Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

I mean XSX IS underperforming (to put it very mildly) compared to desktop RDNA2 cards (albeit AMD provided benchmarks but still) FLOP for FLOP. Whether it's the crappy state of MS GDK or some other bottleneck is anyones guess. Just look at Forza 4 fcs. it can't even run 4Kp60 native on Ultra. They had to gimp the settings.

 

Pretty much every game designed for XBSX will also have to be designed for PC so I don't really understand this logic.

 

But the desktop 6800 has at least 50% more front end throughput than the XSX (at game clocks) and Infinity Cache. We have no idea how much performance that adds.

 

PlayStation galore!!

 

I understand that, but right now it's not even faster than 5700XT with no IC and comparable bandwidth and game clocks.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review/12

 

So just as expected, 2060S has better RT and probably way better ML than next gen hardware. Too bad the standard 2060 only has 6GB of VRAM.

 

RT perf was abysmal on Turing at 1st (Battlefield). It took quite a few game patches to make it run at decent framerates. I don't see why it would be any different on consoles. Especially on Nvidia sponsored title.

 

One thing ive learned is that always to await the DF analysis, and in special those from Alex if you want true pc vs console comparisons.

The PS5 actually seems rather impressive for its tiny specs. But compared to 6800 or RTX products from NV, or Zen3 cpus/7GB/s nvme drives, both are dwarfed and this gap will only grow larger.

Exactly, rather huge difference there. Technically WDL is doing much more impressive things regarding RT (atleast the pc version).

Atleast it says something about RTX3070 or higher RT/ML performance too, if the 2060 is already better.

That goes for all hardware and games. Improvements will take place on consoles and pcs.

 

Hugely disappointed in XSX performance so far and I am an XBot by heart. Something is not right... Higher memory bandwidth, better GPU utilization than PS5 in theory and yet it underperforms constantly. I do not believe for a second that the PS5 is punching above its weight. PS5 is doing what we are expecting it to do, i.e. solid performance but no surprises other than that. XSX is the anomaly. Poor software support from MS? if yes, when could we expect them to mature, and when they do... will we see a slew of patches released for already released games? Sure hope so.. And please, patch up Forza Horizon 4 and make it a high priority..

I sure hope for XSX sake it is a Dreamcast vs PS2 situation where PS2 was not impressive at launch but a year later or so was doing things Dreamcast couldn't keep up with.

End of rant..

 

Just an upscaled last gen game, certainly quickly ported for launch. Wait for real next gen games to really have an idea.
Remember AC4 last gen vs current gen, was not much of a difference, not even double the fps like we have here. And then we got unity.

 

It's somewhat good though, because the current misallocation of RT performance to simply show it off means there is probably lots of room for improvement/refinement for the future.

 

if you expected from machine that in theory is 20% faster to do thing that ps5 couldn't keep up with or similar to dreamcast vs ps2 situation then no wonder you are disappointed

 

I really don't get all this doom and gloom... both systems are performing well and will get progressively better over time. Why does one system have to be slightly (or more) inferior than other, for one to enjoy their console of choice? I'm a diehard PC gamer, with some nice hardware... but I'm still in awe by console gaming regardless of any limiting factors when compared to PC.

 

Actually PS2 had at least a couple of impressive launch games, mainly Tekken Tag Tournament. THAT is how you do a cross-gen port, IMHO. But I wouldn't go as far to say there were a ton of PS2 games in 2001 or even 2002 the Dreamcast couldn't of done, because there are things in some games like Shenmue II the PS2 may not've been capable of during that same time frame.

Dreamcast AAA dev pretty much died right around the exact same time PS2 AAA dev kicked into overdrive starting with the release of GT3 that May in 2001. To this day I still think there's some untapped potential with Dreamcast. No there are definitely some things it'd lose out in (lighting, polygon geometry, particle fillrate being the main three areas), but I would've LOVED seeing some of that super-crisp texture work and deferred rendering (before it became cool) being put to work with Dreamcast's superior resolution output.

Regarding Series X...I'll give MS the benefit of the doubt and assume these issues (with mainly two multi-plat launch titles, FWIW. People are acting like this issue is across all the games but I'm not seeing it Series X struggle WRT games like Dirt 5 or NBA 2K1, where it holds slight edges in graphics and more than holds its own in load times) are related to Gamecore tardiness, but I really hope MS does something to show (rather than tell) what their system can truly do. And, I think they'll need to do so, sooner rather than later.

I can't lie and pretend Sony isn't controlling the flow of next-gen right now, and leading the discussion, because they are. I feel the swing in momentum started with the UE5 demo back in June combined with the "gameplay" from the Xbox Showcase earlier back in May (which I liked, but there wasn't too much actual gameplay and Valhalla was a huge letdown and "gameplay" became a meme), and it's just gradually continued since then. Now it feels like they're cementing impressions thanks to the launch lineup. All of this is irrespective of if Series X is actually more capable than PS5 or not, because for most people, seeing is believing.

Best thing for MS to do sometime soon, IMHO, is show off some real-time gameplay of either Hellblade II or Starlink running on a Series X. Make sure that gameplay and those visuals are incredible, and time it well. If they do it right, and if it looks as close to the Hellblade II footage from December as possible, I think that'll shut down all of these concerns and then some. But like I said, it needs to come sooner rather than later; Sony's got Rift Apart coming down the line and Forbidden West not too long after. GT7 might be coming H1 2021 as well, and if Ragnarok comes out in 2021 after all rather than getting delayed? Considering MS can't really count on Halo Infinite too much, if they let too many of these solidly impressive Sony games come out while there's no display of Series X's true capabilities (preferably from 1P software; kills two birds with one stone), then I'll start to worry about their long-term prospects for next-gen.

It's way too early to start sounding any alarms yet, however. This is still early days, and at the very least MS's Q1 2021 should be much stronger thanks to Scorn, Bright Memory Infinite, The Medium and The Ascent, among others (and if BMI and Exo-Mecha run in real-time as they were shown at their reveal events, they'll be two of the best-looking next-gen games, hands-down).

 

I think people expectations needed realignment? Or convinced themselves they was going to get 3070 RT with DLSS performance or something

I always thought the general consensus of what to expect was this. In non RT lot of performance, with RT lower end Nvidia.

Now as you say this is launch, as we move forward RT will be used in combination and smarter ways with also better implementation in general.
It's why I've been in the hybrid/layered boat for a long time.

Also would be nice to get a ML Upscaling solution of some sorts.

One thing I was disappointed after just watching the WDL breakdown was the lower textures in the XSX. Even without using SFS I expected higher.Any body have any views on why it's the case?

Could you point me to the RT benchmarks for the dGPU's as be nice to compare myself. As I don't remember seeing them.
Probably just dismissed them out of hand, at the time to be fair.

Although fast, wide, by definition your saying pretty much maxing everything?

 

Are they actually running identical resolutions and settings? A problem is with the eyeball test while things may seem similar it doesn't been they are actually identical.

A problem the XSX will likely face is that while it's GPU is technically faster it might not be (and likely isn't) faster enough to lead to an easily discernible difference with respect to the "eyeball" test in practice over the PS5. Even more of an issue if it's a multiplatform game is what the design focus and resource distribution would also be a factor.

Unlike with further past console gens as well the more similar design both consoles use mean's it isn't likely that future development will more expose the differences either.

 

Maybe I put too much stock into what Cerny said but the only surprise for me is that the gap is next to non existent- but out of the gate I was expecting a close start. Games will not be stretching the CU advantage yet and PS5 has the faster clocks.

For me also it was telling how little XSX game footage was shown pre launch, you had Sony showing off R&C gameplay which looked great and MS didn’t have anything to show off this power they kept banging on about.

Not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying this gen the face offs are going to be really interesting to see how things pan out as the gen goes.

 

It is next to non existent in a sense. The theoretical performance delta of the GPU is likely slightly less than say RTX 2070 Super and 2080 Super or RX 5700 or RX 5700XT in terms of the PC side. From a PC 1:1 benchmarking stand point yes there is a noticeable difference but that type of scenario wouldn't be how consoles are measured. From an end user/implementation stand point? It's rather borderline in terms of actually being faster enough to have a noticeable visual difference much less a clear difference.

The gap between the PS4 and Xbox One I think was roughly 50% higher than the gap between the XSX and PS5.

We're also more into the "good enough" situation as well. Just taking resolution the difference between 720p vs 900p scaled to 1080p is more noticeable than the 1440p+ scaled to 4k scenarios this gen.

 

I totally agree that PS5 is not punching above its weight because I never believed it was less powerful than the Series X, hell, even MS didn't think it was. The confident boasting from the XB1X advertising ("the worlds most powerful console" and "..plays better on X..") is missing from Series X advertising. But yeah, if you were expecting the Series X to be more powerful for months leading up to launch, then I can see how someone could see XSX as anomalous. But if you are like me who gets a kick out of the fanboy shit slinging then it makes everything far more interesting.

Although I will say, as PC fanboy, I envy that storage I/O in the PS5 because I wish I could have that on my system.

 

When Direct Storage PC will arrive you will be ok. They don't push the SSD to its limit but being able to stream 3 to 4GB of compresses data wen needed in Demon's souls is great.

We need to wait third party devs to modify game engine to use the PS5 SSD and XVA into account, probably in 2022 and later.