AMD Radeon RX Vega review: Vega 56, Vega 64, and liquid-cooled Vega 64 tested

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity, running on Oxide’s custom Nitrous engine, was an early standard-bearer for DirectX 12, and many months later it’s still the premier game for seeing what next-gen graphics technologies have to offer. Nvidia drivers have greatly improved GeForce performance in Ashes over the past several months. We test the game using the High graphics setting, as the wildly strenuous Crazy and Extreme presets aren’t reflective of real-world usage scenarios.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Vega 56 beats the GTX 1070 across the board in DirectX 12 mode. The GTX 1080 and air-cooled Vega 64 are evenly matched at 4K, with the more potent liquid-cooled version opening a 9.25-percent lead over the GeForce card. AMD’s hardware starts pulling ahead at 1440p resolution, though.

At least in DirectX 12: Nvidia’s cards trounce Vega in DirectX 11. That’s worth noting because DX12 is available only in Windows 10. Ashes is a definite victory for AMD for Windows 10 users, while Nvidia is the clear victor for everybody else—though the majority of PC gamers have migrated to Windows 10, according to the Steam hardware survey.

Next page: Power, heat, noise, clock speeds