It feels a bit unfair because MSAA purposely was disabled/removed, which would have been the preferred applied anti-aliasing option. Hence AMD knows it is performing better, and probably worse with MSAA. I could be wrong here, but it certainly raised my eye-browses for me. Hey like I stated in the conclusion, this is how things go in 2016, it is what it is. AMD has the upper hand with clever optimizations in this game, good for them and everybody with Radeon cards.

So how come you've used FXAA in several of your reviews, but haven't mentioned anything about it being "unfair advantage for NVIDIA", even though you think "MLAA for AMD is what if FXAA for Nvidia." and you see MLAA here as a bit unfair option? Didn't do thorough sweep of all reviews obviously, but at least in one case there was even MSAA option available (Crysis 3), yet you still went FXAA

FXAA's impact on performance is equal on both AMD and Nvidia. The article makes it sound like MLAA negatively impacts performance on Nvidia more than AMD and since there is no other option for AA he wanted to put a note in there regarding it.

I don't really see the issue. He disables Hairworks and stuff for the same reason in other benchmarks specifically because it favors Nvidia.

Also, if he had called out FXAA in Crysis 3 the same way he did MLAA here, would you have posted the same thing about not calling out MLAA in previous benchmarks?

Last time I saw a game with MLAA (Deus Ex) NVIDIA actually took less hit from it than AMD. Yet he doesn't disable FXAA even when he thinks it's the same for NVIDIA as MLAA is for AMD, and calls MLAA unfair. If he had called FXAA unfair advantage in similar way in his previous reviews as he now did MLAA, no, I wouldn't have said anything about it. The point being: He thinks MLAA is for AMD as FXAA is for NVIDIA, yet only MLAA is being called unfair advantage for AMD, while FXAA isn't called the same for NVIDIA, that just doesn't add up.

Any idea how this game runs in APU? I havent seen many test of APUs in DX12

Meh.. Im still waiting for all those magic next gen u4e games and what not, so far only RoTR and Doom came a bit close to the word "nextgen", at least visually.

No we can't, it's AMD fanboy's wet dream. To get back to topic, an overclocked 980 (which I have, and no there's no SLI support), running about 1500MHz gets you below 60fps on the campaign map, with dips to below 10 during the turn end (when the AI gets their turn). Average it shows 59 when I have the ShadowPlay overlay on. But the game runs fine, I have a Gsync monitor. What I see is that I would actually downgrade my fps going for dx12. So.... it's not a thing to do, as simple as that. dx12 offers nothing in better graphics or performance... no gain, so it's a fail for a well built machine that happens to have a nvidia graphics card. Getting 59 or 60 fps with an overclocked card between dx11 and dx12 doesn't make any difference. By the way, I'm not surprised this game runs better on AMD, it's in AMD's partner program... 🙄

As Aelders says correctly all the time, AMD doesn't have an advantage under DX12, they have a disadvantage under DX11. The thing is that cards are sold with the DX11 performance in mind really. So your 980 is overpriced compared to the hardware it has vs a 390x/Nano, and when that hardware is fully utilized under DX12, the AMD cards pull ahead (which they SHOULD have done anyways under DX11, but they don't). It's a matter of pricing and expectations, more than the actual performance.

Nvidia dont want to promote DirectX 12 because they are not prepared for this API. Untill Volta will come these single thread old farts (Maxwell & Maxwell 2-Pascal) will push only in Dx11 games. Sadly,but Nvidia is not a pioneer in gaming industry. Well I want to see how they perform in Battlefield 1 (Dx12). 🙂

I'm not even sure I know what the definition of a "true" DX12 architecture is.

I agree that NVIDIA doesn't really have a "true" DX12 architecture yet, but I don't agree on ****ting on their products so much. If you don't really expect a tremendous uplift with DX12, their stuff is ok. The problem they have is that they sell with "DX11 pricing" which doesn't seem to correspond to the DX12 performance against similar Radeons (look the Nano vs the 980 for example).

You must understand that Nvidia can do pretty much what they want with pricing VS AMD because they have a MASSIVE market share in the GPU area. From a business point of view they must feel that they can do nothing wrong, which was more than evident with the 970 debacle. Basically releasing a product that was slightly misleading but still went on to become the best selling card of all time. Either Nvidia has built up a massive fanboy base or they are just that good. Opinion of that statement makes no difference, truth is that AMD is like a flea on a cows behind compared to Nvidia in the GPU market.

Biggest problem for AMD, at least in recent years is that they're always one step behind Nvidia , release time wise. Their gpus are obviously pretty good, the drivers are also good. Problem is they're a few months behind when it comes to releasing cards to challenge Nvidia. They need to change that, they need to be a step ahead. There's plenty of people who are often looking to upgrade to the newest architecture. But those sales go into Nvidia bank account. I'm sure if AMD had 1080 and 1070 competitors out right now, Nvidia would lose out on quite a few sales. They simply let Nvidia do whatever they want.