Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[troyan]

You're still not getting it. Processing power is meaningless if the data is struggling to get where it needs to be. That is the core issue right now. That is the main factor that has changed this new generation. What has narrowed the relative performance gap between home consoles and PC. Do your best to stop thinking under outdate standards and understand why and how things will be different going forward.

This game loads for over a minute on a PC. There are over 20GBs of data in the system memory. This game needs alone 9.3GB VRAM in 1080p but ony 11.3GB in 4K. Obviously everything about this game is unoptimized and has nothing to with some kind of magic decompression.

 

[Remij]

Judging by the amount of backlash and Sonys initiative to keep porting ps exclusive games to pc, will we ever see a built from the ground up ps5 exclusive harnessing the full power of the ssd if the game is ultimately getting ported to the pc down the line?

I LOVE that pc gamers get to experience these great games but I just feel like due to this negativity that studios will start developing pc versions in tandem with the ps5 version of a game and that the whole 9gb/s on ps5 (if developers devise a way to make this happen without bottlenecking something else) will never become standard.

Your worries are misplaced. You're going to see built from the ground up exclusives hitting PS5 very soon. Ratchet was a preview, soon they will show Spider-Man 2 and minds will be blown...

And them developing the games with a future PC in mind doesn't mean that they will make decisions to "lessen" the PS5 versions... it just means they'll make decisions which will help them in the long run when porting to the PC in the future. Don't worry... PC is not replacing Sony's focus on console... they'll be making console games first and foremost, and the PC versions will be done on a basis of whether they're able to port them in a manner which works for them financially or not.

Basically, by considering that there could be a future PC version of a game, they can make smarter decisions to make the process easier.. and they could even get a lot of the work done at the same time as they build the PS5 version.. saving that work from needing to happen down the road... but PC will never be the priority.

 

[Remij]

But that setting defaults to 100 so it shouldn't be a problem? and I find it hard to believe everyone who has stutter has changed this setting.

But that setting increases native rendering resolution and thus increases VRAM requirements which would cause stuttering.

Huh? I'm not stating that this was the cause of any and all stutter in the game.. I'm talking about the ever persistent random judder that I was experiencing.

I already explained that the higher resolution and higher VRAM consumption is not a factor for my GPU... it's at like 60% utilization with 120 res, and locked to 60.

Basically... if you're getting judder or uneven framepacing despite hitting a locked framerate... then this may be the cause.

 

[yamaci17]

Huh? I'm not stating that this was the cause of any and all stutter in the game.. I'm talking about the ever persistent random judder that I was experiencing.

I already explained that the higher resolution and higher VRAM consumption is not a factor for my GPU... it's at like 60% utilization with 120 res, and locked to 60.

Basically... if you're getting judder or uneven framepacing despite hitting a locked framerate... then this may be the cause.

Changin res. scale in this game has a weird viewport change, you can notice overlay also gets smaller. It is not like how a regular res. scale usually functions. Could be that it disengages VRR somehow.

Edit: Yes, res. scale prevents VRR from working.

 

[davis.anthony]

Huh? I'm not stating that this was the cause of any and all stutter in the game.. I'm talking about the ever persistent random judder that I was experiencing.

I already explained that the higher resolution and higher VRAM consumption is not a factor for my GPU... it's at like 60% utilization with 120 res, and locked to 60.

Basically... if you're getting judder or uneven framepacing despite hitting a locked framerate... then this may be the cause.

But how could it be the cause when the default setting is 100?

I was playing around with the resolution scale and noticed that if the resolution scale was at 100 or lower, the game was silky smooth

Which as I said, the game defaults that setting to 100 so the game should be silky smooth out the box, so how can it potentially be the cause of judder when you're on a locked frame rate? as I doubt everyone who is experiencing judder with a locked frame rate has set that option over 100.

 

[chris1515]

TLOU Part 1 case will never reappear. This is a PS5 exclusive made when Direct Storage was not available. This is the worst case for a PC port and this is non RT on GPU side. Spiderman 2 use RT...

 

[yamaci17]

Yes, res. scale is broken with VRR. Don't use it.

Lmao.

 

[Remij]

Changin res. scale in this game has a weird viewport change, you can notice overlay also gets smaller. It is not like how a regular res. scale usually functions. Could be that it disengages VRR somehow.

Edit: Yes, res. scale prevents VRR from working.

There you go. That makes perfect sense since VRR is disengaged the 60fps lock doesn't map correctly to my 160hz refresh, and thus the judder/stutter. I bet if I changed my refresh rate to 60 or 120, it will be smooth then.

 

[Remij]

But how could it be the cause when the default setting is 100?



Which as I said, the game defaults that setting to 100 so the game should be silky smooth out the box, so how can it potentially be the cause of judder when you're on a locked frame rate? as I doubt everyone who is experiencing judder with a locked frame rate has set that option over 100.

There can be different causes for judder/stutter. Could depend on the refresh rates people are playing at... could depend on people's perception of the issue in the first place... remember some people don't see plain as day stutter.. and could be many other reasons.

 

[davis.anthony]

There can be different causes for judder/stutter. Could depend on the refresh rates people are playing at... could depend on people's perception of the issue in the first place... remember some people don't see plain as day stutter.. and could be many other reasons.

I get it every now and again on my system but after the first full play through now it's stupidly smooth now, maybe I should upload the games cache folder for other 4070ti owners to use? Haha...

 

[Overstander]

Your worries are misplaced. You're going to see built from the ground up exclusives hitting PS5 very soon. Ratchet was a preview, soon they will show Spider-Man 2 and minds will be blown...

And them developing the games with a future PC in mind doesn't mean that they will make decisions to "lessen" the PS5 versions... it just means they'll make decisions which will help them in the long run when porting to the PC in the future. Don't worry... PC is not replacing Sony's focus on console... they'll be making console games first and foremost, and the PC versions will be done on a basis of whether they're able to port them in a manner which works for them financially or not.

Basically, by considering that there could be a future PC version of a game, they can make smarter decisions to make the process easier.. and they could even get a lot of the work done at the same time as they build the PS5 version.. saving that work from needing to happen down the road... but PC will never be the priority.

Thats not entirely true though. Because it comes down to the minimal PC Specs they would aim for.
And if Direct Storage realy is the savior of PC I/O ...
If Direct Storage cant keep up ( on PCs around PS5 Spec or below) with a fully utilized PS5 I/O then it becomes difficult.
Lets hope it us up to the task. What we need is a example of first party title vs direct storage version of said game on pc to make a judgement.
Idealy we would get the Rift Apart port soon.
If for some reason that cobbled together Software solution is not quite on par with PS5s fixed funktion hardware array it could realy hurt PS5 Exclusives Development..
Cerny was so ahead of the time with Sony ... But sometimes being first doesn't help so much.
You could come really early to the cinema to pick the nicest best place. But just before the movie is about to start the last empty seat right in front of you could be found by a very tall guy blocking your field of view...

 

[Remij]

Thats not entirely true though. Because it comes down to the minimal PC Specs they would aim for.
And if Direct Storage realy is the savior of PC I/O ...
If Direct Storage cant keep up ( on PCs around PS5 Spec or below) with a fully utilized PS5 I/O then it becomes difficult.
Lets hope it us up to the task. What we need is a example of first party title vs direct storage version of said game on pc to make a judgement.
Idealy we would get the Rift Apart port soon.
If for some reason that cobbled together Software solution is not quite on par with PS5s fixed funktion hardware array it could realy hurt PS5 Exclusives Development..
Cerny was so ahead of the time with Sony ... But sometimes being first doesn't help so much.
You could come really early to the cinema to pick the nicest best place. But just before the movie is about to start the last empty seat right in front of you could be found by a very tall guy blocking your field of view...

Yes it is. You're forgetting that PC games can also scale down... so those textures can be lower.. thus reducing the strain on the IO.

DirectStorage is more than up to the task... The "issue" comes to how much effort Sony will put into their PC conversions.

 

[troyan]

Thats not entirely true though. Because it comes down to the minimal PC Specs they would aim for.
And if Direct Storage realy is the savior of PC I/O ...
If Direct Storage cant keep up ( on PCs around PS5 Spec or below) with a fully utilized PS5 I/O then it becomes difficult.
Lets hope it us up to the task. What we need is a example of first party title vs direct storage version of said game on pc to make a judgement.
Idealy we would get the Rift Apart port soon.
If for some reason that cobbled together Software solution is not quite on par with PS5s fixed funktion hardware array it could realy hurt PS5 Exclusives Development..
Cerny was so ahead of the time with Sony ... But sometimes being first doesn't help so much.
You could come really early to the cinema to pick the nicest best place. But just before the movie is about to start the last empty seat right in front of you could be found by a very tall guy blocking your field of view...

Dont know what you are trying to say: DS with GPU decompression archives higher throughput than the PS5.
Here is a blog post from nVidia about DS 1.1: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/a...mes-and-apps-with-gdeflate-for-directstorage/

 

[Globalisateur]

Dont know what you are trying to say: DS with GPU decompression archives higher throughput than the PS5.
Here is a blog post from nVidia about DS 1.1: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/a...mes-and-apps-with-gdeflate-for-directstorage/

Sure but you also need to look at ressources used (vram, GPU) and latency. PC will need to brute force it if they want to stay competitive against PS5 I/O.

 

[davis.anthony]

Sure but you also need to look at ressources used (vram, GPU) and latency. PC will need to brute force it if they want to stay competitive against PS5 I/O.

It seemed to perform perfectly fine in Forespoken and tests that were completed by various sites showed no perceivable impact to GPU performance.

 

[troyan]

GPUs have much higher compute performance (Ampere and RDNA3), so using a few cores for decompression isnt a problem at all.

 

[Remij]

Sure but you also need to look at ressources used (vram, GPU) and latency. PC will need to brute force it if they want to stay competitive against PS5 I/O.

Being about to lean more on the IO subsystem surely would reduce the necessity to have everything cached in VRAM way ahead of time. GPU resources we'll have to see... but GPUs have compute to spare.. and of course you can always tweak settings.

 

[Remij]

It seemed to perform perfectly fine in Forespoken and tests that were completed by various sites showed no perceivable impact to GPU performance.

That didn't use GPU decompression though.

 

[davis.anthony]

That didn't use GPU decompression though.

The initial presentation by the developers stated the decompression used 40% of a Ryzen 5900x, so nearly 5 cores just for decompression.

The final game loads just as fast as PS5 with no where near that level of CPU requirement needed as it loads fast on a quad core, so they've either turned in to programming wizards and reduced the decompression requirements to next to nothing or it's using GPU decompression.

They also updated the game to DS1.1 so it makes sense they would move it over to the GPU side.

 

[trinibwoy]

The best thing Sony can do for PC gamers is to develop amazing games that push the PS5 to the limit and as a result require SSDs / directstorage for maximum settings on PC. If they use PS5’s decompression and I/O grunt as a crutch to avoid doing proper asset streaming it would just lead to more mediocre ports that don’t justify the PC hardware requirements.

Does Rift Apart use virtual textures or is it powering through on raw I/O?