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.
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permastoned - Sunday, February 28, 2016 - link
Wasn't trolling - there are other metrics that show the case; for you to imply that 3dmark isn't valid is just silly: http://wccftech.com/amd-r9-290x-fast-titan-dx12-en...Another thing; what's the deal with all these fanboys? There is no benefit to being a fanboy of either AMD or Nvidia, it is just going to cause you problems because it may cause you to buy based on brand, rather than on performance per dollar, which is the factor that actually matters. At different price ranges different brands are better - e.g top end, a 980Ti is better than a fury X, however if you are looking in the price bracket below, and want buy a 980, you will get better performance and performance per dollar from a standard fury.
Being a fanboy will blind you from accepting the truth when the tides shift and the tables eventually turn. It helps you in no way at all, it disadvantages you in many. It also causes you to get angry on forums for no reason, and call people 'trolls' when they are stating facts.
Soulwager - Sunday, March 20, 2016 - link
Poorly how, exactly? It looks to me like DX12 is just removing a bottleneck for AMD that Nvidia already fixed in DX11. It would be more correct to say that AMD has poor DX11 performance compared to Maxwell, and neither are constrained by driver overhead in DX12.SunLord - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
DX12 by desing will slightly favor older AMD designs simply because of the design decisions that AMD made compared to Nvidia with regards DX11 that are paying off with Dx12 while Nvidia benefited from it with DX11 games which is why they own around 80% or so of the gaming GPU market. How much of an impact this will be depends on the game just like how it is with DX11 games some do better on AMD some will be better on Nvidia.anubis44 - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
If results like these continue with other DX12 games, nVidia's going to be the one with only 20% in a matter of months.althaz - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
Even in generation where AMD/ATI have been dominant in terms of performance and value, they've still not really dominated in sales.Just like even when AMD's CPUs were offering twice the performance per watt and cheaper performance per dollar, they still sold less than Intel.
Doing it for a short time isn't enough, you have to do it for *years* to get a lead like nVidia has.
Firstly you have to overturn brand-loyalty from complete morons (aka everybody with any brand loyalty to any company, these are corporations that only care about the contents of your wallet, make rational choices). That will happen only a small percentage of people at a time. So you have to maintain a pretty serious lead for a long time to do it.
AMD did manage to do it in the enthusiast space with CPUs, but (arguably due to Intel being dodgy pricks) they didn't quite turn that into mainstream market dominance. Which sucks for them, because they absolutely deserved it.
So even if AMD maintains this DX12 lead for the rest of the year and all of the next, they'll still sell less GPUs than nVidia will in that time. But if they can do it for another year after that, *then* would they be likely to start winning the GPU war.
Personally, I don't care a lot. I hope AMD do better because they are losing and competition is good. However, I will make my next purchasing decision on performance and price, nothing else.
permastoned - Sunday, February 28, 2016 - link
Wasn't trolling - there are other metrics that show the case; for you to imply that 3dmark isn't valid is just silly: http://wccftech.com/amd-r9-290x-fast-titan-dx12-en...2 points = trend.
Another thing; what's the deal with all these fanboys? There is no benefit to being a fanboy of either AMD or Nvidia, it is just going to cause you problems because it may cause you to buy based on brand, rather than on performance per dollar, which is the factor that actually matters. At different price ranges different brands are better - e.g top end, a 980Ti is better than a fury X, however if you are looking in the price bracket below, and want buy a 980, you will get better performance and performance per dollar from a standard fury.
Being a fanboy will blind you from accepting the truth when the tides shift and the tables eventually turn. It helps you in no way at all, it disadvantages you in many. It also causes you to get angry on forums for no reason, and call people 'trolls' when they are stating facts.
Continuity28 - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
By the time DX12 becomes commonplace, I'm sure they will have cards that were built for DX12.It makes a lot of sense to design your cards around what will be most useful today, not years in the future when people are replacing their cards anyways. Does it really matter if AMD's DX12 performance is better when it isn't relevant, when their DX11 performance is worse when it is relevant?
Senti - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Indeed it makes much sense to build cards exactly for today so people would be forced to buy new hardware next year to have decent performance. From certain green point of view. But many people are actually hoping that their brand new mid-top card would last with decent performance at least some years.cmdrdredd - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Hardware performance for new APIs is always weak with first gen products. That isn't changing here. When there are many DX12 titles out and new cards are out there, you'll see that people don't want to try playing with their old cards and will be buying new. That's how it works.ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
"Hardware performance for new APIs is always weak with first gen products."Except that doesn't seem to be the case with 2012's Radeon line.