Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2018]

It is AC Syndicate not AC Odyssey... If Ubi can solve it with a patch, It think Rockstar can too... I hope a patch will arrive.

 

Yikes! Low 20fps in places on base consoles. If there was ever a game demonstrating that there is a need for nextgen consoles - for those that don't want half-measures Pro and X, there you go!

Yup. If there was easy to lever that in they would have done it already and Rockstar are absolutely right not to rejig their rendering engine just to accommodate one hardware platform out of four that benefits from a particular from of hardware-accelerated CB rendering.

For me, DF's article defaults to only showing the Part 2 video. It may have been the same for BRiT. Even now I can't see any obvious links to Part 1 of the video

 

That vieo is much more interesting: the draw distance, the contact hardening shadows, the volumetric lighting (with a nice dose of SSMS) and those skies

 

Now had a chance to review both videos, really interesting stuff. There is some hyperbolic commentary in places like there the claim the Xbox One S framerate "tanks" while the onscreen counter shows 28fps which is just silly.

DF keep referring to the Xbox One S as the "base Xbox" but isn't S clocked higher than the original Xbox One? Maybe there is nothing in it but why aren't DF testing the original Xbox One, have they covered this before?

 

their checkerboard solution for PS4 pro seems poop, glad i still have a 1080p TV !

 

They don't cover the OG model because the difference isn't large enough to warrant the extra work needed.

Plus you can't buy it anymore, so the S is technically the current base model being offered.

 

This game looks stunning and bodes well for 4K being mostly standard in next gen with much more bandwidth, TF, and better CPU. Hopefully they won't be later than 2020. Next R* open world game is probably 5 years away though. But maybe they can add a third pillar to GTA/Red Dead?

 

1080p standard and 4K for Pro consoles please.

 

I don't agree with this argument. Any of it.
The S is not only clocked higher, it has higher on-chip bandwidth (ESRAM). Its HDD also performs slightly better.
While it's true that in most games the difference is only 1-2fps difference, a few titles have shown up to a 5fps difference in performance in certain sections. If they don't test the base unit, how can we know if it's one of those titles that shows a larger performance gap.
Furthermore, the Base Xbox One was on the market for 3 years before the S was released. I don't know what Microsoft's sales numbers are, but I would bet there are a lot more owners of Base Model Xbox Ones than there are of Xbox One Xs. If that's your largest customer group, shouldn't you make sure that games released for their consoles are playable?

 

It takes a lot of hours to do this stuff. Aside from frame rate counting it should be exactly identical to One S. I think they are right to omit the OG. Just go the S, majority of users are probably S then X then OG.

 

The X hasn't even been on the market for one year yet. You think more people have purchased X in one year than purchased the base model in 3+ years?
If they have to leave something out, they should leave out the S model. Test the base model. Because if it works acceptably on that unit, then we know for certain that it will work at least as well on the S.

 

So, how does RDR2 hold up against titles like HZD and spiderman?

 

On Sony consoles, HZD and Spiderman still have a framerate and IQ advantage. On the X it is clearly a contender for the most impressive game ever. It is certainly more ambitious than both at least.

 

I agree with you, I'm just repeating what John from DF said today or yesterday. I can try to find the quote on ERA when I have time later. He basically said the difference isn't worth the extra work necessary. They already have up to 6 platforms to compare, so I don't think it's fair to really demand they cover a discontinued model.

 

If we're talking pure image quality (i.e., resolution, anti-aliasing, etc..) judging by DF's videos of RDR2, Spider-Man and Horizon Zero Dawn hands down have the better IQ over PS4 version of Red Dead Redemption 2. If we're talking purely graphics and animation, then yes, RDR2 wins across all platforms, but more so on XB1-X.

Also, checking back on older DF PS4 standard and Pro RDR2 footage, it seems R* may have cleaned up the provided footage (more so the Pro). Even DF mentioned that (IQ being different) in today's video.

 

I didn't. See my next comment.
The base may be "discontinued", but I believe it's either the largest group of of Xbox One owners, or it's a close second to the S. Showing the results on Base and X will cover the entire XBO range, because if it runs well on Base, it will run at least as well (and almost always slightly better) on S. Whereas the same doesn't hold true the other way around.
For the record, I have a Xbox One S. If DF, VG, NX all did tests on the Base model instead of the S, I would be fine with that.

 

I'm in the camp that thinks it doesn't really matter at this point. S gives a maximum 7% increase in situations that are soley GPU limited and that don't run into main memory bandwidth issues - which is to say basically nothing these days.

Games using lots of buffers and async compute will be increasingly limited by DDR 3 BW. That didn't change.

X1X is a bandwidth monster - not just the peak GB/s, but the 192-bit bus and 12 memory channels. I bet it can service requests better than any other console out there.

When it's outperforming Pro games in some scenes by 70%+ in dynamic res surely it has to be effective BW.

 

Ditto. I recall the early DF performance testing where some games showed no framerate differences and others it was more pronounced, 1-2fps not uncommon, 5fps in one 60Hz (F1) up to 7fps difference. That's not marginal.

I don't know where folks are getting the idea that there aren't many OG Xbox One's out there, it was the only option for almost three years before S was released. What happened to 34 months worth of OG Xbox Ones, did they evaporate?

 

There's other places that give OG Xbox framerate/times e.g. VG Tech.
Considering the amount of work that goes into DF and what they cover, I think it's more than fair for them to leave the OG up to others to do, and if your interested in that metric then you can hunt them out.
90% of the time the differences between OG and S are negligible at best.

That's one of the many reasons it's good to have multiple places doing it in the first place, including checks and balances.

 

Nobody is saying that should add another platform for comparison, but perhaps instead actually use the defacto slowest platform as base because a lot of people have that console. The last official figure from Microsoft was 10 million units in November 14 so its 10 million + x million sold in the following 20 months before One S launched.

So 10% are not negligible performance differences. Is RDR2 in that 10%?