Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

[Remij]

So I have this game on PC, and the Series X appears to be utilizing the "Ultra Low" geometry setting.

The next lowest setting "Low" isn't anywhere close to it and looks similar to PS5.

I will say, I'm actually quite impressed with the game on PC. It runs smooth as butter and looks visually quite nice, despite the lighting definitely making things look undesirable at certain times of day.. which DF touched upon.

 

[PSman1700]

Could it be that games on XSX are the One S versions just ported? Oh and it turns out as alex assumed, low settings do still happen.

 

[Karamazov]

XsX version of dirt 5 is vastly superior to the XsS version. The weird part is the 120fps mode, someone may have messed up with the settings on XsX.

 

[Remij]

Also what's interesting is that between Ultra Low, Low, and Ultra High, there's a miniscule difference in performance. So it's very unlikely that any setting has been reduced on Series X for "performance purposes" over the PS5 version. I think it's safe to say that this is a bug.

The game is quite interesting in how it dynamically adjusts settings and resolution. There's an "automatic" setting for every single setting, which adjusts the setting on the fly to maintain performance. I think the Series X version is somehow bugged into maintaining that Ultra low geometry setting (possibly others as well) and that wasn't intended.

I could be wrong.. but anyway.. the geometry setting alone like I said has a miniscule difference in performance. I've included the FPS counter on the top right through Steam.

Ultra Low

Low

Ultra High

4 FPS difference between Ultra Low and Ultra High.

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

4FPS for your GPU (which one is it?), might be more for XSX. At 60fps that is a difference, and we know its dropping below 55fps anyway.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

The game is quite interesting in how it dynamically adjusts settings and resolution.

How does that even work? How does the engine know when to lower or increase resolution and settings?

But it is pretty certain that the situation with Dirt 5 is a bug. I mean, looking at how first-party games are running on XSX with their enhancements (and even then there are some hiccups there and there), it is pretty certain that XSX should run third party games better.

 

[Remij]

4FPS for your GPU (which one is it?), might be more for XSX. At 60fps that is a difference, and we know its dropping below 55fps anyway.

2080TI
3900X
32GB RAM

Could be, but I doubt it. I'm thinking it has to be a bug. Why not just drop more resolution if that was the case? Makes no sense. I think the game dynamically adjusts settings on the fly, and it's getting "stuck" on the low geometry setting somehow. Maybe I'm wrong..

Does Series S have the same low geometry setting?

 

[mpg1]

The geometry issue on XSX was happening in the 120fps mode though...and in that mode I believe it was the PS5 having occasional performance dips.

We didn't really get a valid performance comparison due to the issue.

 

[PSman1700]

2080TI
3900X
32GB RAM

Thats way and way above any console. Like someone else noted, its abit hard to compare i think, 4fps on your system could be a different thing for the XSX.

 

[_Enigma_]

Hum, I'm starting wonder about a certain developer who was attacked about his comments dealing with PS5 and XBSX. And other developers agreed with his comments, but of course console warriors and corporate shills ruined any honest discussions to be had.

What comments?

 

[Remij]

Thats way and way above any console. Like someone else noted, its abit hard to compare i think, 4fps on your system could be a different thing for the XSX.

It is, but like I said.. it just doesn't add up to me. Even the next lowest quality setting "Low" looks far better and more in-line with the PS5.. and costs 2 frames.

And again, even if it cost 10fps.. why wouldn't they simply drop resolution for that period? It makes no sense. It has to be an LOD bug due to the fact that this game seems to adjust everything on the fly.

I refuse to believe it's anything else lol

 

[Remij]

Tessellation also doesn't appear to have much of an impact when reduced along with Geometry.. at least on my machine

Just 6FPS in these like for like shots.

 

[see colon]

Tessellation also doesn't appear to have much of an impact when reduced along with Geometry.. at least on my machine



Just 6FPS in these like for like shots.

Tessellation has been traditionally slower on AMD hardware by a lot. So much, in fact, that AMD's drivers have an option enabled by default that caps the amount of tessellation to a fraction of what nVidia supports. Like 1/2 or 1/4, and nVidia still outperforms AMD in tessellation with this option enabled. I haven't seen any benchmarks for RDNA cards specifically with tessellation, but given the amount of time nVidia had a lead in performance with that specific feature, and given AMD's solution was to simply do less of the work with both a visual difference and still a performance penalty, I'm doubtful they've really fixed the issue.

 

[Remij]

Tessellation has been traditionally slower on AMD hardware by a lot. So much, in fact, that AMD's drivers have an option enabled by default that caps the amount of tessellation to a fraction of what nVidia supports. Like 1/2 or 1/4, and nVidia still outperforms AMD in tessellation with this option enabled. I haven't seen any benchmarks for RDNA cards specifically with tessellation, but given the amount of time nVidia had a lead in performance with that specific feature, and given AMD's solution was to simply do less of the work with both a visual difference and still a performance penalty, I'm doubtful they've really fixed the issue.

Regardless... in that case I sincerely doubt it would so much worse on Xbox Series X vs PS5.. which are both "RDNA2".

 

[Shortbread]

What comments?

Comments made by developers during and after "The Road to PS5." One developer from a well-known development house mentioned that PS5 architecture was better in terms of real-world performance and feature sets. And of course, that set-off console warring and threats. It got so bad, he had to leave social media (Twitter) for awhile. And during that timeframe, Jason Schreier reported about developers texting him (agreeing with other developers) - that Sony PS5 is far superior, but Sony isn't being fully open about it for some odd reason.

Edit: Here are the comments from Jason Schreier during the Kataku Splitscreen Podcast.

"The stuff I'm hearing from developers is very different from what I'm seeing in Sony's marketing strategy,"

"I'm getting texts and DMs from developers being like, this is such a shame, the PS5 is so superior in all these other ways that they're not actually able to message right now, or can't talk about right now. I heard from at least three different people, since the Cerny thing, that the PS5 is actually the superior piece of hardware in a lot of different ways despite what we're seeing in these spec sheets."

 

[see colon]

Regardless... in that case I sincerely doubt it would so much worse on Xbox Series X vs PS5.. which are both "RDNA2".

True, but if it's a 10-15% penalty (compared to a 6% on your PC), and API overhead is already making your game run poorly on Xbox, you might crank that setting down because you need that extra performance.

 

[Remij]

True, but if it's a 10-15% penalty (compared to a 6% on your PC), and API overhead is already making your game run poorly on Xbox, you might crank that setting down because you need that extra performance.

Ok, but the tessellation isn't what's making the Xbox pic look like it does. It's the geometry setting, as well as the procedural quality settings that are making it look like that primarily.

And I still can't believe that API overhead would be worse on Xbox Series X than it is on PC either.. haha

 

[jlippo]

2080TI
3900X
32GB RAM

Could be, but I doubt it. I'm thinking it has to be a bug. Why not just drop more resolution if that was the case? Makes no sense. I think the game dynamically adjusts settings on the fly, and it's getting "stuck" on the low geometry setting somehow. Maybe I'm wrong..

Does Series S have the same low geometry setting?

Could be as simple as typo in geometry settings in config file.

 

[BRiT]

Dev Director of Dirt5 taking the time to respond about Dirt5.

"I think with every new console generation, launch titles just scratch the surface of what the consoles can do. So proud of what the team have managed to achieve, but we know there is more to do, inc features to add, bugs to fix, further optimisations and stability improvements."​

"I think with every new console generation, launch titles just scratch the surface of what the consoles can do. So proud of what the team have managed to achieve, but we know there is more to do, inc features to add, bugs to fix, further optimisations and stability improvements."

"It’s not the final result we already have an update in the works that fixes many of the things in the video as well as addressing a bunch of other stuff. We also have a big post launch support plans, so please stay tuned "​

https://twitter.com/x/status/1330301432633896963

 

[jlippo]

Dev Director of Dirt5 taking the time to respond about Dirt5.

"I think with every new console generation, launch titles just scratch the surface of what the consoles can do. So proud of what the team have managed to achieve, but we know there is more to do, inc features to add, bugs to fix, further optimisations and stability improvements."​

"I think with every new console generation, launch titles just scratch the surface of what the consoles can do. So proud of what the team have managed to achieve, but we know there is more to do, inc features to add, bugs to fix, further optimisations and stability improvements."

"It’s not the final result we already have an update in the works that fixes many of the things in the video as well as addressing a bunch of other stuff. We also have a big post launch support plans, so please stay tuned "​

https://twitter.com/x/status/1330301432633896963

As expected.
Will be interesting how this game runs after the first year.

I cannot wait to see how the engine transforms when they drop previous generation hardware and perhaps go in rabbit hole of mesh shaders and such.