Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2024] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[Globalisateur]

You may not get raytracing for $400 but raytracing isn’t necessary for a great experience.

Indeed. Of course gameplay and fun will always be the most important but even on the technical side a smooth and stable framerate is way more important than RT. And even the most powerful PC won't give you that all the time.

 

[davis.anthony]

This is absurd nonsense.

If objectively factual.

We've spent the past 10+ years of PC gaming where you absolutely did not need any kind of high end hardware to have a great overall experience.

And you still don't need high end hardware to have a great overall experience.

This is literally one of the biggest reasons PC gaming grew so much from like 2010-2016.

Casuals weren't buying $400 GPU's in that time.

You didn't need to buy expensive, high end PC hardware to have a really good experience.

And you still don't.

The value aspect was excellent and it helped grow the PC market massively because of it.

It still is excellent.

You're now trying to argue that people who spend say just $250-400 on their GPU were supposedly always getting some 'not decent' experience. Nope. It's exactly opposite. Those people were usually always getting a great experience.

First of all, no one arguing, so wind your neck in and change your tone.

$250-400 GPU's still give people a great experience.

$400 gets you a 7700XT, which is a great little GPU.

It's only more recently where that $250-400 range gets you a 'less than decent' experience, requiring heavy sacrifices in some area or another if you expect to have ray tracing.

It's no different to wanting to use HDR lighting or tessellation back in the day on lower end GPU's and not being able too because they couldn't handle it.

It's a whole different world entirely nowadays. For $250-400, you get a lower end GPU that requires heavy sacrifices if you expect to run ray tracing effects.

Then people need to temper their expectations.

This is not progress.

No, but it's no worse either.

 

[Remij]

Jetpack Interactive have released another patch for God of War Ragnarok, and this patch fixes the tessellation issue of it not being up to the quality of the PS5 version! It also brings optimizations for Zen 1 and Zen 2 processors in CPU bound scenarios, among other stability and control fixes.



I believe that is now all of the issues DF brought up in their analysis fixed.

 

[raytracingfan]

$250-400 used to get you console quality at 2x the framerate or more. Now it gets you console quality or worse. The price of entry for a given level of experience has gone up quite dramatically at almost every tier..

Shouldn't this be the expected outcome of consoles going from a GTX 670 equivalent to an RTX 2070 equivalent?

 

[trinibwoy]

Shouldn't this be the expected outcome of consoles going from a GTX 670 equivalent to an RTX 2070 equivalent?

Console vs PC comparisons change dramatically over the course of a console generation. I don’t see why a $400 card next year wouldn’t offer a PS5 experience at a discount.

 

[DavidGraham]

I believe that is now all of the issues DF brought up in their analysis fixed.

One issue still remains: the ray traced reflections issue.

 

[Remij]

One issue still remains: the ray traced reflections issue.

Ah right! I always forget about that one! lol

 

[techuse]

Console vs PC comparisons change dramatically over the course of a console generation. I don’t see why a $400 card next year wouldn’t offer a PS5 experience at a discount.

Both console gens weren’t that far off from each other in terms of where they lined up to the PC GPU space. The CPU was where a big leap was made.

 

[Below2D]

$250-400 used to get you console quality at 2x the framerate or more. Now it gets you console quality or worse. The price of entry for a given level of experience has gone up quite dramatically at almost every tier..

The PS4 Pro was also $400. The PS5 Pro is $700. Prices are not the same as before. Unlike the PS4, the PS5 wasn’t underpowered out of the box and cost a mere $500 for the DE.

 

[Nesh]

The PS4 Pro was also $400. The PS5 Pro is $700. Prices are not the same as before. Unlike the PS4, the PS5 wasn’t underpowered out of the box and cost a mere $500 for the DE.

I don't consider the PS4 underpowered at launch. I was actually quite impressed with it's output.

The PS5 on the other hand feels underutilized. It's like devs couldn't decide how to focus their resources thus instead of optimizing to either reach the most visual fidelity at 30fps or the most at 60fps, it's as if they were fiddling mostly how many and what modes to get out and at what compromises.

On PS4 I was very impressed with Killzone, Infamous, Arkham Knight, MGS V, Drive Club and The Order.

Now I can't even decide what is the visual identity of the games I am playing on the console because I am informed that I am missing on something with every mode whereas before I was confident that the devs pushed whatever they could at a certain framerate and that's the fixed experience.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I highly doubt that having a couple of visual output modes is compromising the experience in any way. If there were any reason the PS5 feels under-powered it would be the diminishing returns of computational power on graphics. Resolution is the only thing that scales easily. Seems like the cost of real visual upgrades is not linear. Improvements to lighting, shadows, physical simulation all cost a lot to get a noticeable improvement.

 

[QPlayer]

And yet, COD BO6 looks very good on today's consoles and with this graphics featuring great effects, it can run about 4K 60FPS. Where is the problem here? UE5 and its co...

These consoles could be run games with spectacular graphics with much better image quality, but the developers should use the right techniques. BO6 is a good example of this.

 

[Nesh]

I highly doubt that having a couple of visual output modes is compromising the experience in any way. If there were any reason the PS5 feels under-powered it would be the diminishing returns of computational power on graphics. Resolution is the only thing that scales easily. Seems like the cost of real visual upgrades is not linear. Improvements to lighting, shadows, physical simulation all cost a lot to get a noticeable improvement.

I didn't say anything about underpowered. In my perspective it's underutilized.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I didn't say anything about underpowered. In my perspective it's underutilized.

Well, swap out the words and I still feel the same way about it.

 

[Nesh]

Well, swap out the words and I still feel the same way about it.

Well I don't. Devs cant be pushing way to hard the hardware at 30fps because if they have to add a 60fps the visual compromises will be way too large.
This was never a consideration in the past. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may actually be such an example. The visual quality between 30fps and 60fps is so large that any choice feel like a big compromise either on framerate or IQ (which is a blurry mess). And even in the fidelity option for a PS5 game, some visual aspects, especially in the lighting department dont appear like they have received the full care. In some ways it was downgraded even from the first episode. Surely the open world environments brought an additional challenge, but it is also evident that they chose the simpler route

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well I don't. Devs cant be pushing way to hard the hardware at 30fps because if they have to add a 60fps the visual compromises will be way too large.
This was never a consideration in the past. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may actually be such an example. The visual quality between 30fps and 60fps is so large that any choice feel like a big compromise either on framerate or IQ (which is a blurry mess). And even in the fidelity option for a PS5 game, some visual aspects, especially in the lighting department dont appear like they have received the full care. In some ways it was downgraded even from the first episode. Surely the open world environments brought an additional challenge, but it is also evident that they chose the simpler route

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If a company maxes out a console at 60fps it's still maxing out the console, even if a 30 fps mode looks "better."

 

[techuse]

And yet, COD BO6 looks very good on today's consoles and with this graphics featuring great effects, it can run about 4K 60FPS. Where is the problem here? UE5 and its co...

These consoles could be run games with spectacular graphics with much better image quality, but the developers should use the right techniques. BO6 is a good example of this.

I haven’t played BO6, but from what I have seen it doesn't look any better than MW from 2019.

 

[QPlayer]

I haven’t played BO6, but from what I have seen it doesn't look any better than MW from 2019.

The fact is that it looks very good, spiced up with new visual effects. But even if there are no big changes technically, this is a spectacular graphic in high resolution with 60FPS with excellent image quality on current consoles. Much better than the ridiculously low image quality UE5 console versions. Once I get used to the good image quality on a console, I won't lower it, I'd rather avoid games using low-resolution "modern" engines.

Just look at the general opinions, people praise how good the game looks on the console, and many even say how much better quality this traditional technique gives compared to other "modern" games with a limited number of pixels.

Come on, today we play on way bigger TVs, and we need picture quality, like what we can see in this game. This should be the example.

 

[iroboto]

I haven’t played BO6, but from what I have seen it doesn't look any better than MW from 2019.

I don't know if this was in MW, but there is this feature where you stream textures from the cloud while playing the game. It's quite a bit jarring, because sometimes I'm straight up playing with absolutely pixelated textures for a long time. I can see how this reduced the game size down, but it's a weird experience.

 

[Nesh]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If a company maxes out a console at 60fps it's still maxing out the console, even if a 30 fps mode looks "better."

Are they though? I dont think they are maxing in any of the two modes most of the time. They leave enough space to be able to supportt a 60fps often at not so great results (see example I mention of FF7 Rebirth where either mode feels like a large compromise)