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 - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link

    ebay is not really an answer, as some.. may not want to deal with the hassle of ebay, or even have an ebay account. and now a days, not all games can be resold. but that still doesnt add any " value " to the video card by adding specific games...
  • romrunning - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Triple-slot coolers pretty much kill it for mini-ITX systems. Usually they only have room for double-slot at most.
  • damianrobertjones - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Second hand 1070 all... day... long.
  • TheCurve - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Great review guys, loved it!
  • Tilmitt - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    If you actually want these reviews to be useful to real people making actual upgrade decisions, you need to include far more older GPUs. All the mid and high end GPUs from the 700 and 900 series at least. Preferably an awful lot more than this.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    It's always a fine balance between including older cards for context, and newer cards to showcase how it actually compares to other things you can buy (and the product it directly replaces). In this case we do have the GTX 960 and the R9 390 in these graphs; meanwhile for everything else, Bench can give you whatever comparisons you're looking for.

    https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU18/2293
  • Tilmitt - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link

    Unless I'm doing it wrong, bench is useless because the cards people want to compare are
    segregated into different bench years so you can't actually compare them. How does one compare a 770 and a 1660?
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link

    Fair enough point on the Kepler cards. We haven't gone in and backfilled those yet. However all of the 900 series cards are in there.
  • Hrel - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

    Doesn't seem to be any way to compare the R9 280x to the 1660 either, or the GTX1070.
  • zeroidea - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link

    If all the benchmark data is in a database, might it be possible to make the charts dynamic, and have an "add card to this graph" option? Better yet, store a user's personal system (or import it from pcpartpicker) and do this automatically for logged-in users, since this is what a lot of people care about (and currently open multiple tabs to different websites in order to accomplish the same thing). That's the kind of value-add that'd get me to cough up a bit for a premium membership, if AT ever wanted to go down that route.

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