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 ESTClosing Thoughts
Wrapping up our second look at Ashes of the Singularity and third overall look at Oxide’s Nitrous engines, it’s interesting to see where things have changed and where they have stayed the same.
Thanks to the general performance optimizations made since our initial look at Ashes, the situation for multi-GPU via DirectX 12 explicit multi-adapter is both very different and very similar. On an absolute basis it’s now a lot harder to max out a multi-GPU configuration; with reasonable quality settings we’re CPU limited even up to 4K, requiring we further increase the rendering quality. This more than anything else handily illustrates just how much performance has improved since the last beta. On the other hand it’s still the most unusual pairing – a Radeon R9 Fury X with a GeForce GTX 980 Ti – that delivers the best multi-GPU performance, which just goes to show what RTG and NVIDIA can accomplish working together.
As for the single GPU configurations, I’m not sure things as they currently stand could be any more different. NVIDIA cards have very good baseline DX11 performance in Ashes of the Singularity, but they mostly gain nothing from Ashes’ DX12 rendering path. RTG cards on the other hand have poorer DX11 performance, but they gain a significant amount of performance from the DX12 rendering path. In fact they gain so much performance that against traditional competitive lineups (e.g. Fury X vs. 980 Ti), the RTG cards are well in the lead, which isn’t usually the case elsewhere.
Going hand-in-hand with DX12, RTG’s cards are the only products to consistently benefit from Ashes’ improved asynchronous shading implementation. Whereas our NVIDIA cards see a very slight regression (with NVIDIA telling us that async shading is not currently enabled in their drivers), the Radeons improve in performance, especially the top-tier Fury X. This by itself isn’t wholly surprising given some of our theories about Fury X’s strengths and weaknesses, but for Ashes of the Singularity performance it further compounds on the other DX12 performance gains for RTG.
Ultimately Ashes gives us a very interesting look at the state of DirectX 12 performance for both RTG and NVIDIA cards, though no more and no less. As we stated at the start of this article this is beta software and performance is subject to change – not to mention the overall sample size of one game – but it is a start. For RTG this certainly lends support to their promotion of and expectations for DirectX 12, and it should be interesting to see how things shape up in March and beyond once the gold version of Ashes is released, and past that even more DirectX 12 games.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
153 Comments
View All Comments
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.