FairXchange
Member
Not accurate.
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[Digital Foundry] Batman Arkham City PS4 Pro: What If Every Game Got A Pro Upgrade?
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
aygomyownroad
Member
I still don't understand how the Xbox One S has a small increase in clock speed but all games benefit from an extra few fps and are more stable yet the PS4Pro can't do the same thing.
I thought the architectures were pretty similar
I thought the architectures were pretty similar
LukasTaves
Member
It's a fair assumption given their history. AND it was actually announced as such:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...pio-and-xbox-one-s-sales-dont-actually-matter
Basically all games will see the increased power of scorpio. Not many will benefit because of hardcoded resolution, or because it might already hit the desired framerate, but assuming the hardware delta in the very least scorpio will be able to play every single already released game on xbone at a locked framerate.
All games don't benefit from it. Just a few actually. The performance improvements on the S have been blown wildly out of proportion.
Have DF tested any dynamic resolution PS4 games to see if they keep a more stable 1080P resolution on the PS4 Pro?
Thinking about it, not enabling a feature like this is probably part of Sony's overall strategy - the only way your older games can exploit the extra power of the Pro is if the devs patch it, and that patch (AFAIK) also requires the devs to support 1440p+ resolutions. So Sony can push devs into supporting higher resolution if they want their game to perform better, so they can market the Pro as the 4K console with lots of 4K titles.
NeOak
Member
Jesus H Christ.
You're so wrong. So fucking wrong.
It's just a single GPU with double the cores. Jesus.
JJKillaNOLE
Neo Member
He may not be correct, but is there a need to be this angry about what he said?
Interficium
Banned
Hilarious thread full of short-sighted people.
Can you imagine Sony implementing this feature? "Hey third party publishers, many of whom we have extensive marketing and/or content agreements with, we're going to hide a chicken switch deep in our system OS which is going to totally circumvent any and all console certification work you've done and may or may not completely break your game. Don't worry though, we'll have a short disclaimer before a user activates it which we're absolutely sure won't result in any more customer service for you. You're cool with that, right?"
Can you imagine Sony implementing this feature? "Hey third party publishers, many of whom we have extensive marketing and/or content agreements with, we're going to hide a chicken switch deep in our system OS which is going to totally circumvent any and all console certification work you've done and may or may not completely break your game. Don't worry though, we'll have a short disclaimer before a user activates it which we're absolutely sure won't result in any more customer service for you. You're cool with that, right?"
This is the year of fake news.
My favorite part is people dismissing race conditions as not an issue because it's bad design on the developer's part. Because it's totally reasonable to go back to games coded 3+ years ago for TOTALLY FIXED HARDWARE AND CLOCK SPEEDS and just start monkeying with shit expecting it work.
Movalpolos
Banned
Are you insinuating that no game on Pro is actually better?
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
TBF Scorpio has what a 2TF advantage over the the Pro and the Pro doesn't even render 1800p natively
Yet people think Scorpio is gonna do this all natively and we framerate over 30fps?
Is that correct?
Interficium
Banned
Lazy devs at it again.
it really has. It's almost margin of error small
what games are broken on Pro?
Someone should compile a list of Xbox One S games with a boost & compare them to the PS4 Pro games with a boost. to show how things really look.
How Rise Of The Tomb Raider Xbox One S looking compared to Rise Of The Tomb Raider PS4 Pro?
I wouldn't blame the developers. I would blame Sony for designing their API and stuff in such a way that you could actually have race conditions appear just by raising clockspeeds.
Interestingly, ROTTR on Xbox One S *DOES* receive a boost. There were several areas in the game (such as the village or the rainy sequence at night) where it would drop to ~25-26fps on a standard Xbox One. On the S, however, it holds a completely stable 30fps through all scenes. The frame-rate is locked.
So how does it compare then?
Well, it actually looks visually identical to the PS4 Pro "High Frame-Rate" mode aside from the improved specular reflection feature (which was added to the base PS4 version).
It's a nice little boost there - not huge in terms of numbers but it makes for a more stable experience and eliminates all screen tearing.
Agnostic Priest
Member
Sony is life. If you don't have every single Sony fact memorized, you shouldn't be here!
Not broken, just not straight upgrades.
World of Final Fantasy on Pro is a downgrade, visually speaking.
them's fightin' words 'round here
To be fair race conditions should be accounted for in any reasonably designed piece of software, fixed architecture or not. It's a fundamental consideration when developing async software (multi-thread). I totally agree with the overall theme of your post though.
When I say "broken" I'm not talking about slight tearing and the loss of a couple frames in stress situations when rendering at a higher resolution. That's what we have now.
I mean broken as in glitchy, or crashes, or strange graphical artifacts. The kind of thing you might get by changing the hardware configuration for a three-year-old game.
I know I seen the video that's why I used it as an example of a game that got a boost from Xbox One S. the point is that it got a small frame rate boost on Xbox One S but on PS4 Pro it got a unlock frame rate mode at 1080p that's closer to 60fps & also got a 4K 30fps mode & a 1080P 30fps mode with better graphics.
So how are things really looking?
NeoGAF in 2013: "Developers should be coding to the metal and squeezing every ounce of performance out of the box by writing code specifically for that platform's CPU, anyone who doesn't is lazy or incompetent"
NeoGAF in 2016: "What do you mean changing the clock speed of the device will break the game? Developers should have accounted for this when they built their engines, anyone who didn't is lazy or incompetent."
This isn't the sort of thing that could have been prevented by Sony. If you tell developers that the CPU runs a certain clock speed, you can't be surprised when they use that clock speed as an assumption in their code. Even code which has nothing to do with Sony's system APIs can and will be affected by this.
That's the thing about race conditions though, they're completely invisible and extremely hard to detect until they aren't, at which point the system does the wrong thing (which is infinitely worse than crashing) and you have no idea what caused the issue until you spend dozens of hours figuring out which threads were racing. As a developer, even if your system is working properly and is able to handle arbitrarily high clock speeds, you have no way of knowing for sure until you re-do all your QA and verify that everything's working properly. Which is like 90% of the work that goes into designing a PS4 Pro patch in the first place. Telling developers that they're coding for a fixed-hardware platform, then changing the clock speeds out from under them is a really bad idea.
I'd rather be able to choose to fuck up a game a lot than have it fucked up a little without having any choice at all. One of the many reasons I prefer to play on PC.
Err, I just did a big video on the Pro version.
Clearly, in terms of console versions it's Pro > PS4 > Xbox One > 360
It's just a shame the current 1.05 patch on PS4 and Pro introduced bad frame pacing when using the 30fps cap. If they fix that again, it'll be fantastic since it's checkerboard 2160p.
In your testing what is the number of Xbox One games that have gotten a noticeable boost from being played on Xbox One S? does that number of games blow the number of PS4 games with PS4 Pro enhances out of the water?
I know it's about 40 PS4 Pro enhanced games right now & they got pretty big enhancements so what is the number of Xbox One games that have noticeable enhancements on Xbox One S?
Yeah but read those last sentences a few times. Games might be able to go to 1080p since that's the full frame buffer. Devs will have to go back to the titles (patches) if they want to go higher. PS4 has been doing 1080p almost completely across the board since launch, so that boost wouldnt mean crap on the Pro.
That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison, though, right? The entire point of the Pro is to massively enhance games when supported. The One S boost is not a big deal and isn't even discussed by marketing material for that reason.
I haven't tested that many games on my own system, to be honest, but I did notice improvements in a number of them. Obviously ROTTR runs better but Halo 5 seems to maintain a higher resolution more often, Gears Ultimate has less slowdown, Gears 4 holds 1080p almost all the time on One S but seems to dip below that on a stock system and Ori seemed a bit smoother (it was already mostly 60 but a couple spots would dip - they were fine when I replayed it on the S).
Beyond that, though, I haven't really tested many other games and anything else I tested was basically the same. I don't think it should be a selling point, though, since it seems quite minor and not something most people would notice or care about.
Clearly, when games support the Pro, you're going to see much more significant improvements and most games are awesome on there. Going forward, Pro support should hopefully be pretty standard.
It is odd that people use the One S as a comparison point against the Pro, though, since they are fundamentally different.
... You've missed the point. The Pro has a 30% CPU upclock and 120% GPU increase in power. It is capable of down clocking itself from 130% / 220% of the PS4 specs to 100% / 100%. It doesn't have to be a binary switch.
The XB1S showed that a 7% CPU upclock can improve performance in games by 5-20%.
People are asking why Sony won't allow people CHOOSE an OPTION to let the PS4 Pro down clock itself to specs just above the stock levels instead of being locked in at stock PS4 values. Maybe even a few options of varying degrees: 100% stock speeds, 110% CPU speed, 130% CPU & 130% GPU speeds. Those should be options even for games patched to utilize the Pro hardware.
The boost the S gets it's like when you order a delicious meal at a restaurant, and the waitress brings over a couple of dessert shots for you and your date for free. <3
The Pro is more like standing in line at a restaurant at Valentine's Day and finding out that there's no special menu for that day, just new deco. I mean, you expected more but I guess it makes sense.
EDIT:
dark10x, for Ori, did you perhaps play the Definitive Edition the second time? On the OG Xbone there was less slowdown in comparison there.
~
I just can't believe people are defending Sony on this. Do you not want the option , at least?
The Pro is more like standing in line at a restaurant at Valentine's Day and finding out that there's no special menu for that day, just new deco. I mean, you expected more but I guess it makes sense.
EDIT:
dark10x, for Ori, did you perhaps play the Definitive Edition the second time? On the OG Xbone there was less slowdown in comparison there.
~
I just can't believe people are defending Sony on this. Do you not want the option , at least?
Caayn
Member
I think people are solely comparing them on the topic of requiring a patch to run games better. I doubt that people truly believe that the XB1S is similar to the PS4 Pro in terms of a mid-gen upgrade.
Well the video that this thread is about did just that. now I wondering just how the number of Xbox One games with noticeable upgrades on Xbox One S compare to the number of PS4 games with noticeable upgrades on PS4 Pro & how these upgrades actually compare?
Is it over 400 Xbox One games with noticeable enhancements on Xbox One S vs 40 Pro enhanced PS4 games or is it closer to 100 Xbox One games with noticeable enhancements on Xbox One S?
a Master Ninja
Member
Digital Foundry, just keeping doing what you do. Ignore the defensive fanboys.
I would rather have 40 games with big enhancements that could not be archived on the older console than to have maybe 100 games that now perform more like they should have performed in the 1st place,
Oh, I'll get my V-Day menu when Scorpio comes out. For now, I'm fine with revisiting my favourite place where's it's comfortable until they do something big next year.
<3
But in all seriousness, I don't think the point of the S is to have people upgrade but to be an attractive way for people to jump onto the platform. Good thing is that you can collect coupons at this restaurant, and they're valid for when it has a refurbishment.
(Forgive me I'm really freaking hungry rn)
Liabe Brave
Member
No, that is not true at all. By far the highest performance boost Xbox One S has shown is in Project Cars, where it gives at most a ~13% improvement. The usual improvement across all games tested by DF was ~3%. Many games are not improved at all.
I think his point was that the small increase for Xbox One S is welcomed, so who the sort of improvement you would get with the Pro would be more than welcomed.
I remember having problems back in the day with the PC port with my 680. For an Unreal title, you'd think they could get this moving faster than Super Mario Bros..
Liabe Brave
Member
I wasn't responding to any of his argument, just his numbers. The propagation of false "facts" like this can really mar discussion. To meet on level ground, people need to know the truth of the situation.
Yeah. I don't think using percentage numbers for variable framerates makes ANY sense (20 fps to 30 fps is a 50% increase for example).
When something is barely hitting its target, small increases don't matter, but if a small increase gets rid of screen-tearing or frame-pacing issues (like a lot of BC games) then it's very good.