Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

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@Dictator why don't you want to measure the power consumption of consoles in multiplatform games?
That might be interesting and would show how efficiently the raw power of the consoles is being used at the moment.

We know that xsx and ps5 can consume at least 200-210 watts.
In Valhalla and Hitman 3 xsx only consumes ~165 watts (from Gamers Nexus)
How much does ps5 consume in these games?

Also, it would be interesting to see the Control measurements.

Computerbase.de says that xsx in Legion and Dirt 5 consumes 135 and 155 watts, while ps5 consumes 175 and 205 watts.
Is this true?
https://www.computerbase.de/2020-11/playstation-5-test/
I would not do this as I do not have the test equipment - but Rich does. So I will ask him.
 
I would not do this as I do not have the test equipment - but Rich does. So I will ask him.
This would really be interesting. Especially with games that support an uncapped framerate.
Expected behavior:
- PS5 will almost always run at its max power consumption. If the code is optimized to squeeze out as much as possible -> Power consumption goes up, clock goes down. If a game is not optimized for PS5 -> Power consumptions goes up as the clock goes up (you can view it as a kind of "autooptimization").
- XsX will run with a more variable power consumption but generally lower power consumption. But most games won't reach the max because games are not really optimized these days.

We still don't know how much XsX consumes if GPU & CPU are maxed out at the same time. Gears 5 is so far the only title that seems to have consistent high power consumption. But CPU wise it is not the most demanding title so max power consumption is really hard to guess right now.
 
How much does ps5 consume in these games?
Going to take a stab but considering how it's setup to boost and shares power between CPU and GPU, the expected mean should be very consistent between titles. Always around 200 +/- regional differences in hardware, or fan speeds adjusting for air temperature.

If PS5 isn't pushing the maximum draw of their SOC at all times, I would suspect that something is wrong or there is entirely no work to do at all.
 
Shouldn't the XSX end up drawing more from the wall due to it being more powerfull? Atleast when both consoles are saturated to their max's.
 
Shouldn't the XSX end up drawing more from the wall due to it being more powerfull? Atleast when both consoles are saturated to their max's.
PS5 has a 350 watt power supply while Series X has a 315 watt unit. Running at high frequency can consume more current than lower frequencies even if the lower frequency part is wider and has more FLOPs. Not to mention Sony's exotic storage and other features (faster USB, custom sound hardware). There's no data on how much more electricity those customizations require, but Sony saw it fit to include a more robust power supply for a reason.
 
In this Ubisoft double-bill, we check out Ghost Recon Breakpoint's push onto next-gen systems with a new 60fps mode, while also looking into The Division 2's latest patch. For The Division 2 we'd previously seen the PS5 version missing key visual features - SSR and volumetric fog - the good news being that they're now fully reinstated. As for Breakpoint we have a clear success in delivering 60fps gameplay to consoles, a trend that's fast building from Ubisoft's stable of developer, as Tom reports.
 
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-ghost-recon-breakpoint-60fps-upgrade-tested

Ghost Recon Breakpoint doubles performance on next-gen consoles
But there's a big resolution divide between Xbox Series X and PS5.

The new console generation has so far been amazing for players who love smooth, 60 frames per second gaming. Ubisoft, especially, leads the charge with the likes of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, The Division 2, and Immortals Fenyx Rising - all come fully equipped with at least a performance option, or run at 60fps by default on Xbox Series X, Series S and PS5. We can add another to the list here too: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. It was patched around next-gen's launch, and while running in backwards compatibility mode, the doubling of frame-rate is a game-changing experience. The Division 2 tried the same trick but came unstuck somewhat on PS5, missing some visual flourishes found in every other version - even PS4 Pro. Speaking of which, there's good news with The Division 2 here worth touching on before we get into Breakpoint properly.

The Division 2's Patch 1.31 (as it appears on the PS5 front-end) came out hot on the heels of our coverage and essentially sorts out all of the issues we had with it - namely, screen-space reflections and volumetric fog are back. Looking back, this was likely an oversight from developer Massive Entertainment at the time; a simple flag for these settings that went unchecked. However, it's clear that legacy limitations from PS4 Pro are still in place - there's a vanishingly small performance advantage here opposite Xbox Series X, but it comes at the cost of a lower resolution on PS5. All is well, where the big success remains that next-gen can now achieve 60fps - a similar story to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

...
 
However, it's clear that legacy limitations from PS4 Pro are still in place - there's a vanishingly small performance advantage here opposite Xbox Series X, but it comes at the cost of a lower resolution on PS5. All is well, where the big success remains that next-gen can now achieve 60fps - a similar story to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
PS4/Pro game code/profiles are going to really hurt PS5 throughout these comparisons. Microsoft deserves credit for being very forward-thinking in how they handled and designed BC across their systems and development toolsets. Sony is somewhat fucked here...
 
but running at the lower ps4 pro res can help maintain a better performance in some case. So it's not all bad.

It's not always about the resolution, but other aspects of image quality. Such as missing anisotropic filtering carried over from PS4/Pro BC titles.
 
sony let the devs handle it, that's the problem, because gamers don't want to pay to have those patches, and devs can't spend extra dev time for free either, especially with games released over than a year ago.
 
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-ghost-recon-breakpoint-60fps-upgrade-tested

Ghost Recon Breakpoint doubles performance on next-gen consoles
But there's a big resolution divide between Xbox Series X and PS5.

The new console generation has so far been amazing for players who love smooth, 60 frames per second gaming. Ubisoft, especially, leads the charge with the likes of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, The Division 2, and Immortals Fenyx Rising - all come fully equipped with at least a performance option, or run at 60fps by default on Xbox Series X, Series S and PS5. We can add another to the list here too: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. It was patched around next-gen's launch, and while running in backwards compatibility mode, the doubling of frame-rate is a game-changing experience. The Division 2 tried the same trick but came unstuck somewhat on PS5, missing some visual flourishes found in every other version - even PS4 Pro. Speaking of which, there's good news with The Division 2 here worth touching on before we get into Breakpoint properly.

The Division 2's Patch 1.31 (as it appears on the PS5 front-end) came out hot on the heels of our coverage and essentially sorts out all of the issues we had with it - namely, screen-space reflections and volumetric fog are back. Looking back, this was likely an oversight from developer Massive Entertainment at the time; a simple flag for these settings that went unchecked. However, it's clear that legacy limitations from PS4 Pro are still in place - there's a vanishingly small performance advantage here opposite Xbox Series X, but it comes at the cost of a lower resolution on PS5. All is well, where the big success remains that next-gen can now achieve 60fps - a similar story to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

...
And another title that indicates that BC games have only the memory of PS4 Pro available on PS5. Even Series S has a 1440p mode and more memory than pro. Sony should really add a PS5 profile for BC mode. Patched games would really benefit from something like that.
I guess with a power-consumption test we would see, that PS5 would not even use all "its power" in the performance mode.
 
sony let the devs handle it, that's the problem, because gamers don't want to pay to have those patches, and devs can't spend extra dev time for free either, especially with games released over than a year ago.

That's kind of my point. Microsoft was more forward-thinking when it came to this aspect... a more unified BC approach that would require less developer effort when porting/patching/updating BC titles across their hardware ecosystem.
 
That's kind of my point. Microsoft was more forward-thinking when it came to this aspect... a more unified BC approach that would require less developer effort when porting/patching/updating BC titles across their hardware ecosystem.
Well, considering they have Windows and it was probably there since the first xboxes, some native compatibility support has always existed. Add to that relying on DirectX from the very beginning and it is another layer of compatiblity.
 
PS4/Pro game code/profiles are going to really hurt PS5 throughout these comparisons. Microsoft deserves credit for being very forward-thinking in how they handled and designed BC across their systems and development toolsets. Sony is somewhat fucked here...
I think Sony gave very little thought to running PS4 games on future hardware when architecting PS4. It's thin-APIs were great for performance on the original hardware but thin-APIs leave fewer opportunities to leverage new technologies down the line. I had very low expectations for running PS4 games on PS5 at all.
 
PS4/Pro game code/profiles are going to really hurt PS5 throughout these comparisons. Microsoft deserves credit for being very forward-thinking in how they handled and designed BC across their systems and development toolsets. Sony is somewhat fucked here...

Moving forward, wouldn't this be less and less of a concern as devs get to know the PS5 dev kits and fade out last gen hardwares?
 
Moving forward, wouldn't this be less and less of a concern as devs get to know the PS5 dev kits and fade out last gen hardwares?
Depends on how fast developers will abandum PS4. You don't want to abandum 100m users as long as the userbase of the next-gen consoles isn't huge enough. And as it looks right now, there is really nothing in the pipeline that wouldn't run with lower details/resolution and 30 instead of 60fps on the last gen consoles.
The jump from the PS360 gen was bigger and the jump from the ps2->ps360 gen was also bigger. Jumps get smaller and smaller and it is increasingly hard to get better graphics (diminishing returns). Gameplaywise almost nothing has changed since PS2. CPU can be a bottleneck quite fast, but on the other hand, we see games running on the Switch. So I guess the last gen will be longer supported than the gen before. Especially if we look at the hardware market, that currently just can't deliver new hardware in big numbers.
 
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