Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

[Entropy]

A senior engineer ended up working IT at my high school. He would somewhat begrudgingly hold court for thr Amiga and c64 nerds. Thank god, the math teacher running it before was a Mac head and absolutely incompetent in everything. He had a 64 node AppleTalk network. To give you an idea, a three page English paper could take up to a minute to load

To be fair though, AppleTalk (LocalTalk) was designed in 1983 to connect home computers. It used twisted pair cabling for 230,4 kbit/s, and was completely self configuring, didn't need a central hub, and used self-terminating connectors. It was installed in all Macs, at a time when networking was not a standard feature of PCs, or indeed, computers in general. The design did what it set out to, and was later adapted to run on top of Ethernet.
But it was never meant to do what you describe - it was basically meant for anyone to be able to network a couple of computers and a printer (and did an excellent job of that).

 

[Barrabas]

Please do not bring me back to the time when people were introduced to the 3.5 inch floppy disks and suddenly understood that was the hard disk people were talking about in stead of the 5.25 inch flexible

 

[Bickle2]

To be fair though, AppleTalk (LocalTalk) was designed in 1983 to connect home computers. It used twisted pair cabling for 230,4 kbit/s, and was completely self configuring, didn't need a central hub, and used self-terminating connectors. It was installed in all Macs, at a time when networking was not a standard feature of PCs, or indeed, computers in general. The design did what it set out to, and was later adapted to run on top of Ethernet.
But it was never meant to do what you describe - it was basically meant for anyone to be able to network a couple of computers and a printer (and did an excellent job of that).

You’re exactly right. And that’s why he was such an idiot. He blew tens of thousands on this 64 node AppleTalk network, and also refused to purchase PCswhen it was obvious knowing how to use a mac was not preparing students for the real world. A vice principle had to order them, and then convinced the school board of the need to switch. 3/4 computers are fine for AppleTalk. Not 30+ students logging on simultaneously.

 

[dorf]

 

[PSman1700]

NV went all out lol, 3080 offering twice 2080 performance for that price. A 3070 is very impressive i think, you get more then 2080Ti performance aside from all else then.

 

[Shortbread]

Great video. Those performance gains are unbelievable...

 

[Cyan]

first card as a kid was the Monster 3D, which my parents allowed me to buy, then I got the Matrox G400 Max 32MB (with bump mapping and 32bit colour also, but performed badly) and the Voodoo 3 16MB, this one had incredible performance, despite being 16bit --heavy banding.

The new nVidia cards feel like the second golden age of 3D graphics cards.

 

[RobertR1]

 

[Cyan]

for PC gamers this is incredible overall. My GTX 1080 still holds relatively well, since I can run games like Battlefield 1 at 165fps 1080p, which is superb, but while still holding a candle against the new GPUs, it's not only performance but the new features that it's lacking, so I am not in a hurry but I am getting a 30XX GPU.

It's just that I am waiting for the ideal 1440p (my favourite resolution) 144-165fps GPU

 

[RobertR1]

for PC gamers this is incredible overall. My GTX 1080 still holds relatively well, since I can run games like Battlefield 1 at 165fps 1080p, which is superb, but while still holding a candle against the new GPUs, it's not only performance but the new features that it's lacking, so I am not in a hurry but I am getting a 30XX GPU.

It's just that I am waiting for the ideal 1440p (my favourite resolution) 144-165fps GPU

3080 shouldn't have much of an issue doing 1440/144 in a lot of games. My 2080ti already does 3440x1440/120 pretty well and this will be faster. Cpu and mem help to drive high fps as well.

 

[goonergaz]

Wow, so I can get a card better than a 2080ti for ~£450! Even the 3060 which is due early next year is near 2080ti for ~£300!!

Without turning this in a console war kind of thing, it does beg the question where XSX will sit - my card is worth ~£150-200, this is a very tempting upgrade!

 

[cheapchips]

Wow, so I can get a card better than a 2080ti for ~£450! Even the 3060 which is due early next year is near 2080ti for ~£300!!

Without turning this in a console war kind of thing, it does beg the question where XSX will sit - my card is worth ~£150-200, this is a very tempting upgrade!

It's hard to know where the consoles will sit. Current gen punches above it's weight vs PC cards.

You may need to update your CPU/Motherboard/NVMe drive in a couple of years as well, when proper next gen games start to hit. Fast storage is next gen's real innovation.

 

[Jay]

Current gen punches above it's weight vs PC cards.

I've not seen any proof of this.
In fact I've seen the opposit where gpu power is concerned.
An equally powered gpu either delivering equal or outperforming the console at console resolution and settings. Due to the jaguar cpu.

If you mean same power gpu with jaguar level cpu in pc then yea, maybe.

Consoles have many benefits though, but this gen gpu punching above it's weight isn't one of them.

 

[cheapchips]

I've not seen any proof of this.
In fact I've seen the opposit where gpu power is concerned.
An equally powered gpu either delivering equal or outperforming the console at console resolution and settings. Due to the jaguar cpu.

If you mean same power gpu with jaguar level cpu in pc then yea, maybe.

Consoles have many benefits though, but this gen gpu punching above it's weight isn't one of them.

Tbh, I had that thought in mind because of HZD performance and didn't think about it beyond that case. I think I have that impression to a degree as well because our OneS can get away with settings on the big tele I wouldn't dream of tolerating when sat near my monitor.

 

[turkey]

I've not seen any proof of this.
In fact I've seen the opposit where gpu power is concerned.
An equally powered gpu either delivering equal or outperforming the console at console resolution and settings. Due to the jaguar cpu.

If you mean same power gpu with jaguar level cpu in pc then yea, maybe.

Consoles have many benefits though, but this gen gpu punching above it's weight isn't one of them.

Could we take the Nintendo switch as an example? Some very impressive ports there that seem beyond what a low end pc could.

 

[RobertR1]

Wow, so I can get a card better than a 2080ti for ~£450! Even the 3060 which is due early next year is near 2080ti for ~£300!!

Without turning this in a console war kind of thing, it does beg the question where XSX will sit - my card is worth ~£150-200, this is a very tempting upgrade!

Probably something like 3090 > 3080 > 3070 > 3060 > XSX > PS5 > 3050.

 

[Lalaland]

I've not seen any proof of this.
In fact I've seen the opposit where gpu power is concerned.
An equally powered gpu either delivering equal or outperforming the console at console resolution and settings. Due to the jaguar cpu.

If you mean same power gpu with jaguar level cpu in pc then yea, maybe.

Consoles have many benefits though, but this gen gpu punching above it's weight isn't one of them.

Well folks haven't been benchmarking the Radeon 7870 in a long time but any videos I've found of PC ports typically feature performance on par with PS4 which is pretty impressive because the PCs they are in sure as hell aren't running on Jaguar

 

[pharma]

Probably something like 3090 > 3080 > 3070 > 3060 > XSX > PS5 > 3050.

I can see this being the case as long as console setting don't exactly match gpu settings. But aren't you still going to have all those optimizations that reduce visual quality on the consoles that you won't have on gpu's?
Edit: Clarity

 

[RobertR1]

I can see this being the case as long as console setting don't exactly match gpu settings. But aren't you still going to have all those optimizations that reduce visual quality on the consoles that you won't have on gpu's?
Edit: Clarity

Yeah and those optimizations across platfrorms will vary so much game to game that you'd chasing the order on a per game basis. Thus it's best to stick to the theoretical performance and known hardware specs for comparison.

I'm obviously speculating on the 3060 but nvidia is generally pretty good about their tiered structures thus once you know the 3090/3080/3070 you can safely extrapolate the lower tiers. They'll also be aware that AMD's mid range is where they will have competition so their 3060 will need to perform well.

 

[Shortbread]

Digital Foundry's love for Crysis is well known and only ever grows stronger - and for uber-fan Alex Battaglia, the chance to visit Crytek HQ, check out all versions of the game and talk to the developers was nothing short of a dream come true. Join Alex and John for a tour of the Crytek offices and get your first look at work-in-progress footage of Crysis Remastered running on Xbox One X. Like what you see? This is just the beginning...