Horizon Zero Dawn [PS4, PC]

Very smart use of GPGPU. Kind of a shame for the PC space, but amazing how the true capabilities of AMD GCN are best displayed using a console.

I'm a bit late to the party but what was their specific use of GPGPU? Obviously given this is now coming to the PC as well it should make for an interesting comparison point in terms of what additional benefit HSA is bringing to this generation of consoles.
 
https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

''Horizon Zero Dawn is a very beautiful game, and it arrives on PC in a version which allows for higher framerates, arbitrary resolution rendering, 21:9 aspect ratio support and a field of view adjustment option. It also features some graphics settings and improvements which significantly enhance its appearance compared to the console original, such as dynamic foliage and the “Model Quality” option. The controls have also been ported to keyboard and mouse very competently, largely making the game feel like a native PC action Adventure/RPG when played with this input option.''

''Overall, if all you want is 60 FPS and you have a relatively recent system and a sufficiently fast GPU for your target resolution, that should be easy enough to achieve as long as you take note of the settings and configuration requirements I pointed out in the performance deep dive section.''

The definite version is here ;)
 
The IGN article was pretty informative. I wonder if some of the pitfalls they mention are being fallen into by other review sites. i.e. frame rate lock, windowed mode, vsync, non-current drivers are all big no-no's that can severely impact performance.

If you avoid those though the performance doesn't look too bad to me at higher resolutions. It seems the game doesn't scale down much at lower resolution though. The Vega64 for example is actually faster at 1440p at high detail than it is at 1080p in Ultra detail!! Cleary the increased PC settings are having a massive impact there.

If you look at the 4k scores though across both CB and IGN, which both give benchmarks at the original PS4/Pro preset, you can see performance in line with what you'd expect vs the Pro which runs at 50% 4K with a near solid 30fps. For eaxmple IGN sees a 2080Ti averaging 62fps at native 4K. That's twice the resolution and twice the framerate (nearly) of the Pro. And CB see's a GTX 1080 averaging 33.3fps at native 4K. So double the resolution but same performance as the Pro. That's in line with what I'd expect.

The most interesting thing I picked up from those reviews was this from IGN:

IGN said:
The game makes significant use of PCIe bandwidth. Having your GPU connected via fewer than 16 PCIe lanes reduces performance to a larger degree than any other game either of us is aware of.

Could this be the impact of the much vaunted HSA touted at the start of the current generation?
 
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