It's possible that Sony originally allowed some specific access to the hardware that the Xbox didn't which could result in unpredictable behaviour with different clocks and cores. I don't know what that would be, but presumably the deeper the hardware access the more difficult it is to ensure compatibility when parts of it are altered.
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[Digital Foundry] Batman Arkham City PS4 Pro: What If Every Game Got A Pro Upgrade?
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Dr_Biscuit
Banned
And if Sony is afraid of potential unfairness with the rest of the community :
When you run standard games in unlocked mode it disables trophies and online multiplayer (or, if possible, you can only play with other unlocked mode users).
martino
Member
third party game use scalable engine...
even on console games come with dynamic resolution / unlocked framerate
they would probably let people experiment but the risk must be high on closed hardware to find enough people to exploit it for class action when it breaks
Judging by the big performance disparity between the PS4 and PS4 Pro on Battlefield 1, Sony aren't afraid of any potential unfairness.
The word is "forward compatible"That port is so bad they accidentally managed to enable Pro support
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Just to chime in, if a game has Pro patch, I'll pay more attention to it.
Er - AC couldn't hold 60fps on I7 cpus of the time, let alone anything "toaster" like.thelastword said:
Anyway - while it's wholly unscientific to derive anything from a cut-video like the one in OP - the difference at its lowest is 30% and seems to be around there most of the time - which lines up exactly with the CPU performance delta - so chances are that's what's limiting it most of the time too.
The game was built to run with Pro, just like any other recent release, not sure what's accidental about it.jett said:
People keep defaulting to emulation(regardless of what you were told, PS2 emulated half of PS1 from day-1, and all of it in later hw revisions) as examples of this - which is not what Pro is doing here.dark10x said:
Aside for any compatibility questions - there seems to be a need for binary update in relation to full GPU utilization - which to be fair would still help in most retail releases that are CPU bound anyway - but it's less than ideal.
But if you ask me - what I learned from internet in recent months is that people treat options as 100% guarantee - there would be tons of backlash if Pro-option was provided and didn't work out of the box 100% of the time.
Agree, never ever give options that are not 100% tested.
In one software project I added a hard-to-find QOL option for expert use which caused a lot of ruckus at the upper levels. Resulted in several long meetings and a weekend spent removing it and then full regression tests.
I saw a post in another thread saying they tried this but ran into compatibility problems.
If that's the case though, just let users toggle pro mode or not, in vast majority of games it would help, and the few incompatible just leave it off. Although there might be multiplayer problems as well.
People crying about taking a bad port for this comparison is ridiculous, this is not about PS4 Pro power, this is about the benefits of NOT creating a PS4Pro mode and let the Pro be a trully incremental upgrade where you don't force developers to create a specific profile in order to make the game run better. They've also shown RDR running on xbox one and the boost it offers by being simply a better hardware.
The fact that this should run 60 fps locked with PS4 Pro doesnt have anything to do with the actual point of the video.
The fact that this should run 60 fps locked with PS4 Pro doesnt have anything to do with the actual point of the video.
KojiKnight
Member
The engine? Yes. The final? No.
A few games have dynamic resolution and frame rate, but that does NOT mean the game is designed to take advantage of more power by default.
does this game have a patch, or is it somehow not being restricted in base mode? If the latter, I wonder how?
I do think there should be an option per game or at a system level to let you play games like this. Just make it an option like the PS2 as Richard said. Some games might have weird issues so just don't use the option on those.
There are enough games that would benefit that will never get patched for pro support, and several more that have been patched but have worse performance than the base PS4 but you have no choice to avoid it.
I do think there should be an option per game or at a system level to let you play games like this. Just make it an option like the PS2 as Richard said. Some games might have weird issues so just don't use the option on those.
There are enough games that would benefit that will never get patched for pro support, and several more that have been patched but have worse performance than the base PS4 but you have no choice to avoid it.
I think the problem with i7 was that Batman Arkham City did not like hyper threading cpus.
Turning it off on the i7 made the game run without the stutter.
holygeesus
Banned
The cynical me thinks this is more to do with them having the option of releasing 'remastered' versions of these games, further down the line. Why offer improved performance on new hardware for current games, when you can sell them to people in the future?
KimonoNoNo
Member
Watch this bug get "Fixed" in a patch.
Krusenstern
Banned
God, this is interesting. And the game doesn't seem to break either.
Should Bloodborne never get a Pro patch I hope Sony will let us play vanilla games in an unlocked power mode one day.
Just mindboggling that isn't a thing with the Pro.
Should Bloodborne never get a Pro patch I hope Sony will let us play vanilla games in an unlocked power mode one day.
Just mindboggling that isn't a thing with the Pro.
Here we go with this shit. lol
OverBlood 3
Banned
I wonder if we could put some pressure on Sony to allow us to decide for ourselves. Even a 'running in pro mode may cause inconsistencies in game' clause before enabling it and they'd be in the clear.
Yautja_Warrior
Member
So a mistake or bug in the code, has Pro mode enabled. Basically if a developer wanted too, they could just enable the Pro mode for a game with unlocked framerate, without making any other changes and we get a similar effect to how the Xbox One S runs games, only a much bigger jump in performance than the Xbox.
Most games are getting Pro modes now anyway, so not a big issue but still interesting to see it here with Batman, even if its a mistake.
Most games are getting Pro modes now anyway, so not a big issue but still interesting to see it here with Batman, even if its a mistake.
Had to try the benchmark in my old copy of Batman Arkham City.
First run with everything to max (DX11 on, tesselation on full etc @ 1080P) I got the following benchmark:
Minimum 15FPS
Maximum 164FPS
Average 110FPS
But the whole benchmark was stuttering like crazy. Looked more like 20FPS than 110 average.
The cpu-load was never above 55% according to MSI Afterburner.
Then I tried to run the benchmark once again, and it was buttery smooth this time!?.
Minimum 74FPS
Maximum 163FPS
Average 117FPS
Cpu around 50-55% again.
This was on i3 6100 + RX480. Cant believe my computer is so much better than the specs from a PS4 Pro,
so watch this hardly reach 60FPS then I guess the game is badly coded.
First run with everything to max (DX11 on, tesselation on full etc @ 1080P) I got the following benchmark:
Minimum 15FPS
Maximum 164FPS
Average 110FPS
But the whole benchmark was stuttering like crazy. Looked more like 20FPS than 110 average.
The cpu-load was never above 55% according to MSI Afterburner.
Then I tried to run the benchmark once again, and it was buttery smooth this time!?.
Minimum 74FPS
Maximum 163FPS
Average 117FPS
Cpu around 50-55% again.
This was on i3 6100 + RX480. Cant believe my computer is so much better than the specs from a PS4 Pro,
so watch this hardly reach 60FPS then I guess the game is badly coded.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Just because one game doesn't break, it hardly means that all can be guaranteed to work flawlessly. Its all very well pointing out how 360 titles run on Xbone, but that's not an instance where every game was supported from day #1; its been rolled out gradually presumably because testing was needed to validate functionality.
It needs to be recognized that it needs to be a "one size fits all" solution in order for the platform not to run headlong into all sorts of potential trouble.
And as for the "we should be allowed to break our own stuff" thing. No chance, because again the potential is too high-maintenance to justify it. Why risk making less technically savvy people unhappy, not to mention the chance of creating system-level issues,
It needs to be recognized that it needs to be a "one size fits all" solution in order for the platform not to run headlong into all sorts of potential trouble.
And as for the "we should be allowed to break our own stuff" thing. No chance, because again the potential is too high-maintenance to justify it. Why risk making less technically savvy people unhappy, not to mention the chance of creating system-level issues,
The PC version is a completely different game. Not comparable.
I don't know if it is still case or if ever was but didn't Batman AC used crazy amount of tessellation and displacement on PC? I remember that when i played it some of the stone walls had crazy amount of displacement XD
CypherSignal
Member
As mentioned up in the thread, If it was just a switch enabled in the background, and caused instability with some games, you'd likely have a lot of people complaining "hey the game's broken" or "hey this game is crashing" and it taking awhile for the community to suss out what's going on exactly and an increase in support requests to Sony or other third parties. Even on the PC, overclocked CPUs and GPUs unknowingly resulting in system or application instability are problems there, for example, because people don't suspect their own hardware failing in that way, or failing to remember the unsupported config they've left on.
Sony has already accidentally broken some games in the past with subtle changes in their firmware, so their skittishness of going back to old games and allowing for a blanket upgrade in performance is 10,000% understandable. I was genuinely surprised when Msft, had its <10% boost in perf for the XB1S play out for games retroactively, and I can only assume this is in part because I think it was a GPU-only change, not CPU, and they also have way more resources to go back and test this sort of thing that Sony just doesn't have.
This post will be ignored because it doesn't fit the narrative.
holygeesus
Banned
Isn't the PS4 version running Unreal 4 though? You aren't comparing like for like at all.
thatJohann
Member
Maybe Sony is saving a big announcement soon about unlocking both cores by default for all ps4 games. Maybe E3? Haha
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be so simple to take advantage of extra GPU power after all. A boost in CPU clocks for all games could be interesting, though, and I wonder if it would actually cause any real issues.
Of course, it does remind of the PSP in a way since you could increase clockspeed using CFW which I've done for years and have yet to encounter a problem. They made this available for later games to use as an option, at least. That was likely done for battery reasons, though.
I understand why they this took this approach but it doesn't stop it from feeling a tad disappointing. Won't be a real issue going forward, I'd imagine since most new games should support the system.
I don't get your comparison to overclocked PC components. Those issues happen because the hardware is not stable at the overclocked speed, not because the software suddenly has an amount of extra resource available.
This would be hardware running at what it is rated for. I don't really see how giving an option with a 'this may break shit' disclaimer would result in a ton more complaints from players. The answer would simply be 'well, we did warn you' and turn the mode off.
Microsoft probably did it with the S because games are written at such a high level these days that actually, are they even aware of what clock speed the CPU or GPU is running at? You build your game to be compatible with DirectX and it shouldn't matter what the underlying hardware is.
Has anyone tested Arkham Asylum since this was revealed? It's fairly likely that would also be Pro enabled.
Ah, PC runs on UE3 and PS4 on UE4, you are right.
CypherSignal
Member
Because there are a lot of users who do so and either a) forget "we did warn you", or b) don't consider that the overclocking could have contributed to instabilities they're seeing in just one title.
The Dear Leader
Banned
Unreal Engine 4 has different requirements than Unreal Engine 3, so the originals performance have no bearing on how these perform.
I really wonder whether programming for the PS4 is that much more low-level compared to Xbox that you could actually have a game break because of higher clockspeeds. Cerny (?) said you could have race conditions appearing, but I don't trust that just like that. And even if it actually does, I think it's terrible design that a higher clockspeed could have that effect.
Is this the 90s
SeeNoWeevil
Member
You need to remember that Sony charges for patches. If the Pro broke a developer's game (unlikely as it seems), they can't really go back to them and demand they pay to fix it.
Has anybody considered it may actually down to the developer environment and how the PS4 system library and drivers interact with the hardware? Their may be specific optimisations in the PS4's dev api that are (hate to use this term) more close to the 'metal' i.e specific code or library code is more tightly wired to specific timing in the base hardware, hence the very strict requirements for the base compatibility mode. Enabling PRO mode on base software without optimisation might be fine 9.9/10 times with most software but their may be edge cases.
The Xbox One may have more higher level hyper-visor operating system environment which while very optimised to give low level performance is less tied to specific hardware timings clocks etc, hence why MS approach to Scorpio is different, and they see their future hardware as breaking the generation jump because the development libraries are written with this in mind. This allows there software to be much more easily ported to PC and possibly in the future to the next console iteration after Scorpio if it uses a very different architecture. Essentially just like Windows, games run across a plethora of different hardware types.
Just a thought?
The Xbox One may have more higher level hyper-visor operating system environment which while very optimised to give low level performance is less tied to specific hardware timings clocks etc, hence why MS approach to Scorpio is different, and they see their future hardware as breaking the generation jump because the development libraries are written with this in mind. This allows there software to be much more easily ported to PC and possibly in the future to the next console iteration after Scorpio if it uses a very different architecture. Essentially just like Windows, games run across a plethora of different hardware types.
Just a thought?
spoonablehippo
Member
Alot of people are bringing up the Xbox One S here.
But remember, the Xb1S has the exact same CPU and GPU as the standard one, but they just run at a slightly higher clock!
So thats why games get free performance boost.
The PS4 Pro GPU is different hardware to the standard PS4! Hence the risk of problems if it was just unlocked for all games.
But remember, the Xb1S has the exact same CPU and GPU as the standard one, but they just run at a slightly higher clock!
So thats why games get free performance boost.
The PS4 Pro GPU is different hardware to the standard PS4! Hence the risk of problems if it was just unlocked for all games.
Yea this is how it should have been, games running at an unlocked framerate or variable framerate should be running better by default even without any updates or patch due to the simple fact that the reason why those frames were dropped on base PS4 do not exist anymore and as such those drops don't happen.
However as far as I know, in most games that don't have a pro patch the pro down clocks and shuts down its CU to match base PS4 giving same performance as base PS4.
I have absolutely NO idea why they would do that, because this is pretty much actively preventing the game from using the extra power unless specified with a "pro patch". The analogy regarding overclocked CPU/GPU on PC is pointless because those issues there happen because the hardware gets stressed from running at higher clock speed than designed, basically a hardware issue...not a software issue. This here is not a hardware issue, unless the game was made to run at specific clock speeds you won't find any visual glitches. It would be the equivalent of running the same game on the same OS and machine with a better GPU. This is x86 architecture we are talking about so these consoles are essentially PC.
However as far as I know, in most games that don't have a pro patch the pro down clocks and shuts down its CU to match base PS4 giving same performance as base PS4.
I have absolutely NO idea why they would do that, because this is pretty much actively preventing the game from using the extra power unless specified with a "pro patch". The analogy regarding overclocked CPU/GPU on PC is pointless because those issues there happen because the hardware gets stressed from running at higher clock speed than designed, basically a hardware issue...not a software issue. This here is not a hardware issue, unless the game was made to run at specific clock speeds you won't find any visual glitches. It would be the equivalent of running the same game on the same OS and machine with a better GPU. This is x86 architecture we are talking about so these consoles are essentially PC.
blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
This is what l was hoping for PS4 Pro games running at higher framerates at the same resolution. Sony should offer a switch to allow us to enable Pro mode for games without patches.
General Lee
Member
I think the main reasons for not doing a toggle or blanket updating old games to use all the new hw is mainly because Sony doesn't want to force devs into doing more QA or fixes for their old games, even if in reality only few games had any issues. Sony can't fix these potential issues themselves, they could only force the game to run in PS4 mode instead of Pro mode to avoid them. A user enabled toggle could work, but since people are dumb, it would still lead to complaints and support requests if there was a game that actually required to use the slower mode. All the Lazy Devs would be up in arms against Sony if they had to go fix their old shit.
Personally I'm all for Sony to give a toggle option, but I'm not surprised they have opted to not deal with any potential shitstorm due to problems it might have. Especially if it involves devs on their platform having to lift a finger to do anything about it. Sony will rather spend more money on making butterfly GPU configurations to slow new hw down rather than deal with support issues and angry devs/publishers. Besides, I think Sony makes an extra buck from these Pro patches, don't they?
Personally I'm all for Sony to give a toggle option, but I'm not surprised they have opted to not deal with any potential shitstorm due to problems it might have. Especially if it involves devs on their platform having to lift a finger to do anything about it. Sony will rather spend more money on making butterfly GPU configurations to slow new hw down rather than deal with support issues and angry devs/publishers. Besides, I think Sony makes an extra buck from these Pro patches, don't they?
Richard Logic: MS tell us that it will not be a difference between Xbox One games on Xbox One & Xbox One S but we found a few games that have 1 to 7 frames per second boost on Xbox One S. "This is amazing all games are better on Xbox One S"
Also Richard Logic: Sony tells us that it will not be a difference between unpatched PS4 games on PS4 & PS4 Pro "All un patched games will run the same on PS4 & PS4 Pro" Finds game that runs 15 FPS & more over based PS4. "Developer mistake"
Also Richard Logic: Sony tells us that it will not be a difference between unpatched PS4 games on PS4 & PS4 Pro "All un patched games will run the same on PS4 & PS4 Pro" Finds game that runs 15 FPS & more over based PS4. "Developer mistake"
Krusenstern
Banned
It most likely is a developer mistake. So far we haven't heard if the better performance on the Pro was intended or not. It wasn't advertised as a Pro game.
Also, half of the people in the youtube comment section seem to be insecure PC gamers who miss the point of the video and have to rub their "well, a 400$ console can't compete with a 1000$ PC" mantras into people's faces.
InsaneTiger
Member
The Pro has been out for a little over a week right? Developers are still trying to find the best approach because there has never been a iterative console like the Pro before. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony made some changes for developers in the future.
Sony are not the ones who make the games or develop the optimization patches. They aren't in control of the library of games to make those kinds of decisions
ayyyy lmao