AMD exec discusses Radeon RX 480 Ashes of the Singularity demo

[HEXUS]

Provides common system specs and background to testing methodology.

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[Nifl]

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.

[SvDKILLSWITCH]

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

[Fluffmeister]

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

[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.

[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.

[Nifl]

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

The scaling is actually the amazing part in this scenario

[kalniel]

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

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.

[edzieba]

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.

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.

[HW90]

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

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.

[shaithis]

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.

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+

[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.

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

[kalniel]

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.

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

[DanceswithUnix]

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

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

[Jowsey]

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+

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?

[kalniel]

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

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