*spin* "Low Settings" on PC ports vs Consoles

[DavidGraham]

So why do some of the ps360 (8 yr old hardware) titles look better than most of todays PC games

Can you name a few?
Why does Crysis 1, a single 7 years old game look better than the entire armada of console games put together?

Ive got a new PC, where can I play something as impressive as say infamous?

You can play Arma 3, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Metro 2033, Last Light, Medal Of Honor Warfighter, and Battlefield 4. All of these titles will stomp over Infamous in almost and maybe all technical aspects at the Ultra quality settings. After that you move over to The Witcher 2, Shadow Warrior, Arkham City, Hitman Absolution and many others. you will find that PC gamers have enjoyed a visual experience only available now for new consoles since at least 2 years ago.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So why do some of the ps360 (8 yr old hardware) titles look better than most of todays PC games

For the same reason the Sun revolves around the Earth and transistors are made of chocolate.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So why do some of the ps360 (8 yr old hardware) titles look better than most of todays PC games

Because most of todays PC gamers are flash/java based, low budget indies titles or titles from platforms that existed before the PS360 were even conceived. Yay for a diverse open platform with near unlimted backwards compatibility.

On the other hand most big budget AAA games that focus on graphics with a release in the last 4 years or so look quite clearly better than almost everything the PS360 have to offer. Which obviously includes 99% of the same games that are released on both platforms.

Ive got a new PC, where can I play something as impressive as say imfamous?

You already said it. BF4. I'm tired of PS fans rolling out Infamous as the best looking game of all time purely because it's not available on any other platform. I watched about 25 mins of solid gameplay on DF and yes it looks great, but no moreso than BF4 or Ryse. In fact it looked a hell of a lot like the PC version of Alan Wake to me.

I'm sure if Infamous were the cross platform title and BF4 the PS4 exclusive it would be BF4 that's unmatched in the graphics department.

And even if you do truly believe in your hear of hearts that Infamous is in some way a clear step above those other games then you really had better make the most of it for the very short window you're going to get. It's a first gen game with a budget limited to a single platform. Wait until 3rd party games come along with bigger budgets that have had more time to make use of the new DX11 architecture. And there's little point citing the old fallback of "but exclusive games will play to the strengths of a platform like no 3rd party game ever can" because those strengths don't exist anymore. All platforms share the same general CPU and GPU architectures with per platform optimisations being very close to perfectly transferable between each.

 

[szymku]

You already said it. BF4. I'm tired of PS fans rolling out Infamous as the best looking game of all time purely because it's not available on any other platform.

Let's not pretend that any of us is presenting ubiased, objective opinions in this thread...

 

[Nesh]

You already said it. BF4.

Seen it. Wasnt that impressed

 

[Scott_Arm]

Artwork is the main reason why console games look so good relative to PC-only titles. I think one of the reasons you don't see PC versions of console games get many new rendering features is time, and the other one is that the tech was designed for the artwork. You could maybe add new rendering features, but it would not necessarily work well with the art, or would require new art.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Let's not pretend that any of us is presenting ubiased, objective opinions in this thread...

Well until zed brought up "how much infamous blows all other games away graphically" this was a hardware discussion which should include no level of subjectivity.

But yeah, as soon as you start with the "my game looks better than your game" it is of course going to degenerate into bias. And I'll freely admit that my saying BF4 looks just as good (as far as I've seen both) is equally lacking in objectivity. Which is exactly why I think bringing it up in the first place is a pointless waste of time... and incidentally, absolutely nothing to do with the hardware requirements topic of this thread.

 

[TomRL]

Damn, wasn't expecting pc games to speed ahead this fast. The easier architecture of the PS4 compared to PS3 means we won't be getting transformative optimization on the level of Last of Us either. Peasants like me are in trouble.

 

[Jedi2016]

In regards to TW3, I won't believe it until I see it, because this "rumor" directly contradicts statements from the developer, and CDPR isn't as heavily into the BS game as other developers like Ubisoft are.

At this point, I see no reason to believe that any game will be that much more amazing on PC than on console. I haven't seen anything from even the latest exclusive games that I don't think could be done on the consoles. Even games like Star Citizen could, IMO, be done on console (sans VR) at 1080p/30. It's when you start adding VR at 120fps that things get out of hand.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I would not say that TomRL. System architecture only goes so far in what you see during the generation. The significant advances from 360's start to end of life are a testament to that. More important is the ease of optimization with the tools the developers have. I'm pretty sure nobody has yet figured out even 1/5th of the tricks to maximizing the potential of all the available ram now, as well as the bandwidth along with the greater GPU power.

Heck, most games don't even use SMAA yet, when with the power of XB1 and PS4 the boost to IQ alone would be transformative in comparison to the garbage called FXAA. There are plenty of things liable to transform games over the course of the generation.

And yes, i doubt this source until i hear something from CDPR themselves.

 

[Jedi2016]

Heck, most games don't even use SMAA yet...

I still don't understand this. I was fiddling with different AA back in the day on Skyrim and SMAA not only had the best results, but, as I recall it, also the lowest performance cost. And we've seen what it can do, with games like Infamous.

 

[TomRL]

Yeah, what is up with that? I don't understand why anyone would use FXAA after seeing Second Son. SMAA is post processing right? It doesn't act like it.

 

[Inuhanyou]

As other people have said though, its probably to do with the fact that most people are rolling over from last gen, where smaa wasn't feasible due to scraping the very limit of what was possible on last gen systems.

Now its technically almost as cost free as FXAA with the added power of the new consoles, with a huge IQ gain to boot. I think we'll see SMAA variations gain more prominence as time goes on and gradually replace FXAA. Or that's what i'd hope to see

 

[TomRL]

You know they say that AA is one of the most demanding things a processor has to do. Is that still true for post processing?

Damn, SMAA would do console games a lot of good. BF4 in particular.

 

[Inuhanyou]

According to certain graphs, the lower levels of SMAA are relatively processor inexpensive compared to other techniques. 2TX is what Infamous SS uses. As you can see, it barely makes a scratch on performance and goes far beyond what FXAA does in terms of IQ.

Spoiler

As far as i know, the very lowest level of SMAA, 1x, is still slightly better IQ wise than using FXAA, with the added benefit of not blurring the image like FXAA. So i'd expect SMAA 1x to be used with prominence.

 

[Wynix]

According to certain graphs, the lower levels of SMAA are relatively processor inexpensive compared to other techniques. 2TX is what Infamous SS uses. As you can see, it barely makes a scratch on performance and goes far beyond what FXAA does in terms of IQ.

Spoiler

As far as i know, the very lowest level of SMAA, 1x, is still slightly better IQ wise than using FXAA, with the added benefit of not blurring the image like FXAA. So i'd expect SMAA 1x to be used with prominence.

SMAAx1 should be the minimal standard.
Even SMAAx2 is very cheap, i hope more developers make use of it.

 

[HMBR]

I wonder if it's just something related to nvidia exclusive things, like TXAA or GPU Physics? since Nvidia is clearly sponsoring this game on the PC

witcher 2 was enjoyable (great image quality and good and decent enough performance) with my $100-150 range late 2009 VGA on the PC.

No. But, how far CD can drive graphics on a highend PC can be heavily influenced by how well their titles are accepted on consoles. Console have a larger userbase and higher retail prices which makes them a great source of revenue generation. Thereby, the more console games you sell, the bigger investment you can make into taking greater advantage and providing better performance of "all" the hardware you support.

Witcher 1 is PC exclusive, Witcher 2 was released first on the PC, both sold fairly well, I wonder if the xbox 360 version made them that much more money compared to the PC!?

I even think "Skyrim" (not a great game for the PC technically), sold more on the PC than PS3, and skyrim was not offered for bargain price for a very long period on the PC, and as always, I think the Steam tax is lower than the Sony tax, so I think PC is a big source of income for many game companies also making console games.
adding some exclusive "eye candy" specially when sponsored by a hardware manufacturer makes a lot of sense,

Which amounts for literally nothing, considering high end PCs overpower consoles at least 4 to 1 right now. Imagine the situation after 2 years!

And if the recent developments are of any indication, careful software optimizations on PCs are able to penetrate through any "CPU" API advantage the consoles might enjoy.

The Metro games ran on low/med settings on the X360, Crysis games ran on medium "at best", same with Battlefield 4. So it is not like this will be the first trend. If the game is geared toward high end PCs as a priority, then consoles will get the short end of the stick. however I still don't believe W3 will be able to do that.

Yes I think the software efficiency thing is not a huge deal, PS4 is running 1.6GHz Jaguar cores, most gaming PCs have higher IPC cores at almost 2x the clock,

$150 GPU like the R7 265 should be enough to compete with the PS4 GPU.

but the fixed platform aspect optimization is probably a big thing.

BF4 on the 360 was lower than low in my opinion,

The situation is different than before, at the days of the X360 and PS3, consoles were right out of the gate better than high end PCs. it took a couple of years till PCs outpowered them and for PC games to reflect that.

PS3? it was released at the same time as the 8800GTX, no way.

the 360, well, did it really offer better quality for multiplatform games? I don't know, launch titles like Cod2 and NFS? quake 4? or something like Oblivion!? I don't think so,
I remember high end PCs at the time capable of higher res and framerate.

 

[TomRL]

$150 GPU like the R7 265 should be enough to compete with the PS4 GPU.

Yeah, the benchmarks on BF4 for the R7 260x is about the same as the PS4. The similarly priced NVidia GTX 750 whops both however. Just purchased a pc with the R7 in and was very dissapointed when I learned that it was about the same if not better than the PS4 gpu. Kind of makes my PS4 redundant :/

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah, the benchmarks on BF4 for the R7 260x is about the same as the PS4. The similarly priced NVidia GTX 750 whops both however. Just purchased a pc with the R7 in and was very dissapointed when I learned that it was about the same if not better than the PS4 gpu. Kind of makes my PS4 redundant :/

The 260x should be generally a little slower than the PS4 - although certainly capable of giving a very similar experience. The 265 on the other hand virtually is the PS4 in raw performance specs terms. At it's base clock, shader and texture throughput is identical while memory bandwidth is just 3% higher than the PS4 (although with the 265 it's not shared with the CPU) and ROP/Geometry throughput is just 13% higher than the PS4.

In PC terms, you can't really get a closer GPU to the console.

 

[DavidGraham]

but the fixed platform aspect optimization is probably a big thing.
BF4 on the 360 was lower than low in my opinion,

That would have been true if the console's architecture were vastly different from PCs, as in the past. Now PCs and consoles share the same underlying X86 architecture, whatever applies to consoles will also apply to PCs.

PS3? it was released at the same time as the 8800GTX, no way.

Yeah, PS3 was delayed, when it eventually came out, PCs had moved on technically. but few people actually had 8800GTXs, the vast majority of PC players had Geforce 7s and 6s, or Radeon X19xx and X18xx.

the 360, well, did it really offer better quality for multiplatform games? I don't know, launch titles like Cod2 and NFS? quake 4? or something like Oblivion!? I don't think so,

When X360 came out, we -average PC players- suffered in 3 games:
1-Tomb Raider Legends: which was a real chore to run even on a GTX 8800. With amazing visuals and state of the art technical prowess with the full armada of DX9 at the "Next Generation" game preset.

2-Splinter Cell Double Agent, same as Tomb Raider, it has a "Next Generation" preset too. at the time of release it didn't even support Geforce 8 family of GPUs, and it required a patch to run on them.

3-Call Of Duty 2: same as the above two. the directx9 path of the game (effectively a next gen preset) was so taxing on anthing but the 8800s.

Oblivion and Rainbow 6 Vegas also gave PCs trouble, but to a milder extent. PCs didn't recover until Geforce 8 family and Intel C2Ds became wide spread. Granted PC versions of these games had better image quality(texture resolution, AA, AF, draw distance, shadow resolution) but you get the idea.

I remember high end PCs at the time capable of higher res and framerate.

Only very high end PCs, now, even medium PCs are better than consoles. just slap a GTX 760 on a core i5 and you are good to go.