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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium.
Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit.
We opt for the Extreme quality profile and run the GPU-Focused test using the DX12 game mode.
Ashes deviates from the trend we saw across our 3DMark testing – as at both 1440p and 4K, the Zotac Mini card falls behind Nvidia's Founders Edition (FE) card. Analysis of the GPU clock speeds show that this was because the Mini card was unable to maintain its frequency advantage over the Founders Edition due to thermal limitations. In short, the Zotac Mini got hot, so Nvidia's GPU Boost 3.0 tech reined in its core speed – thus causing the Mini to fall behind Nvidia's 1080 Ti FE.
Even though it runs hot, this could be a great card for a SFF build that is being used as a HTPC multi purpose system in your living room. It could bring 4k gaming to your 4k living room TV! I wonder if there is a small AIO cooler that would fit and could help tame those temps.
The mini’s low idle temperature relative to the cards it was tested against suggest the possibility that a custom fan profile might help with its acoustics. As might a well ventilated case. I have a GTX 1070 FE and can attest that it, like many others, got some benefit from a custom voltage profile using Afterburner software. Lower voltage can help the card from hitting its power and temp limits as early, and might help with idle temps and fan speed and noise as well. This was a very informative review, thanks. It’s nice too see more options opening up for gamers.
I’m gonna buy one!