Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[Rangers]

Every single game shows low CPU utilization on gameGPU AFAIK. Pretty sure then it shouldn't be considered an oddity in DR3, just the way games on PC (and probably console if you could measure) apparently work. Not some failure to take advantage by the developers.

As any mid-range GPU can sustain 1080p30

According to gamegpu here are the PC GPU's they tested with minimum dips 29 FPS or below @1920X1200 in decreasing order

GTX 760 -29
Radeon R7260X -29
GTX 660 -24
GTX 580 -23
GTX 750 Ti -23
Radeon 6970 -22
Radeon 7770 -21
Radeon 6990 (!) -20
GTX 590 (!) -20
GTX 570 -19
Radeon 6950 -19
GTX 650 Ti -17
Radeon 6870 -17
GTX 560 Ti -16
Geforce 560 -14
Radeon 6850 -13

Interestingly, they have the 7770 at 21 low, 29 FPS average. Which according to DavidGraham should be better than Xoneand it's @1920X1200. I fail to see any reason that should be the case, unless it's CPU, which could be, with so many zombies onscreen. I dont think you could even find a CPU as lowly as a 6 core 1.6 ghz Jaguar in a desktop.

Also interesting how I've noticed in some of the newest games, 7850 and even 7770 are often equaling or exceeding Radeon 6970. Which I just keep note of cause it's whats in my rig. But I guess is an interesting note on the more advanced architecture. Or at least, programming towards GCN architecture.

I wonder, given the above, if they had it to do again today, with MS rapidly improving drivers, Kinect reservation reclamation, etc, if Capcom could get it to 1080P...it's certainly not the prettiest game...but then if it is CPU...but DX 12 could help that.

 

[betternatethanlever]

There's a new digitalfoundry article up. Dead Rising 3 on PC.

It reads like the Xbox One is punching way above its weight. Just like several of us have been stating here

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Every single game shows low CPU utilization on gameGPU AFAIK. Pretty sure then it shouldn't be considered an oddity in DR3, just the way games on PC (and probably console if you could measure) apparently work. Not some failure to take advantage by the developers.

Although an interesting theory, it's extremely likely that PC CPUs aren't being optimised for. A workload for your game designed for a certain midrange PC performance (including consoles when cross platform) is not necessarily going to scale to fill a top-end CPU. You'd have to explicitly design your game to scale, and there's not much point if it'll generate work for testing and yield no great benefits. That is, you'd need to crank up the number of AI entities, say, like add more and more zombies in DR3, which changes the gameplay mechanics and might make it unplayable.

Big CPUs are really for productivity work, not games. Their real advantage in game comes from taking unoptimised code and making it run quickly, meaning devs have an easier time developing games (not running fast enough? Time to upgrade your PC!). A game that'll max out an i7 would have to be doing crazy amounts of stuff, and that sort of crazy stuff is moving to GPU compute too. And if targeting an i7, it might well not scale down nicely to slower machine, limiting your audience. The business of targeting high-end PCs has never really been there (which is also why games lag behind DX features).

 

[HMBR]

]http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-Dead_Rising_3-test-dr_3_1920.jpg

look at the 260x, isn't it something similar to the XOne GPU?

it's running at 30FPS 1200P

edit: I think I'm wrong, the Xone is slower, it should be a little faster than the 7770, but still, it's also at 20-30 1200P

 

[Michellstar]

Yes 1200p but with an i7 overclocked to >4ghz if im reading it right

Dr3 was a launch game with by all accounts a really unmature platform

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yes 1200p but with an i7 overclocked to >4ghz if im reading it right

Dr3 was a launch game with by all accounts a really unmature platform

The CPU has little to no impact on what resolution you can run at but the CPU performance chart further up shows that a dual core i3 at 3.1ghz is plenty fast enough to play the game at 30fps.

 

[Michellstar]

Wich chart?
I was replying to the gpus chart comparison. With the i7 and fixed res

 

[pjbliverpool]

Wich chart?
I was replying to the gpus chart comparison. With the i7 and fixed res

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1872231&postcount=7394

 

[Michellstar]

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1872231&postcount=7394

Thanks

How badly perform amd's cpus in comparison

Is there any mantle support?

I elaborate better what i tried to say before.
With an overclocked i7 they make sure that the gpu is not held back.
So we see that even 7700 mamages to average 30 fps at 1200p

XO struggles to get 30fps at 720p

What is holding back DR3 in XO
Cpus? Memory sub-system? A beta api?
A combination?

Looking forward to the complete eurogamer article

 

[Shortbread]

Digital Foundry: Hands-on with DriveClub

In our first technical preview of DriveClub last year we had Evolution Studios' racer down as a promising, if rough-edged effort - a pre-alpha build that clearly needed work. And sure enough, its appearance at Sony's 2014 Gamescom conference has shown a project revitalised in all the right areas. The frame-rate is smoother, the landscape detail massively upgraded, while a slew of new effects and lighting tricks are added. It looks like a whole new game.

"It's the whole dynamic nature of the game. Nothing's baked, nothing's faked. We run everything real-time, and some of the demonstrations I've done you can speed the time-of-day to up to 500 times and see all the clouds roll by," Perkins continues. "We've got a fully volumetric cloud system. You play the same track 20 times in a row and you'll get a different sunset every time. It all feeds back, and because of the atmospherics and the draw distances it's all mixed in - from the cars to the roads to the mountains to the skies."

The game's 1080p resolution is put to effective use too, producing one of the cleanest grades of image quality on PS4. And yet Evolution isn't content to leave it there, backing this full HD setup with an excess of techniques to tackle aliasing from every angle. Asked what anti-aliasing is fit for purpose in this case, DriveClub takes a no-compromise approach.

 

[specwarGP2]

I'm trying to remove my own opinions from the mix as much as possible and trying to get a feel of what the masses want. Think of it another way, when you ask if anyone would really want to play Halo or COD on a tablet, I think of the *exact* same question myself except replace "tablet" with "console". To you someone playing such games on a tablet is crazy. Likewise to me someone playing such games on a primitive console is crazy. And yet lots of people do both. So we need to remove our personal feelings from the mix and try to get a feel for what the masses would do.

IMHO, PC only has one advantage over consoles - better performance (and that's only if you have a really expensive gaming laptop or a purpose built rig) and a whole bunch of disadvantages that go along with it. I guess if you have money and time to spare those disadvantages aren't a big deal.

Tablet.. only advantage is portability and cheap games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IMHO, PC only has one advantage over consoles - better performance (and that's only if you have a really expensive gaming laptop or a purpose built rig)

You don't need a really expensive PC to surpass consoles. You also have savings in software potentially (preempting Joker's response ). There's a thread (or three hundred) for discussion PC value versus consoles - doesn't need to be held here in this tech discussion thread.

For on topic, every now and then DF does a PC comparison, what can you get for £x hundred that plays as well/better than consoles. Also US prices tend to be a lot cheaper, so there's a major regional difference. I'm not sure what DF's last PC component selection was like. I think it was an APU comparison.

 

[-tkf-]

You don't need a really expensive PC to surpass consoles. You also have savings in software potentially (preempting Joker's response ). There's a thread (or three hundred) for discussion PC value versus consoles - doesn't need to be held here in this tech discussion thread.

For on topic, every now and then DF does a PC comparison, what can you get for £x hundred that plays as well/better than consoles. Also US prices tend to be a lot cheaper, so there's a major regional difference. I'm not sure what DF's last PC component selection was like. I think it was an APU comparison.

Those threads are locked afaik.

 

[HMBR]

IMHO, PC only has one advantage over consoles - better performance (and that's only if you have a really expensive gaming laptop or a purpose built rig) and a whole bunch of disadvantages that go along with it. I guess if you have money and time to spare those disadvantages aren't a big deal.

Tablet.. only advantage is portability and cheap games.

apparently a 260x ($110) VGA combined with an $120 i3 from 3.5 years ago can run Dead Rising 3 at 1080P with better framerate than the xbox One, so cheap PCs can also achieve superiority,

and the rest of your post is ignoring things like compatibility, with old games, 100x more input devices (for example a wheel and pedals for playing Iracing or Forza, even the xbox 360 wheels can't work with the Xbone, it's absurd), mods and all of the rest new consoles attempt to do (like playing media, twitch streaming, taking screenshots, web browsing, digital games distribution) and the PC can do a lot better,

hopefully Digital Foundry is going to test Dead Rising on a cheap PC at 30FPS and not just their overclocked i5+780 60fps thing.

 

[Malo]

IMHO, PC only has one advantage over consoles - better performance (and that's only if you have a really expensive gaming laptop or a purpose built rig) and a whole bunch of disadvantages that go along with it. I guess if you have money and time to spare those disadvantages aren't a big deal.

There are many other benefits. As far as games are concerned, a PC gamer sees the ability to change option, customize and mod games to be a huge advantage. Skyrim on console is just Skryim. Skryim on PC is an amazing world of mods and enhancements to truly do some spectacular things graphically as well as create some extraordinary additions to the game code itself.

 

[-tkf-]

apparently a 260x ($110) VGA combined with an $120 i3 from 3.5 years ago can run Dead Rising 3 at 1080P with better framerate than the xbox One, so cheap PCs can also achieve superiority,

and the rest of your post is ignoring things like compatibility, with old games, 100x more input devices (for example a wheel and pedals for playing Iracing or Forza, even the xbox 360 wheels can't work with the Xbone, it's absurd), mods and all of the rest new consoles attempt to do (like playing media, twitch streaming, taking screenshots, web browsing, digital games distribution) and the PC can do a lot better,

hopefully Digital Foundry is going to test Dead Rising on a cheap PC at 30FPS and not just their overclocked i5+780 60fps thing.

And everything the console does is so much easier than the pc. It's a better experience for the average consumer that just wants to play games.

Here we go again?

 

[HMBR]

And everything the console does is so much easier than the pc. It's a better experience for the average consumer that just wants to play games.

Here we go again?

that's a fair point consoles are easier to use (but in my opinion they are to complicated compared to how the experience was back in the PS2 days for this "average consumer"), my post was just to say PC gaming is not only about high end systems and looking better, but this is way to off topic.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PC versus console posts after this one will be remove.

 

[betternatethanlever]

DriveClub looks phenomenal. Probably has the most natural lighting I've ever seen in a video game.

I also liked the alpha/splash effects when the cars were driving on the wet road, not to mention how it actually left a trace on the road instead of just floating over the roads, like most games usually do.

 

[chris1515]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-dead-rising-3-pc

Digital Foundry against Dead Rising 3 PC