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Digital Foundry: Could PlayStation 5 Pro Handle Path-Traced Games?
- Thread starter ChiefDada
- Start date
ReBurn
Gold Member
He gets paid based on views. He's trying to generate views.
Bojji
Member
Even PS5 can do path tracing. Question about Pro is: how fast it can do it?
In most calculations 7900XTX will be ~1.8x faster than Pro.
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Ashamam
Member
Well then why did you make the title about PT?
I happen to agree with them on the Path Finding side of things. I think they are spot on in highlighting Sony's own examples. I also think Alex is 100% correct when pointing out that RT has multiple steps and its likely Sony is only accelerating some of them, so don't take the 2x 4x comments as indicative of the whole. These are developer focused notes remember. I'm no blind DF fan, been more than happy to point out their hypocrisy in the past. But on this topic, yeah don't expect path tracing from the Pro. Do expect much better frames with moderate RT improvements over the standard machine though. Everything about the Pro should always be looked at as an extension for the standard machine, not new generational leaps. Which PT is.
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Quantum253
Member
Is the real question "Can it do it" or "How well can it do it"? If it's the possibility, sure I think it can path trace. Doesn't mean that it can do it well.
Bojji
Member
Quake RTX, Portal RTX, Minecraft RTX, Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk are only (known to me) games with Path Tracing.
It can do it, I think we will something with PT but obviously it won't be 60FPS.
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ChiefDada
Gold Member
Maybe, and I'm just guessing here, but maybe it's because that's the title of their video?
And Path tracing is an extension of Ray Tracing.
simpatico
Member
Which GPU are they comparing it to? I think for what it will likely cost, 7700XT perf would be welcome and pretty damn good with 1st party optimizations. Hell maybe that's even a lofty goal.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Digital Foundry continues to achieve new heights of stupidity.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Based on leaks, it seems like it will match 7700XT (and potentially exceed depending on RDNA3.5 optimizations). RTRT is a big question mark, but 2x-4x is above 7800XT territory. PSSR is harder to quantify obviously so that remains to be seen.
simpatico
Member
Hopefully. I would think if AMD found a way to get more rays with less watts we would probably already know about it though.
Lagspike_exe
Member
I would be perfectly happy with average ~45% increase in raster along with adding RTRT shadows / AO to a bunch of titles. The raster alone will smooth out a lot of low res / unstable FPS games and adding some RTRT will make the game look better rounded. PSSR should make the final result look great even on larger TVs.
Bojji
Member
I think end performance will be around that 7700XT-4070 level for raster and hybrid RT (probably closer to 4070 for that one).
But PT is super hard for AMD hardware (and Alex explained why) so they are talking about 7900XTX in that video, they doubt Pro will be faster than BIG TOP 360W 2022 AMD GPU - and I doubt it as well.
KuraiShidosha
Member
Spoiler: it can't
simpatico
Member
PSSR to me is the wildcard. Hopefully Sony found someone to make them some really special sauce. It would be a very wise investment for a console maker. I don't think we'll be breezing through 4k RT for a couple more GPU gens. Not even really close now and when PS4 first came out everyone thought it was right around the corner.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
TLW: Cynical no's and dismissiveness from the DF Team. I'm making this thread ficusing less on PT and more so to archive Richard's prediction of PS5 Pro vs 7900XTX RT performance overall and revisit once the eventual head to head comparisons are conducted.
Unless there are path traced games on the Pro, it’ll get destroyed by the 7900 XTX. What are you going to revisit exactly?
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Mister Wolf
Gold Member
What does it take to run Minecraft RTX at a decent framerate?
OverHeat
« generous god »
My 3090 used to run it okay ish
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
You're on about this
Killzone 4 Uses Raytracing For Its Real-Time Reflections
did a search and didn't find anything...mock and lock if old/posted. http://www.dsogaming.com/news/killzone-4-uses-raytracing-for-its-real-time-reflections/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DDYVcQNgu4Y# the full presentation has been uploaded. enjoy...
Ashamam
Member
Their coverage of the Pro has been shockingly bad, like drawing teeth to get them to acknowledge it might actually be worthwhile. But their coverage on the RT side of things whilst maybe inheriting some of the flavor has imho been accurate. The 2x 4x comment need to be viewed through a developer lens, what exactly is it doing faster and what will that actually look like in a game. eg, ok you can double the performance, so maybe double the rays which means what? Higher resolution reflections for example? Or better defined shadows? Or added RT shadows. All alluded to in the documents. But what is not alluded to is Path Tracing and massive upgrades that presumably would also have a CPU impact. This being the exact opposite of what Sony is trying to achieve.
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Ashamam
Member
They've asked it, what they aren't doing is try to answer it. Certainly don't ever look at the PS5 design philosophy and implementation. Totally out of bounds for DF.
Sure - but either you take the leaked docs at face value or you don't.
With 46% render performance - it didn't get questioned as the global number at all.
But with RT multiplier there's basically:
Ultimately performance numbers always need context to make sense - but when same source numbers are treated differently - that's an emotional response, not an analytical one.
ChiefDada
Gold Member
Whether games with heavy or stacked RT features in particular like RTGI, reflections, shadows, any combination will look better on PS5 Pro or 7900xtx as I've predicted in the past.
Ashamam
Member
The documents did provide context. Thats literally what the examples were added for.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
The Pro has a 70% deficit or so in rasterization to climb back so we’ll have to hope that PSSR is so good that it can outdo FSR from a much lower base resolution, and we also have to hope that the Pro can deliver RT performance 4x better than the regular PS5 consistently. If it’s only 2x, it likely won’t be enough to come all that close.
I wouldn’t bet on all of these factors coming to fruition.
Unless there's something I haven't seen yet - what context?
The case-studies in the leaks offer nothing except for resolution numbers. Taken at face value - one could infer render performance at 2x+ (and that's for a game that - presumably - uses no RT).
And 'Game with no RT' to 'Game with RT' is as unspecific as it gets - who knows what that actually refers to.
Ashamam
Member
For me I read that as within the current generational experience. So maybe RT reflections instead of SS for example. But generally in line with what we have already seen in titles on the standard PS5.
Its only a couple of examples of course, so you do have to be careful what you extrapolate from it.
But generally I'm looking at things through the assumption that Sony doesn't want two distinct development targets. Its 1 plus instead if that makes sense.
So its more likely to me that they add RT reflections on the Pro at full resolution or in the 'performance' 60fps mode vs the Standard only having RT reflections at 1/4 resolution in the fidelity mode. That kind of uplift. Where the work is already done in some form for the standard machine but can be pushed much further. I wouldn't think it common that RTGI would be present on the Pro but not on standard for instance as the developers then have to rig the lighting for one mode and then on top of that test against a RTGI version. It would add a lot of work. Not saying no developer would do that, just that it would be an unusual choice and not what Sony is pushing for.
Adding reflections exclusively on the Pro otoh engine dependent might be a much simpler process. Just turn them on and by their very nature the main consideration will be how well it fits the aesthetic and then perhaps limiting them to a few materials so there isn't a wholesale review needed. eg just have them on bodies of water instead of trying to tune them on every semi glossy surface in the game.
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ChiefDada
Gold Member
Much lower? I don't think so. Consider the case of Avatar Pandora, a heavy RT game. Look at the profile of 7900XTX vs 4070.
At ultra settings, the 4070 runs 1440p/50fps. The 7900XTX runs 4k/40. Remember, our resident insider Heisenberg expects PS5 Pro to perform at 4070 level based on his sources so not an unreasonable comparison (though i expect a bit bettet performance). It's also not farfetched to see PSSR quality mode achieve better image than native 4k with non ML AA. If we assume additional 1ms render budget for PSSR upscaling from 1440p, we are looking at PS5 Pro running a game which DF crownd best graphics of 2023 ~20% faster (~47fps) with noticeably better image quality via ML upscaling. This is the holistic approach DF is sorely lacking in their analysis. Now imagine how their Avatar analysis using their same methodology would shake out. I won't be surprised if they abandoned this approach just to spite the Pro console.
MikeM
Member
Turned on PT on Cyberpunk just now. 7600x/7900xt build. 4k output.
At a mix of high and ultra general settings, I get 20fps with FSR set to quality. Dumping it down to performance FSR gets me about 28fps. Ultra performance gets about 46fps.
PS5 Pro would need some serious RT improvements to get passed that.
At a mix of high and ultra general settings, I get 20fps with FSR set to quality. Dumping it down to performance FSR gets me about 28fps. Ultra performance gets about 46fps.
PS5 Pro would need some serious RT improvements to get passed that.
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OverHeat
« generous god »
You just killed the dream for some
MALpractice311
Member
The real question is, who cares about path tracing on consoles when it's almost guaranteed to reduce resolution and framerates? If you can't lock your game to 1440p, 60fps, I want nothing to do with unnecessary bells and whistles.
Bojji
Member
Using mod to reduce Ray bounces from 2x to 1x can get serious performance boost and it's not very noticeable.
MikeM
Member
Yeah just reality. Now, given that, it could absolutely PT if the PS5 Pro version runs a 30fps mode (or 40fps mode).You just killed the dream for some
For science, I shut off PT and ran normal RT with everything on, medium RT lighting, and FSR ultra performance runs at about 75-90fps driving around the city. Switching to FSR performance drops it to about 55-60fps. Seems if PS5 Pro is at least 7900xt level, it possible to get about 60fps RT modes assuming raster and CPU keep up.
MikeM
Member
Might give it a go. I don’t care for RT but if it saves the perf more then perhaps I would play using it fulltime.
ChiefDada
Gold Member
You just killed the dream for some
Ah OK I now I understand the disconnect with PC crowd: I'm not predicting we see PT games running at 60fps on PS5 Pro. I am talking about 30fps mode, not 60.
MikeM
Member
30fps MAY be possible. It would need a massive RT leap if the base raster is 7700xt or so. Thats assuming the CPU keeps up.
So - we agree it's without context then.
Because what you described above can be incredibly variable in terms of frame-costs - especially on a standard PS5. Eg. if reflections run at 2x - do shadows do 4x? 1.5x? Does it vary with scene topology what uplift you get? Etc.
Sony wants ways to highlight the Pro hw. They couldn't care less how developers go about it - it's how it worked last gen as well.
They provide the tools - you choose what to use and for what. But you can rest assured that 1st parties will put in extra effort - much like they did last gen - CBR was a rather distinct target from regular render pipeline the first time you implemented it. Also why so few 3rd party titles even bothered.
I mean - sure. But then lots of cross-platform titles already do exactly that. Pro may very well just be High/Mid to PS5's Medium/Low settings. But as I note above - we have very little to work with in terms of relative positioning here other than guesswork at the moment, and debating 'what will developers do' with it doesn't bring us any closer to that.
Average 3rd party will most likely just move a few sliders on their PC config and call it a day. 1st Parties will put in more work as always - but we don't yet know what the hw is capable of in concrete terms. What we have today is - 40% faster at 'rendering', it can run standard raster titles at 2x resolution, and it's a 'lot' faster at RT as a whole (but no clue how that breaks down to different parts of RT pipeline).
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Much lower? I don't think so. Consider the case of Avatar Pandora, a heavy RT game. Look at the profile of 7900XTX vs 4070.
At ultra settings, the 4070 runs 1440p/50fps. The 7900XTX runs 4k/40. Remember, our resident insider Heisenberg expects PS5 Pro to perform at 4070 level based on his sources so not an unreasonable comparison (though i expect a bit bettet performance). It's also not farfetched to see PSSR quality mode achieve better image than native 4k with non ML AA. If we assume additional 1ms render budget for PSSR upscaling from 1440p, we are looking at PS5 Pro running a game which DF crownd best graphics of 2023 ~20% faster (~47fps) with noticeably better image quality via ML upscaling. This is the holistic approach DF is sorely lacking in their analysis. Now imagine how their Avatar analysis using their same methodology would shake out. I won't be surprised if they abandoned this approach just to spite the Pro console.
I’d argue 1440p is a much lower base resolution than 4K, yes.
For one, DLSS almost never looks better than 4K. It can do some things better such as resolving fine details, but overall, 4K with halfway decent TAA is better.
For two, you’re assuming PSSR would be even better than DLSS out of the gate, which is incredibly unlikely. Furthermore, FSR with a custom resolution of say 1800p outputting at 4K would still be cheaper than native 4K and in all likelihood look better than PSSR at 1440p.
For three, the RT performance of a 4070 is assuming a 4x increase in RT performance which is very unlikely to happen very often. Realistically we’re looking at 2-3x most of the time.
So as I said, you need for everything to fall into place neatly for the Pro to stand a chance against the 7900 XTX. 4x RT performance, PSSR at least as good if not better than DLSS, and a game that doesn’t play particularly nicely with FSR that makes something like 1800p/w FSR look worse than 1440p with PSSR.
I wouldn’t be betting on this. In all likelihood, the 7900 XTX will constantly easily outdo the PS5 Pro, just like it easily crushes the 4070 99% of the time. No shame in that since it’s a big-ass power hungry GPU.
At that point, you may as well argue the 4070 is a better card than the 7900 XTX but spoilers: no one will agree with that.
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Magic Carpet
Member
I compare the PS5PRO to my current RTX4070. It can do CP2077 Path Tracing and everything set to Ultra but only if I set the game to 1080P 60 AND use DLSS.
Upping to 1440P I can't break 30FPS even with DLSS set to ugly mode. Something about 1440P Path Tracing is too hard on even the 4070, You can forget about 4k.
PSSR will be needed in everything the PS5Pro does.
And I hope PSSR wont need to be in UGLY mode to make it to 30FPS.
Upping to 1440P I can't break 30FPS even with DLSS set to ugly mode. Something about 1440P Path Tracing is too hard on even the 4070, You can forget about 4k.
PSSR will be needed in everything the PS5Pro does.
And I hope PSSR wont need to be in UGLY mode to make it to 30FPS.