Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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DavidGraham
Veteran
Series X and PS5 are both equals.
The console equivalent settings are likely somewhat optimal (or close, as PC hardware isn't the same) in terms of fidelity/performance as it's likely what the developers have optimized for in terms of tuning within their engines performance characteristic and overall art design. It's likely in most cases that you will tend to see diminishing returns in either direction the further you sway from it.
As such it does serve as a good starting point, if known, even for PC users who choose to tweak with more powerful hardware.
cheapchips
Veteran
The way it should be on a big budget cross gen title!
Well others have mentioned answers already, but I just want to say that in general, there's a lot of good reasons to game on PC that aren't just 'better graphics'.
Also it's simply not true that low/mid range PC hardware at the time of the console releases were 'so much' more capable. That is not a usual situation at all. XB1/PS4 generation was the exception, not the norm.
0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:25 News 01: 60fps Red Dead Redemption patch released on PS5
0:12:03 News 02: Forza Motorsport reaction - and what’s up with the game’s visual downgrade?
0:28:56 News 03: FSR 3: could it work on consoles?
0:43:42 News 04: Ubisoft adds Denuvo DRM to Assassin’s Creed Mirage post-release
0:51:20 News 05: Horizon Forbidden West to be first 2-disc PS5 title
1:03:03 News 06: Intel Arc A580 budget GPU leaks
1:11:34 News 07: Nightdive mulling unofficial game enhancements
1:17:30 Supporter Q1: John, how was your trip to Japan?
1:32:08 Supporter Q2: Should Sony increase the internal storage on PS5?
1:34:26 Supporter Q3: If the Switch 2 uses DLSS at low handheld-class resolutions, will this hurt image quality?
1:37:30 Supporter Q4: What do you suggest to prevent OLED burn-in while gaming?
1:43:07 Supporter Q5: Can you end the show with “This Is Digital Foundry, bidding you farewell und auf wiedersehen”
Some interesting points on Forza Motorsport. IMHO, the PC edition could have achieved the original reveal footage, but for whatever reasons T10 decided to claw back IQ/RT for closer parity to the series consoles.
There are areas where the PS5 shows a performance advantage... not by much, but it's still there. Honestly, Series X should be wiping the floor with PS5 in the vasty majority of these games (if not all) when it comes to framerate and less torn frames. I guess going wide and with a mixed memory configuration wasn't the best solution after all. And PS5's much vaunted SSD/IO tech and performance isn't showing much difference in comparison to the Series consoles and PC.
This generation of consoles are so meh, when compared to the XB360/PS3 era of one truly upping the other in certain areas.
Depends what you're measuring against. Given both consoles are largely the same in performance, we have two different approaches to the same end. One costs more - by how much? And the other draws more power. Or does XBSX cost less/the same along with lower power draw? It's only a really bad choice I think if costs are much higher for the larger slab of silicon, 20% larger than PS5's and/or it makes size reduction harder.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's quite likely that even if MS also went fast and narrow that slight differences in architecture would still see PS5 versions of titles outperforming the XBS version just due to which was the lead platform. Only now, instead of PS5 sometimes performing better or XBS-X sometimes performing better, the PS5 would have always performed better (lead platform).
It'd be sort of like the PC space. Doesn't matter if AMD hardware is equally or more capable than NV hardware, NV hardware will perform better in games because it's the hardware that almost always gets optimized for and then you are basically running NV centric code on AMD hardware. Basically if code runs well on NV hardware but not AMD hardware, the developer will likely keep that code. If on the other hand code runs well on AMD hardware but not on NV hardware, developers will generally change the code such that it runs well on NV hardware and if that adversely affects AMD hardware? Wel, so be it although some developers may provide an alternate rendering path, but that's not likely in this day and age.
Just like AMD hardware is almost never going to get optimized to remotely the same extent as NV hardware does, the XBS-X is almost never going to get optimized to nearly the same extent as PS5 for multiplatform titles.
Regards,
SB
Why would that be the case for cross-plats with console versions? PS5 and XBSX are getting optimised AMD code. Seems wasteful to have that but give AMD PC users the nVidia code.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Because the hardware and the development environment aren't exactly the same. So, there will always be differences in what code runs better. Sometimes the differences will be negligible sometimes they won't. Also, you're going to have to change much of the code to work on PC anyways (especially if you are adding features or even potentially expanding on features), although MS attempts to make this easier with the Xbox development kit.
Also, some development houses will hire a 3rd party to port to PC. Those houses may be more familiar with the ins and outs of NV hardware versus AMD hardware. Even if they aren't they may just follow NV's "best practices" guidelines as that's the predominant hardware on PC.
Regardless, NV has a very large share of the PC market so when porting, a multiplatform developer or porting house likely still feels it is in their or their customer's best interest to change things to work better on NV hardware whenever possible (time and budget allowing) as that would potentially get them or their customer better sales. NOTE - this doesn't mean they are deliberately trying to make it run worse on AMD hardware, but refactoring code to run better on NV hardware may not have positive benefits for AMD hardware.
Regards,
SB
Is there any information from developers or gaming journalist supporting this claim? The whole PlayStation being the lead platform (hence, having the performance advantage) seems a little too convenient on explaining away the Series X lack of grunt. I mean, for all intents and purposes they're very similar architecturally, with X having a beefier GPU and a higher clocked CPU. You would think from a raw hardware advantage or brute force approach, Series X wouldn't need that type of babying on getting equal or better framerates than PS5, regardless of the PS5 being the lead platform.
Because what's the point? If you are leading on the PS5, then the simplest thing to do is to optimize for parity on the XSX. You are not going to take PS5 code, compile it for the XSX and it automatically runs at PS5 performance levels. You are going to have to optimize to produce similar performance as the hardware is slightly different and so is the API. Any performance you get beyond the PS5 is probably the product of minimal effort. And any major effort to showcase the XSX performance levels over the PS5 isn't going to significantly impact your title's sales, so unless MS is paying you to do so, it doesn't make much financial sense.
The push for parity is not only the cheapest and easiest thing to do, it also prevents your title from being drawn into the system wars, which can lead to negative PR. The ability for gamers to easily distinguish performance differences between ports doesn't create any positive effect for a title.
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Why would it be vastly superior? The other problem with this XSX vs PS5 issue that seems to be overlooked is that the XSX's theoretical advantages aren't even all that much higher. The difference is much smaller than what we saw last gen with either the PS4 vs Xbox One or the later refresh Xbox One X vs. PS4 Pro.
Let's just assume with a 20% faster PS5 (the theoretical tflops differential between the XSX and PS5 is actually slightly less than this) across the board, how much better do you think games would look? Keep in mind also that outside of developer focus there is a lot of claw back in terms of the actual PS5/XSX hardware gap as in some areas they are the same and some areas the PS5 is more hardware capable.
In the PC space 20% faster in terms of GPU performance is generally considered the borderline of whether an upgrade is even noticeable at all. The 7900XTX has a larger hardware gap over the 7900XT for instance, and if we do apples to apples comparisons I don't think people would consider the XTX "vastly superior."
In general what are peoples expectations for something that is 20% faster? Keeping in mind the difference even based on theoretical hardware is less than this.
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Not necessarily. Budget, studio culture, and general development progress determines the output.
None of that stuff should concern the consumers expectaions, IMO.
Basically, you have a brand new game, built for a new console generation. It should be entirely reasonable to expect the game to look reasonably better than an older cross gen game.
Especially when the budget comes from Microsoft, and it's built for "the worlds most powerful console". lol
Yes. I whole heartedly agree.
But if we are talking shop; then we need to look at considerations affecting output, and be real about their impact, Just being a first party exclusive title doesn’t mean you’re going to maximize and produce infallible software.
SedentaryJourney
Regular
I doubt developers are aiming for parity across the two consoles, that’s just how the games are performing. If developers can push quality a little bit further on one console versus the other they’ll likely do it, even if it’s a minor res bump or slight increase in settings. One of the Immortals of Aveum devs confirmed that they pushed PS5 settings a bit further, since it was the better performing console for their game.
Do you have a link to this statement? Are we talking IQ, framerate, geometry, LoD, textures, world streaming/load, etc.?
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