Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
DF Direct Weekly #205: Xbox 'Kennan' Handheld, Death Stranding 2, Oblivion UE5, Ryzen 9 9950X3D!
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:38 News 1: Xbox-branded Windows handheld reportedly in development
00:19:36 News 2: Death Stranding 2 gets release date, new trailer
00:30:23 News 3: 9950X3D launches with impressive performance
00:46:43 News 4: Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake rumoured
00:55:51 News 5: AI Aloy prototype debuts in leaked footage
01:09:19 Supporter Q1: Have we underestimated PS5 Pro’s ML performance?
01:19:31 Supporter Q2: Is Nvidia betting on a big gaming performance increase for the 60 series?
01:26:47 Supporter Q3: Could the PS4 survive indefinitely as a platform?
01:31:30 Supporter Q4: How should we understand generational leaps for PC gaming?
01:36:10 Supporter Q5: Will the Series X become a sought-after retro console?
01:40:55 Supporter Q6: Could you produce videos showing carefully tailored experiences for certain graphics cards?
01:46:56 Supporter Q7: Is Nvidia’s focus on proprietary tech helping or hurting PC gaming?
DavidGraham
Veteran
Ray traced global illumination makes a big difference in Assassin’s Creed Shadows on consoles, though it locks frames to 30fps.
60 fps also removes the strand hair tech. Thankfully both are available in the 40 fps mode.
Series S continues to show that with software made to properly use it (and not crappy Xbone / PS4 Ports) it's a very capable little box able to support software that the PS4Pro and even the X1X wouldn't have had a chance of running.
This is the most impressive A.C. game to date by a mile, and it's pretty damn good on the Series S.
Edit: Comparing Series X 60 fps performance mode to Series S at 30 fps, (because that's where the graphics features are almost identical), the Series S is attempting to maintain 40% of the fillrate (at lowest resolution scale) but with 33% of the GPU compute. No wonder it can dip under 30 fps a little more than the Series X dips under 60.
The Series S is delivering - relative to it's GPU performance - very well compared to the Series X.
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davis.anthony
Veteran
That's a stretch, outside of missing RT hardware, Xbox One X is arguably more capable than Series-S (More compute, more RAM and more bandwidth) and I doubt Series-S is a significant step-up over PS4 Pro in terms of GPU.
cheapchips
Veteran
No SSDs. They lack the seek time for virtual geometry.
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davis.anthony
Veteran
There are plenty of videos on YouTube of UE5 'Valley' demo working just fine on an HDD.
But can it run on a 2.3GHz Jaguar?
The game looks nice on all 3 consoles. It's interesting that the HUB world on Series S does include the Ray Tracing but not the rest of the game.
I think this will be one of the Switch 2's standout 3rd party titles. I bet this will run at dynamic 720p to 1080p with DLSS on Switch 2 but WILL have the Ray Tracing that was lacking on Series S because of the additional RAM and Tensor Cores on the Switch 2.
Outside of missing RT hardware? What about the 4~8 times faster CPU - the ultimate limiter of gameplay - or the SSD which is 15~1000 times faster depending on the type of access?
Many videos shown online are not from initial play-throughs, where things have been cached. It's an interesting change of pace to go from "UE5 streaming demo could only run on PS5, Sweeny said so" to "it runs fine off any HDD without pre-caching it's irrelevant".
But not with a Jaguar CPU, and a laptop HDD, and not necessarily on first run through without caching. And the Valley demo is not a game, with all kinds of scripts and headroom for physics intensive destruction of environments.
I'll just outright state that massively faster CPUs and massively faster, lower overhead and lower latency mass storage devices have a huge impact on modern games.
And if it can (probably can't), can it also run a whole game with an open world and scripting and physics and destruction with mostly regular frame times?
The limited RAM has definitely hurt the Series S. During development as much as anywhere else it appears. I will die on the hill of "it needed another 2GB, if only to help devs make the most of it".
Artistic choice I suspect. Being able to build your own buildings and farms etc the way you want, you wouldn’t be able to bake lighting and have it look somewhat consistent to the rest of game. It would come out looking like fallout I guess if they went with a baked solution.
True but it shows the Series S is capable of Ray Tracing in the game. Just not during the main game only the HUB section. I suspect the HUB section takes up much less memory than the main stages. Which also bodes well for Switch 2's extra memory.
With a 120 fps TV, it lock framerate to 40 fps. And tomorrow, Digitalfoundry will release the PS5 Pro video for non patreon subscriber. I am a subscriber. For non subscriber if we believe Ubi soft, RT GI is on in performance mode.
I saw Gamersyde vidéo PC max settings, the game look very good and add RT reflection at 60 fps and great image clarity.
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GhostofWar
Regular
I wonder if it's going to have a hidden heavier RT mode like Avatar and Starwars.
It’s a smaller area for sure, memory could have played an issue, or just general RT muscle may not have been sufficient to do much more than this area.
So Balanced mode on the Pro is the same as the PS5, maybe just slightly higher res? Very disappointing.
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