in order to annoy. Itchypoot's posts reads like a newb's or fanboy's (likely a bit of both) who simply doesn't understand how evidence and logic factor into civilized debate.