A Generational Leap in Graphics [2020] *Spawn*

[PSman1700]

This demo you people keep talking about?

Going soley by demos isnt really.... Its just a tech demo, fully optimized for just that scene. It was a straight forward 'scripted' event. NV has shown some real time demo too (even more impressive), cant remember the name, but one of them was realtime. in reality, in real games that are longer then two minutes, AI; etc etc, things could be different.
I just wouldnt go too much after demos and use it as performance metrics against fully released games.
Sure we can do that, but then expect other demos to make their appearance here too. For being what it was, i didnt even think it was that special. I think Cp2077 at the ultra max settings with RT, 4k60, going about in night city, at night in special, really blew me away more. Much of it has to do that there is so much going on, instead of only brown rock, with bad water and animation tech (which i think they could have focussed on since it was the only char on screen but ok).

That a 2080maxQ (2070) can run it aswell or better isnt all that surprising either, seeing where it falls in specs.

 

[BillSpencer]

This really makes you think how technology could progress if PC was not treated like the second rate platform it often is..

Not even FIFA gets a next-gen PC release. Rockstar games take years to release on PC and other big titles also get ported as an afterthought.

I understand that the high end pc market is very, very small so it’s only normal that developers don’t target it. But still.. imagine if games were built from the ground up for pc like in the 90s, early 2000s.. that would be something. CP2077 would have PC exclusive assets. And so many NPCs on screen that it would rival a real city...

But developers are smart and they don’t create games for a tiny minority. Steam surveys case in point.

looking at CP2077 again it seems the current discrepancy between platforms is less about the talent of the developer and more its inability to create a console version.

Their other game: Witcher 3 looked especially terrible compared to other tiles, and it didn’t even run at 30 FPS if I remember correctly.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

I understand that the high end pc market is very, very small so it’s only normal that developers don’t target it.

Incorrect. High end pc's account for 47%, mid-range is 34% and low-end pc's at 19% of the pc gaming market.

 

[BillSpencer]

Incorrect. High end pc's account for 47%, mid-range is 34% and low-end pc's at 19% of the pc gaming market.

Sorry it's less than 10%
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Actually less than 2.5% if you count anything below 2080 as mid-end

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Sorry it's less than 10%
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
Actually less than 2.5% if you count anything below 2080 as mid-end

Sorry, you are wrong again. That's videocards accounted by steam, not high end pc gaming market per your original statement.

The correct figure is 47% for high end pc's worldwide.

Edit: It's hardly unlikely studios would derive PC market share from Steam since total users is approx. 25 million. The total gaming market is roughly 1.5 billion.

 

[PSman1700]

This really makes you think how technology could progress if PC was not treated like the second rate platform it often is..

Doesnt seem second rate at all. On pc you get all the best versions of all games available as multiplats. You enjoy all MS games, all pc exclusives which is alot, massive amounts of indie/steam games, cheap at that. You also get more and more playstation titles.
When theres a console (timed) exclusive, its atleast on pc too. Like ghostrunner, Stray, godfall etc.

Its also the platform where RT is either much better or exclusively to it. Wouldnt want to miss out on things like Q2 RT either. Games are cheaper, no pay for online play, and a mod community to extend the lifetime and value of games.
Technology progresses on pc first, they had RT 2.5 years ago, DLLS like tech seems missing on console, too.
Like in MM where RT is limited to low quality reflections, and a cross gen gfx experience.

Nah wouldnt call the pc a 2nd rate platform. The only gain for ps5 would be its exclusives, looking back at ps4, thats not going to be alot (pc versions did come). For a seven year lifespan thats not many games a year. Could aswell PSnow the handfull of them, or get the pc versions if they release.
As for now, most is cross gen to ps4 aswell.

Sorry, you are wrong again.

The average gaming pc right now is probably much faster then the average console which is mostly ps4’s.
Highend isnt even a discussion since the consoles arent high end by todays standards.
Hell, amd and nv havent even released anything thats at ps5 level performance. The lowest are 6800 and 3060Ti both of which are a class above.

The shape of pc gaming is better then ever, that market is growing rather quick aswell.

 

[dobwal]

Incorrect. High end pc's account for 47%, mid-range is 34% and low-end pc's at 19% of the pc gaming market.

Would you mind providing the whole report because that link seems to provide limited data regarding hardware sales not software?

It makes sense that highend PC gamers make up a significant portion of revenue generated through hardware sales as highend GPUs, CPUs, memory, disk drives and other PC components can far more costly than low end wares.

If 47% is in relation to software sales, I wouldn’t mind seeing the part of the report that points to that reality.

 

[BillSpencer]

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/steam-one-billion-accounts-1203201159/

 

[chris1515]

Going soley by demos isnt really.... Its just a tech demo, fully optimized for just that scene. It was a straight forward 'scripted' event. NV has shown some real time demo too (even more impressive), cant remember the name, but one of them was realtime. in reality, in real games that are longer then two minutes, AI; etc etc, things could be different.
I just wouldnt go too much after demos and use it as performance metrics against fully released games.
Sure we can do that, but then expect other demos to make their appearance here too. For being what it was, i didnt even think it was that special. I think Cp2077 at the ultra max settings with RT, 4k60, going about in night city, at night in special, really blew me away more. Much of it has to do that there is so much going on, instead of only brown rock, with bad water and animation tech (which i think they could have focussed on since it was the only char on screen but ok).

That a 2080maxQ (2070) can run it aswell or better isnt all that surprising either, seeing where it falls in specs.

My point is not the demo, it is the fact than UE5 doesn't use triangle based RT

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/a-first-look-at-unreal-engine-5

Introducing “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” a real-time demo running live on PlayStation 5

The demo use other technology available into Unreal Engine 4 but no triangle based RT available into UE4:

The demo also showcases existing engine systems such as Chaos physics and destruction, Niagara VFX, convolution reverb, and ambisonics rendering.

And the translation of the Epic China interview:

-The Epic guy is saying the first scene(Lumen) can run at 40fps on his notebook, not the whole demo.

-If its a 1080P screen, 2 triangle per pixel, make some compression on vertex, than you still can run this demo, no need very high bandwidth and IO like PS5.

-UE4.25 implemented asynchronous/overlapped loading (Because bottleneck was the CPU). They overhauled their shaders to work well with the event-driven loader. This gave them >50% loading speed improvement.

-In the final UE5 scene, compression and careful disk layout avoided the need for high speed SSD. The workload wasn't that high.

-Guy mentioned they can run the demo in the editor at 40fps, not 40+ but did not specify resolution.

-Currently Nanite has some limitations such as only works on static meshes, doesn't support deformation for animation, doesn't support skinned character model, supports opaque material but no mask.

-Lumen costs quite a bit more than Nanite.UE5 could eventually be a hybrid renderer using both Lumen and Raytracing in the future.

Maybe one day UE5 could use Lumen and raytracing.

Funny, they probably set the data sequentially in the last sequence for being able to run on it on low speed SSD. For an open world it means use redudancy and so on. Everything Mark Cerny said it is not needed with a fast SSD like PS5 and XSX.

 

[BillSpencer]

My point is not the demo is the fact than UE5 doesn't use triangle based RT

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/a-first-look-at-unreal-engine-5



The demo use other technology available into Unreal Engine 4 but no triangle based RT available into UE4:


And the translation of the Epic China interview:


Maybe one day UE5 could use Lumen and raytracing.

Funny, they probably set the data sequentially in the lase sequence for being able to run on it on low speed SSD. For an open world it means use redudancy and so on. Everything Mark Cerny said it is not needed with a fast SSD.

For gears of war, all the characters have the same body, they only have direct heads and textures

 

[Dictator]

For gears of war, all the characters have the same body, they only have direct heads and textures

The characters have very different bodies in Gears games - minus the normal line troopers each named Character has had a custom custom sculpt since around gears 3

 

[zed]

For gears of war, all the characters have the same body, they only have direct heads and textures

I just googled the game https://gearsofwar.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters theres some women there so ?

 

[BillSpencer]

The characters have very different bodies in Gears games - minus the normal line troopers each named Character has had a custom custom sculpt since around gears 3

Diminishing returns I guess

 

[pjbliverpool]

Sorry it's less than 10%
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Actually less than 2.5% if you count anything below 2080 as mid-end

How are you defining high end to get 10%?

I don't think Jon Peddie are going to be defining "high end" based on platform wars criteria or the PC elitists. It'll almost certainly be based on what developers consider a viable target for a specific class of games. Likely something along the lines of a system capable of playing the latest last gen console games at or above the same fidelity as those consoles (I'm being vague here because we don't know the exact criteria).

If you look at the Steam survey then you can see that ~23% of systems feature a GPU in the GTX 1070 or above class and that's from November. Ampere and RDNA2 will likely have pushed that up by a couple of percentage points at least by now.

As per your link above, Steam likely has ~100 million active accounts by now and that likely doesn't come close to representing the total PC market given it's minimal penetration in Asia (and specifically China). But let's for arguments sake assume it does, so 25% of that is 25m PC's that have a GPU which is not only more powerful than the PS4/XBO but also more powerful than the mid-gen refreshes. That's a pretty significant market considering the absolute bottom end of that 250m is a GTX 1070 (handily more powerful than the Xbox One X). Take that down to GTX 1050Ti level (around the minimum bar to comfortably match or exceed previous gen consoles in the latest games) and you're looking at around 59%, or more than 59m PC's that can easily exceed XBO performance. That's a much bigger install base that either the XBO or Switch and over half the PS4 install base. So again, a very significant target market for developers.

Looking at the 47% cited above then you can get there from the Steam survey by not going lower than a GTX970/1060. While not high end by "platform war" standards, they're still both much more capable than the current gen (meaning PS4 gen) consoles and so would be considered by developers as no compromise platforms for the latest games. They can even handle the current trenche of "next gen games" with some setting compromises and lowered resolutions.

Also if you want to look at PC's that can compete with the new generation consoles (let's say 2070S and above) then even in Nov you were looking at well over 5% or 5 million PC's, and that figure will have increased since then with the launch of Ampere and RDNA2 so likely compares pretty well with either of the new gen consoles install base.

 

[HLJ]

And that number will keep rising...AMD's 7000 series and NVIDIA's 4000 series will not wait for the consoles...

 

[BillSpencer]

Thank you for your explanation, but I am just referencing the metrics by the person who appears to know the most about the PC platform; HVJ or something I would have to look it up.

edit:
if you are sure the high end pc market is more than 2.5% then that would qualify PS5 as a high end pc

so either the high end PC market is less than 3%, or PS5 has high end PC hardware.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Thank you for your explanation, but I am just referencing the metrics by the person who appears to know the most about the PC platform; HVJ or something I would have to look it up.

edit:
if you are sure the high end pc market is more than 2.5% then that would qualify PS5 as a high end pc

so either the high end PC market is less than 3%, or PS5 has high end PC hardware.

By the standards of the Jon Peddie article then the PS5 is easily a high end PC. The Xbox One X and maybe even PS4 Pro would probably qualify as well.

As a PC gamer then I would personally still class the PS5 as equivalent to a high end PC (just as I would any PC running a 2070 or above), although it'd be in the lower part of that high end spectrum, at least for non RT based workloads. But since that's a subjective analysis I'm sure others would classify it differently.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Would you mind providing the whole report because that link seems to provide limited data regarding hardware sales not software?
It makes sense that highend PC gamers make up a significant portion of revenue generated through hardware sales as highend GPUs, CPUs, memory, disk drives and other PC components can far more costly than low end wares.
If 47% is in relation to software sales, I wouldn’t mind seeing the part of the report that points to that reality.

Yeah, the report only targets the PC hardware gaming market and unfortunately the report is behind a paywall ($27,500). Like you I believe the 47% is inclusive of PC & components purchased in one of three PC gaming tiers.

I did find two other JPR reports available as pdf's that might offer thread info on consoles and PC's.

The_Balance_of_Power_in_Gaming_2019_-_V8.pdf (jonpeddie.com)
The_Balance_of_Power_in_Gaming_2018_-_V4.pdf (jonpeddie.com)

One interesting tidbit from the reports:

Consoles, unlike Gaming PCs, are sold by games, as a result suppliers take a loss-leader marketing but they all claim to make money on the hardware.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah, the report only targets the PC hardware gaming market and unfortunately the report is behind a paywall ($27,500). Like you I believe the 47% is inclusive of PC & components purchased in one of three PC gaming tiers.

I did find two other JPR reports available as pdf's that might offer thread info on consoles and PC's.

The_Balance_of_Power_in_Gaming_2019_-_V8.pdf (jonpeddie.com)
The_Balance_of_Power_in_Gaming_2018_-_V4.pdf (jonpeddie.com)

One interesting tidbit from the reports:

Great find, that answers all of the questions posed above and then some. You and @dobwal are absolutely correct that the higher proportion allocated to high end is due to the higher ASP and margins rather than higher volumes.

From the report:

High End Segment: at least $1800 including a monitor for the full system or >$350 for AIB GPU. 20.7m of these in mid 2019.
Mid Range Segment: between $1000-$1800 including monitor for the full system or between $150 and $350 for AIB GPU. 77m of these in mid 2019.
Entry Level: up to $1000 including monitor for the full system or <$150 for AIB GPU. 470m of these in mid 2019.

Bear in mind the report is from mid 2019 so we're roughly looking at the high end at that point being represented by the RTX 2060 and above.

Consoles numbers by comparison are 112.6m PS4's and 46.8m XBO's for the same period.

 

[PSman1700]

By the standards of the Jon Peddie article then the PS5 is easily a high end PC.

PS4 was high end too then (7870 level). Even more so then the ps5 just baded om metrics.

And the translation of the Epic China interview:

That a laptop equipped with a nvme drive, 2080maxQ gpu can run the demo aswell if not better isnt all that surprising again.

Maybe one day UE5 could use Lumen and raytracing.

Funny, they probably set the data sequentially in the last sequence for being able to run on it on low speed SSD. For an open world it means use redudancy and so on. Everything Mark Cerny said it is not needed with a fast SSD like PS5 and XSX.

No matter what method will be used, it will always be much and much faster on a 6800/XT and in special Ampere gpu.

As a PC gamer then I would personally still class the PS5 as equivalent to a high end PC (just as I would any PC running a 2070 or above), although it'd be in the lower part of that high end spectrum, at least for non RT based workloads. But since that's a subjective analysis I'm sure others would classify it differently.

RTX2070, well not high end since ampere snd rdna2, their still capable gpus indeed. A 2070s is still quite capable in RT.