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).

Ashes 1920x1080 2560x1440 3840x2160
Average FPS
99th Percentile

For Ashes, the 20 series fare a little worse in their gains over the 10 series, with an advantage at 4K around 14 to 22%. Here, the Founders Edition power and clock tweaks are essential in avoiding the 2080 FE outright losing to the 1080 Ti, though our results are putting the Founders Editions essentially neck-and-neck.

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  • ESR323 - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link

    I agree with the conclusion that these cards aren't a good buy for 1080ti owners. My 1080ti overclocks very nicely and I'll be happy to stick with it until the next generation in 7 nm. By then we might have a decent selection of games that make use of ray tracing and the performance increase will be more appealing.
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link

    Yah i agree, especially its only a 20-25fps increase on average. While many might thing thats great, considering the price increase over 1080TI and the fact many 1080TI can overclock to close that gap even more. The features don't justify the cost.

    However, it could be lots of performance could be unlocked via driver updates..we really don't know how tensor cores could increase performance till the games get updated to use it. Also, while super expensive option...how does the new SLI performance increase performance? Lets see a compare from 1080TI sli to newer sli 2080TI..maybe its easier to put into games? So many what-ifs with this product.

    I feel this product should of been delayed till more games/software already had feature sets available to see.
  • Aybi - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    There wont be driver&optimization support for 1000 series. They will focus on 2000 series and with that the gap going to increase a lot.

    If you remember 980ti and 1080ti it was the same case when 1080ti announced and then you know what happened.
  • Vayra - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link

    Actually I don't and there is also no data to back up what you're saying. The 980ti still competes with the 1070 as it did at Pascal launch.

    Don't spread BS
  • Matthmaroo - Sunday, September 23, 2018 - link

    Dude that’s not true at all

    Nvidia will fully support the 10 series for the next 5 -10 years

    They all use the same CUDA cores

    Don’t just make crap up to justify your purchase
  • SanX - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    What the useless job the reviewer is doing comparing only to latest generstion cards? Add at least 980Ti and 780Ti
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    Ever heard of their benchmark database?
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    You'll be glad to hear then that we'll be backfilling cards.

    There was a very limited amount of time ahead of this review, and we thought it to be more important to focus on things like clocking the cards at their actual reference clocks (rather than NVIDIA's factory overclocks).
  • dad_at - Sunday, September 23, 2018 - link

    Many thanks for that, I think it is useful job, people are still using maxwell(or even older) generation GPU in 2018. And when we could expect maxwell (980/980ti) results to appear in GPU 2018 bench? Could you also please add Geforce GTX Titan X (maxwell) to GPU 2018?
  • StevoLincolnite - Sunday, September 23, 2018 - link

    Hopefully you back-fill a substantial amount, the GPU bench this year has been a bit lacking... Especially in regards to mid-range and older parts.

    Whole point of it is so that you can see how the latest and greatest compare it to your old and crusty.

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