Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Flappy Pannus]

So after seeing the DF video, it's not hat the game is 'poorly optimised' on PC, it's just a really heavy game with RT on.

No, it's poorly optimized. The PC has massive stutters, both traversal and shader. The CPU is barely being used, and then the GPU is severely underutilized as a result. This occurs without RT as well.

PS5 can drop too 972p in resolution mode and 648p in the 60fps mode, no wonder PC GPU's are having a hard time at native 1440p.

The GPU's aren't really having a hard time though. CPU usage is the bottleneck. The rigs who are showing decent performance in some areas are where their GPU usage is 99%.

If the GPU was the bottleneck on the PC, this wouldn't have been a disaster at all - it would be just like Uncharted, a very GPU heavy game that you can 'fix' by just lowering resolution. This is clearly not the problem here, as DF's video showed - no diff between low settings and Ultra.

 

[mr magoo]

648p …. At some point someone must have asked question “should we remove some features and bump resolution? Maybe we are too optimistic”. This has to be a record for the lowest resolution so far.

 

[DavidGraham]

Two things, this is like The Witcher 3 next gen edition, RTGI that is console friendly is often CPU limited and adds a lot of CPU overhead, something in these console implementations is stressing the CPU far more than the GPU to try to compensate for the weak RT capabilities of the consoles, we've seen this in The Callisto Protocol, Gotham Knights as well.

Also if the game is dropping resolution on the PS5, that means it's GPU limited on the consoles. So the game on PS5 is both CPU and GPU limited.

 

[Inuhanyou]

They keep trying to force HWRT instead of making a more lightweight software RT like crytek and ue5. which the consoles just are not equipped to do without a lot of optimization around your approach(like metro exodus or insomniac). Especially on an engine like ue4 which is very limiting by itself.

This is probably a hot take, but I kind of feel like the consoles should have shipped without HWRT features this time.

RT(whatever implementation) is the future. But I feel that would have given devs more incentive to go about their own solutions rather than forcing an approach that is not ready for primetime on mainstream machines at the performance devs want.

Wait until 2027/2028 when atleast AMDs technology would have improved a fair amount and allowed for more ambition without the disasters we see now with certain games with RT features.

You could say it's up to developers to know what should and should not be possible but we have seen too many disasters on recent games even without RT features. It's just one less variable to fuck up

 

[davis.anthony]

The GPU's aren't really having a hard time though. CPU usage is the bottleneck. The rigs who are showing decent performance in some areas are where their GPU usage is 99%.

If the GPU was the bottleneck on the PC, this wouldn't have been a disaster at all - it would be just like Uncharted, a very GPU heavy game that you can 'fix' by just lowering resolution. This is clearly not the problem here, as DF's video showed - no diff between low settings and Ultra.

You do know the average PC has like a 2060 right?

So the vast majority of PC's have a GPU that's having a hard time with this game.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

You do know the average PC has like a 2060 right?

So the vast majority of PC's have a GPU that's having a hard time with this game.

You literally can be CPU limited with a 1660. This with a Ryzen 7 5800X.




I really don't know why you're trying to argue this, we have ample evidence where the problem points are with the game by now. Every game is 'GPU limited' if you adjust the settings accordingly and put it on the weakest GPU you can find, we use terms like GPU/CPU limited in a relative context of where the bottlenecks are on modern hardware. A game being classified as "CPU limited" doesn't mean you'll get 60fps on Intel Integrated with a fast enough CPU. It means this game's issue is primarily with the CPU.

 

[davis.anthony]

I really don't know why you're trying to argue this, we have ample evidence where the problem points are with the game by now.

There's nothing too argue, the average user is GPU bound way, way more than they're CPU bound and that can clearly be seen on Twitter.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

There's nothing too argue, the average user is GPU bound way, way more than they're CPU bound and that can clearly be seen on Twitter.

Nope. See actual benchmarks done by reputable outlets. They're even posted in this very thread!

 

[iroboto]

This is probably a hot take, but I kind of feel like the consoles should have shipped without HWRT features this time.

It was the right move, software moves and evolves much more slowly than hardware. Developers need time to learn and integrate these new techniques and make them efficient. Their work and feedback today goes into building the features of tomorrow. So they had to start now or would be another 8 years behind before anyone really started to make the change to RT.

I think a patch will helpfully sort most of this out. Worth revisiting in a few weeks or playing at 30fps mode seems reasonable to me. It’s a bit jarring at first but you get used to it.

 

[techuse]

So after seeing the DF video, it's not that the game is 'poorly optimised' on PC, it's just a really heavy game with RT on.

PS5 can drop too 972p in resolution mode and 648p in the 60fps mode, no wonder PC GPU's are having a hard time at native 1440p.

It can be poorly optimized on the GPU side too.

 

[Below2D]

Are we sure the resolution counts are that low? This seems almost unbelievable.

 

[Remij]

Are we sure the resolution counts are that low? This seems almost unbelievable.

Doesn't seem that unbelievable to me when looking at the insane fizzling and speckled, grainy images.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Doesn't seem that unbelievable to me when looking at the insane fizzling and speckled, grainy images.

It doesn't help that ue4 doesn't scale particularly well once you try and push the complexity of the game world beyond a certain threshold. So on top of the devs having problems the engine is unnaturally heavy for what it's actually doing. Hence we get a game that doesn't look that much better than the last one but performing way worse than the last game as well with only a few extra features added

 

[mr magoo]

Doesn't seem that unbelievable to me when looking at the insane fizzling and speckled, grainy images.

I have to say this was the first DF vid that I watched and was like “what the hell is this shimmering fuzzy noise”. IQ is pretty much horrible.

 

[techuse]

Ya the extremely low resolution was quite apparent even in heavily compressed YouTube footage.

 

[mr magoo]

Gold.

 

[Dictator]

Are we sure the resolution counts are that low? This seems almost unbelievable.

If you Stop any frame in motion with motion blur off, the game is extremely countable - quite different from other releases.

Even with it on it was very countable.

 

[chris1515]

The resolution of Series S will be crazy...

 

[yamaci17]

The resolution of Series S will be crazy...

It won't be, as it does not run ray tracing. (and hence subjected to weird graphical artifacts)

 

[Smutz]

I love reconstruction tech but Jedi Survivor is asking way too much of FSR.

I noticed within seconds of starting the game the grainy image, ghosting, shimmering and aliasing on grates etc. I'm not surprised that DF confirmed it was lower than the 960p or whatever Dead Space was as I didn't find that game too awful. Dead Space is a much darker game and one where your main character moves very slowly but for a game where your character is backflipping around with a glowing light source in his hand it was always going to be a struggle to make it look acceptable.

I've been buying very recklessly in the cross gen phase as even the worst performing games were very good so I hope this is a anomaly or that I can control my FOMO until the DF video hits in the future.