Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (DX12)

A veteran from our 2016 game list, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation continues to be the DirectX 12 trailblazer, with developer Oxide Games tailoring and designing the Nitrous Engine around such low-level APIs. Ashes remains fresh for us in many ways: Escalation was released as a standalone expansion in November 2016 and was eventually merged into the base game in February 2017, while August 2017's v2.4 brought Vulkan support. 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-threaded work submission and high batch counts. While what we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation - 3840x2160 - Extreme Quality

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

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

Ashes: Escalation - 99th Percentile - 3840x2160 - Extreme Quality

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

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

Battlefield 1 DOOM
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  • Dr. Swag - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Oh cool! Anandtech finally reviews some aftermarket gpus!

    If only we could actually, you know, buy them.
  • sharath.naik - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Whats with the gpu prices?!! I had bought 1080 ti for 660$ 8 months back, today its 1400$+, when trying to get a second one.
  • Hereiam2005 - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    I bought mine last week for 750$. Its a shitty 1080ti, the gigabyte gaming oc version, but it is much cheaper than other models.
  • Dr. Swag - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Miners.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Supply/Demand.

    People are pointing the finger at miners, but it's more than just an alternative coin mining issue. AIB partners are hesitant to make more cards because the last time GPU mining was big, GPU AIBs mostly sought to meet bigger supply to the bigger demand, only to get burned three-ways.

    1) Bitcoin market crashed. This led to GPU demand faltering quickly.

    2) They had already made their quarterly order to AMD/nVidia and were stuck with excess GPUs which they couldn't sell due to:
    a) Miner card resale market providing cheaper cards to those at lower price brackets.
    b) Lack of miner demand which the increased supply was supposed to meet.
    c) New GPU architecture releasing the next quarter, while they were still stuck on lots of old GPUs.

    3) Excess of warranty claims for excess GPU supply to miners.

    AIB partners would be willing to increase their quarterly orders so as to increase GPU supply to meet increased demand (due to miners) if they could _assume_ stability in the demand, which fundamentally means assuming stability in the crypto market, but stability in the crypto market is a complete and utter joke, so they're not willing to increase supply especially if next-gen GPUs might be around the corner if AMD/nVidia have an announcement by next quarter (GTX1100 series, RX600 series, etc.)
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Also, GPU pricing is also being affected by 3rd party sellers wanting to take advantage of the mining demand. 3rd party marketplace sellers on Amazon marketplace, Newegg marketplace, and eBay are also scalping excess GPU stock not to mine, but just to resell to gamers willing to fork over the money, but particularly to miners which can still recoup on the purchase, but will face a longer return on investment.

    Don't buy from 3rd party marketplace scalpers, they're just as guilty as miners (if not moreso, as they have no intent to even open the GPUs to use them for themselves) for draining supply from 1st party sellers, which prevents folk like you from getting rational prices.

    Just wait for next gen cards, maybe. AIBs won't be shy to ramp up production of the newest stuff that miners and gamers will be sure to buy and can guarantee they won't be sitting on outdated stock.
  • Pinn - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    Nvidia has volta, but AMD has nothing next-gen for awhile.
  • VulkanMan - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - link

    AMD has Navi.
  • CiccioB - Thursday, February 1, 2018 - link

    Coming in 2019
  • FreckledTrout - Wednesday, February 7, 2018 - link

    AMD have Vega on 7nm coming this year. I wouldn't brush the move to 7nm off either is it should allow the GCN architecture to breath by hitting much higher clocks. Of course the proof is in the pudding but I expect the 7nm shrink to be a decent performance bump.

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