Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart RDNA 2 Ray Tracing

[BobShark]

Not true at all.
Next generation games for the console devs will squeeze more out of the hardware available to them than they could with pc.

I have always looked at pc being brute forced.

+1. Console clearly has been (for years) and will continue to be better optimised than PC in the vast majority of cases.

The situation is simple: Console devs have a known hardware spec and power envelope to develop for and can wring every ounce out of it, whereas for PC that level of optimisation simply isn't possible given the variety of possible configurations.

 

[Grim5]

Then explain how a 8700k cannot lock to 60 FPS in AC odyssey while 1.6 ghz jaguar cores lock to smooth rock solid 30

or explain how wd:legion suffers from frame drops below 60 with a 5800x (400 dollar cpu) while the ps5/series s/series x does not suffer

console games always require 1.5-3 times more ipc/single core power on PCs. you can argue all you want. i can found countless examples

gpu optimization is better, it can be up to %30 but some games push it towards %70-150 so i won't dwell much on there

Please provide evidence for all those fps claims, I'm sure you're wrong but I don't want to spend an hour digging up benchmarks so you can do it since it's your bold claim

 

[Relentless81]

Now why don't you put your pc components on members market? Tons of people will want to buy them and you can go play some irrelevant console kiddie game.

I did, made a small fortune out of it and bought a Series X. PC components for gaming pricing is a joke compared to the cost of a Console I wouldn't be able to live with myself paying the kind of money for a GPU compared to a Console its a mugs game. Yes I can afford it but I point blank refuse to be taken for a mug, even before Covid and Scalpers GPU pricing was on an upward trend now its just ludicrous.

 

[Wrinkly]

Ironic that people are nitpicking RT details in R&C but were willing to give a free pass to Metro EE and its brightly lit underground area.

I'm not sure R&C has RT based GI, it certainly doesn't look like it.

I personally found the lighting in ME Enhanced to be good, although it was another RT light title. I even commented with the inclusion of DF's video explaining why some areas were lighter. Technically it was correct, artistically is up for debate. If you look back, the original ME was called out for being too dark with RT on, which was due to single bounce lighting.

 

[oguzsoso]

Please provide evidence for all those fps claims, I'm sure you're wrong but I don't want to spend an hour digging up benchmarks so you can do it since it's your bold claim

can't lock to rock solid 60 in the city while driving, frames fluctuating between 55-65 with cpu bound (note that this is 5800x, supposed to be %60-75 faster than the "peasant" 3.6 ghz 8 mb cache zen 2 that is present on consoles. imagine how horrible the frame drops are with a 3700x.

5800x being cpu bound between 55-70 fps in wd:legion

series s/x hitting rock solid 60 in the city while driving;

3700x is even horrible, no where near the console experience;

(rofl 44-48 fps)

just 3 months before, i made a bold claim where i said 3700x will not be able to keep disparity with consoles. these games are already proving my theory.

if the consoles can hit rock solid 60 and 3700x can't, it is clear that there's an optmization overhead in PCs in regards to CPUs


you're welcome

 

[Brun]

I'm not sure R&C has RT based GI, it certainly doesn't look like it.

I personally found the lighting in ME Enhanced to be good, although it was another RT light title. I even commented with the inclusion of DF's video explaining why some areas were lighter. Technically it was correct, artistically is up for debate. If you look back, the original ME was called out for being too dark with RT on, which was due to single bounce lighting.

Haven't seen the DF video, but there were definitely some aspects to ME's GI that weren't technically correct. In the Caspian map in the buildings near the train, outside the door was dark. It brightened as you walked outside. Should have been completely the other way round, outside appearing over-exposed when indoors.

 

[Gerard]

Really this nonsense again? We even have ps4 exclusives now on pc and equivalent gpus run them on par with a ps4 or ps4 pro. There is no such thing as magic fairy dusty console optimization.

Now why don't you put your pc components on members market? Tons of people will want to buy them and you can go play some irrelevant console kiddie game.

Show me on the doll where the bad console touched you!

You must have missed the discussions with amd and nvidia when mantle was announced and the subject of lost performance was brought up due to the messiness of dx11 and how much overhead there was in the driver and dx11.

Consoles have far less of that so performance lost on the pc due to driver overheads and direct x are pretty much non existent so they can generally get more out of lesser hardware. It’s not “magic fairy dust optimisation” its simply less overheads and being able to interact with the hardware without having to dive through many layers, or as they call it “coding close to the metal”. You might want to read up on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_to_Metal

 

[BobShark]

Show me on the doll where the bad console touched you!

 

[oguzsoso]

Show me on the doll where the bad console touched you!

You must have missed the discussions with amd and nvidia when mantle was announced and the subject of lost performance was brought up due to the messiness of dx11 and how much overhead there was in the driver and dx11.

Consoles have far less of that so performance lost on the pc due to driver overheads and direct x are pretty much non existent so they can generally get more out of lesser hardware. It’s not “magic fairy dust optimisation” its simply less overheads and being able to interact with the hardware without having to dive through many layers, or as they call it “coding close to the metal”. You might want to read up on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_to_Metal

**

 

[PrincessFrosty]

can't lock to rock solid 60 in the city while driving, frames fluctuating between 55-65 with cpu bound (note that this is 5800x, supposed to be %60-75 faster than the "peasant" 3.6 ghz 8 mb cache zen 2 that is present on consoles. imagine how horrible the frame drops are with a 3700x.

I'd be interested to know if there's parity in quality settings between the consoles and PC in these tests. Because the consoles optimize settings which generally means crippling them vs what a high end PC can handle. One thing turning up the visual settings does is actually put more demand on the CPU. One of the big moves with DX12 was to attempt to reduce the CPU overhead that modern graphics loads were causing because they were starting to become a substantial overhead.

Same goes for things like traffic and pedestrian density, and if there's parity on these kinds of settings. They contribute to additional graphics overhead but if they're being controlled by AI then they also add to the overhead of the CPU. So can other subtle optimizations such as the frequency you calculate the physics at, these are the kind of things that are sometimes hard to spot in side by side comparisons and can result in varying loads on the CPU.

 

[oguzsoso]

I'd be interested to know if there's parity in quality settings between the consoles and PC in these tests. Because the consoles optimize settings which generally means crippling them vs what a high end PC can handle. One thing turning up the visual settings does is actually put more demand on the CPU. One of the big moves with DX12 was to attempt to reduce the CPU overhead that modern graphics loads were causing because they were starting to become a substantial overhead.

Same goes for things like traffic and pedestrian density, and if there's parity on these kinds of settings. They contribute to additional graphics overhead but if they're being controlled by AI then they also add to the overhead of the CPU. So can other subtle optimizations such as the frequency you calculate the physics at, these are the kind of things that are sometimes hard to spot in side by side comparisons and can result in varying loads on the CPU.

let's see

4-5 cars on the horizon, 3 npcs visible, a fairly simple - easy to render scene can drop to 50-53 fps with a 5800x (would probably go below 40 fps with a 3700x)

actual proof that it drops near 45 with a 3700x;

)

lots of cars (5-6), 4-5 visible npcs, rock solid 60 fps in the entirety of the road

 

[Godhand007]

+1. Console clearly has been (for years) and will continue to be better optimised than PC in the vast majority of cases.

The situation is simple: Console devs have a known hardware spec and power envelope to develop for and can wring every ounce out of it, whereas for PC that level of optimisation simply isn't possible given the variety of possible configurations.

There are exceptions like DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. There used to be more titles like this but alas.

 

[Godhand007]

I'd be interested to know if there's parity in quality settings between the consoles and PC in these tests. Because the consoles optimize settings which generally means crippling them vs what a high end PC can handle. One thing turning up the visual settings does is actually put more demand on the CPU. One of the big moves with DX12 was to attempt to reduce the CPU overhead that modern graphics loads were causing because they were starting to become a substantial overhead.

Same goes for things like traffic and pedestrian density, and if there's parity on these kinds of settings. They contribute to additional graphics overhead but if they're being controlled by AI then they also add to the overhead of the CPU. So can other subtle optimizations such as the frequency you calculate the physics at, these are the kind of things that are sometimes hard to spot in side by side comparisons and can result in varying loads on the CPU.

Do we really have settings that justify such a performance hit on PCs these days? I know it's an old trope but Orginal Crysis had meaningful settings which made the game look almost completely different from low to Ultra/Very High. I remember playing it on my 9600 GT (it was the price/performance king). Now you just get some higher shadow settings and better texture packs sometimes that's pretty much it for exclusive PC settings.

 

[oguzsoso]

 

[PrincessFrosty]

let's see

4-5 cars on the horizon, 3 npcs visible, a fairly simple - easy to render scene can drop to 50-53 fps with a 5800x (would probably go below 40 fps with a 3700x)

I was going to say in my initial reply that it's too hard to eyeball well and what we ideally need is to pull the settings files off disk to do any kind of objective comparison, and I didn't expect we'd be able to do this until the consoles DRM was cracked and we could get access to the file system. So I was going to fall back to my fave person for high quality technical breakdowns, Alex from Digital Foundry who does a lot of this purely from sight.

BUT that sneaky sleuth actually did do a Xbox Series X vs PC comparison video and found that the PC version of the game ships with the config files for the consoles and covers it in his comparison here

And actually just watching this video through now, he mentions specifically the config files go way past the settings exposed in the graphical menu, which is precisely what I mean about these kinds of console games being "optimized", because often there's all sorts of little tweaks that have subtle impacts on visuals but save on performance. Consoles at the end of the day are basically budget gaming systems, the APU horsepower isn't great vs high end PC even at launch, and they need to cut corners. And this has been completely typical of consoles since forever when comparing vs PC and why I knew before even looking there was no way this was an even comparison.

Here's some of the highlights if you cba to watch the video:

• Turned off dynamic headlight shadows from cars
  
• Quarter resolution global illumination
  
• Reduced shadow settings
  
• Don't use high resolution texture pack the PC uses
• Dynamic resolution scaling (4k output is actually only 1440p most of the time)
  
• Ray Traced reflections on the PC uses native resolution where as consoles force this to 1080p
• Reduced range objects are ray traced in reflections (PC medium equiv)
• Dynamic particles like smoke are not shown in ray traced reflections
• Screen Space Reflections quality used in RT reflections (Lower than PC medium equiv)
• RT Reflection ray distance and rate of decay lower (Lower than PC medium equiv)
• Console fall back to cubemap reflections on rougher surfaces quicker (lower than PC Medium equiv)

As well as "other optimized settings too long to list in this video", from the look of the config file it's a list a mile long so the stuff above is probably a fraction of the total difference.

He goes on to apply the console settings to PC as close as you can (minus dynamic resolution, and with the PCs slightly higher RT setting) and has it running in native 4k on a RTX 2060 Super and core i5 8400 lol.

Do we really have settings that justify such a performance hit on PCs these days? I know it's an old trope but Orginal Crysis had meaningful settings which made the game look almost completely different from low to Ultra/Very High. I remember playing it on my 9600 GT (it was the price/performance king). Now you just get some higher shadow settings and better texture packs sometimes that's pretty much it for exclusive PC settings.

Like you can see above a lot of the time the optimizations consoles get are not the sort of thing you'd normally get in the settings on a PC. Some of them are exposed to PC users through graphical menu options, but there's hundreds and hundreds of variables that go into modern game engines that control level of detail and it's always been the case that consoles are optimized by having many of these tweaked to get performance up to acceptable levels. Watch the video above and Alex scrolls through the config file to show you an idea of everything you could in theory change, it's crazy long and why he only covers a fraction of it.

On PC many of these settings are just bundled into the preset "high", "ultra" modes or whatever, mostly just to make it accessible and easy to change for novices who don't know what they're doing. But most games do store these config files in plain text so you can just edit them manually if you wish to push settings hard (and harder than presets allow).

 

[oguzsoso]

he probably nitpicked a location where 8400 gets locked 60

most of those settings are gpu bound and they were reduced so that it can run ray tracing, which is completely irrevelant with our discussion

in the end, none of those settings meaningfully change the image quality either. you're practically forced upon unnecessary settings that hog down your system

bruh, i had a 8400. even on LOWEST possible settings, i mean LOWEST OF lows, it couldn't hit locked 60 in athens and sparta. end of discussion. it simply CAN't and never will with the OVERHEAD present on console ports.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

he probably nitpicked a location where 8400 gets locked 60

most of those settings are gpu bound and they were reduced so that it can run ray tracing, which is completely irrevelant with our discussion

No it's not, because graphical settings have an impact on the CPU as well. This is what people were saying about DirectX and the kind of workload the drivers and DirectX have to do translating graphical calls into instructions the GPU can execute and why I talked about things like DX12 moving towards doing that more efficiently because of the burden graphics were starting to have on the CPU was starting to get high.

*edit*

Oh it turns out to be even worse because the comparison done in Alex's video was the original launch game which runs at 30fps on the consoles as the target. So whatever this 60FPS patch is doing it's almost certainly reducing those setting lower to achieve that increased performance.

Also viewing the example of "rock solid" FPS of driving through London on the consoles actually does show minor dips. Nothing big but neither are the PC ones at significantly higher settings.

 

[chris85oc]

he probably nitpicked a location where 8400 gets locked 60

most of those settings are gpu bound and they were reduced so that it can run ray tracing, which is completely irrevelant with our discussion

in the end, none of those settings meaningfully change the image quality either. you're practically forced upon unnecessary settings that hog down your system

bruh, i had a 8400. even on LOWEST possible settings, i mean LOWEST OF lows, it couldn't hit locked 60 in athens and sparta. end of discussion. it simply CAN't and never will with the OVERHEAD present on console ports.

Your 8400 is a weak 6core/6thread cpu. Compared to ps5’s 8 core 16thread.

Even my 4790k has 8 threads… your cpu was obsolete even when it came out. Nothing to do with ‘console magic optimization’.

Also like it was mentioned before, the ‘optimization’ is usually cut down settings that in some cases are lower than lowest on PC. And then you get the PC users testing maxed out everything vs console going all like but cant hold 60fps wut? Sure the ps5 has some settings maxed, while others not.

Now the SSD, yeah that’s untouchable until RTX-io, directstorage etc come to the masses. Also ‘the masses’ arent even on highend ssds…

 

[oguzsoso]

Your 8400 is a weak 6core/6thread cpu. Compared to ps5’s 8 core 16thread.

Even my 4790k has 8 threads… your cpu was obsolete even when it came out. Nothing to do with ‘console magic optimization’.

Now the SSD, yeah that’s untouchable until RTX-io, directstorage etc come to the masses. Also ‘the masses’ arent even on highend ssds…

we were talking about ac odyssey

ps4 runs this game at a rock solid 30 fps with a 1.6 ghz jaguar chip (as far as i know, developers get 6-7 cores)

coffee lake has 2 times more ipc than jaguar (maybe 2.5-3, i don't know. at least 2, i know of)
3.8 ghz all core speed is 2.4 times faster than console's clock speed of 1.6 ghz

4.5-5 times more single power/ipc = and barely 43-52 fps in athens and sparta

look at this sweet obsolete 5800x barely getting 58-70 fps cpu bound while having 6-7 times more ipc/single core power than a ps4 (it only gets 58-70 fps because it is exactly %45-50 faster than an i5 8400. as you can see, PC needed an overpowered zen 3 to hit rock solid 60+ fps in this console port. you can cry all you want. it is real. even a series s will easily hit rock solid 60 fps with a 3.6 ghz 8 mb crappy zen 2 chip with SUPERIOR console optimization while the exact CHIP on PC will get 44-48 fps, just like the 8400 (4750g)


you are the one who is obsolete here, with your trash arguments.

you people simply can't cope with the fact of console games being superiorly better CPU optimized in a variety of games

ignored, have a good day

(final addition, your trash 4790k will render 39-45 fps in athens and sparta while the ps4 gracefully locks to 30. keep buying and shelling out money to developers to hit rock solid 60 fps with your overpowered cpus compared to consoles. you're practically being robbed of 1.5-3 times more performance but keep being a happy sheep)

 

[chris85oc]

we were talking about ac odyssey

ps4 runs this game at a rock solid 30 fps with a 1.6 ghz jaguar chip (as far as i know, developers get 6-7 cores)

coffee lake has 2 times more ipc than jaguar
3.8 ghz is 2.4 times faster than console's clock speed of 1.6 ghz

4.5-5 times more single power/ipc = and barely 43-52 fps in athens and sparta

look at this sweet obsolete 5800x barely getting 58-70 fps cpu bound while having 6-7 times more ipc/single core power than a ps4

you are the one who is obsolete here, with your trash arguments.

you people simply can't cope with the fact of console being superiorly better CPU optimized in a variety of games

ignored, have a good day

The good old ignored cause you cant argue. Good one.

Thinking 30 fps on ps4 means you can get steady 60 fps on a much more powerful cpu. True ignorance, so many factors that could limit the performance and has nothing to do with ‘magic optimization’.

Enjoy your ignorance i guess

Even funnier is i love my ps5, its an amazing machine with great games and i kinda ignore my pc atm, useless and no games atm… that doesn’t mean i gotta turn into an ignorant fanboy.