Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[troyan]

When Cyberpunk relies only on the indirect part of the Pathtracer it can run with ~30 FPS in nativ 4K on a 4090. With 10s of dynamic objects throwing shadows and getting reflected.
Dont really understand terms like "last gen". UE5 has a last gen lighting systems. So is every UE5 game a "last gen" one? Cyberpunk looks better than anything else despite these technical problems.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don’t think anyone is saying that. The intention is a game that scales down from high to low instead of scaling up from low to high.

Well there's no difference, unless you are dong something that doesn't scale, at which point you have the costs of effectively running two games. The example given was arcades doing things consoles and computers couldn't and then those games being ported.

If you are starting with something maxing out a top tier PC and it's not just higher resolution and framerate and a bit of RT, you are increasing the costs to develop to beyond what it already costs to target consoles, for a product that only a niche of PC users can use. And then spending on creating a pared down experience that won't be good enough...OR, will be good enough, at which point why bother with the top-tier version?

 

[trinibwoy]

Well there's no difference, unless you are dong something that doesn't scale, at which point you have the costs of effectively running two games. The example given was arcades doing things consoles and computers couldn't and then those games being ported.

The same resources applied to extracting more out of top end hardware can potentially unlock new scalable features that otherwise wouldn’t be explored. This is all theoretical because we have no games today that do this.

If you are starting with something maxing out a top tier PC and it's not just higher resolution and framerate and a bit of RT, you are increasing the costs to develop to beyond what it already costs to target consoles, for a product that only a niche of PC users can use. And then spending on creating a pared down experience that won't be good enough...

It’s probably not free but it’s also not necessarily much more expensive especially for games using mature middleware. Pay the cost once and spread it across multiple years / games.

OR, will be good enough, at which point why bother with the top-tier version?

Presumably because there are still developers out there who actually want to push the envelope and aren’t just bean counting.

 

[Karamazov]

When Cyberpunk relies only on the indirect part of the Pathtracer it can run with ~30 FPS in nativ 4K on a 4090. With 10s of dynamic objects throwing shadows and getting reflected.
Dont really understand terms like "last gen". UE5 has a last gen lighting systems. So is every UE5 game a "last gen" one? Cyberpunk looks better than anything else despite these technical problems.

last gen assets, physics, AI, next gen lighting. I'm not the one here not impressed, i just keep hearing PC could do so much more if not restrained by consoles, but PT is not on consoles, and is already hard to handle with "last gen" everything else in the game. and if some want next gen everything now, i'm not sure actual PCs could handle it decently, that's my point, i'm not bashing CP77 at all.

Maybe Alan Wake 2 PC is a better candidate, but on a smaller scale of course, though assets are the same between consoles and PCs, the question is could PCs handle even more complexity while retaining the greater lighting ?

 

[Remij]

last gen assets, physics, AI, next gen lighting. I'm not the one here not impressed, i just keep hearing PC could do so much more if not restrained by consoles, but PT is not on consoles, and is already hard to handle with "last gen" everything else in the game. and if some want next gen everything now, i'm not sure actual PCs could handle it decently, that's my point, i'm not bashing CP77 at all.

Maybe Alan Wake 2 PC is a better candidate, but on a smaller scale of course, though assets are the same between consoles and PCs, the question is could PCs handle even more complexity while retaining the greater lighting ?

Yes, they could.

A big problem with PC gaming is also PC gamers. Mayyyybe if PC gamers could accept games which don't hit the arbitrary fps they have in their minds.. they'd be more willing to put higher settings in.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The same resources applied to extracting more out of top end hardware can potentially unlock new scalable features that otherwise wouldn’t be explored. This is all theoretical because we have no games today that do this.

Or, optimisations found to make the low end run better can be applied to get more from the high end.

It’s probably not free but it’s also not necessarily much more expensive especially for games using mature middleware. Pay the cost once and spread it across multiple years / games.

That's a theory. There are a lot of developers out there not doing this. Have they all just missed the trick?

Presumably because there are still developers out there who actually want to push the envelope and aren’t just bean counting.

Lots. There are also lots going under, studios closing, cutbacks, even without trying to push the envelope further to please a few million elite PC owners; they have to still count the beans even if that's not what they want to be doing.

I think it worth taking a look at some real 'next gen' visuals like nVidia's RTX Racing, a game created as a PR exercise from a company flush with cash to show what top tier PC, unrestrained, can achieve. This is releasing in November 2022 and it'll show what's...oh...hmmm......

 

[trinibwoy]

Or, optimisations found to make the low end run better can be applied to get more from the high end.

More performance, and slightly better IQ. That’s exactly what spurred this convo. Scaling up doesn’t introduce tangible IQ improvements beyond resolution.

That's a theory. There are a lot of developers out there not doing this. Have they all just missed the trick?

No they’re all avoiding the risk.

Lots. There are also lots going under, studios closing, cutbacks, even without trying to push the envelope further to please a few million elite PC owners; they have to still count the beans even if that's not what they want to be doing.

Yes, it’s not for the faint hearted. Maybe Elon will fund a game studio that’s shooting for the moon. He seems to like burning cash.

4A Games hasn’t played their hand yet either. Will they go all out or settle for a pragmatic console friendly option like Massive?

 

[DavidGraham]

With the advent of Path Tracing/Ray Tracing, we on PC have what could be considered the best of both worlds, devs don't have to go out of their way to scale their games up to target high ebd hardware. They can just add Path Tracing and that takes care of the scaling issue to a very satisfying degree. Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 are very good examples of this.

 

[trinibwoy]

With the advent of Path Tracing/Ray Tracing, we on PC have what could be considered the best of both worlds, devs don't have to go out of their way to scale their games up to target high ebd hardware. They can just add Path Tracing and that takes care of the scaling issue to a very satisfying degree. Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 are very good examples of this.

Path Tracing is just a lighting algo. There’s a lot more to visuals than that. Geometric complexity and density, volumetrics, particles, animation etc are also important.

 

[DavidGraham]

Path Tracing is just a lighting algo. There’s a lot more to visuals than that. Geometric complexity and density, volumetrics, particles, animation etc are also important.

I get that, but I would settle for boosting lighting/reflections/shadows/transparencies right now, better than boosting nothing at all. Especially in the current circumstances.

 

[Below2D]

When Cyberpunk relies only on the indirect part of the Pathtracer it can run with ~30 FPS in nativ 4K on a 4090. With 10s of dynamic objects throwing shadows and getting reflected.
Dont really understand terms like "last gen". UE5 has a last gen lighting systems. So is every UE5 game a "last gen" one? Cyberpunk looks better than anything else despite these technical problems.

I find the term "generation" to be very console-centric. PC has incremental upgrades. You don't get one huge jump every few years. Ray tracing has been viable since 2018 and Control and Cyberpunk were effectively "next-gen" games. Same for Crysis 3 on PC back in 2013 which looked far better than most PS4/X1 games.

 

[pharma]

AMD RX 6500 XT Revisit – 1080p Low Settings benchmark! - KitGuru

Today we are revisiting the AMD RX 6500 XT. That’s right, we’re taking an updated look at quite poss

www.kitguru.net

Today's testing is quite simple, then. We've taken 10 games released over the last 12 months, and tested them with the RX 6500 XT using the lowest in-game presets. We're only interested in native 1080p, so no upscaling (FSR) was used in this analysis. We're also not even thinking about ray tracing, apart from something like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, where it simply can't be turned off.
...
I personally wasn’t anticipating that the 6500 XT would fail in every single game, especially for long-running series like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed – you do expect those titles to be developed with older and slower hardware in mind.

That said, of the ten games we tested, six of them delivered sub-30fps results with the 6500 XT when tested at 1080p using the lowest in-game preset, and that is a pretty shocking result it has to be said. Of course, these are modern games, but that is the whole point. Less than two years on from the launch of what was a £200 GPU (if not even more expensive due to the shortages) it can’t even keep a majority of the games we tested above 30FPS on the lowest settings at 1080p resolution.

 

[techuse]

AMD RX 6500 XT Revisit – 1080p Low Settings benchmark! - KitGuru

Today we are revisiting the AMD RX 6500 XT. That’s right, we’re taking an updated look at quite poss

www.kitguru.net

Does the 3050 do better?

 

[Below2D]

It’s sickening how low-end GPUs have become complete trash instead of being actual cheap options. Now, "budget" cards are $250+.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It’s sickening how low-end GPUs have become complete trash instead of being actual cheap options. Now, "budget" cards are $250+.

Were they ever good? Serious question. I do think the main problem is just that prices are really high, so an Nvidia x060 or the equivalent AMD are priced pretty high.

 

[techuse]

Were they ever good? Serious question. I do think the main problem is just that prices are really high, so an Nvidia x060 or the equivalent AMD are priced pretty high.

The RX 480 and 580 launched at $229. Prior to that the R9 270x was $199. There are various other examples too. It's a recent predicament that the GPU market is horrible.

 

[pjbliverpool]

AMD RX 6500 XT Revisit – 1080p Low Settings benchmark! - KitGuru

Today we are revisiting the AMD RX 6500 XT. That’s right, we’re taking an updated look at quite poss

www.kitguru.net

To be fair, several of those games are pretty much intended to be used with upscaling even at the high end. The simple addition of FSR Quality on the games where it's not hitting 30fps min should deliver a solid 30fps in all those titles.

Not saying its not a very weak GPU, but it's still serviceable for a low end experience on todays most graphically demanding games.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Does the 3050 do better?

It should do much better. It's around 33% faster in non-RT according to TPU and it should fair a bitter better still in Avatar due to it's more performant RT hardware. Also with access to DLSS it should be able to provide a comparable end result to the 6500XT using only DLSS Balanced or possibly even Performance vs FSR Quality. Ultimately at the same settings and image quality I don't think double the performance is an unreasonable expectation. So if we're talking about hitting 30fps minimum at FSR quality on the 6500XT in all these titles then 60fps may be achievable with the 3050.

 

[trinibwoy]

Were they ever good? Serious question. I do think the main problem is just that prices are really high, so an Nvidia x060 or the equivalent AMD are priced pretty high.

Things were better in the past when the top end was $600 but objectively we as enthusiasts have our collective heads up our asses.

A 3050 @ $250 is very serviceable depending on your needs. I have one in my HTPC and it does surprisingly well at 4K in older games and is solid at 1080p in newer stuff. Could it be better? Sure but it’s not useless. The main problem is reviews don’t benchmark these cards at appropriate settings, namely 1080p medium.

The 4060 at $300 is decent too, again if you’re not expecting 4K 120fps.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can anyone provide a more objective comparison of the value propositions? Something like "relative cost of card versus top end : relative performance".