Ashes of the Singularity update leads to significant performance gains with Ryzen CPU
Rts game Ashes of the Singularity gets an update that allows the game to make better use of the eight cores and sixteen threads of the Ryzen CPUs. A test shows that the update is good for a performance gain of up to 31 percent in combination with the Ryzen 7 1800X.
Oxide Games has made changes to the Nitrous Engine, which Ashes of the Singularity uses. The changes are specifically aimed at improving game performance when using an AMD Ryzen 7 processor. PC Perspective got its hands on a new build of the game and compared the results with the current one. The test was performed in a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, because the processor has a lot of influence at such a resolution.
When using the Extreme preset, for the best graphics, the patch yields a 20 percent gain when combined with DDR4-3200 memory. With ddr4-2400 memory, the gain is slightly smaller at 17 percent. If the High preset is used, which shows less graphical pageantry, the gain with the fastest memory increases to 31 percent. With these settings, the game is more dependent on CPU performance.
On the Extreme preset, the Ryzen 7 1800X processor narrowly beats the Intel Core i7-6900K, but the differences have become much smaller. A comparative test of the AMD processor against the Intel CPU was not performed with the High preset. The scores achieved with the Intel CPU are the same for both versions of the game.
AMD promised after the release of the Ryzen processors that developers would come up with patches to improve the performance of the CPUs in games. It is not certain whether all games can make as big a profit as Ashes of the Singularity. The engines that the games use must be able to properly distribute the workload over the various cores and threads of the CPU.
Dota2 recently got a patch for better performance with Ryzen CPUs. AMD previously announced that it is collaborating with Bethesda and Sega, among others. It is unknown which other developers are working on Ryzen patches for their games.