Ashes of the Singularity

Sorely missing from our benchmark suite for quite some time have been RTSes, which don’t enjoy quite the popularity they once did. As a result Ashes holds a special place in our hearts, and that’s before we talk about the technical aspects. Based on developer Oxide Games’ Nitrous Engine, Ashes has been designed from the ground up for low-level APIs like DirectX 12. As a result of all of the games in our benchmark suite, this is the game making the best use of DirectX 12’s various features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threadeded work submission and high batch counts. What we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, but it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.

Ashes of the Singularity - 3840x2160 - Extreme Quality (DX12)

Ashes of the Singularity - 2560x1440 - Extreme Quality (DX12)

Of all of the games in our benchmark suite, Ashes is perhaps the most unusual. Besides being built for low-level APIs like DirectX 12 from the start, its rendering optimizations scale very well with resolution. As a result it takes a lot of rendering power to play Ashes with all the bells & whistles turned on, but once you can reach that point, going to 4K isn’t too much harder.

In any case, the GTX 1080 Ti becomes the first card to crack 60fps at 4K in this game. In doing so it’s 27% faster than the GTX 1080, and 71% faster than the GTX 980 Ti. Performance has actually reached a point that if we drop to 1440p, we start being CPU-limited a not-insignificant percentage of the time. So the GTX 1080 Ti outright needs 4K to really put its best foot forward.

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  • deathtollwrx - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link

    I upgraded from a
    Asus 1080GTX 8oc and it made a huge difference for me.

    OW was 110 fps now running about 155
  • OldManMcNasty - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link

    Ok is it me but why are all the games old AF? AND why is the 800-pound gorilla named BF1 missing from just about every review?
  • stardude82 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link

    Quick search pulls up many BF1 benchmarks for the 1080 Ti...
  • bill44 - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link

    Thanks Ryan, nice review.
    Still missing info/specs on Audio (inc. supported sampling rates), which, I suspect, you still not have at hand.
    I have asked about this in the past.
  • hughw - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link

    Does the 1080 Ti have dual DMA channels as the Titan X does?
  • MarkieGcolor - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link

    Nvidia is so gay. I don't understand why people complain that intel's chips slowly optimize over the years. You seriously want your hardware to depreciate 50% every year?
  • Meteor2 - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link

    That's one way to look at it! But lose the homophobia.
  • prateekprakash - Sunday, March 12, 2017 - link

    Hi,
    After going through the well written review, I think: wouldn't it be nice if AIB partners (atleast one of them) released a blower type card with 3 slots, so that it could include a heftier heatsink, yet exhaust heat out? That way I could consider putting it in a congested chassis and not worrying about thermal throttling. PS: here in India, my zotac gtx 1060 mini reaches 78° c even in open air!
  • PocketNuke - Monday, March 13, 2017 - link

    GP106-GP102 have the same 4x int8 performance according to this article:
    https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/mixed-p...
  • panicp - Sunday, October 15, 2017 - link

    I have a GTX 1080Ti and to date, I've been using FSX which apparently devotes more use to the CPU than the GPU. I've just loaded P3D - and it really does look super smooth. The temp maxed out around 85 degs - and my monitoring software was having kittens showing me temps in the RED zone.

    Can thus GPU continue to run at this temp indefinitely? For unlimited hours?

    Is it going to damage the card in the long run?

    I'd appreciate your kind advice.

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