Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

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Layman talk, could it just not be the variable clocks of PS5 showing an ‘advantage’ in that the bottleneck gets the boost it needs quicker than the resolution can scale?

I thought the PS5 was an inverse boost, where you assume you're running at max clocks until a power bottleneck happens and the system has to downclock CPU or GPU.
 
Layman talk, could it just not be the variable clocks of PS5 showing an ‘advantage’ in that the bottleneck gets the boost it needs quicker than the resolution can scale?

This is Cerny's 'a rising tide lifts all boats' comment in action.

I don't think this is PS5 having some mysterious hardware advantage. The whole point of a dynamic resolution system is to assist in consistently hitting your target frame rate by lowering the resolution but a bunch of games on XSX had frame pacing issues out of the gate. Some have already been fixed like AC Valhalla.

Why aren't the games dynamic resolution scaling systems already lowering the resolution on XSX to hit 60fps? Is the cause of the frame miss not related to resolution/GPU activity? If not, what is it caused by? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Welcome to the new weekly Digital Foundry Direct - a discussion show where the DF team convene to talk about the topics of the week, answer questions from our Patreon supporters and share some behind the scenes gossip! In future, the plan is to release this show early to Patreon supporters, but bear with us during the piloting phase as we refine the workflow on this one :) Please let us know what you think!

00:01:30 OLED Nintendo Switch rumors discussed
00:09:42 PSVR on PS5 / Doom 3 VR
00:17:10 Reveal of Radeon RX 60700XT
00:31:15 Retro Pickups / New Game Expo+
00:41:16 Pentium 3

This Week in Digital Foundry:
00:48:41 Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Reaction
00:56:00 DF Retro - Dinosaur Planet
00:59:10 Horizon Zero Dawn PC Revisit
01:02:00 Patreon Supporter Program Q&A!
 

Welcome to the new weekly Digital Foundry Direct - a discussion show where the DF team convene to talk about the topics of the week, answer questions from our Patreon supporters and share some behind the scenes gossip! In future, the plan is to release this show early to Patreon supporters, but bear with us during the piloting phase as we refine the workflow on this one :) Please let us know what you think!

00:01:30 OLED Nintendo Switch rumors discussed
00:09:42 PSVR on PS5 / Doom 3 VR
00:17:10 Reveal of Radeon RX 60700XT
00:31:15 Retro Pickups / New Game Expo+
00:41:16 Pentium 3

This Week in Digital Foundry:
00:48:41 Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Reaction
00:56:00 DF Retro - Dinosaur Planet
00:59:10 Horizon Zero Dawn PC Revisit
01:02:00 Patreon Supporter Program Q&A!

@JLinneman -- that backwall LCD playing some game is a great setup, looks like final fight or Streets of Rage. Not sure if I saw Terry. Hard to tell from back here. Memory is faded
I'd like to see Karateka up there one day for serious points. Nothing like 2 dudes inching slowly to each other and bowing. And King's Quest 2 demo on loop.

6700XT - not surprised that this AMD announced this as a 1440p card either. Basically following on as an evolution of the 5700XT which also targets 1440p.

Some echoing happening on audio during talking around the 48-50 minute mark.
 
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ash-bandicoot-4-ps5-and-switch-ports-compared

Crash Bandicoot 4 revisted: PlayStation 5 vs Nintendo Switch
A true test of Unreal Engine 4 scalability?

Initially released just before the arrival of the new wave of consoles, Crash Bandicoot 4 is set to arrive imminently on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series machines - but Activision has thrown us a curveball with the simultaneous release of a port for Nintendo Switch. The arrival of this release is a good thing - Crash 4 is a worthy successor to the original trilogy that feels true to its roots, while offering some new ideas along the way. It's far from perfect, but it's a solid platformer that shines on its new host consoles.

You'll note that we're limited to just PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch for this piece - Series support is on the table, but it's not easy for publishers to distribute Smart Delivery code to journalists when the title is already available publicly, something we hope to see addressed soon. Still, PS5 and Switch make for an interesting combination in that we're seeing Crash Bandicoot 4 viewed through the lens of systems with a huge variation in horsepower - though both are powered with Unreal Engine 4.

To appreciate the upgrades and changes in this new version of Crash 4, let's quickly recap the Xbox One and PS4 results. Users of the enhanced Pro and One X renditions had the best experience with a frame-rate that mostly hit 60fps, though both were limited to the same 1080p as the vanilla PS4, while Xbox One S delivered the game at 900p. The base version looks fine but runs with an unstable, uncapped frame-rate.

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2088p on ps5 (quite nice jump from 1080p on xox and ps4pro), locked 60fps during gameplay, some drops found in one cutscene
switch docked 648p, portable 540p, targetting 30fps

Nice multiplier from the PS4 Pro and XOX versions. It's essentially a ~4x pixel increase.

I wonder if the previous bottlenecks were more related to CPUs, or if we're seeing nice efficiencies with the RDNA2 hardware.
 
Nice multiplier from the PS4 Pro and XOX versions. It's essentially a ~4x pixel increase.

I wonder if the previous bottlenecks were more related to CPUs, or if we're seeing nice efficiencies with the RDNA2 hardware.
Not really surprising. The PS4 Pro and xox 1080p Resolution was more than surprisingly low. Especially XB1 -> xox more than 4x the rendering power, but just doubled framerate and a really small increase to the resolution. And PS4 -> PS4 Pro wasn't that much better, too. Resolution was just much lower than expected. So 4k60 shouldn't really be a problem for the new consoles.
 
Not really surprising. The PS4 Pro and xox 1080p Resolution was more than surprisingly low. Especially XB1 -> xox more than 4x the rendering power, but just doubled framerate and a really small increase to the resolution. And PS4 -> PS4 Pro wasn't that much better, too. Resolution was just much lower than expected. So 4k60 shouldn't really be a problem for the new consoles.
I still apreciete devs works as many nextgen (especially ps5) patches just remove fps cape and keep ps4pro resolution on ps5 and xox on xsx. Here we have proper nextgen jump.
 
Not really surprising. The PS4 Pro and xox 1080p Resolution was more than surprisingly low. Especially XB1 -> xox more than 4x the rendering power, but just doubled framerate and a really small increase to the resolution. And PS4 -> PS4 Pro wasn't that much better, too. Resolution was just much lower than expected. So 4k60 shouldn't really be a problem for the new consoles.

Maybe the XOX should have been at a higher resolution, yeah.

The PS4 Pro is doing double the framerate of the PS4, which is broadly correct based on other games across the two. 4x the resolution is disproportionately in favour of the PS5, but yeah, could be because there was available headroom on the Pro. Need to check the original video for when the Pro drops.
 
These are seriously impressive improvements. Kudos to the devs for dealing with pretty much all of the issues, it's rare to see such post launch dedication. It just so happens I've owned this game since it was launched, but I've never played it. This makes me happy!
There's improvements no doubt, and on high-end hardware you can get a pretty good experience - more hardware than you need sure, but 4k/60, or something just under 4k is doable with optimized settings on 3070-class cards and up.

Unfortunately though, there are still quite a few remaining issues that weren't able to be covered in that video, and the complete lack of activity on Steam DB since 1.10 doesn't give one hope they'll be fixed anytime soon:

- Textures are severely downgraded when playing beyond 1080p on 6GB cards (at least with Nvidia).
- Massive pop-in issues are still occurring for some users, even after the 1.10.1 hotfix that was supposed to fix this.
- Bug that occurs with some where the 5-10 minute texture compiling process needs to be re-done on each launch.
- The reflections setting also affects TAA quality - there's significant shimmering with reflections on medium vs. high, even on non-reflective surfaces.
 
DF should take a look at ghost recon breakpoint photo mode because i'm sure it cranks up the details there and even on PS5 there are slowdowns and tearing in photo mode.
 
DF should take a look at ghost recon breakpoint photo mode because i'm sure it cranks up the details there and even on PS5 there are slowdowns and tearing in photo mode.
I wouldn't overanalyze some bc game but for example there is now Yakuza Like a Dragon on ps5 or wrc9
 
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-crysis-remastered-2-point-one-tested

Crysis Remastered PC: DLSS is added - but are the major issues resolved?
It's far from perfect, but improvements have been made.

It's been over six months since Crysis Remastered launched on PC and it's fair to say that as a gigantic fan of the original game, I was left disappointed by its re-emergence - while there was much to praise, legacy baggage from the Xbox 360 and PS3 ports effectively saw aspects of the game lacking compared to the 2007 original, while CPU performance was not where it should have been. Today's 2.1 patch is a good jumping on point though: there are genuine improvements, missing content has been restored, and for owners of GeForce RTX cards, the inclusion of DLSS AI upscaling dramatically boosts performance in graphics-limited scenarios.

There's not much to say about the DLSS implementation, except to say that it's just as impressive as other recent outings and a great addition to the game. Once again, elements of the visual presentation are actually improved over native rendering and while there is some TAA-style ghosting, it's hardly noticeable in the thick of the action. What I particularly enjoyed about this particular use of DLSS is that post-process sharpening can be manually tweaked within the command console - access to which I'd dearly like to see as a standard in all DLSS-supported titles. Ultimately, the lower down the RTX power ladder you go, the more impressive the boost given by DLSS, to the point where even in a GPU-heavy scene, the relatively lowly RTX 2060 should be comfortably capable of exceeding 60 frames per second at 1440p resolution. It even makes a reasonably good stab of 4K output too - meaning that higher-end RTX cards should deliver this with minimal issues.

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I still think I'd rather go back and play the original version if I'm looking for a nostalgia trip. Whatever spots in that game which look dated I can easily accept because it's a ~14 year old game, but I can't do that with anything that this remaster opted to change for technical or artistic reasons. Kind of reminds me of the Star Wars special editions and subsequent remasters.
 
I still think I'd rather go back and play the original version if I'm looking for a nostalgia trip. Whatever spots in that game which look dated I can easily accept because it's a ~14 year old game, but I can't do that with anything that this remaster opted to change for technical or artistic reasons. Kind of reminds me of the Star Wars special editions and subsequent remasters.
yeah this remaster is just one big missed opportunity, they should made proper remake but maybe they are in so bad financial situation it wasn't possible
 
yeah this remaster is just one big missed opportunity, they should made proper remake but maybe they are in so bad financial situation it wasn't possible

Remastering is fine and could have been great, except...

They remastered the freaking neutered console version. Has they instead remastered the PC version this could have been absolutely incredible.

So instead of everything being improved, you have areas where things are quite obvious improved in game compared to the previous console version (and for some things even better than the original PC version), but are inferior or just plain missing compared to the original PC version for many things. And that's just a crying shame.

A remastered PC version could have been a graphical showcase on next gen consoles, but instead it's a mixed bag of improvements and downgrades compared to the original PC version.

Regards,
SB
 
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