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Equally DirectX 12 and Windows 10 whorl out across the PC ecosystem, the number of titles that support Microsoft'south new API is steadily growing. Last month, we previewed Ashes of the Singularity and its DirectX 12 functioning; today we're examining Microsoft'due south Fable Legends. This upcoming title is expected to debut on both Windows PCs and the Xbox One and is built with Unreal Engine 4.

Like Ashes, Fable Legends is still very much a work-in-progress. Unlike Ashes of the Singularity, which can currently be bought and played, Microsoft chose to distribute a standalone benchmark for its first DirectX 12 title. The test has fiddling in the way of configurable options and performs a series of flybys through circuitous environments. Each flyby highlights a unlike aspect of the game, including its day/night wheel, foliage and building rendering, and one impressively ugly troll. If Ashes of the Singularity gave united states a peek at how DX12 would handle several dozen units and intense particle effects, Fable Legends looks more like a conventional first-person RPG or FPS.

Fable2

At that place are other facets to Fable Legends that make this a particularly interesting match-up, even if it'southward nonetheless very early on in the DX12 development cycle. Different Ashes of the Singularity, which is distributed through Oxide, this is a exam distributed direct by Microsoft. It uses the Unreal four engine — and Nvidia and Ballsy, Unreal's developer, have a long history of close collaboration. Last year, Nvidia appear GameWorks support for UE4, and the UE3 engine was an early supporter of PhysX on both Ageia PPUs and later on, Nvidia GeForce cards.

Test setup

We tested the GTX 980 Ti and Radeon Fury X in Windows 10 using the latest version of the operating system. Our testbed was an Asus X99-Deluxe motherboard with a Cadre i7-5960X, 16GB of DDR4-2667 memory. Nosotros tested an AMD-provided beta commuter for the Fury Ten and with Nvidia'due south latest WHQL-canonical driver, 355.98. NVidia hasn't released a beta Windows 10 driver since last April, and the company didn't contact us to offer a specific commuter for the Legend Legends debut.

Fable3

The benchmark itself was provided by Microsoft and tin can run in a limited number of modes. Microsoft provided three presets — a 720p "Low" setting, a 1080p "Ultra" and a 4K "Ultra" benchmark. There are no user-configurable options likewise enabling or disabling 5-Sync (we tested with V-Sync disabled) and the ability to specify low settings or ultra settings. There is no DX11 version of the benchmark. We ran all three variants on both the Fury X and GTX 980 Ti.

Exam Results (Original and Amended):

Once other sites began posting their ain test results, information technology became obvious that our own 980 Ti and Fury X benchmarks were both running more slowly than they should accept. Information technology'due south normal to see some variation between review sites, but gaps of 15-twenty% in a benchmark with no configurable options? That meant a dissimilar problem. Initial retests confirmed the figures shown beneath, even after wiping and reinstalling drivers.

FableLegends

The next matter to check was power direction — and this is where nosotros found our smoking gun. We tested Windows 10 in its "Counterbalanced" power configuration, which is our standard method of testing all hardware. While we sometimes increment to "High Performance" in corner cases or to measure out its impact on power consumption, Windows tin can generally be counted on to handle power settings, and there'southward normally no operation penalty for using this style.

Imagine our surprise, and so, to meet the following when we fired upwardly the Legend benchmark:

Fable-Bench

Click to enlarge

The benchmark is actively running in the screenshot above, with power conservation mode and clock speed visible at the same time. And while CPU clock speed isn't the determining factor in most titles, clocking down to 1.17GHz is guaranteed to have an impact on overall frame rates. Switching to "High Performance" pegged the CPU clock between iii.ii and 3.3GHz — exactly where we'd await it to exist. It's non articulate what caused this problem — it'due south either a BIOS upshot with the Asus X99-Deluxe or an odd driver bug in Windows 10, but we've retested both GPUs in High Functioning manner.

Fable-RetestThese new results are significantly different from our previous tests. 4K performance is unchanged, and the two GPUs still tie, but 1080p performance improves past roughly 8% on the GTX 980 Ti and 6% on the Fury X. Aftermarket GTX 980 Ti results evidence higher-clocked manufacturing variants of that carte du jour equally outperforming the R9 Fury X, and those are perfectly valid data points — if you want to pay the relatively modest cost premium for a high-finish carte with more clock headroom, yous tin expect a commensurate payoff in this test. Meanwhile, the R9 Fury 10 no longer wins 720p every bit it did before. Both cards are faster hither, but the GTX gained much more than from the clock speed boost, leaping up 27%, compared to just 2% for AMD. While this conforms to our general examination trends in DX11, in which AMD performs more capably at college resolutions, it'due south however unusual to run across only one GPU answer so strongly to such ludicrously depression clock speeds.

These new runs, like the initials, were performed multiple times. We ran the benchmark 4x on each card, at each quality preset, just threw out the outset run in each case. We also threw out runs that appeared unusually far from the average.

Why include AMD results?

In our initial coverage for this article, we included a set up of AMD-provided examination results. This was mostly done for practical reasons — I don't actually take an R9 390X, 390, or R9 380, and therefore couldn't compare performance in the midrange graphics stack. Our decision to include this information "shocked" Nvidia's PR team, which pointed out that no other reviewer had constitute the R9 390 winning by the GTX 980.

Implications of venial deserve to exist taken seriously, equally practice charges that test results have misrepresented performance. So what's the state of affairs hither? While nosotros may accept shown you lot chart data before, AMD'southward reviewer guide contains the raw data values themselves. According to AMD, the GTX 980 scored 65.36 FPS in the 1080p Ultra benchmark using Nvidia's 355.98 driver (the same nosotros driver nosotros tested). Our ain results actually point to the GTX 980 existence slightly slower — when we put the card through its paces for this department of our coverage, it landed at 63.51 FPS. Still, that's just a 3% departure.

AMD-Perf1

It's absolutely truthful that Tech Study's excellent coverage shows the GTX 980 beating past the R9 390  (TR was the only website to exam an R9 390 in the kickoff place). But that doesn't hateful AMD's information is non-representative. Tech Written report notes that it used a Gigabyte GTX 980, with a base clock of 1228MHz and a heave clock of 1329MHz. That's 9% faster than the clocks on my own reference GTX 980 (1127MHz and 1216MHz respectively).

Multiply our 63.51 FPS by 1.09x, and you finish upwards with 69 FPS — exactly what Tech Report reported for the GTX 980. And if you have an NV GTX 980 clocked at this speed, yep, you lot will outperform a stock-clocked R9 390. That, withal, doesn't mean that AMD lied in its test results. A quick trip to Newegg reveals that GTX 980s ship in a diverseness of clocks, from a low of 1126MHz to a high of 1304MHz. That, in turn, means that the highest-end GTX 980 is every bit much as 15% faster than the stock model. Buyers who tend to buy on cost are much more likely to end up with cards at the base of operations frequency, the cheapest EVGA GTX 980 is $459, compared to $484 for the 1266MHz version.

AMD-Perf2

There's no evidence that AMD lied or misconstrued the GTX 980's functioning. Neither did Tech Report. Bluntly, we adopt testing retail hardware when such equipment is available, but since GPU vendors tend to charge a premium for higher-clocked GPUs, it's difficult to select whatever single card and declare it representative.

Amended Conclusion:

Nvidia's overall operation in Fable Legends remains excellent, though whether Team Ruby-red or Greenish wins is going to depend on which type of carte, specifically, you lot've chosen to purchase. The boosted headroom left in many of Nvidia'southward current designs is a feature, non a bug, and while it makes information technology more difficult to point at any single point and declare it representative of GTX 980 Ti or 980 performance, nosotros doubtable most enthusiasts appreciate the additional headroom.

The power issues that forced a about-total rewrite of this story, even so, also indicate to the immaturity of the DirectX 12 ecosystem. Whether you favor AMD or Nvidia, it's early days for both benchmarks and GPUs, and we wouldn't recommend making drastic decisions around expected time to come DirectX 12 capability. In that location are nonetheless unanswered questions and unclear situations surrounding certain DirectX 12 features, like asynchronous computing on Nvidia cards, just the overall performance story from Team Blood-red vs. Squad Green is positive. The fact that a stock R9 390, at $329, outperforms a stock GTX 980 with an MSRP of $460, still, is a very nice feather in AMD'due south cap.

As with Ashes of the Singularity, the usual caveats employ. These are pre-launch titles and early on drivers on a still-young operating system. So far, however, the DX12 results nosotros've seen have been very positive for AMD — lending credence to the company's longstanding argument that GCN would fare well under the new API.

Update (nine/24/2015): Later on results from other sites began to go live, it became apparent that our operation figures for Fury Ten and the 980 Ti were oddly low. We've inserted a section above (and new benchmarks) to explicate what happened and examine the new information. Relative operation between lower-end AMD and Nvidia cards is as well at present addressed.