The AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot At The High-End
by Nate Oh on February 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTAshes of the Singularity: Escalation (DX12)
A veteran from both our 2016 and 2017 game lists, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation remains the DirectX 12 trailblazer, with developer Oxide Games tailoring and designing the Nitrous Engine around such low-level APIs. The game makes the most of DX12's key features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threaded work submission and high batch counts. And with full Vulkan support, Ashes provides a good common ground between the forward-looking APIs of today. Its built-in benchmark tool is still one of the most versatile ways of measuring in-game workloads in terms of output data, automation, and analysis; by offering such a tool publicly and as part-and-parcel of the game, it's an example that other developers should take note of.
Settings and methodology remain identical from its usage in the 2016 GPU suite. To note, we are utilizing the original Ashes Extreme graphical preset, which compares to the current one with MSAA dialed down from x4 to x2, as well as adjusting Texture Rank (MipsToRemove in settings.ini).
We've updated some of the benchmark automation and data processing steps, so results may vary at the 1080p mark compared to previous data.
For the Radeon VII, the intended goal was to equal or trade blows with the RTX 2080. The situation in Ashes: Escalation is still in line with that intention at 4K, where despite trailing the GTX 1080 Ti FE/RTX 2080 duo is comfortably ahead of the RTX 2070 and RX Vega 64. The lead begins to dwindle at lower resolutions, but the Radeon VII can still claim a 20% speedup at 1440p over the RX Vega 64.
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Dr. Swag - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
If I had to guess, those tests probably are more dependent on memory capacity and/or memory bandwidth.Klimax - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Could be still difference between AMD's and Nvidia's OpenCL drivers. Nvidia only fairly recently started to focus on them. (Quite few 2.0 features are still listed as experimental)tipoo - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
That they changed the FP64 rate cap entirely in BIOS makes me wonder, should the iMac Pro be updated with something like this (as Navi is supposed to be launching with the mid range first), if it would have the double precision rate cap at all as Apple would be co-writing the drivers and all.tvdang7 - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
I feel AT needs to update the game list. I understand that these are probably easier to bench and are demanding but most of us are curious on how it performs on games we actually play. Lets be real how many of you or your friends play these game on the daily? BF1 and MAYBE GTA are popular but not on the grand scheme of things .Manch - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
7 DX 111 DX 12
1 Vulcan
Need a better spread of the API's and denote which games are engineered specifically for AMD or Nvidia or neither. I think that would be helpful when deciding which card should be in your rig.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Perhaps tell game developers to get with the times then? You cant test what isnt there, and the vast majority of games with repeatable benchmarks are DX11 titles. That is not Anandtech's fault.Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Didn't say it was. Merely a suggestion/request. There are around 30 games that are released with DX 12 support and about a dozen with Vulkan. Some of the DX 11 titles tested for this review offer DX 12 & Vulkan supt. They exist and can be tested. If there is a reason to NOT test a DX version or Vulkan version, for example RE2's broken DX12 implementation, OK fair enough. I think it would offer a better picture of how each card performs overall.Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
DX11 DX12 Vulkan
BF1 Tested Yes No
FC5 Tested No No
AotS Yes Tested Yes
Wolf Yes Yes Tested
FF Tested Maybe? No
GTA Tested No No
SoW Tested No No
F1 Tested No No
TW Tested Yes No
4 of the games tested with DX11 have DX 12 implementations and AotS has a Vulkan implementation. If the implementation is problematic, fair enough. Put a foot note or a ** but there are games with DX 12 and Vulkan out there on current engines so it can be done.
Ryan, perhaps and article on the games, the engines, their API implementations and how/why you choose to use/not use them in testing? Think it would be a good read.
Manch - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
Sorry bout the format didn't realize it would do that to it.eddman - Friday, February 8, 2019 - link
"about a dozen with Vulkan"What are these dozen games? Last time I checked there were only three or four modern games suitable for vulkan benchmarking: Wolfenstein 2, Doom, Strange Brigade and perhaps AotS.
IMO Wolfenstein 2 is enough to represent vulkan.
"Wolf Yes Yes Tested"
Wolfenstein 2 is vulkan only; no DX12.
As for DX12, yes, I too think they could add more.