Next gen game performance

Omaeka

Omaeka

Omaeka

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10 Apr 2012
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I was thinking (rare!) and this generation of games has seen so many titles that just don't look all that good, yet required absolutely insulting PC specifications to run. I personally don't believe there is a single game out at the moment that couldn't be optimized to run flawlessly on a 1GB card, let alone top of the line hardware.

Will the next generation of games get even worse and demand way more than this generation, and render every conventional graphics card obsolete? Will the developers stop being lazy and work hard for optimization or are we going to be forced to buy cards with this kind of grunt in order to game:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-034-PN&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=

Thoughts?
 
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Hopefully the next gen consoles will be more like a PC hardware wise and development for cross platform should be easier.

That's is if developers can be bothered at all, I read some stats somewhere showing the percentage of cross platform games for hot releases last December and the majority of them were <5% for PC sales.
 
New Gen Consoles = exclusive titles me thinks, at least to start off with. When Gears of war came out on PC my then gaming rig should have maxed it, but was a horrible stuttery mess. So yes Omaeka I think you may be right, new consoles = bad news for mid range gaming PC's
 
I can't even think about a PC exclusive that looks amazing either, except Legend of Grimrock, so the only people who can push the envelope on what's possible are the huge companies like Crytek/Ubisoft/Bethesda etc. who, from what you've both said, are rumored to be moving away from the platform?

Pretty worrying really, especially when a good PC costs so much.
 
Omaeka said:
so the only people who can push the envelope on what's possible are the huge companies like Crytek/Ubisoft/Bethesda etc.
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CDProjeckt will hopefully deliver!

Bohemia Interactive will deliver!

CCP will continue to deliver.


Who even cares about the rest? >.< I'm surprised you'd mention crytek or ubisoft now days though... What on earth have they brought us?


Looking at the leaked specs of the next consoles... They just sound identical to 5 year old mid range PCs in a fancy case. While they wont be pushing any boundaries it may hint at much smoother and most importantly effective crossplatform porting. I damn well hope so.
 
Better optimisation, but more exclusives.
If Valve are releasing a Steambox to compete with Nextgen, that means it's very powerful, more so than most PC's (unlikely), or the games are gonna improve a little, but have better optimisation due to the PC like architecture
 
jakspyder said:
CDProjeckt will hopefully deliver!

Bohemia Interactive will deliver!

CCP will continue to deliver.


Who even cares about the rest? >.< I'm surprised you'd mention crytek or ubisoft now days though... What on earth have they brought us?


Looking at the leaked specs of the next consoles... They just sound identical to 5 year old mid range PCs in a fancy case. While they wont be pushing any boundaries it may hint at much smoother and most importantly effective crossplatform porting. I damn well hope so.
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CDproj will probably be alright, but The Witcher 2 is overrated graphically IMO, Bohemia have ArmA 3 running on a very high end PC at 16fps from what I heard? :D CCP... who? :eek:

As for console specs, lets look at the 360/PS3... they are mid range 2004 PC power, yet can produce games that run smooth, which when made on PC run like ass and look just as bad, so what are 2008 PC spec'd games going to be like when a 670 can't even run Assassin's Creed 3 maxed when it's the card the game was designed around!.

As for what Ubisoft have bought us; Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 3 look amazing considering they were engineered for 8 year old hardware. Crytek created SSAO and made the best looking game of all time.
 
Assume by next generation of games you mean those that will follow the new batch of consoles. I think they will be more demanding than current games but I don't think they will render current cards obselete, people will just have to be realistic about game settings.

I think part of the 'problem' is that modern day gamers are often running high resolutions (1080p and above) whereas historically older games weren't just less taxing (in terms of texture size, shaders, poly count etc) but they were also being run at lower resolutions. So when a new console generation came out we'd be tackling games at say 1024x768 or 1680x1050.

Of course, performance issues will be prevalent but that is just par for the course; I remember how ridiculously demanding Halo was on PC relative to how it looks for example.
 
Thing is though, developers never have issues making games for PS3 & X360, and those are two different hardware set ups, so how can it be so hard to make games for AMD/Nvidia/Intel? That's only 3...
 
Next gen console games will be a big shock to PC gaming as they are likely to be exclusive console titles & or poorly ported. MS have no incentive to help port anymore now they retired GFWL & Sony do not care at all for PC gaming as it does not help them sell the PS4 does it! I think you will find PC gaming dips like it did in 2006-7 as it will take time to translate the console code & get some dev tools which take the hard work out of the process.

Intel/Nvidia/MS all made tools which helped save a lot of money in the porting process from Xbox 360 to PC. I doubt MS or Intel will now as the next gen consoles are based around AMD components so that only leaves Nvidia who will have no choice as PC gaming will be all they have left if AMD as rumoured have all the CPU/GPU contracts :eek:

Historically PC gaming has always dipped when a new console launches go look back at the PS2/Xbox/Xbox 360 launches the PC games market took a hit for a while on big budget titles although you will always get exceptions.

So make the most of this year as its most likely the last for a while where PC gets most big budget multiplatform games!!
 
Omaeka said:
Thing is though, developers never have issues making games for PS3 & X360, and those are two different hardware set ups, so how can it be so hard to make games for AMD/Nvidia/Intel? That's only 3...
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The spec never changes in the consoles.
How many different PC spec's are there?
 
jakspyder said:
CCP will continue to deliver.
so.
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Deliver what exactly?
They have one pc game.
They have one console game.
That is it.
They have currently shelved development of their other IP title.
That will be in mothballs for some time, which is a shame.

So they will continue to deliver player driven content for their one PC game? That isnt a hard delivery.
 
Omaeka said:
Thing is though, developers never have issues making games for PS3 & X360, and those are two different hardware set ups, so how can it be so hard to make games for AMD/Nvidia/Intel? That's only 3...
Click to expand...

There are dozens of different models of graphics cards for each, and dozens of different drivers. And that's just the graphics cards. Different motherboards, amounts of ram, operating systems. There are literally thousands of different hardware setups, not just 3 :rolleyes:
 
Yep the PC platform has a huge number of variables compared to consoles, even once you get out of the innards there are differences like peripherals (needing to support a wider range of controllers), need to support more resolutions/refresh rates than just 720/1080 @ 60hz.

The only advantage a PC has in terms of ease of development versus a console that I can see is maturity and experience on the platform i.e. when a new console comes out it takes a couple of years for developers to really get to grips with it and start fully taking advantage of the hardware (look at late Dreamcast games compared to early ones for example). Whereas the PC platform (lets say DX9) has been around for years. Even then, this is probably outweighed by new graphics card technologies being introduced at a more frequent rate than new consoles anyway. PC devs have constantly moving target (that is a very fuzzy target to start with) versus console devs who have targets that stay the same for a few years and then undergo a drastic change (so there is an intial steep learning curve but once you get your eye in you know you are always aiming at the same thing). Take Duke Nukem Forever, an example of a game that changed directions several times during the course of development because PC hardware and software was evolving all the time and they found themselves at risk of falling behind the curve.

As for the point about PC gaming 'dipping' in 2006-7 I can't say I noticed that particularly although that's not to say 2006 was a vintage year. If I look back historically I'm sure I can find at least half a dozen games every year on PC that I either enjoyed or were well received by others... even if there are a lot of console-exclusive games that doesn't mean to say that there aren't good games on PC as well, I don't have time to play every game that comes out anyway.

To be honest even if the 'worst' should happen and next gen games are heavily focussed on consoles with either non-existent or shoddy underperforming ports to PC then it won't be that big a deal as PC has such a massive back catalogue of games that should keep me going until at least PS5 generation.
 
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I'm relying on PC hardware developers to see where PC gaming goes
If Valve do release the Steambox and the VR goggles and get attention, developers will want to port to PC due to the sales that they could be missing out on
Same goes for Nvidia and their technologies, oculos rift, etc.
 
Sleepery said:
There are dozens of different models of graphics cards for each, and dozens of different drivers. And that's just the graphics cards. Different motherboards, amounts of ram, operating systems. There are literally thousands of different hardware setups, not just 3 :rolleyes:
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All RAM works the same, all Motherboards work pretty much the same, and on top of that neither effects gaming performance all that much, if at all. As for graphics cards, you only really need to open the door for the companies and they'll do the rest with drivers, however tons of games only work on one card or neither, because they just slap the game onto windows pretty much CTRL+C and paste, they don't even bother looking at how the hardware does things and changing their code around for it to work. Hopefully the consoles will behave more similarly to PC's than before so it'll be easier for the lazy B's to slap it on our platform but the consoles are just APU's and little microchips for the graphics like before.
 
You still need to cater for different amounts of RAM, if somebody has 2GB RAM then that will limit what you can do (in terms of acceptable performance levels) compared to say 6GB RAM i.e. texture size etc. On consoles, everyone for a given platform has the same amount of memory so you only have to target that, you can can optimise the texture quality, level sizes etc etc for that target level. Whereas on PC, you can't please everyone without putting in a variety of settings - you either dumb things down to keep within limits of a low RAM machine and fail to take advantage of the extra RAM in other systems, or you push the boat out and have people with low memory moaning about swapping etc (or exclude them altogether by setting the min spec higher).

In most cases, the solution adopted is to put in the ability to change gfx settings (to cater for a wider audience), which is additional work not required on consoles.

In terms of different graphics cards the same applies, drivers can't fix everything, cards have different VRAM amounts, different support for various functions (e.g. DX11.1) and so forth.
 
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