Watch_Dogs 2 was recently patched, fixing a few things, among which the few performance issues we showed you the other day on PS4 Pro. The result is quite impressive, as it now seems that the game is able to maintain a perfect 30 fps framerate. Kudos to the developers who did not lose any time to address the problem.
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Dull flat textures, bland lighting, low polygon models.
To me, it just looks like a 360/PS3 game running at a higher resolution TBH.
Dull flat textures, bland lighting, low polygon models.
After a while, you get used to 30fps, but if the game has framerate and framepacing issues, it really breaks immersion and significantly detracts from the experience - not to mention the health related issues like headaches, nausea, etc.
As for XB1 Scorpio, if Microsoft does indeed upgrade the XB1 Scorpio CPU to the extent that it can deliver better visuals than PS4 Pro and 60fps as well, while the same games on PS4 Pro are still running at 30fps and the two consoles' prices are similar, that will influence a lot of people to go to Microsoft's side.
I really hope Microsoft gets a custom version of one of the new AMD Zen CPUs, from everything that has been shown and talked about, they seem to be a really great improvement over the Bulldozer and Jaguar series of CPUs - ranging from 2 to 4 times the performance.
This would put XB1 Scorpio's CPU significantly ahead of PS4's Pro - which allied with XB1 Scorpio's GPU, around 33% more powerful than PS4 Pro's - thus enabling the much dreamed 4k@60fps on consoles.
The only question left is if Microsoft has the courage to actually encourage developers to make 60fps vs 30fps versions of XB1 games, which would leave most XB1 owners feeling "left-behind".
So its great to see it runs smooth.
is it fun though?
.
All following thoughts after about 3 hours of play:
I'm playing on a 4k TV on Pro, looks great. Sharp, colourful, clean, no tearing or performance hits that I've noticed - Some vistas really make you do a double take. Very fun game too. Great concept pulled off well.
The "ubi grind" hasn't set in yet which I'm happy about and main missions have great design with a lot of ways to accomplish them, some not being possible, depending on how you styled your level up points. More strategic than one might expect as well. Obviously not talking Total War levels lol, but you have to think about your style and the level up tree and take that mindset into the missions with you.
Also worth noting and something I was worried about: The characters aren't as annoying as they seem. Make sure to listen to the logs about their background in the hacker HQ, it assures they are not just "comedy characters" and adds just right amount of depth to their personas and motivations.
I'm having a blast and about to start another session right now :).
AMD's Jaguar CPU is around an underclocked FX-8120 or i7 2600K. I'm not saying Microsoft will put a high-end version of a Zen CPU on XB1 Scorpio, but AMD itself said that Zen's 8-core CPU delivers twice the performance of the FX-8350. If XB1 Scorpio's custom 8-core CPU is anywhere near it, that's a very significant improvement over PS4 Pro's CPU - 2-4 times more powerful depending on the specifications Microsoft decides. Not to mention all the benefits of a new architecture.
As for memory bandwidth, PS4 Pro has only 218GB/s, while Microsoft said XB1 Scorpio will have 320GB/s. That's almost 47% more memory bandwidth.
To resume, a 2-4 times more powerful CPU, a 33% more powerful GPU, and 47% more memory bandwidth are enough to make a 4k game running at 30fps on PS4 Pro run at 60fps on XB1 Scorpio with the same graphics - as long as the CPU is the determining factor on framerate and there's no GPU bottleneck.
Like Simplex is saying, don't expect even Scorpio to be able to reach full native 4K on a game like Uncharted 4 AND a solid perfect 60fps too.e. PS4 Pro can't do it at native 4K and 30fps after all. And I mention solid framerate because that is what we are talking about in this article, devs shouldn't be targeting 60fps in Scorpio if it can't consistently stay at it.
I don't think it would "influence" people to "go to Microsoft's side" either way (in that context you make it sound like you would be dropping PS4 support and going Xbox going forward). Will The Last of Us 2 or Day's Gone or Detroit Become Human or Horizon Zero Dawn or Insomniac Games' Spiderman be on Scorpio? Or will it be the 5th Forza game for the Xbone console, Forza 7 next year, that will finally sway a lot of us to go Xbox.............. even though it will be on PC too? :)
But if they pair these same really high-end GPUs with older and much weaker CPUs, the CPU bottleneck is really going to strip down the GPU's raw processing power to the point that resolution just simply doesn't matter anymore.
This is how PCs work, you can read the same thing from Digital Foundry's latest article, "Batman: Return to Arkham has stealth PS4 Pro support":
"on PC, where CPU power in particular is instrumental in brute-forcing engines originally designed for 30fps gameplay to hit twice the frame-rate."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2...
Below is a Youtube video of a user who paired a GTX 980 Ti GPU (from 2015) with a Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPU (from 2008) and ran GTA 5. It's a 7 minutes video and while the title mentions 4k, the first 4 minutes are of the game running at 1080p resolution, the last 3 minutes are of the game running at 4k resolution with the same settings and as you will be able to see for yourself, the average framerate at 4k resolutin stays the same as at 1080p resolution.
GTA V at 4K with a Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ GTX 980TI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS-yXIAiFQw
In this case, the CPU is the biggest bottleneck to framerate, far more than the GPU's raw processing power. And the selected resolution just simply doesn't matter - even at 1080p resolution, the framerate still dips below 30fps at times.
If the requirements I mentioned are met and a game runs at 30fps on PS4 Pro, regardless of its native resolution, it will run at 60fps on XB1 Scorpio with the same graphics. In this scenario, a lot of people would choose XB1 Scorpio over PS4 Pro, whether to play at 1080p or 4k, since it would be a 60fps console vs 30fps console choice. And most console(s)' players wouldn't buy a gaming PC just to play Microsoft's exclusives, they would still buy a XB1.
As a game dev what you said is totally on point its extremely difficult to achieve the stuff the devs are doing on the consoles. We need to understand devs don't control the hardware we get we have to do our best with what we get and many times it’s a real shitty situation.
Yeah its sucks that a new PS4 Pro can't do 60 FPS on WD2 but its an open world game which is heavily dependent on massive amounts of content to calculate and render which kills any CPU and GPU. It does not surprise me at all that its not 60FPS, but yeah it sucks but it is what it is.
Lets see what MS does and if they do in fact use a new Zen CPU and double the logical threads to 16 and raise the clocks, that would be massive for them(I personally hope so). Unless the Pro games do the 1080 ultra mode route then 60FPS is probably not going to be the norm when they do the sub 4K down sampled rez route(which WD2 did, the hardware nums needed is just not there so that is why its 30fps).
I see worst the imagen quality now, is posible? The firts days looks better with more anti alias, but now the framerate its solid as well.
Regards.
It's just that people forget how incredibly freaking horrible AMD's Jaguar CPUs are - even in 2013 they were already shit, they are low-end mobile devices' CPUs that were designed for laptops, netbooks, etc.
IF - and it's a really big IF - Scorpio's custom CPU was a modified version of even the lowest Zen CPU model, which is a brand new high-end Desktop PC CPU architecture by design, the increase in performance would be more than enough to push 60fps.
XB1 Scorpio's specs make it more similar to a next generation console than just an enhanced version like PS4 Pro. So what people need to think is IF Scorpio's CPU is 3 times more powerful than PS4 Pro's, what the hell are developers gonna do with it that isn't graphics or memory bandwidth related?
I could even say they would add more physics simulations - like Nvidia's PhysX and AMD's TressFX, special effects and better AI, but we all know that most developers would not spend more time and resources just for one version and these things take time.
So most developers would probaly do what they're doing with PS4 Pro and graphics improvements - because that's all the PS4 Pro's 2.3x more powerful GPU allows for and is the easier/faster route. Similarly most developers would just take the easier/faster route that is doubling the framerate with a 3 times more powerful CPU.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and Microsoft might as well use the same CPU as XB1 or use a custom one based on one of the AMD FX Bulldozer CPUs, which while would be a great improvement, unless they went for one of the high-end models, it wouldn't be enough for 60fps. Time will tell.