The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTAshes of the Singularity Escalation
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of DirectX12s features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
As a real-time strategy title, Ashes is all about responsiveness during both wide open shots but also concentrated battles. With DirectX12 at the helm, the ability to implement more draw calls per second allows the engine to work with substantial unit depth and effects that other RTS titles had to rely on combined draw calls to achieve, making some combined unit structures ultimately very rigid.
Stardock clearly understand the importance of an in-game benchmark, ensuring that such a tool was available and capable from day one, especially with all the additional DX12 features used and being able to characterize how they affected the title for the developer was important. The in-game benchmark performs a four minute fixed seed battle environment with a variety of shots, and outputs a vast amount of data to analyze.
For our benchmark, we run a fixed v2.11 version of the game due to some peculiarities of the splash screen added after the merger with the standalone Escalation expansion, and have an automated tool to call the benchmark on the command line. (Prior to v2.11, the benchmark also supported 8K/16K testing, however v2.11 has odd behavior which nukes this.)
At both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we run the same settings. Ashes has dropdown options for MSAA, Light Quality, Object Quality, Shading Samples, Shadow Quality, Textures, and separate options for the terrain. There are several presents, from Very Low to Extreme: we run our benchmarks at Extreme settings, and take the frame-time output for our average, percentile, and time under analysis.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro RX 480 8G Performance
1080p
4K
AMD gets in the mix a lot with these tests, and in a number of cases pulls ahead of the Ryzen chips in the Time Under analysis.
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Zoeff - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Yeeeees! Thanks for the review! I was hoping there'd be an embargo lift at this hour. :DZingam - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
The best CPUs for MineSweeper in 2017 in a single article!!!!NikosD - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Anandtech is simply wrong regarding Game mode or "Legacy Compatibility Mode" as you prefer to call it and make jokes about it.It seems that you don't know what ALL other reviewers say that Game mode doesn't set SMT off, but it disables one die.
So, Threadripper doesn't become a 16C/16T CPU after enabling Game mode as you say, but a 8C/16T CPU like ALL other reviewers say.
Go read Tom's Hardware which says that Game mode executes "bcdedit /set numproc XX" in order to cut 8 cores and shrink the CPU to one die (8C/16T) but because that's a software restriction the memory and PCIe controller of the second die is still alive, giving Quad Channel memory support and full 60+4 PCIe lanes even in Game mode.
And you thought you are smart and funny regarding your Game mode comments...
monglerbongler - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
real renderers buy epyc or xeon. Either they have the money because its corporate money, they have the money because it comes from plebs paying someone comission/subscription money, or they have the money because they are plebs buying pre-built workstations.craptasticlemon - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Here's the real Threadripper review:AMD thrashes Intel i9 in every possible way, smushes it's puny ass into the dirt, and dances on the grave for the coup de gras. It is very entertaining to watch the paid Intel lackeys here try to paper over what is clearly a superior product. Keep up with the gaming scores guys, like anyone is buying this for gaming. I for one am looking forward to those delicious 40% faster render times, for the same price as the Intel space heater.
alysdexia - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
its, shit-headswifter
Dr. Swag - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
In paragraph two you say Ryzen 3 has double the threads of i3, I think you mean to say double the cores :)IanHagen - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Not trying to nitpick or imply anything but... There is a logical reason for Threadripper getting five pages of gaming performance review and Skylake-X not even appearing on the charts more than a month after it was reviewed?Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Bottom of page one.IanHagen - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
With all due respect Mr. Cutress, "circumstances beyond our control" and "odd BIOS/firmware gaming results" didn't prevent anyone from bashing Ryzen for its gaming performance on its debut.