AMD exec discusses Radeon RX 480 Ashes of the Singularity demo

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Provides common system specs and background to testing methodology.

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Read more.

Shots fired. But I guess Nvidia would use any trick to get a few more fps, even at the cost of image quality. People tend to only look at the numbers after all. Sad but plausible.

Just a correction, the AOTS demo and results were from two RX 480's running in DirectX 12 explicit multi-adapter mode, not CrossfireX.

Funny, less snow actually looks better. The game is a mediocre RTS as it is, soo meh.

Seems unlikely that this is a deliberate trick by nvidia to improve AotS performance. Far more likely is that the driver support for the particular shader calls is incomplete or incorrect on the 1080, given it's a brand new card. These things happen all the time with drivers (I had to disable one particular effect on neverwinter nights back in the day because the ATI implementation was buggy and crashed the game). Whether nvidia ever bother to "fix" the "bug" is another matter entirely, of course.

Since when was it a shocker to find 2 mid-range cards that outperform one large card?...at least when scaling is working correctly.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Since when was it a shocker to find 2 mid-range cards that outperform one large card?...at least when scaling is working correctly.

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The scaling is actually the amazing part in this scenario :P

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

(I had to disable one particular effect on neverwinter nights back in the day because the ATI implementation was buggy and crashed the game).

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Was that the shiny water bug? We still have a sticky on our PW forums for that ;)

But yes, he clarified he wasn't saying nVidia were fudging the results, only that there might be a bug with the rendering - might be nVidia, might be the game devs, and only a small increase in performance gained as a result (theoretically). It was more in response to the comments saying AMD were the ones fiddling the settings.

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

Seems unlikely that this is a deliberate trick by nvidia to improve AotS performance. Far more likely is that the driver support for the particular shader calls is incomplete or incorrect on the 1080, given it's a brand new card. These things happen all the time with drivers (I had to disable one particular effect on neverwinter nights back in the day because the ATI implementation was buggy and crashed the game). Whether nvidia ever bother to "fix" the "bug" is another matter entirely, of course.

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Or the the developers didn't implement - or implemented differently - something for the Nvidia path (or even the Pascal sub-path) that did for the AMD path. Remember that with DX12 most of the architecture-specific tweaking is on the developer rather than the GPU vendor.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Since when was it a shocker to find 2 mid-range cards that outperform one large card?...at least when scaling is working correctly.

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I don't think that's the shocker, the shocker is the sheer price difference. Using a pessimistic estimate for the RX480 cost in the UK you could get 2x RX480s, an i5, motherboard and 8GB memory for the same amount you'd spend on a GTX1080.

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Originally Posted by HW90

I don't think that's the shocker, the shocker is the sheer price difference. Using a pessimistic estimate for the RX480 cost in the UK you could get 2x RX480s, an i5, motherboard and 8GB memory for the same amount you'd spend on a GTX1080.

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Again, we have seen these percentage differences in the past. Nothing new, people pay large premiums for the top cards.....hell look at Titans and 295x2....even Fury X.

And until we see UK pricing of RX480 and non-FE 1080 prices, your speculating on the difference anyway....with the recent £/$ changes and the rip-off Britain "extra fee", I expect 480 prices to be noticeably higher then many are expecting....in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they are £200+

What's the betting the developers started with an Nvidia card, so have accidentally ended up relying on an Nvidia bug to render the way they want it? I mean, the Nvida shots do look better don't they, so I presume that is how they are supposed to look.

Edit: what do they look like on a 980 or similar previous gen card?

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

What's the betting the developers started with an Nvidia card, so have accidentally ended up relying on an Nvidia bug to render the way they want it? I mean, the Nvida shots do look better don't they, so I presume that is how they are supposed to look.

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AMD guy implies the devs agree it should be done correctly (ala AMD/other nVidia cards).

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Originally Posted by kalniel

AMD guy implies the devs agree it should be done correctly (ala AMD/other nVidia cards).

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So it really is supposed to look that white and bland? Fair enough, but then I think modern Audi's look like boredom on featureless wheels and clearly millions of drivers disagree with me there too :)

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Again, we have seen these percentage differences in the past. Nothing new, people pay large premiums for the top cards.....hell look at Titans and 295x2....even Fury X.

And until we see UK pricing of RX480 and non-FE 1080 prices, your speculating on the difference anyway....with the recent £/$ changes and the rip-off Britain "extra fee", I expect 480 prices to be noticeably higher then many are expecting....in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they are £200+

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I think we can just got a step back and think about what has occurred. Nvidia has released a high end flagship card to show "the best it has" (we obviously know it's not a Halo product, look out for the 1080ti and the Titan 10) and AMD has released a mid range volume. Both offer marginal increase on PY, healthy increases in performance per watt and, hopefully, great performance per pound.

This generation has not set me on fire but it's not rubbish either. Lets wait and see the GTX1060/1060ti and how it stacks up against the RX 480 and how the RX 490X (and some kind of Fury 4?) stack up against the 1080/ti.

The big thing this gen is AMD is pushing that price point down nice and hard from the word go. Must be really good yield?

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

So it really is supposed to look that white and bland? Fair enough, but then I think modern Audi's look like boredom on featureless wheels and clearly millions of drivers disagree with me there too :)

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Heh, I guess the devs design it to look how they like, then punters can decide whether they agree with them or not. If you want an Audi to look funky you don't hope the panel assembler has their instructions upsidedown, you buy an Ariel instead ;)

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Originally Posted by Jowsey

The big thing this gen is AMD is pushing that price point down nice and hard from the word go. Must be really good yield?

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Spot on. Not only a good yield, more GPUs per wafer compared to their previous gen. All while permitting same gross margins as previous gen! AMD doing precisely what they said they would.

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Originally Posted by edzieba

Or the the developers didn't implement - or implemented differently - something for the Nvidia path (or even the Pascal sub-path) that did for the AMD path. Remember that with DX12 most of the architecture-specific tweaking is on the developer rather than the GPU vendor.

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The weird thing is that apparently the 1070 renders it correctly... never mind the 980s, etc.

Yes, snow makes scenery look bland. That's one of its attributes. This is a snowy level, so sadly it should look a bit bland, and detract less from the action that actually matters.

The downward pricing pressure cannot be making Nvidia happy. The 1060 (1280 shader SKU) is in a bad place now, pricing is now restricted to being under $179 in all likelihood (when you do the performance maths). That is surely not what Nvidia wanted for this part (considering the 1070 is $379/$449, I bet the 1060 was scheduled for $229 to $279 (with a +$40 FE version) but we'll never know now. It'll compete against the RX 470.

Maybe don't use a moron that can barely speak English with the proper accent, to present your products. No? Yea, didn't expect much from AMD anyway.

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Originally Posted by kpkCioby

Maybe don't use a moron that can barely speak English with the proper accent, to present your products. No? Yea, didn't expect much from AMD anyway.

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"proper accent"?

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Was that the shiny water bug? We still have a sticky on our PW forums for that ;) ....

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Yep, the infamous shiny water :) I don't believe it ever got "fixed" properly, but afaik modern AMD graphics don't have the same problem (pretty sure I have shiny water enabled on my laptop). I suspect that's more down to the problem being obsoleted rather than fixed though.

who would have thought given pascal is just Maxwell on steroids , Nv already know how to write a driver for it.....

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Since when was it a shocker to find 2 mid-range cards that outperform one large card?...at least when scaling is working correctly.

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Exactly. The only difference would be if most or all games accommodated the new AMD multi-card regimen, unlike the way things are with SLI/X-Fire setups that has compelled me to go with high-end single card solutions rather than two mid-level or even two high-end cards.

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Originally Posted by kpkCioby

Maybe don't use a moron that can barely speak English with the proper accent, to present your products. No? Yea, didn't expect much from AMD anyway.

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You're the moron, you ignorant buffoon. That guy has more qualifications than you can count (if in fact, you CAN count, which I doubt).

So get lost, troll.

Yesterday one card was 199usd, today two cards are 500usd, what gives?

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Originally Posted by zulm

Yesterday one card was 199usd, today two cards are 500usd, what gives?

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4GB card is $199. 8GB is $230 I think, so 2x8GB gives $460 and the <$500 that was marked.

I think the big difference this time is the cost.

£160-180 vs £600-£700

For the price of a GTX1080 you could buy a RX480 + full i5 k system to go with it, and freesync monitor and a copy of Windows.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/WsLQzM

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Originally Posted by kalniel

4GB card is $199. 8GB is $230 I think, so 2x8GB gives $460 and the <$500 that was marked.

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Thanks that makes sense, missed the 8gb config

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Originally Posted by kalniel

4GB card is $199. 8GB is $230 I think, so 2x8GB gives $460 and the <$500 that was marked.

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Is my memory failing me or did i read that DirectX 12 combines the RAM when using explicit multi-adapter mode?
If so could that mean the game had access to 16GB or that they're reporting the total available from two 4GB cards.

End of the month for release so at least 2 months before you actually get one in your hands. I really wish AMD would get ahead of Nvidia with releases more often.

Will be interesting to see how quickly Nvidia react to this card and get a 1060 into the market.

Also I just realised its an RX 480.... so have they just abandoned the whole R7, R9 etc thing to separate cards depending on their market segment?

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Originally Posted by Corky34

Is my memory failing me or did i read that DirectX 12 combines the RAM when using explicit multi-adapter mode?
If so could that mean the game had access to 16GB or that they're reporting the total available from two 4GB cards.

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There are all sorts of funky things the DX12 multi-adaptor can do - no idea how it's reported, but if two 4GB cards had been used they'd have said <$400 ;)

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Also I just realised its an RX 480.... so have they just abandoned the whole R7, R9 etc thing to separate cards depending on their market segment?

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Appears so :( More confusion for the user sadly, when AMD were beginning to be quite sensible about model naming. RX almost implies better than 9 as per Roman numeral, but these aren't necessarily R9 beaters.

Unless OFC it is RX460,RX470,RX480,etc??

The next gen is RX560,RX570,RX580,etc??

From http://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-pric...ket-1464725394 (stick the link into google and open it from there - they don't paywall hits through google):

"AMD said its new Radeon RX cards, certified for use in VR by HTC and Oculus VR, deliver performance equivalent to that of $500 graphics cards used for VR."
I took that to mean RX cards are certified by HTC and Oculus. Cards that are either not powerful enough or not certified for some other reason could still be R3/7/9. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Unless OFC it is RX460,RX470,RX480,etc??

The next gen is RX560,RX570,RX580,etc??

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Right... so the whole exercise of introducing the R# only lasted 2 generations which were all based on pretty much the same technology, except the fury which didnt fit into that scheme anyway.

I feel as though I have to have a rant about this nonsense twice a year. There is definitely busy-bodies at tech companies in the nomenclature department and it drives me up the wall.

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Originally Posted by Bagnaj97

From http://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-pric...ket-1464725394 (stick the link into google and open it from there - they don't paywall hits through google):

"AMD said its new Radeon RX cards, certified for use in VR by HTC and Oculus VR, deliver performance equivalent to that of $500 graphics cards used for VR."
I took that to mean RX cards are certified by HTC and Oculus. Cards that are either not powerful enough or not certified for some other reason could still be R3/7/9. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

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Interesting thought, but I think thats just the way they have worded it... I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

They pretty much only sold R7 and R9 cards before anyway, so ditching them to RX is only halving the number of prefixes.

Interesting that they used a haswell-e system, would the story be the same on one of their own systems or even a skylake system where the number of pci-e lanes will be a limited.

X99 boards are pricey never mind the 40 lane cpu,

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Originally Posted by keithwalton

Interesting that they used a haswell-e system, would the story be the same on one of their own systems or even a skylake system where the number of pci-e lanes will be a limited.

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There's no real limitation on dual GPU PCI-E lanes for skylake or AMD systems.

I really like the price point for this card. If only the games and driver updates could keep up it would be a solid price performance winner.

What is the difference between multi-adapter mode crossfireX?.

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Originally Posted by canopus72

What is the difference between multi-adapter mode crossfireX?.

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In DX12 a game can see a pair of GPUs and drive the rendering itself.

In crossfire the graphics driver makes the pair of cards appear as a single resource and tries to split work up between them behind the scenes.

Very impressive but also slightly confusing 4K results. Assuming this true the RX 480 seems to punch well above it's price tag.

http://www.ashesofthesingularity.com...b-d49c93a4572e

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Originally Posted by jigger

Very impressive but also slightly confusing 4K results. Assuming this true the RX 480 seems to punch well above it's price tag.

http://www.ashesofthesingularity.com...b-d49c93a4572e

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Hard to tell too much since some of the options are turned down.

I'm not sure how hard the game is on graphics cards at those settings, but for a £165-£200 it seems impressive to be able to run that game at 4K with decent settings.