Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[BitByte]

First of all, your mistake is comparing it to "other AAA games" which are nothing like it.

Secondly... I wasn't referring to The Ascent and Baldur's Gate 3 when saying "those games are nothing like it..." I'm talking about Horizon, A Plague Tale.. ect..


And again... there's nothing you've mentioned which is on some other level from Diablo 4. It looks great, runs great... This entire argument is just basically starting drama where there is none. It's not impressive to you? Great! So I asked which ones you though were more impressive, and all the ones you said look great... but they're not WOW Impressive! levels of great. Diablo 4 looks as good as it should.. these games are far more about art content than they are about breaking barriers in 3d rendering.

If the game is more about art than it is about breaking 3d barriers, it should be running at a higher resolution than 1260p especially since its doing nothing that's remotely special. It's a good game and I'm happy they kept the frame rate mostly locked at 60fps.

Ah, embarrassing for Blizzard to be technically outclassed by a 12 person indie dev team....on the back of an engine created by and iterated on by some of the smartest people in the industry, alongside contributions from thousands of other people over multiple generations


I'm not going to take anything away from the awesome folks who worked on The Ascent... but the way you're looking at this is just completely wrong.

Wait, why is that my concern lol? Was there anything stopping Blizzard from using the same engine? It's available for all to license? I don't even have my own game development company yet I still mess around and create games in Unreal..... Sorry but, that's not a valid argument in my book. Lets call a spade a spade, the ascent does way more especially when it comes to destruction and scale. I don't think it's really debatable but, I'm sure some will argue. However, for what they're doing in Diablo 4, the resolution of 1260p is actually bad. I don't think it's outrageous to have that opinion when we've seen others do way more with the same consoles.

 

[snc]

Dont understant whats with this d4 graphics hate ;d Diablo was never a looker and diablo 4 looks better and run better than d2 remake on consoles

 

[Remij]

Why is it a mistake to compare it to other AAA games? It's a AAA game, no? It's a Blizzard flagship title. In fact, it's probably closer to a AAAA-level project than anything.

Also, you're very much confusing me with others. I wasn't jumping on you 'from the other side', I was merely responding to what you said, as my own individual person. I think they've done an impressive job overall, but it's just not cutting edge and thus is still comparable in visuals to plenty of other games, which goes a long way in why this game runs so well.

It's a mistake because there's such a thing as different priorities. You may not like it... and nobody is saying you have to... but it's the same reason why a game which takes place entirely inside a castle, can have incredibly detailed lighting, geometry, bricks, stone, metal, decorations, all sorts of things in high fidelity... whereas one which takes place across forest, a river, in the sky, in the desert... may likely not look quite as high fidelity.

 

[Remij]

If the game is more about art than it is about breaking 3d barriers, it should be running at a higher resolution than 1260p especially since its doing nothing that's remotely special. It's a good game and I'm happy they kept the frame rate mostly locked at 60fps.

Wait, why is that my concern lol? Was there anything stopping Blizzard from using the same engine? It's available for all to license? I don't even have my own game development company yet I still mess around and create games in Unreal..... Sorry but, that's not a valid argument in my book. Lets call a spade a spade, the ascent does way more especially when it comes to destruction and scale. I don't think it's really debatable but, I'm sure some will argue. However, for what they're doing in Diablo 4, the resolution of 1260p is actually bad. I don't think it's outrageous to have that opinion when we've seen others do way more with the same consoles.

It's your concern once you start talking about technical capabilities of those 12 people. You said they could do better... but they can't... and they didn't.

It's like me asking an AI to build a pretty game for me.... vs someone who's actually built a pretty game.

 

[BitByte]

It's your concern once you start talking about technical capabilities of those 12 people. You said they could do better... but they can't... and they didn't.

It's like me asking an AI to build a pretty game for me.... vs someone who's actually built a pretty game.

Huh, What?...... Did you work on Diablo 4? I mean I don't think it's a big deal that it should be taken so personally but if you did, I can understand it. Can we at least agree from an objective point of view that D4 is inefficiently utilizing it's resources when we compare it's outcome to that of other games? D4 doesn't need to be the next boundary pushing game but, if we can agree on that, I think I'm good.

 

[Remij]

Huh, What?...... Did you work on Diablo 4? I mean I don't think it's a big deal that it should be taken so personally but if you did, I can understand it. Can we at least agree from an objective point of view that D4 is inefficiently utilizing it's resources when we compare it's outcome to that of other games? D4 doesn't need to be the next boundary pushing game but, if we can agree on that, I think I'm good.

lol.. no I did not work on Diablo 4. It's just simple logic. If you're comparing The Ascent and Diablo 4... and saying that The Ascent's team of 12 embarrassed Diablo 4... then you have to look at what they were given to start with. If you're not willing to.. or simply don't care, then don't expect me to take you seriously and I'll call it out.

 

[BitByte]

lol.. no I did not work on Diablo 4. It's just simple logic. If you're comparing The Ascent and Diablo 4... and saying that The Ascent's team of 12 embarrassed Diablo 4... then you have to look at what they were given to start with. If you're not willing to.. or simply don't care, then don't expect me to take you seriously and I'll call it out.

Yes I did take that into account. Blizzard had the option to use Unreal but, they chose to use their own engine that they had poured tens of thousands of hours into developing if not hundreds of thousands. It's a fair choice to make but, the team of 12 made a better choice and they should be applauded for it. Blizzard on the other hand should be chastised for not pursuing aggressive technical targets when ramping up their engine for D4. I expected the game to run at like 1800p on the ps5 and higher on the series x. Like the 3050 can run this at 1440p60 so the fact that consoles are running it at a resolution lower than the 3050 is really really bad. Consoles have way more efficient api's and Blizzard could have invested more time to pursue more aggressive technical targets.

Frankly, I don't understand how people are defending this level of performance.

 

[Remij]

Yes I did take that into account. Blizzard had the option to use Unreal but, they chose to use their own engine that they had poured tens of thousands of hours into developing if not hundreds of thousands. It's a fair choice to make but, the team of 12 made a better choice and they should be applauded for it. Blizzard on the other hand should be chastised for not pursuing aggressive technical targets when ramping up their engine for D4. I expected the game to run at like 1800p on the ps5 and higher on the series x. Like the 3050 can run this at 1440p60 so the fact that consoles are running it at a resolution lower than the 3050 is really really bad. They have way more efficient api's and they could have invested more time to pursue more aggressive technical targets.

Frankly, I don't understand how people are defending this level of performance.

A day in the life of a PC gamer..... where literally every day there's some game released which isn't properly taking advantage of the hardware. It's it REALLY surprising to you that the PC oriented developer, creating the PC oriented game.. is not putting in the same level of "give a shit" as Sony's own teams are in their games, or on the consoles as a whole?

The game looks great. Is right up there with the best of it's kind. Runs at 60fps. That's basically the end of it.

 

[BitByte]

A day in the life of a PC gamer..... where literally every day there's some game released which isn't properly taking advantage of the hardware. It's it REALLY surprising to you that the PC oriented developer, creating the PC oriented game.. is not putting in the same level of "give a shit" as Sony's own teams are in their games, or on the consoles as a whole?

The game looks Alright. Is right up there with it's kind. Runs at 60fps. That's basically the end of it.

Ftfy. I am surprised because Blizzard usually delivers strong performance regardless of platform. I don't care because I can play it on PC or console but, I'll definitely call out bad performance where I see it. If you're going to charge full price for something, do a good job or don't bother. They did an ok job here, didn't really give it their best tbh.

 

[davis.anthony]

I expected the game to run at like 1800p on the ps5 and higher on the series x. Like the 3050 can run this at 1440p60 so the fact that consoles are running it at a resolution lower than the 3050 is really really bad.

How so?

There could be loads of reasons why that is and I think people sometimes forget these consoles have GPU's that are equivalent to a 2018 mid-range PC GPU.

PS5 and XSX were always going to age.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Ftfy. I am surprised because Blizzard usually delivers strong performance regardless of platform. I don't care because I can play it on PC or console but, I'll definitely call out bad performance where I see it. If you're going to charge full price for something, do a good job or don't bother. They did an ok job here, didn't really give it their best tbh.

Outside of some small 1fps drops in towns on the PS5, the game is pretty much locked at 60fps on consoles from all reports I've seen. Due to the isometric design and quality setting (likely balanced here) used, FSR2 gets very close to native 4K in final appearance. For most console players they'll get a very solid performing, 4k-like experience. The vast majority would have no idea what the base rendering res was, as that's the entire point of reconstruction.

Amazing? No, but not remotely comparable to the state of many console->PC ports. God I wish most PC ports were this 'poor'.

Like the 3050 can run this at 1440p60 so the fact that consoles are running it at a resolution lower than the 3050 is really really bad.

No, it can't. The 1% lows on the 3050 from TomsHardware charts are just over 50fps, that would give you a hell of a lot more framedrops than we've seeing from the console versions. Hell even .1% lows of 50fps would be less consistent that what I've seen on consoles, never mind 1% - remember that's an average of the 1% lows. It means it could be dropping well below 50fps at points too.

To be consistently over 60fps for the 1% lows at 1440p, you need a 2070/3060ti. Yes, the 3060ti would be considerably over 60fps - but as has been explained numerous times, reconstruction has a cost. FSR2 starting from ~1300p will very likely be more costly than native 1440p, probably significantly so.*

All this says is that Blizzard prioritized a stable framerate, as they should - especially when FSR2 works so well here. The actual comparable performance to the PC and you're getting something in between a 3060/3060ti. That is not exceptionally poorly optimized at all, it's nothing like say needing a 3080ti to equal PS5 performance in TLOU.

*Edit: Here, check this out. Just did this test:

God of War, mostly console settings, 4k with FSR Performance (so native 1080p): 67fps

Native 1440p: 71fps

1080p with FSR2 is more costly than native 1440p. If you wanted higher res than 1440p with simple bilinear upscaling, you very likely could have gotten it, probably at least 1620p or higher. Blizzard just felt FSR2 was the right choice here, and I'd say they look to be correct (and if they did just use regular scaling, you would hear countless complaints about how they didn't 'even bother' with reconstruction, just as Naughty Dog has received).

 

[iroboto]

Seems like a really bad console port to me. The fact that a 3050 is averaging 60fs at 1440p I think says all we need to know about this port. Thoroughly unimpressed to see it at 1260p....

If you have 4 guys spamming abilties all in the same areas all at once: I’m sure the consoles hold 60.

These benchmarks are unlikely benchmarking some insane pulls with massive chaining of abikties and status effects.

I can definitely bring the performance of my PC down in some crazy chain pulls. And that’s just me alone. There are certain events that spawn 50+ guys where 16 players can descend onto all at once ability spamming.

I think you vastly underestimate how heavy Diablo can get and I doubt the benchmarks on PC are reflecting of it. Console resolutions are set to handle all loads.

 

[techuse]

Does the game not support dynamic resolution? Seems like a miss in this type of game where the lower bounds will be significant due to ability spam.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

They were really conservative there. According to Tom's Hardware, a 2070 averages 84fps at 1440p with lows of 64fps.

1440p/60 should have easily been doable.

Wow, the 1% lows on the NV cards are shockingly bad...

Diablo IV's GPU/CPU performance on the PC appears to be excellent, but we may have another entry in the VRAM debate:

Wonder if this is related, although the 3090 (24 GB) is also bad.

Regards,
SB

 

[yamaci17]

Texture situation is getting out of hand.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Wonder if this is related, although the 3090 (24 GB) is also bad.

Regards,
SB

Yeah it's odd. That points to potentially a driver issue, if it was purely isolated to vram then the 3090 should be destroying the 4070, but they're neck and neck. But then look at the absolutely huge gulf between the 4070ti and 4080, they're certainly far closer in rendering performance than that, but it's 12 vs 16gb. So dunno.

As Computerbase.de says, the texture stuttering is not catastrophic, but it is there for cards under 16GB vram and generally will really only manifest itself clearly in frametime graphs. Again, 1% lows are not adequate to capture stutters! Games measured with frametimes is what I want to see more of when the discussion of 8GB cards comes up, there may be games where it manifests in visible stutters but otherwise barely effects average/1% lows.

 

[dobwal]

How can you tell when Diablo IV has a pretty restrictive camera height limit?

It has a zoom in feature (~6X) that you can turn on from the settings which is a novelty feature as it useless for core gameplay

 

[chris1515]

Depending on the implementation FSR2 could/should be more expensive than native 1440p:
4K FSR2 Cost on XSX is around 2 ms (a bit higher on PS5)
+ Potential full res things after that at 4K

And from the DF video, FSR 2 works very well with Diablo 4.

 

[Liandry]

Diablo 4 looks amazing. I was very impressed when played first open beta. Great polygon count, high resolution textures, amazing effects, great lighting and shadows. Of course no game in same genre looks even nearly great. But most important Blizzard again made game with amzing art design. Performance also without problems, at least for me. And about resolution. Befor I red here what game doesn't run in native 4k I haven't even noticed. And now also, at least for me picture looks clear. I'm playing on XSX.
Also I can tell what graphics level is better whan I expected from Blizzard. In my opinion they alway made games far beyond average level for time they game was released. Maybe I'm wrong Champions Return to Arms on PS2 was game with better graphics than Diablo 3 on PS3 and Xbox 360. Seriously. Diablo 2 REsurrected was first Blizzard game what impressed my in terms of graphics. But that game aslo was't made as it should in some moments. On Xbox One X there was two mods. 1080p 60fps or 4k 60fps. I think that would be possible to make Diablo 2 Resurrected 4k 60fps on Xbox One X.

 

[iroboto]

Does the game not support dynamic resolution? Seems like a miss in this type of game where the lower bounds will be significant due to ability spam.

It’s probably because that would cause slow downs. The number of things that can happen at once, all the calculations, chain effects, animations, etc.

Honestly I suspect this is a fairly heavy CPU game, so it’s going to eat a lot of bandwidth keeping everything updated. You need to have the location of every single item marked when you TP. Stuff in town. Dungeons randomly generated.

Imo, consoles have lower resolution because of bandwidth sharing.