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[Digital Foundry] Gears Tactics PC - The DF Tech Review: CRS, Performance, Engine Analysys, new DX12 features?

EDIT. Meant VRS in title, not CRS (Also sorry for typos, gotta stop posting before breakfast)

VRS talk is around the 4:30 mark
From DF Youtube



A PC real-time strategy game with triple-A production values and brand new DirectX 12 features? Gears Tactics delivers and Alex Battaglia has the full tech review. Oh, and a max 20 per cent performance increase from variable rate shading? We've got the full lowdown.

Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe
I will to provide a summary shortly, watcing the video currently.

Quoting Alex, from the video:

- Really well thought out squad tactics game, part XCOM, part Dawn of War II, recommends to anyone who likes the genre, or SRPGs
- AAA Presentation
- Lavish cutscenes can be ran at 60 FPS or higher if you have the rig
- VRS can be toggled on or off, in the video there was a 20 FPS increase with VRS maxed out
- Currently VRS is only available to Turing GPUs on PC, but will be coming to RDNA 2 GPUs with DX12 Ultimate, and confirmed for XsX
- At 4k with highest settings, Gears Tactics will run at around 47 FPS on a 2080ti, turning on VRS increases performance by 13 percent, maxing it out increases performance by 21 percent
-


wDFrEqp.jpg



AHhCJ8t.jpg


- Does not recommend using VRS and dynamic resolution scaling together, you get a worst of both worlds in image degradation, seems to prefer DRS over VRS in this game

Alex recommends these tweaks for those with midrange GPU for best performanc/IQ combo, can improve performance by over 70 percent and still maintain quality fidelity


2ua0NN2.jpg


---

- Looks like game uses 9+ gigs of VRAM at 4k with higher settings (12:10 mark)
- With optimized settings, mid-range cards like the 1060 and RX 580 seem to hover around 55ish FPS at 1440p
 
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Dory16

Banned
Damn. I'm not a PC gamer. Is it usual for strategy games to be that greedy? We may be above Doom Eternal territory (I'm taking that example because it's the only game this gen that makes my Xbox One X noticeably loud and hot).
 

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
I was ready to test VRS with my C9 TV, but looks like that requires Turing GPUs. That sucks. So if I need to use this TV to the max, with VRS, G-Sync, 120Hz 4K and what not, I need to get the upcoming HDMI 2.1 GPUs. Good thing they are a little away in time, cause I blew my current budget on the TV :p
 
I was ready to test VRS with my C9 TV, but looks like that requires Turing GPUs. That sucks. So if I need to use this TV to the max, with VRS, G-Sync, 120Hz 4K and what not, I need to get the upcoming HDMI 2.1 GPUs. Good thing they are a little away in time, cause I blew my current budget on the TV :p

What GPU are you sporting?
 
EDIT. Meant VRS in title, not CRS (Also sorry for typos, gotta stop posting before breakfast)

VRS talk is around the 4:30 mark
From DF Youtube




I will to provide a summary shortly, watcing the video currently.

Quoting Alex, from the video:

- Really well thought out squad tactics game, part XCOM, part Dawn of War II, recommends to anyone who likes the genre, or SRPGs
- AAA Presentation
- Lavish cutscenes can be ran at 60 FPS or higher if you have the rig
- VRS can be toggled on or off, in the video there was a 20 FPS increase with VRS maxed out
- Currently VRS is only available to Turing GPUs on PC, but will be coming to RDNA 2 GPUs with DX12 Ultimate, and confirmed for XsX
- At 4k with highest settings, Gears Tactics will run at around 47 FPS on a 2080ti, turning on VRS increases performance by 13 percent, maxing it out increases performance by 21 percent
-


wDFrEqp.jpg



AHhCJ8t.jpg


- Does not recommend using VRS and dynamic resolution scaling together, you get a worst of both worlds in image degradation, seems to prefer DRS over VRS in this game

Alex recommends these tweaks for those with midrange GPU for best performanc/IQ combo, can improve performance by over 70 percent and still maintain quality fidelity


2ua0NN2.jpg


---

- Looks like game uses 9+ gigs of VRAM at 4k with higher settings (12:10 mark)
- With optimized settings, mid-range cards like the 1060 and RX 580 seem to hover around 55ish FPS at 1440p


Makes u wonder what series x settings would be since it only has 10gig for games. Im look around 4k @30fps medium to high settings
 

DavidGzz

Member
Hmmm, so by the time we're halfway through the gen we'll need the refresh with 20+ gigs of RAM. Man, I think I'm just going to splurge on a phatty PC later this year instead.
 

D.Final

Banned
EDIT. Meant VRS in title, not CRS (Also sorry for typos, gotta stop posting before breakfast)

VRS talk is around the 4:30 mark
From DF Youtube




I will to provide a summary shortly, watcing the video currently.

Quoting Alex, from the video:

- Really well thought out squad tactics game, part XCOM, part Dawn of War II, recommends to anyone who likes the genre, or SRPGs
- AAA Presentation
- Lavish cutscenes can be ran at 60 FPS or higher if you have the rig
- VRS can be toggled on or off, in the video there was a 20 FPS increase with VRS maxed out
- Currently VRS is only available to Turing GPUs on PC, but will be coming to RDNA 2 GPUs with DX12 Ultimate, and confirmed for XsX
- At 4k with highest settings, Gears Tactics will run at around 47 FPS on a 2080ti, turning on VRS increases performance by 13 percent, maxing it out increases performance by 21 percent
-


wDFrEqp.jpg



AHhCJ8t.jpg


- Does not recommend using VRS and dynamic resolution scaling together, you get a worst of both worlds in image degradation, seems to prefer DRS over VRS in this game

Alex recommends these tweaks for those with midrange GPU for best performanc/IQ combo, can improve performance by over 70 percent and still maintain quality fidelity


2ua0NN2.jpg


---

- Looks like game uses 9+ gigs of VRAM at 4k with higher settings (12:10 mark)
- With optimized settings, mid-range cards like the 1060 and RX 580 seem to hover around 55ish FPS at 1440p


Interesting analysis
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
This game looks cool, so I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. Pre-loading on Game Pass PC right now. It looks like they'll unlock it at 8:00AM PT.
 

thelastword

Banned
Yes, there is definitely a noticeable visual degradation with VRS ON, even moreso on VRS performance.

Still, the performance on a 2080ti for this game is simply out of whack.....Unreal really needs to do something about this....There's no reason a strategy game should incur such penalties on potent hardware...
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Still, the performance on a 2080ti for this game is simply out of whack.....Unreal really needs to do something about this....There's no reason a strategy game should incur such penalties on potent hardware...

That's exactly what happens when the assets are higher quality than the CPU/GPU can actually render at targeted resolution/framerate. It's actually the quite opposite of what some PS/Cerny die-hard fans on the forum want normal people to believe in. Games like that, with isometric view, are where Mesh Shading should step into play, to save some resources on the geometry when viewed from far away, and get back that higher quality for close-ups, when it's actually needed.
 

Allandor

Member
Yes, there is definitely a noticeable visual degradation with VRS ON, even moreso on VRS performance.

Still, the performance on a 2080ti for this game is simply out of whack.....Unreal really needs to do something about this....There's no reason a strategy game should incur such penalties on potent hardware...
It is like with Crysis. Hardware on release was not capable to max it out. "simple" effects maxed out can have a huge impact on performance without getting much better visual quality.
In older games maxed out quality was always for the future, not for the current hardware.
 
I was ready to test VRS with my C9 TV, but looks like that requires Turing GPUs. That sucks. So if I need to use this TV to the max, with VRS, G-Sync, 120Hz 4K and what not, I need to get the upcoming HDMI 2.1 GPUs. Good thing they are a little away in time, cause I blew my current budget on the TV :p
VRS lowers the resolution of some out of focus, I'm not sure that this is much better than lowering the quality of specific effects in the graphics settings given what has been shown so far.
 

thelastword

Banned
It is like with Crysis. Hardware on release was not capable to max it out. "simple" effects maxed out can have a huge impact on performance without getting much better visual quality.
In older games maxed out quality was always for the future, not for the current hardware.
Are you comparing Gears Tactics to Crysis? Wow, Tactics should be a tour de force in graphics then...…..because I don't see it....
 
EDIT. Meant VRS in title, not CRS (Also sorry for typos, gotta stop posting before breakfast)

VRS talk is around the 4:30 mark
From DF Youtube




I will to provide a summary shortly, watcing the video currently.

Quoting Alex, from the video:

- Really well thought out squad tactics game, part XCOM, part Dawn of War II, recommends to anyone who likes the genre, or SRPGs
- AAA Presentation
- Lavish cutscenes can be ran at 60 FPS or higher if you have the rig
- VRS can be toggled on or off, in the video there was a 20 FPS increase with VRS maxed out
- Currently VRS is only available to Turing GPUs on PC, but will be coming to RDNA 2 GPUs with DX12 Ultimate, and confirmed for XsX
- At 4k with highest settings, Gears Tactics will run at around 47 FPS on a 2080ti, turning on VRS increases performance by 13 percent, maxing it out increases performance by 21 percent
-


wDFrEqp.jpg



AHhCJ8t.jpg


- Does not recommend using VRS and dynamic resolution scaling together, you get a worst of both worlds in image degradation, seems to prefer DRS over VRS in this game

Alex recommends these tweaks for those with midrange GPU for best performanc/IQ combo, can improve performance by over 70 percent and still maintain quality fidelity


2ua0NN2.jpg


---

- Looks like game uses 9+ gigs of VRAM at 4k with higher settings (12:10 mark)
- With optimized settings, mid-range cards like the 1060 and RX 580 seem to hover around 55ish FPS at 1440p

Those JPGs are way too compressed for anyone to see anything.

but on the 400% zoom image I can see artefacts of VRS (I assume)... the image is pretty blocky in there, it looks similiar--but not exactly like--mpeg compression artefacts in dark areas of an image, blocky in an high resolution image... man this will make evaluating image quality pretty complex when we have new consoles with this kind of feature.
 
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Xyphie

Member
Gears 5 is probably the most technically complex game out there and this game builds on that branch of Unreal Engine so it's definitely up there.

When game devs include VRS in games they definitely need to give users granular controls over aggressiveness so you can configure it to not use more than 2x1/1x2, 2x2, 4x2/2x4 etc depending on preference.
 
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That's exactly what happens when the assets are higher quality than the CPU/GPU can actually render at targeted resolution/framerate. It's actually the quite opposite of what some PS/Cerny die-hard fans on the forum want normal people to believe in. Games like that, with isometric view, are where Mesh Shading should step into play, to save some resources on the geometry when viewed from far away, and get back that higher quality for close-ups, when it's actually needed.
Here is the part I think you may need to consider, this SSD tech is not about what you have on the screen now, because as you say, the GPU can only do so much work... but this is about how different the stuff you will have on the screen in the next second can be.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Here is the part I think you may need to consider, this SSD tech is not about what you have on the screen now, because as you say, the GPU can only do so much work... but this is about how different the stuff you will have on the screen in the next second can be.

That's actually what Mesh Shading is responsible for, rendering only the things that are actually visible on the screen. Where the data comes from hos nothing to do with it, you can have tens GB of RAM and VRAM and the performance can still tank if you overload the CPU/GPU, that's just how things work.
 
That's actually what Mesh Shading is responsible for, rendering only the things that are actually visible on the screen. Where the data comes from hos nothing to do with it, you can have tens GB of RAM and VRAM and the performance can still tank if you overload the CPU/GPU, that's just how things work.
But however, let's say you want to show something that requires you to show something completely different in the next screen, different enough that you need to fill the screen with an entirely different area that uses enough memory so that you have to refill the memory almost completely... No amount of mesh shading will do that (it does make the dataset smaller for fine details).
 

01011001

Banned
I wonder why it doesn't support DLSS2.0
VRS + DLSS2.0 would be a perfect fit. the parts of the image that get degraded by VRS could be scaled up again by DLSS2.0 and the resulting image would look almost indistinguishable from native resolution I bet.
even when the whole image is at a lower resolution DLSS2.0 comes close to a native image.

this is a usecase of AI upscaling that I never heard anyone talk about honestly
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Yes, there is definitely a noticeable visual degradation with VRS ON, even moreso on VRS performance.

Still, the performance on a 2080ti for this game is simply out of whack.....Unreal really needs to do something about this....There's no reason a strategy game should incur such penalties on potent hardware...
I would say that running anything on 4k is simply shit. There is talk about Dynamic res, being better options for this. I also think that technology needs to mature. 'member Tesselation?

I wonder why it doesn't support DLSS2.0
VRS + DLSS2.0 would be a perfect fit. the parts of the image that get degraded by VRS could be scaled up again by DLSS2.0 and the resulting image would look almost indistinguishable from native resolution I bet.
even when the whole image is at a lower resolution DLSS2.0 comes close to a native image.

this is a usecase of AI upscaling that I never heard anyone talk about honestly

The issue with likes of Control is that, it does not use Ai when it comes to DLSS 2.0 (in Control). It was simply run through neural network at nVidias servers and that model was included in GPU drivers. That's why it works so great. Realtime would not present such results, but at the end of the day, developers can create this offline ML model for any game, since they sure have some spare computational power.
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
But however, let's say you want to show something that requires you to show something completely different in the next screen, different enough that you need to fill the screen with an entirely different area that uses enough memory so that you have to refill the memory almost completely... No amount of mesh shading will do that (it does make the dataset smaller for fine details).

That still has nothing to do with performance, whether you store a 20M polygon model or different 20M polygon model, if the hardware can only render 15M models at targeted framerate you're screwed anyway.
 

sendit

Member
No wonder they didn’t release this on the Xbox One. This game is crippling 2080 Ti’s for no good reason.
 
At 1440p I’m not getting close to dipping below 60fps with everything on, mostly
Ultra but some high (shadows and shadow map resolution on high/not maxed out) with planar and glossy reflections turned on.
 

Jesb

Member
Was wondering how my old 7970 runs on this and not too bad. Stable 60fps on medium settings.
 
That still has nothing to do with performance, whether you store a 20M polygon model or different 20M polygon model, if the hardware can only render 15M models at targeted framerate you're screwed anyway.
Effectively, they are different things, raw performance is great, but being able to feed the calculator with numbers is great too... what do you gain when going from 10M polygons to 12M polygons? and how much can you gain from being able to fill all the memory you use for game data with new data in a split second instead of two seconds, 5 minutes?

I've posted this a million times, so I'll do it again, having an SSD feeding video ram directly allows you to render things that are otherwise impossible:
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I don't see it. It doesn't look THAT good. Kinda like more zoomed out gow5 but I did nout found gears 5 especially good looking too
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
Just started putting the game through it's paces on R5 1600+2060 Super. I'm getting around 6-8% perf increase on Quality VRS, and 14-17% perf increase on Performance VRS. In the benchmark, getting 63fps Avg with VRS Off @ 1440p/Ultra Preset. 67fps Avg VRS 'Quality', and 73fps Avg VRS 'Performance'.

Minor gripes, but I wished the benchmark was fully canned and didn't vary with tactical positioning. Makes it hard to do a side-by-side. I haven't paid enough attention to see if there's a few presets that repeat. Another minor gripe is that most of the low frames occur during the load-up of the level, it would be nice if they didn't start profiling it until after this happens.

Does anyone know if there's an option to control Dynamic Resolution? I feel like I'm missing something.
 
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