DirectX11 vs DirectX12 Ashes of Singularity Benchmark (R9 280X)

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Its very simple. AMD didn't bother to do any DX11 optimizations as you can see here:
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-10/...ashes-of-the-singularity-directx-11-1920-1080
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-10/...ashes-of-the-singularity-directx-12-1920-1080

That doesn't make any sense ...

Why would AMD ignore over half the market ?

 

[ShintaiDK]

That doesn't make any sense ...

Why would AMD ignore over half the market ?

This game is at least a year away, if it even end up finished. So in terms of who uses what, we have to see in a year from now.

And with the free upgrade still for Windows 10. I dont see why AMD cant say they dont want to bother with the cost of DX11 optimizations. Considering the upgrade to DX12 is free.

 

[Skurge]

This game is at least a year away, if it even end up finished. So in terms of who uses what, we have to see in a year from now.

And with the free upgrade still for Windows 10. I dont see why AMD cant say they dont want to bother with the cost of DX11 optimizations. Considering the upgrade to DX12 is free.

And steam shows windows 10 is already more used than 8.1 and about 10% behind windows 7. So a year from now windows could very likely be the majority. This of course only counts steam users.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

This game is at least a year away, if it even end up finished. So in terms of who uses what, we have to see in a year from now.

And with the free upgrade still for Windows 10. I dont see why AMD cant say they dont want to bother with the cost of DX11 optimizations. Considering the upgrade to DX12 is free.

The game is available on Steam Early access so it's available for ANY IHV to optimize right now ...

Just because the upgrade to Windows 10 is free doesn't mean users will automatically do it ...

 

[Mercennarius]

So I decided to rerun the benchmark with the latest update and my new setup (Saphire 290X, higher resolution monitor, 48GB of RAM). Here's DX11 vs DX12 at 1080P and "High" settings:

DX11

DX12

Average frame rate was increased 68.6% going from DX11 to DX12 at 1080P. Again this is still early access so the game/benchmark have not been fully optimized.

 

[funboy6942]

DANG!

 

[boozzer]

dang! this is really impressive.

 

[TheELF]

Average frame rate was increased 68.6% going from DX11 to DX12 at 1080P. Again this is still early access so the game/benchmark have not been fully optimized.

From 20 to 34 FPS is more like 58% and not 68% ,but still...
Although the one thing that is apparent is that the benchmark is heavily GPU limited (jeez 20-34fps...wtf) ,did you play the campaign at all?

 

[bystander36]

From 20 to 34 FPS is more like 58% and not 68% ,but still...
Although the one thing that is apparent is that the benchmark is heavily GPU limited (jeez 20-34fps...wtf) ,did you play the campaign at all?

It's actually a 70% increase from 20-34, but he probably included the decimal place in his calc. 34/20 = 170%

 

[Mercennarius]

From 20 to 34 FPS is more like 58% and not 68% ,but still...
Although the one thing that is apparent is that the benchmark is heavily GPU limited (jeez 20-34fps...wtf) ,did you play the campaign at all?

?? 33.9 - 20.1 = 13.8/20.1 = .68656 + 1 = 1.68656 * 20.1 = 33.9
Therefore the increase is 68.65%

And yes the campaign averages much higher FPS than this benchmark. The benchmark has areas where there are literally hundreds of units on the screen at once all interacting at once displaying some impressive scale and lighting effects.

 

[moonbogg]

So they released half of this game ahead of time? Why the hell would they release half of a game? So is this the finished half or the unfinished half that people are playing now? Is it going to change? Its a work in progress or what? When is the game coming out and when can I buy it. That's what I'd like to know. What's wrong with these people?

 

[Mercennarius]

So they released half of this game ahead of time? Why the hell would they release half of a game? So is this the finished half or the unfinished half that people are playing now? Is it going to change? Its a work in progress or what? When is the game coming out and when can I buy it. That's what I'd like to know. What's wrong with these people?

Its early access, extremely common for developers to do this now days through Steam or on their own. Often offer discounts and the ability to try the game in advance to players willing to purchase the game during an Alpha/Beta stage. The game feels about 80% complete and i'd expect a release around Summer 2016.

 

[RussianSensation]

That doesn't make any sense ...

Why would AMD ignore over half the market ?

I am confused by your statement.

1. Windows 10 is a free upgrade to W7/8/8.1 users. Any gamer worth his salt that doesn't feel like wasting $100 later is going to jump to W10 by the upgrade deadline in 2016. Windows 10 combines all of the best aspects of 7 and 8.1 and it's a free upgrade so why would most gamers who are paying attention to DX12 development and want to save $100 on something other than re-buying a free OS upgrade NOT get Windows 10 in 2016?

2. GCN 1.0/1.1/1.2 all support DX12 in ashes so what "half of the market" are you talking about? VLIW GPUs such as HD4890/5870/6970? None of those cards would even have the GPU horsepower to run this game well and some of those will be approaching 6-8 years old in 2016.

Just because the upgrade to Windows 10 is free doesn't mean users will automatically do it ...

Anyone who is interested in Ashes or next gen AAA PC gaming in 2016-2019 is upgrading to W10:

-- W10 is free. Sooner or later there will be more DX12 games and who wants to pay $100 to realize the benefits in other DX12 games?
-- Driver support and GPU driver focus will start shifting towards the latest and greatest gaming OS -> that will be Windows 10
-- W10 is going to stick around for a long time, at least as long as W7 so evading W10 isn't an option unless someone is straight up against DX12 gaming
-- MS gave a full year to upgrade to W10. No excuses. If you still want to retain your copy of Windows 7, you can do that too:
http://www.pcsteps.com/45-download-windows-7-iso-legally-free/

Even with DX12, early beta benchmarks show that this game is very demanding. At 1080P on medium, nothing below Fury / 980 will hit 60 fps. On epic graphical settings, no GPU from this generation will hit 60 fps:
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-10/...ashes-of-the-singularity-directx-12-1920-1080

Therefore your point about DX11 vs. DX12 is moot since Ashes of Singularity is extremely demanding. It's not meant for casuals, or users with low-end GPUs or ancient CPUs. Someone really serious about this game is going to be upgrading from ancient HD4000/5000/6000 series and even 7000 series, possibly getting a new CPU just because of how demanding this game is anyway.

Users with slower CPUs such as FX8000 series, i5 and i3 would benefit as well from upgrading to Windows 10:

This game's DX12 benefits go far beyond just AMD cards or AMD CPUs.

So they released half of this game ahead of time? Why the hell would they release half of a game? So is this the finished half or the unfinished half that people are playing now? Is it going to change? Its a work in progress or what? When is the game coming out and when can I buy it. That's what I'd like to know. What's wrong with these people?

It's Early Access much like ARK Survival.

There is a write-up on what you get right now on Steam under the Early Access banner:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/228880/

 

[Mercennarius]

So Ashes of the Singularity just received a large update this week (v.70). A few of the MANY listed changes include:

Significant performance improvements (especially in DX12)

Don't draw shadows for MB frames, Re-use Initial frame data for MB frames for detail objects.

Better local sorting of mesh's within an object

Slightly better sort logic for draw_elements

txaa frames using same batch set with different dynamics

Improved performance for plasma whip projectile

RegionRenderer. Now takes color directly in 32bit format. Way less temporary memory, and memory movement.

So of course I decided to run the benchmark again at 1080P and compare DX11 vs DX12 with all fidelity quality settings the same. Here are the results after the latest update:

DX11:

DX12:

With the latest update I saws a 28% increase in average FPS moving to DX12. Also you can see that in both scenarios the game achieves noticeably higher FPS than before the v.70 update. It looks like DX12 performs much better in the "Heavy Batches" sections. Also DX11 registered a maximum of 4,067MB of VRAM during the benchmark while DX12 measured a maximum of 4,338MB.

 

[Mercennarius]

Decided to compare the multithreading between DX11 and DX12:

DX11:

DX12:

As you can see both DX11 and DX12 can utilize more than 12 threads in this game. DX12 shows a significantly improved resource allocation between threads, while DX11 shows the majority of the work load left to the primary thread.