Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Cyan]

PS5 Pro would be amazing for PC gaming as it would ensure developers offer a good scalability above PS5 which would filter over to PC too.

So I'm all for it.

yup, PS5 has at least some interesting technology, which the competition lack.

 

[Shortbread]

Yes we do, and from the start. XSX uses a unique 14WGP per Shader engines design while PS5 (like almost all RDNA GPUs) use 10WGP per Shader engines. As expected 14WGP per SE is less efficient for gaming. It's more complex than narrow vs wide design.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1684628439758725120

I do wonder if Microsoft X-Box engineers were more concerned with making a more server performant component (board) with Series X for cloud/compute/ML needs (more so than a traditional gaming box that's more balanced or optimized on getting immediate performance without hassle), and positioned the Series S more towards the gaming space. I'm not saying X isn't a gaming machine, because it is, but a lot of X design/tech seems more akin towards Microsoft's cloud gaming servers.

 

[eastmen]

I have a 3700x - but I did not do this video.

Is there a reason why people on this forum are saying that DF thinks a 3600 is the same as the zen 2 in the ps5 ?

No, they are comparable, because they tested it (in many many benchmarks over time) that you reach approximately the same or better performance with a 3600.
Also there a benches in the web thatcome to even lower CPUs. Problem with the CPUs in the consoles are, that they normally have no direct counterpart in the PC space. So you can only get an approximation of the speed

E.g. the cache of both consoles is halfed (like in the mobile CPU space/). But not only that, gddr is much more inefficient for CPU tasks (the video shows that quite good), they are speed-limited and in case of the PS5 they have also altered some parts (well Sony cut some parts of the CPU) ...
This all leads to quite different CPUs. In case of the PS5 PC that came out years ago, it was even less comparable to a 2700x, ..

More efficient APIs, smaller OS, ... this all leads to that performance target that DF is currently using. Might change in future, especially if the game optimization on PC continues to be as bad as in some current titles.

But again you are missing 2 cores on a 3600 and you are running full windows on the pc. It will only be a matter of time that as devs move from 8 jaguar cores at 1.6-2.4ghz and onto the 8/16 zen 2 @3.5ish ghz that the 3600 will start drop off.

Seems very odd that people would say the 3600 is equal to the ps5 cpu and thus the ps5 doing better shows it stretches above its weight class. It's the wrong conclusion to come too.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Is there a reason why people on this forum are saying that DF thinks a 3600 is the same as the zen 2 in the ps5 ?


But again you are missing 2 cores on a 3600 and you are running full windows on the pc. It will only be a matter of time that as devs move from 8 jaguar cores at 1.6-2.4ghz and onto the 8/16 zen 2 @3.5ish ghz that the 3600 will start drop off.

Seems very odd that people would say the 3600 is equal to the ps5 cpu and thus the ps5 doing better shows it stretches above its weight class. It's the wrong conclusion to come too.

3600 has much higher actual clock speeds in games. It boosts to over 4Ghz and even if games are multithreaded well, some cores are pretty much always stressed harder than others, lessening the benefit of more cores beyond certain point. Nowadays a faster 6 core CPU is still doing just fine.

 

[eastmen]

3600 has much higher actual clock speeds in games. It boosts to over 4Ghz and even if games are multithreaded well, some cores are pretty much always stressed harder than others, lessening the benefit of more cores beyond certain point. Nowadays a faster 6 core CPU is still doing just fine.

3700 also has turbo clocks over 4ghz tho.

It's also not about a 6core cpu doing fine or not. if you are building a pc like for like with a ps5 or xbox why wouldn't u put in a similar 8/16 core zen 2 for comparisons ?

 

[Allandor]

Is there a reason why people on this forum are saying that DF thinks a 3600 is the same as the zen 2 in the ps5 ?


But again you are missing 2 cores on a 3600 and you are running full windows on the pc. It will only be a matter of time that as devs move from 8 jaguar cores at 1.6-2.4ghz and onto the 8/16 zen 2 @3.5ish ghz that the 3600 will start drop off.

Seems very odd that people would say the 3600 is equal to the ps5 cpu and thus the ps5 doing better shows it stretches above its weight class. It's the wrong conclusion to come too.

It is a 8 core CPU in the consoles, yes. But they are not boosting so high, have the gddr disadvantage, memory contention problems, less cache and not they don't have all cores for a game, at least one core is reserved for the OS (in Windows you have all cores).
Only thing left is the advantage of the API and the fixed hardware.
Currently it is approximately a 3600 on a windows PC (and the 3600 tends to be a bit more powerful in benches so far).
DF never say that it is the "same" CPU, but currently you need something like a 3600 to get the same or better performance.

Maybe in a few years DF say that the performance level is about a 5700, can happen when we get more bad ports like there are these days. But that is not the current situation. DF can only take their conclusion of numbers they have right now.

 

[davis.anthony]

Have people forgotten that Richard stated in the video multiple times the CPU would perform completely differently in the console environment it was meant for.

All his video shows is how the CPU would perform while running Windows and not the actual performance it gets from running inside the consoles with their lightweight OS's and tight levels of optimisation.

 

[mr magoo]

yesterday: We just scratching the surface with PS5

blinks

today: ps5 pro is coming!

WTH happend. IMO midgen refresh kinda ruin impact of next gen (ps6), if sony introduce ps5pro than in 3 or so years ( rumoured ps6 release date) people will complain about ps6 that its not the jump they expected and so on.
Its better to have more choice ofc but it feels like next gen ended before it even started. Seems like ps5/xsx were heavily underpowered or maybe pc is evolving so dynamically that consoles playing impossible to catch game.
Its a weird generation for sure. Game development cycles are getting longer and longer and seems like ps5/xsx realase get cought in the middle of it. By the time next gen titles arrived HW got obsolete.
On paper everything kinda is there (RT, upscaling, vrr) but in reality (often not always) the final product dosent have desired wow factor due to weak RT, cpu or gpu bootlenecks, upsacling is not free etc etc

 

[Deleted member 11852]

yesterday: We just scratching the surface with PS5
blinks
today: ps5 pro is coming!

With the prospect of more games locking in 30fps on consoles - Starfield being first the first really huge game - the rationale that Sony provided for the PS4 Pro will continue to apply: PS4 Pro was designed to slow attrition of PS4 users moving to PC mid-generation as the hardware could not longer deliver the performance that users had come to expect.

I for one would be very reluctant to revert to 30fps for first person games.

 

[Seanspeed]

With the prospect of more games locking in 30fps on consoles - Starfield being first the first really huge game - the rationale that Sony provided for the PS4 Pro will continue to apply: PS4 Pro was designed to slow attrition of PS4 users moving to PC mid-generation as the hardware could not longer deliver the performance that users had come to expect.

I for one would be very reluctant to revert to 30fps for first person games.

Starfield will hardly be some typical first person shooter, which is the genre that gets the most cries for '60fps is mandatory'. And even then, that was usually reserved for multiplayer shooters, as there were still regularly highly playable single player 30fps FPS games. I mean, Halo's prime existed when all their games were 30fps, up until Halo 5. Starfield is not gonna be some fast-paced action game that requires minimum latency and great reflexes. The combat is simply not the main reason people are gonna be playing it, and the rest of the experience is really not gonna be hindered to any significant degree by lack of 60fps, even if people try and convince themselves otherwise.

Also, PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were not designed because of lack of performance in XB1/PS4 games. They were designed primarily to push higher resolutions. They didn't actually do a lot to alleviate the regular CPU bottlenecks of those games, which is why most Pro versions of 30fps games remained 30fps. That said, there's better scope to improve the CPU's this time round, since they wont necessarily be stuck with Zen 2, as they were with Jaguar.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Starfield will hardly be some typical first person shooter, which is the genre that gets the most cries for '60fps is mandatory'.

60fps isn't 'mandatory' for anything, it's about personal preference. My personal preference is to play first person games in 60fps minimum, I feel differently about third person games.

And even then, that was usually reserved for multiplayer shooters, as there were still regularly highly playable single player 30fps FPS games. I mean, Halo's prime existed when all their games were 30fps, up until Halo 5.

For you perhaps. Halo's prime was the best part of two decades ago. The last two Halo games have targeted 60fps, and the performance mode in Infinite targets 120fps. If 60fps is unnecessary, why even include a 120fps mode?

Starfield is not gonna be some fast-paced action game that requires minimum latency and great reflexes. The combat is simply not the main reason people are gonna be playing it, and the rest of the experience is really not gonna be hindered to any significant degree by lack of 60fps, even if people try and convince themselves otherwise.

Again, perhaps for you. From what Bethesda showed off during the 45-minute Direct, if combat is your thing it looks fast-paced and solid with environmental traversal, tactics and a wide variety of weapons and tools to be used. You may be happy to play Starfield at 30fps, as I am sure are many others. The Pro consoles are seemingly not aimed at you or them.

That doesn't mean that there is no audience for them. There clearly is, just like last generation. If they're not for you, or anybody else with with different personal preferences then live and let live. Ignore Pro consoles and let those with different preferences enjoy them. There is no 'right' way to play videogames.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

60fps isn't 'mandatory' for anything, it's about personal preference. My personal preference is to play first person games in 60fps minimum, I feel differently about third person games.

Absolutely the stressed part. I just will not game at 30 FPS anymore other than some few exceptions on NSW. I know a lot of people in RL that complain anytime they are forced to play at a suboptimal 30 FPS on console if they want to play that game.

They end up in a weird situation where they think the game was good, but they hated playing it at 30 FPS. Love/hate relationship.

Then when it comes out on PC (if they have a gaming PC), they're always like, "Thank god, I can play it like the game was meant to be played" when they can finally do 60+ FPS. In other words, regardless of how good the game might be, playing it at 30 FPS is always the dogs arse for them.

OTOH, I do know some people that are fine playing at 30 FPS even on PC. /shrug. Personal preference, and I'm not going to throw shade on them if they are fine with playing a game at 30 FPS which reduces motion resolution to a (to me) unacceptably low level not to mention the huge impact to control responsiveness and accuracy.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

It is a 8 core CPU in the consoles, yes. But they are not boosting so high, have the gddr disadvantage, memory contention problems, less cache and not they don't have all cores for a game, at least one core is reserved for the OS (in Windows you have all cores).
Only thing left is the advantage of the API and the fixed hardware.
Currently it is approximately a 3600 on a windows PC (and the 3600 tends to be a bit more powerful in benches so far).
DF never say that it is the "same" CPU, but currently you need something like a 3600 to get the same or better performance.

Maybe in a few years DF say that the performance level is about a 5700, can happen when we get more bad ports like there are these days. But that is not the current situation. DF can only take their conclusion of numbers they have right now.

But the boost on the desktop parts are not for all the cores.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/specifications/compare/processors/8456,8981

1. Max boost for AMD Ryzen processors is the maximum frequency achievable by a single core on the processor running a bursty single-threaded workload. Max boost will vary based on several factors, including, but not limited to: thermal paste; system cooling; motherboard design and BIOS; the latest AMD chipset driver; and the latest OS updates. Learn More.

Are people really trying to say a single core clocking not even 1ghz faster would make up for the additional 2 cores found in the ps5 ?

Also when trying to compare like for like why are we handicapping the pc with its processor but are sticklers on things like ram amount? Are people in 2023 going to build a pc with only 8 or 16 gigs of ram ? Seems silly. If you are going to match the specs then match the full specs and don't pick and choose.

 

[function]

Are people really trying to say a single core clocking not even 1ghz faster would make up for the additional 2 cores found in the ps5 ?

IIRC the PS5 has 6.5 cores for games. It also only has half width SIMD units, so SSE and AVX run at half speed. Zen 2 on PC and in Xbox has full fat full width cores.

Depending on workload, one or two higher clocked cores could make a six core chip outperform an eight core one. In Unreal Engine you can easily become limited by the engines render thread.

 

[eastmen]

IIRC the PS5 has 6.5 cores for games. It also only has half width SIMD units, so SSE and AVX run at half speed. Zen 2 on PC and in Xbox has full fat full width cores.

Depending on workload, one or two higher clocked cores could make a six core chip outperform an eight core one. In Unreal Engine you can easily become limited by the engines render thread.

you still have windows using cores on the 3600 also.

the ps5 also has much faster ram and a higher bus than the pc cpu so why aren't we controlling for that?

 

[Allandor]

you still have windows using cores on the 3600 also.

the ps5 also has much faster ram and a higher bus than the pc cpu so why aren't we controlling for that?

Windows does not need 1,5 cores, normally it just needs a bit of your CPU. You can play a game while watching a video,.. without much impact on the game.
And the memory, I already wrote that gddr is not for a CPU, especially if the cache was cut. It might have a bigger bandwidth, but the latencies are much worse which normally decreases the CPU performance. You can see that with the 3d cache versions of and CPU. Clocks are lower but even bad latencies from DDR4/5 memory are compensated and it also boost bandwidth, but that isn't that important as it only is a small cache. Only in really bandwidth intensive calculations gddr is better for the CPU, but that is not how games work.

I really don't see your problem here. Maybe a games might perform better in future but currently the performance level hovers around this CPU. Btw, it is not only that video where the Xbox CPU can be tested directly, it are also those videos that compares the games to their PC version counterpart where the PC usually performs a bit better with a 3600 than the console version at console like settings.
And that is totally fine, the consoles are always a compromise between price and performance. That is also why they used CPU core with less cache (because of the price). That is also why there is not a higher end GPU inside of it or why the SSD memory is so small.

 

[eastmen]

Windows does not need 1,5 cores, normally it just needs a bit of your CPU. You can play a game while watching a video,.. without much impact on the game.
And the memory, I already wrote that gddr is not for a CPU, especially if the cache was cut. It might have a bigger bandwidth, but the latencies are much worse which normally decreases the CPU performance. You can see that with the 3d cache versions of and CPU. Clocks are lower but even bad latencies from DDR4/5 memory are compensated and it also boost bandwidth, but that isn't that important as it only is a small cache. Only in really bandwidth intensive calculations gddr is better for the CPU, but that is not how games work.

I really don't see your problem here. Maybe a games might perform better in future but currently the performance level hovers around this CPU. Btw, it is not only that video where the Xbox CPU can be tested directly, it are also those videos that compares the games to their PC version counterpart where the PC usually performs a bit better with a 3600 than the console version at console like settings.
And that is totally fine, the consoles are always a compromise between price and performance. That is also why they used CPU core with less cache (because of the price). That is also why there is not a higher end GPU inside of it or why the SSD memory is so small.

Windows constantly uses multiple cores for different processes. Yes you can watcha video while playing some games but that doesn't as well with newer games coming out that require more threads. that is a side effect of the older games being made with jaguar in mind.

Like I said , we already have a comparable cpu in the 3700x and it is what should be used in comparison. Anything else is a flawed one. That is my problem. We should be comparing as like for like as we can.

 

[Allandor]

Windows constantly uses multiple cores for different processes. Yes you can watcha video while playing some games but that doesn't as well with newer games coming out that require more threads. that is a side effect of the older games being made with jaguar in mind.

Like I said , we already have a comparable cpu in the 3700x and it is what should be used in comparison. Anything else is a flawed one. That is my problem. We should be comparing as like for like as we can.

No, Windows doesn't really do this. A system should normally be in a range of 0.5-5% CPU usage in Windows (btw that is including teams, outlook, wsl & docker on my system). Yes it "uses" multiple cores because the scheduler will move the threads from one core to the next, so this gives the illusion that windows uses cores all the time.
And you are constantly ignoring the fact that the CPUs are cut back (much lower frequencies, cache, logic blocks) and games can only use 6.5 cores on PS5 (Xbox was about the same).

It might be a good idea if a mod moves this discussion elsewhere?

 

[eastmen]

No, Windows doesn't really do this. A system should normally be in a range of 0.5-5% CPU usage in Windows (btw that is including teams, outlook, wsl & docker on my system). Yes it "uses" multiple cores because the scheduler will move the threads from one core to the next, so this gives the illusion that windows uses cores all the time.
And you are constantly ignoring the fact that the CPUs are cut back (much lower frequencies, cache, logic blocks) and games can only use 6.5 cores on PS5 (Xbox was about the same).

It might be a good idea if a mod moves this discussion elsewhere?

Windows is constantly uses cores for background tasks and security, you would have to go through and stop every process to stop it from using cpu power above what you are saying. . Not additional software like outlook.

The cut back cores seems to be a sony problem and not a pc problem. You are assuming that those cuts degrade performance in games but you really don't know and its just conjecture.

Like I said if we are comparing like for like then we should be using 8 cores on both. The 3700x would be the closest match to the ps5 and xbox series chip.

To go further if you are trying to choose between buying a ps5 or a pc and using Ratchet performance to make the comparison who would go out and build /buy a new system based around a zen 2 at this point. So the only reason to even look at zen 2 cpus is to see match for match

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'd be surprised if a 3600x wasn't enough to match the PS5 in R&C. It seems very light on the CPU in my (admittedly limited) testing.

With RT maxed on every setting I'm basically never exceeding 50% CPU usage on my 5900X3D with the spread across cores being pretty even.

Oh and that's with Direct Storage disabled.