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Performance Analysis: Assassin's Creed Unity (Digital Foundry)

LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
"We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff," Unity producer Vincent Pontbriand told Videogamer. "Technically we're CPU-bound. The GPUs are really powerful, obviously the graphics look pretty good, but it's the CPU [that] has to process the AI, the number of NPCs we have on screen, all these systems running in parallel.

"We were quickly bottlenecked by that and it was a bit frustrating," he continued, "because we thought that this was going to be a ten-fold improvement over everything AI-wise, and we realised it was going to be pretty hard. It's not the number of polygons that affect the frame-rate. We could be running at 100fps if it was just graphics, but because of AI, we're still limited to 30 frames per second."
Click to expand...


Still makes as little sense as when we first heard it. If this was the case, they'd have no problem going to 1080p, graphics resolution increases are independent of CPU load. If I put a GTX 980 in a computer with a Core 2 Duo that gets 20FPS in games, it would get 20FPS whether I limit it to 720p or 1080p, if the GPU is not the lower limit.
 
S

SmoothOperator

Banned
I don't even know what to say really.

Ubisoft is the first studio that managed to make an inferior version of a game on platform with around 40% more raw power : I mean just WOW.

I did not intend to buy the game simply because it looked underwhelming on all sides (let's put aside that 900P parity bullshit) but with that nonsense I know I won't get that game at all. EVER.
 
M

moltonasty

Member
What's really fucked is that the game is going to sell millions anyway, since it's the first new gen ass creed, and ubi will say "hey I guess they don't care about performance and sub 1080p graphics after all!"
 
C

Conduit

Banned
KKRT00 said:
Off-loading to GPGPU is not an easy task, especially if You wrote Your code for CPUs already.
Its a solution, but its not easy solution.
Click to expand...

Pocky4Th3Win said:
It's not a difficult task either, a small team of engineers could have had it done while they were developing the engine for the years the game was in development. Many exclusive games did that during the PS3 era to make engines that would take advantage of the SPUs of the cell, once its done you use similar code for all games going forward. It's not like its a one and done job that is never used ever again.
Click to expand...

Ask the Housemarque then. They used GPGPU tasks in Resogun,
 
Larogue

Larogue

Member
I guess the Xbox One faster CPU at 1.75GHz vs 1.6GHz on the ps4, makes a difference. Since the game is CPU bound.
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
This is pretty much the worst performing game on either console, I think even Daylight runs better than this (it of course looks worse but that is a different thing). How could they even think this was acceptable performance is beyond me.
 
deeptech

deeptech

Member
It seems like that higher CPU clock clearly benefited the bone , in cutscenes we see ps4 having bigger fps as they are GPU bound same like on PC.
 
L

LukasTaves

Member
LegendofDragoonLives said:
lol, I hope for your sake you work for MS.
Click to expand...

Xbone has a faster CPU, and a higher clock gpu, which means a higher setup rate for instance.

Gpus are very complex designs, putting all their power on a single metric is wrong.

Of course, Ps4 is consistently outperforming xbone, but there are other factors that impact the wideness of the gap other than the baseline performance of the hardware.
 
R

Raist

Banned
What the fuck.
acvncsd2.jpg
 
W

Waylon Drums

Member
I'm having fun with this but it's got plenty of problems. I'm running through people. Background music stops on a dime at random. I've seen NPCs literally fall from the sky into a group. It's so bad.

Fun, though. Still kinda bad.
 
T

therealminime

Member
Yeah I played about an hour or so on PS4 and it really is brutal when there's a crowd. The poor framerate is especially noticeable after coming from Halo. The game does look really good but I'd take a better framerate any day.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
It just baffles my mind wondering why they made such a CPU-intensive game for this generation of consoles, where the CPU is the weakest part of them. PS4 and even XB1 are capable of stunning games, but only when the games are designed around these system's architectures.
 
T

TrojanBlade

Member
When ND can run UC4 1080p/60fps with that pristine quality, there is no doubt in my mind this game can't be run on PS4 at 1080p/30fps. I know ND is way ahead of others but come on. The devs pretty much screwed up as the performance is even bad on the X1.

Hope they patch it to run smoother.

darkwing said:
what happened to the PS4 version? could this be a start of a trend?
Click to expand...

MS money hats finally getting delivered by UPS to devs ;)
 
D

Damian.

Banned
KKRT00 said:
Off-loading to GPGPU is not an easy task, especially if You wrote Your code for CPUs already.
Its a solution, but its not easy solution.
Click to expand...

It's not an easy task, but we're talking about a company with 1,000 fucking people working on a game. They have the resources, but choose to be complete morons.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Autofokus said:
Thats a slide from Unity's development, isn't it? I'm not sure how to interpret those numbers, I don't see the PS4 GPU at a 100% advantage for example.
Click to expand...

Because its not PS4 GPU being better than Xbone GPU, but GPGPU performance being more efficient by 100%, which could be true for the period that researched it.
CPUs comparisons are correct, because they both are exactly the same except for a clock.

---
Damian. said:
It's not an easy task, but we're talking about a company with 1,000 fucking people working on a game. They have the resources, but choose to be complete morons.
Click to expand...
Sure they have, and they will explore it in future, but they were working on this game before devkits hit them. In one interview they actually mentioned that they predicted much better CPUs in current gen platforms than what they got.
And rewritting their most heavy systems to GPGPU was not viable in the timeframe. They released it like at least half a year to early.
 
M

Marlenus

Member
Well according to the Metro devs the PS4 API has less cpu overhead on draw calls than xbox 1 and given the cpu clockspeed advantage the xbox 1 has is only 9% the only way the fps can have a 20% advantage on xbox 1 is sheer developer incompetence. This is a total mess and I will not be buying any Ubisoft games for the forseeable future.
 
W

Wolfgunblood Garopa

Member
Sir TapTap said:
I don't entirely agree--they looooove bragging about the number of NPC models and that seems to be basically the entirity of the bottleneck. I don't really find that any more valid than saying "man we have some BITCHIN water physics. It doesn't really affect gameplay in any significant way and it runs at 20 FPS sometimes but man. It is pretty"

Also...man those hundreds of NPCs are ugly and samey. Like that ballroom pic where 90% of the guys are the same palletswapped dude doing the same animation at once. I really think they focused on the wrong thing and both versions run like crap because of it.
Click to expand...

How can you not agree? They're bragging about something new they were able to do with the hardware that is not pees. It can be picked apart all you want, but the fact remains.
 
I

ICPEE

Member
Never thought i'd see the day when sub 30fps performance is celebrated by some as sort of a victory, from what i assume are hardcore gamers.

When have we started to accept sub 30fps performance in today's age.
 
D

Durante

Member
Damian. said:
It's not an easy task, but we're talking about a company with 1,000 fucking people working on a game. They have the resources, but choose to be complete morons.
Click to expand...
It's not just not an easy task, it's also simply not a good idea for some types of code. It's not like the GPU can do everything -- if that was the case we wouldn't have CPUs.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
Kezen said:
Ubisoft ports are pretty wild on PC, be careful. It's the "go big or go home" philosophy if you want to make the most of them.
Click to expand...

If Ubisoft open world games are what drives your purchasing decisions, the upgrade every other year, $2000 PC myths suddenly become true.
 
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