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

C

Conduit

Banned
TEH-CJ said:
Damn. The PS4 has a really crap CPU. Its slower than PS3 and xbox one?

surely the PS4 has other advantages other than a better GPU?

wonder why Cerny went with a slow CPU for PS4...
Click to expand...

I wonder why MS went with same slow CPU. Just like in PS4.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Durante said:
It's not such a shock if you believe Ubisoft's claim that it's CPU limited. And given the nature of the game that doesn't seem so far-fetched.
Click to expand...

I didn't think the differences in clock speeds would lead to such fairly large performance differences. although also I don't think we fully know how many cores are reserved for the OS etc - are we settled on 2 CPU cores on both machines?
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
The game obviously came in hot. In addition, Microsoft probably sent their Diablo-proven Seal Team X to Ubisoft to help with optimizations.

Or they just spend less time on the PS4 version. 175mhz difference in CPU clock don't map to the degree of frame rate difference, and they don't explain the resolution parity. Memory bandwidth as a bottleneck on PS4 seems very unlikely given that their setup is better as Ubisofts synthetic GPGPU benchmarks showed.
 
E

Endoplasmatisch

Banned
Interesting to see The effects in sales:

wp_ss_20141111_0001enpfh.png
 
C

CozMick

Banned
Has there ever been a game that runs better on less powerful hardware?

Its like getting the same performance from an nvidia fx5200 as a fucking titan.

smh ubi. You guys should be ashamed
 
M

Mononoke

Banned
Hasney said:
No it isn't. Going for any version of the game is a bad thing. It's still shit.


Higher clocked CPU.

There is one good thing to come from all this and that's the fact that it shows devs still have headroom. Compute functions on the GPU are rarely (if ever) utilised right now and once development pipelines get used to using it more to offload tasks, games will be better. Just hope it's sooner rather than later!
Click to expand...

I should have read more. Thanks for explaining. Guess I accidentally chose the right version.
 
D

Deepo

Member
I've bought the digital version from the US PSN. I don't know if I'm more angry or sad now. 21 FPS. Wish I'd gone with the EU pre order here so I could've cancelled it.
 
A

Akainu

Member
nelchaar said:
So let me get this straight..

- shit performance on both consoles
- slightly less shitty performance on the weaker console
- 900p and pop up
- micro transactions up the wazoo, including a delicious $100 one.
- different colored chests that require using a mobile app to unlock
- "Parity" comments

Am I missing anything? Screw this game to hell.
Click to expand...
What? What does it do unlock everything and just skip to new game+?
 
M

Muppet of a Man

Member
NBtoaster said:
They didn't have time to utilize compute on any platform.
Click to expand...

This is true. But it would have made a much bigger impact on the PS4's performace had GPGPU utilization been implemented. There are many more compute resources available on PS4 relative to XB1. Like double looking at Ubisoft's own internal synopsis of GPU power. (~800 for X1 vs. ~1600 for PS4).
 
K

KKRT00

Member
mrklaw said:
I didn't think the differences in clock speeds would lead to such fairly large performance differences. although also I don't think we fully know how many cores are reserved for the OS etc - are we settled on 2 CPU cores on both machines?
Click to expand...

Its definitely 2 cores for PS4 [KZ:SF and Naughty Dogs slides confirmed that] and its been leaked that its the same for Xbone.
 
L

LegendofDragoonLives

Member
LukasTaves said:
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.
Click to expand...
The higher clocked GPU is still nowhere near PS4's GPU. There's a reason every single game until the shady parity clauses started creeping up was better on the PS4. Other than Ryse, every single exclusive looks a lot better on the PS4 as well.

Can you start to explain this in detail rather than saying something incredible vague such as other factors? It sounds like you don't know what you're talking about and putting down political air statements. Pretty much every single expert that has compared the two consoles has estimated that the PS4 is noticeably stronger.
 
cyberheater

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
TrojanBlade said:
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.
Click to expand...

I don't know about the 30fps bit but I agree that it should have been 1080p on PS4. I can't think of a valid technical reason why it's not.
 
KyanMehwulfe

KyanMehwulfe

Member
the PR around cpu bound is hilarious, as if that is any excuse for not using the rest of a platform's architecture to its fullest extent

imagine if Square let itself be storage bound and tried to make FF7 multi plat... and that was with a budget [risk] that dwarves AC Unity
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Being CPU bound shows how Ubisoft should have used GPU comoute for the crowds. Wasn't that dancers slide from Ubi? The one showing huge numbers of characters o screen when using compute?
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
Is it really CPU bound?

I know PC CPUs are much better these days but people were getting big improvements dropping the resolution and less than like 50% CPU utilization mostly.

It's not like the crowds are super smart.
 
C

Citizen_Insane

Member
Gonna quote myself from the OT since this is the performance and graphics thread so I thought you lot would be interested to hear from someone with the game.

"I've played about an hour so far, which is barely enough to make a first impression. That first impression is horrible, though. I personally don't care too much if a game decides to go with 30fps over 60. A locked 30 is 100% fine by me. This game doesn't even have that. So far it feels like I've been playing a 20fps game and it's choppy as hell. I'm struggling to find the right word to describe the pop-in in the very first few chase sequences. Abysmal? Something along those lines. These crowds they're so proud of flicker in and out of existence constantly. That and the framerate combined are making my eyes hurt. How the FUCK could they ship a game in a state like this? I don't even know. The game doesn't even look that good if I'm being honest, so I don't know why it struggles so much to run decently on the PS4. The lighting's great, but overall Black Flag was a lot more impressive. Especially since it ran smoothly."

And then after that I played a bit more and got to this part that I had to screenshot because I couldn't believe how bad it looked. The crowds were unbelievable. http://i.imgur.com/fsOzJh0.jpg

Yes, it's being compressed from the PS4 screenshots to make it look a lot worse, but god damn it definitely looks almost as bad as that on my TV. Just a hell of a lot sharper.
 
I

ICPEE

Member
ElTorro said:
The game obviously came in hot. In addition, Microsoft probably sent their Diablo-proven Seal Team X to Ubisoft to help with optimizations.

Or they just spend less time on the PS4 version. 153mhz difference in CPU clock don't map to the degree of frame rate difference, and they don't explain the resolution parity. Memory bandwidth as a bottleneck on PS4 seems very unlikely given that their setup is better as Ubisofts synthetic GPGPU benchmarks showed.
Click to expand...
I'm going to say this outright. Something smells with the development of this game.

Digital Foundry: "Quite why PS4 isn't rendering at a higher resolution is certainly a bit of a puzzler - in addition to GPU resources, it is worth bearing in mind that memory could be a factor too"
I don't understand this. And to top it all the game doesn't perform so hot on PC either but then again Ubisoft can give less of a fuck to PC ports.
 
ISee

ISee

Member
shacklesmcgee said:
pardon my french, but what the fuck is wrong with the X1 shot?
Click to expand...

Simple answer: Now that both consoles are closer to PC architecture all player can enjoy bad ubisofts optimization quality. True parity to end debates and stuff.

/jk

The game really performs like shit on both consoles. In its current state AC:U needs more development and optimization time...
 
S

StrongBlackVine

Banned
No sympathy for any one on PS4 that kept their pre-order after the initial parity statement. This game had disappointment written on it way before now.
 
cyberheater

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Can Crusher said:
Takes a special kind of talent to make a game run worse on similar but more powerful hardware.
Click to expand...

Crowds require CPU and the CPU in the Xbox One is faster. In this corner case, the game is playing the strengths of Xbox One rather then PS4.
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
TEH-CJ said:
Damn. The PS4 has a really crap CPU. Its slower than PS3 and xbox one?

surely the PS4 has other advantages other than a better GPU?

wonder why Cerny went with a slow CPU for PS4...
Click to expand...

The PS3 CPU MIGHT have been a tad faster - if you perfected micro-managing the teeny tiny local memory in each SPE, if you never had to thrash the main memory because the local memories were so small, if you took advantage of the very specific type of work the SPEs excelled at. If you had in-order operation in mind for all the code you wrote, anything branchy could choke it. One wee mistake, and your performance fell off a cliff.

So while they may seem close, or a regression, in benchmarks showing their full potential, the Jaguar is much, much easier to actually use the power of. A lot more tolorant of mistakes.

_1413434492.jpg
 
M

Marlenus

Member
LordOfChaos said:
Can a 9% clock speed increase really explain the difference in crowds though?
Click to expand...

Not on its own and PS4 is faster in every other metric. The only other difference is the API but the PS4 one has less CPU overhead. The only reasonable explanation is incompetence.
 
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