Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

Irrespective of the resolution difference, I wonder why the difference in the shadow map resolution? Shadow map is mostly a memory thing, isn't it?

 

I wonder if games designed with PC in mind will perform better on Xbox? Because the performance difference in that game reflects the paper specsa and that is what usually happens on PC all the time.

 

My personal thesis is: Game engines are trending towards needing more more compute units. XsX seriously outperforms ps5 in that regard.

Existing console focused engines (and posisbly future ps5 engines) will exert a gravitational pull to resist that trend.

 

Depends on how it's computed I think. I believe traditional rasterization techniques is a mixture of size (memory footprint), bandwidth and computation.

I think RT shadows is mainly computation and bandwidth, possibly footprint depending on how many times they will calculate it, they would need to save the shadow map somewhere.

 

Shadow maps are mostly bandwidth and fillrate, very strange the difference between Xbox Series X and PS5 on this point for the other difference this is logic seeing the spec on paper.r

 

I don't know why PS5 is running in lower resolution, but it can outperforms Xbox Series in hitman 3. Up to ~46% higher performance in some cases (while XSX displays a 44% higher resolution) . The games is completely locked 60fps on PS5 while the framerate can severely drop on XSX.

 

I read simillar sentences like 10 years ago ;d so crossgen hitman 3 is now example of future engines ? ;d

 

We don't know that the cost is flat per pixel (actually, since it's a scene with alpha, we can assume otherwise) but overall two settings being lower everywhere else in the game implies the developers found higher performance on average with the xbox.

Either way dropping in exactly one spot in a whole game, even if the drops are _rather_ severe, isn't damning for xbox on hitman any more than it is for ps5 on cod. What it is is interesting, but I guess that doesn't mean anything to a console warrior.

I think it's a better example than many other crossgen games we've seen, yeah -- this is an engine thats seen major updates in the last ~2 years, so it's more likely to be either an outlier or predictive of something, and less likely to behave the same as every other crossgen game.

 

yeah, lackig of dynamic resolution in their "major updated" engine is problem on ps5 as it's obvious it could be 4k in many scenes and also would help xsx version with drops in this one level

 

Alternate theory (less flattering to xsx hardware) -- anyone know if this game uses VRS on consoles? It's available on PC, that could account for a few ms and push them to up the resolution.

 

But we don't know that. And it is interesting indeed because using framerate drops is actually a great way the compare the hardware behind the framerate cap. DF did exactly that in 2 videos comparing PS5 and PC using Valhalla and COD. And even if the settings were a bit different that didn't prevent them to use the results in order to compare PS5 against GPUs and write two articles with those results.

And as the PS5 is completely locked at 60fps in those scenes the performance advantage could actually be only higher than ~46fps.

 

I doubt developer would use1800p and not 4k with same perf but its quite obvious with this steady 60fps even on this demanding scene on ps5 dynamic resolution with 1800 as lowest should be the way to go

 

I'm confused. Is this a new engine (built ground-up for next-generation systems), or simply a late prior generation title with BC forward code (or next-gen patch)?

Anyhow, the game looks gorgeous (SX version looks super clean and sharp), especially the night scenes. I have never played a Hitman game in my life, I might pick this up later on Steam.

 

I love how you use one part of one level, where the problem only exist to prove your point.

 

Look at PC benchmarks of Hitman 2...It has the most scalable engine is all of gaming.

 

Wouldn't it be Id Tech though?

 

Nice video thanks DF: XSX stretching its longer legs it seems, guess the further we go into the gen the more apparant the hardware differences will be as software matures and we leave behind cross gen stuff.

 

Sorry yea that was the term I was looking for. Not sure why I was calling fill rate as computation. Got too caught up with ray tracing shadows I guess. Good correction.

fill rate lately is bound by bandwidth available provided you have more fill rate than bandwidth.

 

IIRC shadow maps can be done as texel data and that would come down to texture fillrate, an area Series X has an advantage in over PS5. Which would also suggest Hitman 3 is saturating the GPU relatively well, at least more than some other 3P games on the system were doing at launch.

And that's really where you'll start to see these type of advantages; games saturating the GPU more, you'll generally see an advantage in favor of Series X. As for how much that saturation needs to be, it really depends on the needs of the game. I wouldn't say games like Hitman 3 are pushing these systems just yet, but when we start getting 3P games that are pushing, say, PS5 to its limits, Series X will still have an advantage but it'll be by smaller margins. In some cases it could be within a margin of error.

But I don't think we'll be seeing 3P games of that calibur for another year or two...I'm mainly saying this because I'd like for these systems to give us even more surprises in terms of performance and that gets cut down by the knees if they are being tapped out sooner rather than later.

The shadow maps would probably be relying on texels which would be indicated through the texture fillrate which is (IIRC) the TMUs * CUs * GPU clock. That's an area Series X has an advantage in, and in this game's case would also mean it's getting better saturation of the whole GPU in terms of CUs.

 

The PS5 probably dips too, just maybe less (given the res) and in different places. These consoles are very similar overall, but the different balance of speed and compute will show a little differently in different stress points.

PS5 still looks very nice at 1800p*, and XSX and XSS occasional dips won't be so bad, especially with adaptive sync.

(4K downscaled onto my 1080p poor man's monitor lol)