You probably hate or love the game

Why would anyone "hate" this game? It's a beautifully crafted, modern RTS that attempts to bring all the best from earlier productions and run it on today's multi-core hardware. The attention to detail is remarkable, the graphics are stunning, and the gameplay is fluid and continually refined. Find something else to hate, such as the endless stream of melee-bound "first person shooters".

Why would anyone "hate" this game? It's a beautifully crafted, modern RTS that attempts to bring all the best from earlier productions and run it on today's multi-core hardware. The attention to detail is remarkable, the graphics are stunning, and the gameplay is fluid and continually refined. Find something else to hate, such as the endless stream of melee-bound "first person shooters".

RTS are cool to hate, it's been that way for a while. Neat to see another game supporting Vulkan; I wish more would.

I'm curious if Vulkan performs any worse on Windows 7 than on Windows 10. Hopefully Vulkan will catch up to the DX12 performance. I assume high DX12 performance in this game has been important for both AMD and Nvidia.

This is a game? I always thought that this is just some sort of benchmark demo or something.

For the first Vulkan release, I'd say the performance is pretty good. I'm sure they'll add patches to further refine performance.

Why would anyone "hate" this game? It's a beautifully crafted, modern RTS that attempts to bring all the best from earlier productions and run it on today's multi-core hardware. The attention to detail is remarkable, the graphics are stunning, and the gameplay is fluid and continually refined. Find something else to hate, such as the endless stream of melee-bound "first person shooters".

You kind of answered your own question - the people who hate on this game are the type of people who only play FPSs and adventure games (not RPGs - too complex for them). RTSs are a very adult genre since they require critical thinking and patience. RTSs punish you pretty hard for failure, and a lot of kids can't handle that - why do you think so many schools hand out awards for things like coming in 6th place, "great enthusiasm", or "being a team player"? That being said, I noticed most people who hate on RTSs are also the type of people who don't like playing shooters like UT where you have to actually have skill to win. I never liked games where you die in just a couple hits, because it really comes down to "whoever sees you first wins". I want to be able to put up a fight, and I want who I'm facing to prove themselves. I'll pretty much never play a game like CS:GO or Battlefield for this reason.

Why would anyone "hate" this game? It's a beautifully crafted, modern RTS that attempts to bring all the best from earlier productions and run it on today's multi-core hardware. The attention to detail is remarkable, the graphics are stunning, and the gameplay is fluid and continually refined. Find something else to hate, such as the endless stream of melee-bound "first person shooters".

I don't think anyone hates the game per se; Oxide however have stained their reputation with this title through misinformation. In case you missed the ordeal, at some point they were shouting how asynchronous compute was the second coming of Jesus Christ and they were implying how Nvidia is anti-consumer for not supporting it. The decreased complexity from having an emulated async solution allows for less heat and higher clocks. And it turned out that Nvidia didn't really need it either. AMD has far more holes in their pipeline, holes that can be filled with compute tasks. Nvidia's uarch simply doesn't have nearly as many holes. So it's practically a design trade-off, a very common thing in hardware architecture. Sh1t got confusing when Hitman came along and showed asynchronous compute giving an average FPS increase of what, 5% on AMD hardware? It looked like asynchronous compute was more specific than Oxide had said. Like, combined with the fact that Oxide had been with AMD since the beginning this whole thing started smelling weird. Not only did Oxide assume too much, they 'incidentally' assumed heavily in AMD's favor. AMD also released some near-cringe statements that certainly didn't help their case in the long run. And ironically, Nvidia was accused of not supporting DX12 because they weren't doing async the way AMD was - even though they were supporting more features from the DX12 spec sheet. They still are. And even more ironically, Intel's iGPUs support more than both. TL;DR asynchronous compute is the most useless overhyped tech from the past years, even though Oxide and AMD swore by it at the expense of their reputation. Maybe this is what Hilbert meant in regards to why some people might hate this game. People tend to look at the developer too. Most people for example are accustomed to taking anything from EA or Ubisoft with caution. I for one won't believe anything Oxide says from now on without confirmation from a third party.

Why would anyone "hate" this game? It's a beautifully crafted, modern RTS

Yes, it looks great, but the gameplay itself is complete cr*p. I am a primary RTS users since the very early days, starting with things like Dune 2, Warcraft 1, Command & Conquer and the amazing Total Annihilation... and even today trying/playing almost any RTS that appears. Ashes kept me about 20 minutes in front of it, never to be started again. Total disappointment, I want my money back. In contrast, I still play Supreme Commander (which has this concept of large-scale battles with thousands of units) every day 10 years after it's launch... Very sad that it's simulation is single threaded, otherwise it would be the best RTS ever. Even so, it probably is.

I hate this game because we have to hear about it so much. Yeah we get it, an average-to-bad game ran better on AMD for awhile.

Well, this is obviously good news. However, I'm reading early reports of Nvidia users having a much wider gap between DX12 and Vulkan, than AMD users.

This is a game? I always thought that this is just some sort of benchmark demo or something.

My thoughts exactly. I never seen anybody talking about gameplay or anything gaming related, only benchmarking.

This is a game? I always thought that this is just some sort of benchmark demo or something.

Ashes of the Benchularity might be a more fitting tittle ! although to their honor they support so many technologies on their Game mutli-gpu 3 api's optimisations you name it .... whats next support for 3dfx glide ? :banana:

For the first Vulkan release, I'd say the performance is pretty good. I'm sure they'll add patches to further refine performance. You kind of answered your own question - the people who hate on this game are the type of people who only play FPSs and adventure games (not RPGs - too complex for them). RTSs are a very adult genre since they require critical thinking and patience. RTSs punish you pretty hard for failure, and a lot of kids can't handle that - why do you think so many schools hand out awards for things like coming in 6th place, "great enthusiasm", or "being a team player"? That being said, I noticed most people who hate on RTSs are also the type of people who don't like playing shooters like UT where you have to actually have skill to win. I never liked games where you die in just a couple hits, because it really comes down to "whoever sees you first wins". I want to be able to put up a fight, and I want who I'm facing to prove themselves. I'll pretty much never play a game like CS:GO or Battlefield for this reason.

schim do you spy on me ? I LOVED ADORED WORSHIPED Unreal tournament and 2003 and 2004 every C&C till 3 Civilizations and rpgs my all time favorites are Never Winternternights 2 Gothic 1/2 and the old baldur's gates well a lot more but those are my favorites of all time the first and the last cod i played was the first one Call of duty 1 after that i just had no interest for em !

Considering how well they support the game and have been patching it. It's a pretty good game actually.

I hate this game because we have to hear about it so much. Yeah we get it, an average-to-bad game ran better on AMD for awhile.

troll much?

****tiest game ever made. "Asses of the Singulerity

Well, I have several hundred hours into Ashes and have enjoyed every minute - locked to the screen. But then I feel the same way about the Crysis games, which have also been roundly hated. I might think that I'm too easily pleased, except that practically every other game in these genres seems like crap relative to these. I appreciate the smoothness and intelligence of their gameplay, the focus on what's important, the refinement of the engines, and especially the huge variety and... replayability!

Yes, it looks great, but the gameplay itself is complete cr*p. I am a primary RTS users since the very early days, starting with things like Dune 2, Warcraft 1, Command & Conquer and the amazing Total Annihilation... and even today trying/playing almost any RTS that appears. Ashes kept me about 20 minutes in front of it, never to be started again. Total disappointment, I want my money back. In contrast, I still play Supreme Commander (which has this concept of large-scale battles with thousands of units) every day 10 years after it's launch... Very sad that it's simulation is single threaded, otherwise it would be the best RTS ever. Even so, it probably is.

I agree with this 100%.. It looks cool, but the gameplay is terrible. I got a refund. We need another C&C or Supreme Commander game.. sigh 🙁

I don't think anyone hates the game per se; Oxide however have stained their reputation with this title through misinformation. In case you missed the ordeal, at some point they were shouting how asynchronous compute was the second coming of Jesus Christ and they were implying how Nvidia is anti-consumer for not supporting it. The decreased complexity from having an emulated async solution allows for less heat and higher clocks. And it turned out that Nvidia didn't really need it either. AMD has far more holes in their pipeline, holes that can be filled with compute tasks. Nvidia's uarch simply doesn't have nearly as many holes. So it's practically a design trade-off, a very common thing in hardware architecture. Sh1t got confusing when Hitman came along and showed asynchronous compute giving an average FPS increase of what, 5% on AMD hardware? It looked like asynchronous compute was more specific than Oxide had said. Like, combined with the fact that Oxide had been with AMD since the beginning this whole thing started smelling weird. Not only did Oxide assume too much, they 'incidentally' assumed heavily in AMD's favor. AMD also released some near-cringe statements that certainly didn't help their case in the long run. And ironically, Nvidia was accused of not supporting DX12 because they weren't doing async the way AMD was - even though they were supporting more features from the DX12 spec sheet. They still are. And even more ironically, Intel's iGPUs support more than both. TL;DR asynchronous compute is the most useless overhyped tech from the past years, even though Oxide and AMD swore by it at the expense of their reputation. Maybe this is what Hilbert meant in regards to why some people might hate this game. People tend to look at the developer too. Most people for example are accustomed to taking anything from EA or Ubisoft with caution. I for one won't believe anything Oxide says from now on without confirmation from a third party.

Let's Fix It. 1st Oxide got flame from nV's fans as game was AMD "sponsored" and being "benchmark". Then it got flame from AMD's fans as it was actually running better on usually equal nV's cards over AMD's. Then they kind of uncovered that nV used dummy Async "implementation" in driver. And refused to do nV specific stuff as it was alteration of standard DX implementation which would negatively affect AMD's performance. Or nV specific code path would have to be made, but that would make difference in IQ between manufacturers and game could no longer serve as "benchmark". That brings it to love/hate. Many people who bought it use it only as benchmark. And Oxide does not really want to kill this feature as it brings additional money. And while some, like xIcarus may not like it, there have been tests of ASync done when Pascal came and repeated again later. At that time GTX 980 Ti (Maxwell) Lost few % of FPS with ASync ON, but GTX 1080 (Pascal) Gained few % of FPS. No, that's not because Pascal introduced holes in processing. That's because Maxwell was simply missing HW capability to plug very same holes Pascal has. Enabling ASync has certain software overhead (read CPU cycles due to game+driver processing), if that goes to null HW, then there is proportional loss in performance unless this software part runs outside of main thread. But idea is that this mentioned overhead causes smaller loss than HW gains. That's why Pascal gains from ASync. This has been confirmed by all ASync capable software solutions known. Including Time Spy bench: [spoiler]https://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-07-14/timespy-3.png[/spoiler] And then there is another reason why Oxide is being hated by some. It is nasty set of words: "Asynchronous Shaders". And when one looks at ASync on AMD vs. nV... 3 queues capable to actually execute certain tasks in overlapping way vs. 2 queues which really are just about plugging "holes". Can't wait people turning coats and loving ASync if gaming Volta gains full support and gains similar to AMD chips...

Async Compute and Vega were super hyped. In reality, there's nothing there game changing... The $100 price increase on Vega was also pretty shady of AMD. Nvidia is the better...

Well, there is certain level of elementary brute force required, then there are efficiencies. It is all about number of transistors vs. gain. And if something quite small and simple can gain 10%, then another thing 5%, and another after another... That's what got us to today's performance levels. There are hundreds to thousands of small improvements involved. We just get to name few bigger ones which are exposed via software. We should not belittle something what gives additional performance gain at little investment. But there is something to question. Fiji with 8,9B transistors vs. Vega 10 with 12,5B transistors. That's 40,45% more transistors and yet it is about equal in clock to clock comparison. Actually, if Fiji got just 3072bit HBM2 IMC and got clocked to 1,5GHz due to 14nm manufacturing, it would beat Vega 10 while costing much less per chip. That's really weird part of Vega 10, those additional 3,6B transistors. That's budget required to build Ryzen 6C/12T as 8C/12T is 4.8B transistors (including caches).

Fox2232 - Another way to look at the current situation is that Vega isn't being fully utilised and so isn't really being tested to it's full capabilities. It's also one of the first consumer cards that brings some performance that benefits professionals. Even Nvidia bringing some elements of their professional cards to Titan X doesn't take away from what Vega is trying to do. However, it's also been a waiting game for both vendors to have the complete list of features for DX12/12.1. This has meant that not all beneficial features are being used from either vendor. AMD supporting 12.1 is a crucial step. Nvidia also needs to improve when Volta comes, so devs can start implementing more advanced DX12.1 that both vendors will benefit from.

The reason some people consider async to be hype or a gimmick is that without it AMD carda underperformed while Nvidia cards didn't, so it was hard to sell to Nvidia owners. It didn't help that so many people were under the impression it was magic and enabled 110% performance on AMD cards, while poor Nvidia cards could only do 100% at best. As for AOTS, i bought it but i have yet to play it,mostly down to the fact i have a HTPC style setup so need some preparation to get it working for mouse/kb, and not because i think it's bad. Great news that Vulkan has been added, as i'm sure the devs wanted to get this onto Linux and performance wise this must be a dream compared to what OGL has been providing for years. I don't expect it will ever catch DX12 performance wise, but it will be interesting to see how Vulkan performs on W7/W10 and Linux and how it all compares.