Gadgetory

a few short months ago we checked out ashes of the singularity for the first time this upcoming RTS game has received a lot of attention due to the fact will most likely end up being the first DirectX 12 title to be released the initial benchmark released back in October 2015 showcase DirectX 12 features such as asynchronous compute it was discovered that the new async compute feature doesn't work well with Maxwell GPUs as it's not supported at the hardware level instead nvidia patch support in a driver level which came in a performance cost this was seen back in October MD is juicy and architecture on the other hand features hardware-based async computer and this hands them a serious advantage and DirectX 12 games so with Maxwell and video have been more focused on directx 11 performance and to a certain extent this makes sense of course the games released while Maxwell remains parent will only use directx11 giving them time to shift focus whence DirectX 12 becomes more commonplace still the DirectX 12 pain is real and in regards to ashes of the singularity could be about to get even worse today developer oxide is releasing an updated version 2 point 0 of the benchmark which features advanced use of DirectX 12 multi cue and signaling mechanisms in other words more advanced asynchronous computers apart from a heavier emphasis on a scene compute the updated benchmark enables another very cool and exciting feature called explicit multi-gpu this technology means gamers can now install an additional graphics card into their pc for increased performance now you're probably thinking map we've had that ability for over a decade it's called SLI or crossfire where explicit multi-gpu differs from traditional multi-gpu methods supported by AMD and NVIDIA is that allows users to game simultaneously with an AMD and an nvidia graphics card that's right you heard me correctly and what's an unnatural and perhaps even unholy pairing it's possible to combine a geforce gtx 980 TI and a radiant are no fury X for example without delving into the long and fairly complicated details as to how this is possible let's give to the results for those that would like more information I'll post something over at the harbor own box forums later today keep starting the benchmarking we have geforce gtx 970 and radeon r9 390 unfortunately for NVIDIA uses the latest actions of the singularity performance isn't looking great as the 390 was twenty-three percent faster at 1080p and nineteen percent faster at 1440p that's a huge margin given we expect these gpus to deliver similar performance in today's DirectX 11 titles combining the two with the 970 is the primary display card through superformance over a single 970 by sixty-seven percent which isn't bad boost over the single 390 was less impressive just thirty five percent more performance was had at 1080p and thirty-two percent more 1440p swapping the cards around by placing the 390 in charge booster performs at 1080p by sixteen percent for an average frame rate of 58 FPS this meant the combo is now fifty-seven percent faster than a single 390 and ninety-two percent faster than a single 970 finally opting for a pair of three 90s seemed like the way to go as the average frame rate at 1440p was now 52 FPS a thirteen percent gain over the three ninety and nine seventy pairing I should also point out the crossfire was disabled for this test so the graphics cards are being linked without any driver support very cool indeed although the gtx 980 is typically faster than the 390 x and often by a decent margin this isn't the case in ashes of the singularity here the 390 X is fourteen percent faster at 1080p and 1440p combining the tube with the 980 is the primary display adapter produced fairly average numbers swapping the tool around which the 1080p framerate 261 FPS with 49 FPS at 40 40 p that said we again find opting for a pair of AMD cards will be the preferred choice in ashes this last pairing which I like to call my fury ti provide some very damning results the 980 TI which we're used to seeing match or even beat the fury x gets completely annihilated the fury ax is almost an unbelievable thirty one percent faster at 1080p and 1440p is an even greater thirty-six percent margin seen at 4k despite the massive performance deficit coupling the cards yields fairly impressive results so again I should note that to fury X cards are considerably faster especially a 1440p and 4k where other system bottlenecks are GPU performance here we see that it is in fact a sin computed causing most of the pain for the NVIDIA GPUs if the GTX 980 TI became over twenty percent faster at 1080p once disabled even with async compute disabled the fury axe still performed admirably though once enabled and enjoyed a few extra frames per second this here is why AMD is so desperate for a low-level API not only does it solve their driver overhead issues but it removes the CPU bottleneck as well AMD likes to point out that DirectX 12 allows developers to utilize all 8 cores of the high and FX processors and this is the sole reason my performance is so much better under DirectX 12 truth be told their processes are still inefficient and while DirectX 12 does improve CPU utilization it mostly removes traffic that was swamped in the CPU and holding up GPU workloads finally due to the fact that graphics card drive is a far less important under DirectX 12 aimed a should enjoy another win in the form of your videos game works program becoming a lot less toxic than it has been for DirectX 11 games this latest 2 point 0 version of the ashes of the singularity benchmark paints quite a different picture to their first version the advanced implementation of Esen computers crippled and videos GPUs and will be interesting to see if they can optimize the drivers further to improve performance the ability to mix AMD and NVIDIA GPUs has massive implications that extend well beyond this single DirectX 12 title in fact I should point out that it's also possible to use the explicit multi-gpu feature with Intel's integrated graphics or an AMD apu and then you can of course also mix different model graphics cards from the same brand for example if you purchase the vanilla fury back when was released paying over five hundred dollars for a second card when the nano can be had for less is a bit painful having the ability to use a fury in nano together in directx 12 games is pretty attractive option of course this is just one example I'm sure there are dozens of useful scenarios where explicit multi-gpu proves invaluable on that note I'm aware that the testing this video provides just a small snapshot of what's possible and for now I don't plan to do too much more testing at least not until the game is officially released as always be sure to let me know what you think in the comments what are you making the new Direct X 12 features do you think will be a game-changer like me would you rather to stick with a single brand i'm your host Matt signing off and I'll see you next time