Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Albuquerque]

You might disagree but the rest of the world that adheres to capitalism does not
Especially if you listen to the people in charge of companies.

So what does any of this conversation, any of it at all, have to do with Digital Foundry reviews?

Let's get back to talking about DE, thanks.

 

[BitByte]

All for profit companies and even many so called "non-profit" companies go into it with the primary goal of making money.

Obviously, in order to make money you need to convince people that they want to buy your product or services.

I think the part that you are getting caught up on is that not all companies target all consumers, in fact no company targets all consumers.

Mercedes targets a different consumer demographic than Ferrari or Ford, although there may be some overlap between their target demographics.

Just because I don't see any value in current generation NV or AMD offerings doesn't mean that others don't.

Plenty of people still find value in NV products and thus they continue to buy their products. Some might complain about the cost, some might not. But they are still buying the product. NV aren't going to suddenly decide that they don't like making money and start lowering the prices of their products as long as people still buy them.

Now we can all argue that NV are pricing their products out of the average PC gamer's budget which may end up killing the PC gaming market, but that's beside the point because there are still many people with a lot of disposable income willing to buy their products.

So, until people stop buying their products, NV can only assume that they are pricing their products correctly in order to make a profit.

Regards,
SB

I never said their goal wasn't to make money? I'm not even sure why you brought that up as no one ever argued that....

Nah, I'm not getting confused. Nvidia has at least 80% of the consumer discrete pc graphics space. They are clearly targeting all consumers in that space. You can't call Mercedes and Ferrari while Nvidia dominates the space. In fact, there's no car manufacturer that dominates the space like Nvidia. it's not even a relevant comparison.

People still buy their products but at a significantly reduced rate as they're seen as the only viable option. In the same way, people bought only intel cpus as they were seen as the viable option. A viable competitor only needs to surface to destroy that narrative.

Finally, you're argument is built on a narrative of profit, a point I never argued. I argued against Nvidia's excessive profiteering which is bad for my investment in general.

 

[BitByte]

You seem to be confusing purpose with strategy. Companies change products and strategy all the time. Their purpose always remains the same.

No, I'm not. That's not a strategy, that's a purpose.

 

[BitByte]

You might disagree but the rest of the world that adheres to capitalism does not
Especially if you listen to the people in charge of companies.

I do listen to people who run companies as I sit in on lots of quarterly calls and it's based on that information that I can confidently disagree. Nvidia's dividend last year was approximately $0.16 per share. I can promise you that nobody cares about 16 cent dividend on $267 stock. The majority of the value I receive comes from increasing the stock price which Nvidia is gaming with stock buybacks. How Nvidia delivers value to me as a shareholder is increasing their revenue and sales which cannot be done except you deliver compelling products to your consumer base. In this case, Nvidia's revenue is comprised with both a combination of B2C and B2B sales. Their pricing is limiting their addressable market in the B2B segment where a large amount of their revenue is derived. It's leading big potential clients to seek viable alternatives and in the case of some companies, investing in creating their own chips. It's a vicious cycle as the more you shrink your addressable market, the more revenue you have to extract from the remaining consumers. It's bad for the investment in the long term.

This doesn't necessarily apply to you but, I wish that those that knew nothing about the subject matter would stop chiming in. If someone doesn't invest in Nvidia stock or spend a lot of time analyzing the company, their market, and viable competitors, it's inappropriate to even participate in this discussion.

 

[JPT]

I do listen to people who run companies as I sit in on lots of quarterly calls and it's based on that information that I can confidently disagree. Nvidia's dividend last year was approximately $0.16 per share. I can promise you that nobody cares about 16 cent dividend on $267 stock.

No profit/ROI is the only reason for any company, now you mention shareholder value, sure that is part of the ROI, you buy NVIDIA shares for 267 and sell again for 300 and what not.
BUT, if they get the share price to 300 by selling graphics cards or pivoting to a business modell that gets the share price there by straightening bananas, does not matter. Now you might argue that banana straightening is also a compelling product to the right customer, sure, but that is the means to create profit/ROI for shareholders.

Ohh yeah, unless you do it for a living, I would not buy shares in companies, just put your money in index funds*.

*I am not a financial advisor, so please consult a real one

 

[trinibwoy]

How Nvidia delivers value to me as a shareholder is increasing their revenue and sales which cannot be done except you deliver compelling products to your consumer base.

So you actually do understand that selling products is just a means to an end.

 

[function]

Guys this is the same stuff that got the 3D Architecture and Products forum shut down. Please let's try and get back to stuff at least tangentially related to DFs output.

 

[DavidGraham]

Guys this is the same stuff that got the 3D Architecture and Products forum shut down. Please let's try and get back to stuff at least tangentially related to DFs output.

Let's also hope the main forums opena soon, so that all of these side conversations are relegated to their relevant threads.

 

[BitByte]

So you actually do understand that selling products is just a means to an end.

Ngl, you're just making reductive arguments for arguments sake.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Remij]

Seems like they just ported Ghostwire Tokyo as half-assed as possible, just to get it out there and have as another game on GamePass.

Shame.

 

[Dampf]

Alright, here it is. Path tracing at a stable 30 FPS on my RTX 2060 laptop:







This is practically running at Xbox One S image quality, but hell the lighting looks so good it's worth it imo. I'm running it at 1502x860 (with NIS up to 2560x1440, idk if its enabled or not because NIS icon won't show) or something with DLSS Performance to get 30 FPS even in more demanding areas in the game + custom settings and the path tracing mod.

Considering this is full path tracing running on a 80 watts laptop GPU from 2019 and this is a modern game, I consider this pretty impressive performance.

Also I disagree with Steve from HUB that you won't notice the path tracing at a resolution such as this (this statement makes zero sense to me because lighting is probably something you'd notice even at 120p).

Here's a comparison between path tracing on and raster. The difference is atleast two generations:

 

[Dural]

Seems like they just ported Ghostwire Tokyo as half-assed as possible, just to get it out there and have as another game on GamePass.

Shame.

They should be embarrassed releasing it in that sort of state, this is a first party studio that is releasing a game running in a worse state than the competition. How could they let that happen? Does MS not have an engineering team to help out when games aren't up to snuff? Seems shortsighted if they don't.

 

[Remij]

They should be embarrassed releasing it in that sort of state, this is a first party studio that is releasing a game running in a worse state than the competition. How could they let that happen? Does MS not have an engineering team to help out when games aren't up to snuff? Seems shortsighted if they don't.

Yea, it's pretty bad optics. As they said in the video there, they've had a year since the game launched on PS5 and PC to improve things and they should have capitalized on this new release to fix longstanding issues with the game, and hell, throw their loyal console gamers a bone and maybe give them something exclusive to stand out from the others.

But no.. this just continues the narrative that Xbox doesn't manage studios properly, and that their hardware is continuing to underperform relative to their competitor.. and that they don't think enough of their core fanbase to do something special for them.

They should be firing on all cylinders by now in the gen.. and yet it still looks like nothing is changing. They really need some wins right now.. because honestly looking at my twitter, their hardcore fanbase is starting to ask hard questions.. and that's not good.

 

[ethomaz]

Here's a comparison between path tracing on and raster. The difference is atleast two generations:

View attachment 8773

View attachment 8774

Thanks for sharing.
You will call me crazy but maybe I do like more the holywood look of the raster version.
But I can see the shadows and background light source are better in the RT.
Can we have a mix? The more raster tone with the details of RT?

BTW that was the issue I had playing Metro... the the indoor scenarios where it was suppose to be dark become too bright in RTGI version.
I need to adpat my tastes I guess.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@Dampf Yah, the differences between the path traced and the raster are pretty big in most of the pictures and video I've seen. Path tracing is way more natural looking, as it should be. All path traced games really need is virtual objects that you can't see in-game that bounce, block or diffuse light like they do in film. They basically have these canvas or boards that can bounce light in a variety of warmths, or block it if they're black. That way you can add or remove lighting in a scene that looks very natural, and it's happening off screen so you can't really tell that things are being manipulated. I've worked with a friend who is a photographer and spent a bunch of time holding those things on small shoots.

 

[see colon]

They should be embarrassed releasing it in that sort of state, this is a first party studio that is releasing a game running in a worse state than the competition. How could they let that happen? Does MS not have an engineering team to help out when games aren't up to snuff? Seems shortsighted if they don't.

It's only a matter of time before a member of congress writes a letter about this blatant sabotage of an Xbox game by a Japanese studio.

 

[Inuhanyou]

It's only a matter of time before a member of congress writes a letter about this blatant sabotage of an Xbox game by a Japanese studio.

But how will ms lobby congress against one of its own studios

 

[Dr. Nick]

Yea, it's pretty bad optics. As they said in the video there, they've had a year since the game launched on PS5 and PC to improve things and they should have capitalized on this new release to fix longstanding issues with the game, and hell, throw their loyal console gamers a bone and maybe give them something exclusive to stand out from the others.

But no.. this just continues the narrative that Xbox doesn't manage studios properly, and that their hardware is continuing to underperform relative to their competitor.. and that they don't think enough of their core fanbase to do something special for them.

They should be firing on all cylinders by now in the gen.. and yet it still looks like nothing is changing. They really need some wins right now.. because honestly looking at my twitter, their hardcore fanbase is starting to ask hard questions.. and that's not good.

I don't know how much it would have been worth it to put more effort into this particular game. Big picture, you can count on most games in the future to be Xbox PC exclusive. It might suck that the Xbox didn't get the best version of this game, but based on what the studio released before it, I think things will be different from now on.

 

[vjPiedPiper]

DF needs someone to buy them one of these hdmi 2.1 protocol analyzer