Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[see colon]

The issue with gamepass and subscription like services imo is that all your money invested goes down the drain once you stop paying. I don't think that is a very good deal for those of us who don't play every single game on the service once and move on. I pick up games in interested in and generally keep them for as long as I wish for a flat rate without having to worry about whether or not I can keep up payments to keep the privilege of gaming as a hobby

That's like saying all the money I spent on lunch goes down the drain after I eat lunch. Which is technically true is you are eating gas station sushi. Or the same as going to a Broadway show, a movie, or a theme park. You don't get to keep any of those things after you stop paying. Most people would probably find analogs with Netflix, Hulu, or other subscription services as well.

The thing I love the most about Gamepass, and this is true for most buffet style subs, is discoverability anyway. Finding a game you like but weren't sure you wanted to pay for is great. Finding a game you hate but didn't pay for is even better. I used to subscribe to Gametap somewhere around 2005-2008. That where I first played The Witcher, Trine, Sam and Max (the Telltale one) and Clive Barker's Jericho. I'm not sure I would have played any of those if I had to pay for them.

Subscription model may not be for everyone but i am not looking forward to going back and collecting cds, dvds, brs and games anymore. I have tons of those and dont know what to do with it, too sentimental to throw it away and too cheap/problematic to sell. And problem with getting older is i get bored with games pretty quickly, before i could play for hours crap like Battle Arena Toshninden 3 on psx now i am getting bored after 1 hour playing games that are 8s or 9s. I was hyped as hell for RE4 remake as this was one of my favorite games on ps4 and i couldn't even finish demo. Now i know, if it was on gamepass maybe i would give it a second chance to play but i am not gonna buy it. Thats a huge value for me.

Not to get morbid, but my mother passed away some years ago and she collected books. Cleaning out her house was one of the hardest things I've done. The emotional impact of trying to get rid of things she loved that may or may not have value is draining. And it's not something I want my kids to go through. But I have a large physical game collection and over 2000 DVD/BD/HDDVD movies. And my wife... Collects books.

I'm also glad to hear that I'm not the only one who was underwhelmed by the RE4 demo. I'm not sure what it is I don't like about it, but it just isn't quite there for me. I didn't finish the demo either, but that's because it kept crashing.

I think the choice here though is more between permanently owned digital games (e.g. through Steam) and a subscription service which gives you temporary access to games while they are hosted on the service. I doubt anyone is advocating for a return back to physical media.

It's not an either/or choice though. I have Gamepass, and I've bought games that are on Gamepass. Two recent examples would be Streets of Rage 4 and Back 4 Blood. In fact, I bought Back 4 Blood twice, because once I discovered that I liked the game, it went on sale on Steam for the right price for me, and I picked it up for when it leaves Gamepass. But then I wanted the DLC and I found that transferring my save was convoluted, so I bought the Ultimate Edition on Xbox. Back 4 Blood happens to be an Xbox Anywhere game, so the PC and console version are included in the same license.

I would also like to point out, and again not to be morbid, but when I pass away, technically so does my Steam account. It's in the user agreement. So that's temporary as well, because when it comes down to it, I'm temporary.

 

[pjbliverpool]

It's not an either/or choice though. I have Gamepass, and I've bought games that are on Gamepass. Two recent examples would be Streets of Rage 4 and Back 4 Blood. In fact, I bought Back 4 Blood twice, because once I discovered that I liked the game, it went on sale on Steam for the right price for me, and I picked it up for when it leaves Gamepass. But then I wanted the DLC and I found that transferring my save was convoluted, so I bought the Ultimate Edition on Xbox. Back 4 Blood happens to be an Xbox Anywhere game, so the PC and console version are included in the same license.

Oh yes I completely agree both have their place for all the reasons you've mentioned. But I would be concerned if the industry moved away from permanent ownership altogether in favour of subscription services only, with temporary game access.

Although if that were the case I assume there would be the option to pay to secure permanent access to a specific game whether or not it's currently hosted as part of the subscription service much like the streaming TV services do with their Rent or Buy options. I could certainly live with that.

I would also like to point out, and again not to be morbid, but when I pass away, technically so does my Steam account. It's in the user agreement. So that's temporary as well, because when it comes down to it, I'm temporary.

Not temporary to you though

 

[Dural]

The issue with gamepass and subscription like services imo is that all your money invested goes down the drain once you stop paying. I don't think that is a very good deal for those of us who don't play every single game on the service once and move on. I pick up games in interested in and generally keep them for as long as I wish for a flat rate without having to worry about whether or not I can keep up payments to keep the privilege of gaming as a hobby

I treat Gamepass like a rental service. If I like a game enough I'll buy it digitally and at that point it will likely be pretty cheap. The service is cheap enough that I find it good value.

 

[neckthrough]

This is a good discussion but perhaps too much of a tangent for the DF thread. Spawn a new thread? Or is there already a more appropriate thread?

 

[Cyan]

Aya Neo Slide, which is based on the same APU of Aya Neo 2, is like the true game changer for me, along with GPD Win 4, mainly because of the keyboard. Nice review anyways. Steam Deck is better for the price/performance though, if you take into account that at 15W -Deck's max power consumption- the performance difference is quite small, if not mostly the same. except for CPU bound scenarios given the much superior hardware the Aya Neo 2 has.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I wonder how close that is thing is to the switch 2

 

[Pete]

I love Richard’s reviews and this one is no exception (who knew that these handheld gaming PCs have vertical screen tear because they’re technically portrait displays?!), but did I miss him mentioning the relative prices amid the relative performances and power draws? I understand he may be more interested in the tech than the marketing/productisation, but the 16GB 512GB 800P Geek is $950 vs. the $650 Deck.

To be fair, it comes with Windows and a better looking screen (albeit no user-defined refresh rates) and smaller form factor and the upgrade fees seem fairly reasonable relative to other portable tech (doubling RAM or SSD is “only” ~$100 extra each). Strange that it only equals the Deck’s performance at the Deck’s max “15W” power draw, but it does get 30-45% faster with 45% more watts, pretty much justifying its price difference (at the expense of battery life). It would have been interesting to know how limiting the Ayaneo’s CPU (disabling four cores) would impact performance and CPU/GPU utilization.

Also, did he mention fan noise at different power limits?

 

[SmooTh]

 

[chris1515]

Again a great format. I will finish to see the video later but like thiw way to present two versions at the same time @Dictator

 

[HolySmoke]

BG3 doesn't seem too VRAM intensive judging by YouTube. This video below seems to place it at ~6GB of VRAM (at 4k with DLAA enabled) and ~5GB for the process. The latter number might be more troublesome but it's hard to say since it's running on Windows.

Late update to this but it doesn't seem like memory should be an issue on Series S in BG3 at first glance.

1080p

4k

1080p

*** Summary ***

Draw calls: 2119
Dispatch calls: 30
API calls: 12542
API : Draw/Dispatch call ratio: 5.8362

422 Textures - 1727.51 MB (1717.08 MB over 32x32), 67 RTs - 532.51 MB.
Avg. tex dimension: 841.321x705.017 (1003.21x861.689 over 32x32)
965 Buffers - 160.27 MB total 31.49 MB IBs 66.08 MB VBs.
2420.29 MB - Grand total GPU buffer + texture load.

4k

*** Summary ***

Draw calls: 2112
Dispatch calls: 30
API calls: 12490
API : Draw/Dispatch call ratio: 5.831

420 Textures - 1923.34 MB (1912.91 MB over 32x32), 67 RTs - 1049.60 MB.
Avg. tex dimension: 857.17x713.895 (1023.83x873.7 over 32x32)
961 Buffers - 210.18 MB total 64.51 MB IBs 65.78 MB VBs.
3183.12 MB - Grand total GPU buffer + texture load.

 

[see colon]

Late update to this but it doesn't seem like memory should be an issue on Series S in BG3 at first glance.

I don't have time to watch that video right now, but does it include a test using splitscreen? Splitscreen could almost double the amount of memory needed for assets and render buffers if the 2 players have different assets in view. Even if the assets required for the environment are the same, it will still be more than single players just by keeping character assets in memory

 

[HolySmoke]

I don't have time to watch that video right now, but does it include a test using splitscreen? Splitscreen could almost double the amount of memory needed for assets and render buffers if the 2 players have different assets in view. Even if the assets required for the environment are the same, it will still be more than single players just by keeping character assets in memory

It doesn't seem available yet. Local co-op complains about requiring gamepads but there's seemingly no gamepad support in the game.

I can't really comment much beyond that. Maybe it would double the memory use but I kinda doubt that.

 

[Globalisateur]

It doesn't seem available yet. Local co-op complains about requiring gamepads but there's seemingly no gamepad support in the game.

I can't really comment much beyond that. Maybe it would double the memory use but I kinda doubt that.

Devs never stated or implied there was a problem on the single player game. They specifically talked about splitscreen mode which will not be available on PC at release.

 

[HolySmoke]

Devs never stated or implied there was a problem on the single player game. They specifically talked about splitscreen mode which will not be available on PC at release.

Yes, but this was about the question of memory usage preventing the S from having split-screen. The point of posting that was to show that the game is already fairly light on memory.

Will split-screen double that? Maybe but I doubt it, personally.

 

[davis.anthony]

Late update to this but it doesn't seem like memory should be an issue on Series S in BG3 at first glance.

1080p

4k

What about system RAM?

 

[HolySmoke]

What about system RAM?

It's in the screenshots under the 'used mem game' heading though it went closer to 3GB after a while.

Windows' Task Manager also has a specific metric for the peak working set used by a process. The highest point was about 3.1GB after maybe 20min or so. Maybe it grows higher later in the game but I don't know. That video I linked earlier suggests it might hit 5GB+ but I don't know if it's using the same metric.

 

[Cyan]

 

[see colon]

I can't really comment much beyond that. Maybe it would double the memory use but I kinda doubt that.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it does, I'm saying that it could. If you have 2 viewpoints with totally different assets on screen in each, you would need twice the assets that you would in one viewpoint.

 

[HolySmoke]

To be clear, I'm not saying that it does, I'm saying that it could. If you have 2 viewpoints with totally different assets on screen in each, you would need twice the assets that you would in one viewpoint.

Yeah, but each viewport is now half the size. What you wrote is perfectly true in classical rendering but virtual textures kinda change that since they should only keep in memory what's visible on screen.

Anyway, I don't want to put my foot in my mouth. But since I couldn't compare BG3 then I used Divinity 2 to compare single player vs split-screen and I'll leave the results below. These are captured at 4k but they mostly also hold true at 1080p. The only real difference is in render targets which are about half the size at 1080p.

Single player:

318 Textures - 207.86 MB (207.54 MB over 32x32), 54 RTs - 685.87 MB.
Avg. tex dimension: 636.011x641.284 (729.218x748.04 over 32x32)
913 Buffers - 21.30 MB total 2.38 MB IBs 16.47 MB VBs.
915.02 MB - Grand total GPU buffer + texture load.

Split-screen:

580 Textures - 313.70 MB (313.01 MB over 32x32), 61 RTs - 725.42 MB.
Avg. tex dimension: 551.828x547.004 (636.352x643.696 over 32x32)
1618 Buffers - 32.84 MB total 3.69 MB IBs 24.39 MB VBs.
1071.96 MB - Grand total GPU buffer + texture load.

 

[davis.anthony]

We are all assuming its memory related, could it be as simple as lack of bandwidth and fill rate?