Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

Could be they're using a Freetype renderer on the Xbox, that's very computationally hungry compared to say this or this.

 

I really don't think that font rendering itself is the issue here. Yes, fonts and 3d rendering are not optimal matches but we are talking here about a few letters, not thousands or even million's. That shouldn't be a problem. It really seems more like a loading related bug. As some thread is fetching aiming and needs a bit longer than expected and the renderer is waiting longer than it should.

 

Is there any chance the Series X is having issues similar to the split memory configuration of the GTX 970?

 

If it is, it's not in the same way that the 970 suffers. 970 will suffer _all the time_ for having that split pool. So if that was an issue we'd see it crop up. We're seeing heavy dips losing a lot of frames and then it going back to 60 suddenly. We saw similar issues in DMC5 for instance, nothing was happening but frame rate was tanking. So it's likely nothing to do with what affects the 970. I would look at streaming/IO issues, or memory management issues

 

50ms is quite a hitch, three frames worth. Plus the XSS has similar three (or more?) frame hitches, and all game content is resident in the "optimal" 8GB there, so it's not the two memory speed setup.

It's more likely to be something to do with how you handoff between areas, maybe to do with binding resources or large changes of the contents of the virtual memory address table, or a simple bug, or .... I dunno but it can't be the physical setup of the memory because [the hitches are] too big, too localised, and there on the XSS too.

 

creating objects during runtime will cause all sorts of badness

 

Obviously font size 72 takes double the time to render than font size 36, it’s elementary Watson!

 

If you are using vector fonts, it's much greater than double! No, really!

 

Because we're seeing similar types of issues, that's why I think it's in MS software stack, and if that's the case may be more hassle than it's worth to work around it for the individual titles.

Especially if for the majority of people it won't be a big deal. So as you say, I'm not holding my breath for them to be fixed, but would be nice.

Could be something to do with memory management, although the text thing is strange in its own right and could be something that they may resolve if it's engine related to XS.

 

You can also think of Control in another way. If you are a Star Wars fan, it is the best Star Wars Jedi powers simulator on the market. Yes, better than any Star Wars game, IMO.

The combat in this game is impressive and the fluidity between "gun" play and "power" play is fantastic.

Regards,
SB

 

So I watched the DF Control review / Console compare, and perhaps I mis-read their findings,
But personally i got the feeling that they were saying that on the PS5 there is a few sub-60 frame drops, which appear to be obviously GPU limited,
The XSX on the other hand has sub-60 frame drops, in different places, odd places, but that is was actually still a solid 60, in the situations where the PS5 was GPU limited.

So XSX, has fps drops in odd places ( large text, level loading), and frame pacing issues, but none in the same locations where the PS5 is showing GPU limited scenarios.
Or did i just mis-interpret their findings?
(i should sign up to DF and compare the actual footage i guess

Which frankly i think is explained by the current situation on both consoles, but perhaps thats just confirmation bias on my behalf.
eg. XSX having slight GPU edge, but currently worse tools.

 

As Tom stated @10:43 XBSX is GPU limited in certain areas where's PS5 isn't, but on average they're both the same. XBSX is also suffering from certain load/streaming/hitching issues, which could be SSD/IO related.

 

Ahh your correct! thx.

 

about fps drops @10:43
"they can appear in places different to ps5 in equal amounts" so i dont think the statement "XBSX is GPU limited in certain areas where's PS5 isn't" is entirely correct.

the same is stated in eurogamer article

"Owing to the dynamic nature of play, 'ranking' the consoles here is not easy - it seems that in some scenarios, Series X can outperform PlayStation 5, while in others the opposite is true. Xbox Series S does seem to be the least consistent overall, but only by a very small margin. The most noticeable issue here is the Xbox stutter, causing hitching on top of the existing frame-rate drops"

 

it's a tie. With all the dynamic objects and smoke effects during action sequences, it's impossible to reproduce the exact same scenes on both machines.
So for now what separates them is the stutter on XsX.

 

So PS5 will be good for text based RPG's

 

So how does that make it a tie?
For most gamers it may be a tie, but from a technical perspective I disagree, close but not a tie.

 

It's a tie for the lion's share. The stuttering is only for brief moments on odd occasions, isn't it?

 

Well until that stutter is removed, it's not really measurable. We don't know what causes the stutter and how that may impact the game overall. With it in place, overall experience is going to be PS5.

If it's imperative to know if the GPUs are performing where they should be, we would to need to find equivalent settings on PC and compare them to like GPUs. Can't triangulate with only 2 points.