Ashes 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 from last year.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation - 2560x1440 - Extreme Quality

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation - 1920x1080 - Extreme Quality

Ashes: Escalation - 99th Percentile - 2560x1440 - Extreme Quality

Ashes: Escalation - 99th Percentile - 1920x1080 - Extreme Quality

With Ashes, the GTX 1660 edges out the RX 590, but at a decent distance from the GTX 1660 Ti. And like how Ashes offered the least amount of improvement in the suite for the GTX 1660 Ti over the GTX 1060 6GB, this also offers the least amount of improvement for the GTX 1660 over the GTX 1060 6GB and 3GB. Nevertheless, it still slightly outpaces the RX 590.

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  • Qasar - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    it also depends on if the consoles even have any games some one would want to play... for me.. those games are not on consoles.. they are on a comp... not worth it for me to by a console as it would just sit under my tv unused..
  • D. Lister - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link

    @eva02langley: "...console hardware is more efficient since it is dedicated for gaming only."

    smh... console hardware used to be more efficient for gaming when console hardware was composed of custom parts. Now, consoles use essentially the same parts as PCs, so that argument doesn't work anymore.

    Fact of the matter is, consoles remain competitive in framerate by either cutting down on internal resolution, or graphic quality features, like AA, AF, AO, or in many cases, both res and features. Take a look at the face-offs conducted by the Digital Foundry over at Eurogamers.net.
  • D. Lister - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link

    @eva02langley: I also find it rather ironic that you, who has often criticized NVidia for not being open-sourced enough with their technologies, are making a case here for consoles that are completely proprietary and closed-off systems.
  • maroon1 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Faster, consume much less power, smaller and produce less noise than RX590 which cost same

    Even if you ignore the performance advantage, the GTX 1660 is still better out of the two. No reason to buy big power hungry GPU when it has no performance advantage
  • 0ldman79 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    What is it with Wolfenstein that kills the 900 series?

    I mean they're still competitive in almost everything else, but Wolfenstein just buries the 900 series horribly. If it's that bad I'm glad I'm not addicted to that series. I had thought about picking up a copy, but damn...
  • Opencg - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    they may be using some async techniques. the famous example is doom where many 900 series saw worse performance on vulkan due to async being a cpu based driver side implementation.
  • Dribble - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    I think it's because it has FP16 code in the shaders - which Turing and newer AMD have hardware support for, but Pascal doesn't. It was AMD's trump card until Turing so you'll find a few AMD sponsored games use FP16.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    "What is it with Wolfenstein that kills the 900 series?"

    Memory capacity. It really wants more than 4GB when all of its IQ settings are cranked up, which leaves everything below the GTX 980 Ti a bit short on space.
  • AustinPowersISU - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Used GTX 1070 still makes the most sense. You can easily get one for less than this card and have much better performance.

    Nvidia needs to do better.
  • eva02langley - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    It is still their best offering in term of price/performance from Turing. However, yeah, that should have been done way before.

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