Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2015]

[Shortbread]

I'm doing a little testing on AF on an older laptop with a 2GHz quad core CPU with a decent GPU (decent back then anyhow). I'm almost certain, PS4 is more CPU bound than XB1. It seems from my laptop testing, the CPU spikes around 7%-11% higher at higher quality AF settings. The GPU and memory subsystem is relatively the same (at best 1-2% spike) when switching between AF settings.

I'm guessing the developers who are having AF issues aren't optimizing around PS4s quirky CPU issues. Freeing up needed performance (fps) by not enabling AF (cheap/easy fix). The developers not having issues, maybe prioritizing CPU usage better (shuffling more task over to the GPU). My guess anyhow...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Did you really just blame "lazy devs"?

 

[London Geezer]

Lazy devs ruin lives. Lazy devs created climate change. Lazy devs kill people!

 

[AlNom]

Honestly, these ports are starting to get annoying. AF/noAF I can live with. But a game that should be running easily at 60fps, dropping frames half the time? Come on!

It's UE3.

It seems from my laptop testing, the CPU spikes around 7%-11% higher at higher quality AF settings. The GPU and memory subsystem is relatively the same (at best 1-2% spike) when switching between AF settings.

Driver forced AF?

 

[shredenvain]

Did you really just blame "lazy devs"?

I think he blamed the Ps4 for it's CPu being more " bound".

 

[Shortbread]

Did you really just blame "lazy devs"?

Not in this case. It's more hardware specific... i.e. the choices Sony and MS made hardware wise. For good or bad...

Lazy devs ruin lives. Lazy devs created climate change. Lazy devs kill people!

Lazy developers IMHO, are developers who purposely let issues slide by or limits one system over the other, for the sake of parity. In this case, its more of PS4 hardware being more CPU bound (possibly) than XB1.

Driver forced AF?

CP (control panel) level? Then yes.


Side Note: If I up the laptop resolution from 1920x1080 to 1920x1200, the CPU utilization isn't quite as high (4-5%). However, GPU and memory utilization goes up quite a bit (3-6%).

 

[szymku]

I read a dev opinion somewhere on the matter and he claimed that xbone has dedicated libraries for AF and PS4 has not. According to him it's actually lazy devs who are responsible, as people responsible for the graphics pipeline in his team didn't understand what all the fuss is about and why people even care. BTW. Check out latest patch for Dying light PS4. It pretty much confirms the above.

 

[chris1515]

I don't think developer are lazy. They have a release date and a budget to respect maybe publisher need to give a little more time or more budget and people on PS4 port from PC as the base platform this gen. After people continues to buy games with bigger problem than no AF, we have seen much worse with broken game like Battlefield 4, Drive Club, Halo MCC multi, Assassin's creed Unity. I think publisher need to think more about the quality of product.

 

[Billy Idol]

To add, I also hope that devs emancipate themselves and don't let publishers solely dictate the quality of their product...at the end, the names of the dev are written on the product and people associate it with them first, with the publisher second imo.

But after reading the NVida dev stuff Joker linked in an other thread...I fear it doesn't improve in near future. Although...maybe, this is the reason we get so many delays as of late...maybe publishers start to fear the massive backlash some games got?!

 

[chris1515]

To add, I also hope that devs emancipate themselves and don't let publishers solely dictate the quality of their product...at the end, the names of the dev are written on the product and people associate it with them first, with the publisher second imo.

But after reading the NVida dev stuff Joker linked in an other thread...I fear it doesn't improve in near future. Although...maybe, this is the reason we get so many delays as of late...maybe publishers start to fear the massive backlash some games got?!

Game Budget are up again but maybe someone have a comparison between game budget last gen and current gen but my instinct tell me that the budget ballooning was bigger between gen6 to gen 7 than gen 7 to gen 8. Maybe my impression is wrong. This time PS4 and Xbox One are easier to use than 360 and the difficult to master PS3.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm doing a little testing on AF on an older laptop with a 2GHz quad core CPU with a decent GPU (decent back then anyhow). I'm almost certain, PS4 is more CPU bound than XB1. It seems from my laptop testing, the CPU spikes around 7%-11% higher at higher quality AF settings. The GPU and memory subsystem is relatively the same (at best 1-2% spike) when switching between AF settings.

I'm guessing the developers who are having AF issues aren't optimizing around PS4s quirky CPU issues. Freeing up needed performance (fps) by not enabling AF (cheap/easy fix). The developers not having issues, maybe prioritizing CPU usage better (shuffling more task over to the GPU). My guess anyhow...

I don't really see how this test is valid because you're testing DX11 and your graphics driver, which is going to be decidedly different than GNM or GNMX on PS4.

 

[London Geezer]

I heard most of ISIS is made up of Lazy Devs.

 

[iroboto]

I don't really see how this test is valid because you're testing DX11 and your graphics driver, which is going to be decidedly different than GNM or GNMX on PS4.

Agreed. The test is more likely to model Xbox one performance than PS4 in this case

 

[TheWretched]

Having read Naughty Dogs TLOU port post mortem from GDC, I can see why some games struggle on PS4, even with 30Hz. Go read it, if you haven't.

http://www.swedishcoding.com/2015/03/08/gdc-2015-presentation-parallelizing-the-naughty-dog-engine/

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well, for most multiplatform games, they probably wouldn't start from the PS3 version because it's the least similar to the PS4 hardware.

 

[Shortbread]

I don't really see how this test is valid because you're testing DX11 and your graphics driver, which is going to be decidedly different than GNM or GNMX on PS4.

True. I was mostly seeing (testing) how much of an impact AF has on hardware in general. But I'm still incline to believe the PS4 is slightly more CPU bound at this point and time, even before the testing. Things may change...

 

[iroboto]

True. I was mostly seeing (testing) how much of an impact AF has on hardware in general. But I'm still incline to believe the PS4 is slightly more CPU bound at this point and time, even before the testing. Things may change...

If I were to suspect hardware, the only thing i might suspect as being a culprit is that bandwidth is not simple for them to determine due to the nature of CPU contention. If for whatever reason AF is implemented incorrectly or causing strange behaviour, not having a fixed amount of bandwidth to work with makes budgeting for it all the more difficult.

 

[Arwin]

I'm inclined to believe that where there is this much smoke, there is probably fire. But what the fire is, is the question. SDK issues, lazy devs, hardware issues, problems with old game engines, a combination of all of them ... whatever it is, there's not nothing or we wouldn't be seeing such a clear pattern.

 

[DrJay24]

What pattern? Other than from budget multi platform games or ports from 3rd parties?

 

[Shortbread]

If I were to suspect hardware, the only thing i might suspect as being a culprit is that bandwidth is not simple for them to determine due to the nature of CPU contention. If for whatever reason AF is implemented incorrectly or causing strange behaviour, not having a fixed amount of bandwidth to work with makes budgeting for it all the more difficult.

Not that I'm saying your right or wrong... the issues outside of AF, like performance (fps), it seems PS4 has struggled with certain 3rd party games in this regard as well. If certain 3rd party developers are struggling with performance deltas they want to meet - then no AF or lower quality AF maybe their immediate solution. I think Ubisoft raw data test somewhat confirms PS4 CPU is not the beefiest...

Please don't get me wrong, PS4 hardware overall is tops when compared to others. However, it has its own quirks and limitations like any other hardware.