News Digital Foundry compares UE4 PC and PlayStation 4 ports

I'm excited about the ps4, that 4GB VRAM is the most significant thing about it, of course the updated CPU & GPU is going to help a lot but the adequate VRAM is a really good & sensible move, it'll work wonders for console ports since they were playing with 256MB VRAM.

My next scratch build might well be for a ps4, I'm quite hungry to do some nice console modding so I'm pre ordering one just so I can do a scratch built case for it straight away, I don't want no plastic box.

On topic I don't think there was much difference between the 2, PC was nicer but not by much.

 

PS4 is a slightly overclocked 7850 attached to a mid range AMD mobile processor with a large chunk of speedy RAM.

Its really that simple.

If you have an i5 or an i7 of any vintage and a 7850 then you already have a machine that is faster.

 

Considering the time they've had with the Ps4, it looks pretty good.

Post launch is when we'll see the best, though, as everyone knows that developers eek the best performance from consoles as they get more and more familiar with the device.

 

While technically that will be true spuzzle the setup you listed would struggle to run ps3 games at 1080p with all details maxed let alone next gen games.

Consoles biggest advantage has always been its ability to be coded direct, that 7850 is likely already pretty close to a 680 in performance terms and they have had th dev kit for 2-3 months imagine what they can do in a year or more.

Sad facts are There's a lot of console games that have interested me in the years gone by and that's why I still buy them.

PC is home of fps, simulation,mmo and strat titles all other game types perform better with a game pad or steering wheel / joystick.

We pc gamers may just have to accept our fate in that reguard.

 

doubt it - since nearly all devs are saying they can get far more performance out of the gpu thanks to not having the bloatware called directx in the way

 

"Playstation" still sounds like a bad translation

 

The lack of decent dropped loot and the forced inheritance of gold/stash items/artisan levels for new characters are what killed the game for me. Waiting on the full release of Path of Exile, which is the most aRPG fun I've had in ages.

 

It remains to be seen however how the games will work with the PS4 (which will be heavily optimised) and how new games will work with our PC hardware (which should benefit a little from the optimisation for a similar architecture).

Sorry for double post, too lazy to switch to forum view ^^

 

Look, I've said this before. There isn't any magical sauce in the PS4s hardware. We already know what it is and what its capabilities are.

Just because game devs know exactly what the weaknesses of every PS4 will be and can design around them doesn't suddenly make them strengths.

And the idea that PCs aren't suited to any type of gaming is just stupid. Xbox pads and wheels work on PC too.

 

Something that people seem to keep leaving out of the price comparison between the PS4 and Gaming PCs is the cost of the games themselves!

Using the PS3 and Steam as comparisons, the typical AAA new releases on the PS3 are in the region of £50 to £60, while on Steam they typically retail brand new for £30, sometimes £35. I recently picked up the Survival Edition of Tomb Raider on PC for £26 pre-order!

Second example: Bioshock Infinite on Playstation Network is £49.99 compared to Steam where it is £29.99.

When you add up the price difference for a large number of games (I have 103 on my Steam list! Granted they're not all release date AAAs) then a Gaming PC can quite easily end up paying for itself...

Then of course we get into the flexibility and scalability of PCs compared to consoles; good luck finding many 1080p native games for the PS3 (they're mostly 720p only or rendered at lower res and upscaled). Sure the PS4 can probably handle 1080p no problem, but it's still worth pointing out given that people made the same arguments RE: PCs when the PS3 came out...

That and I certainly use my PC for far more than gaming! The real cost comparison between a console and gaming PC would be the cost of the PC vs. the cost of a Console plus the cost of a mid-to-low spec laptop and/or an tablet for general email and internet outside of gaming!

So, Decent gaming PC for £900 to £1000 (ball-park example) "all in"
compared to £300 for a PS4 plus £400 for laptop/tablet plus £10 to £20 per game extra...

Where's the cost saving of getting a console?

 

They do but pc gaming to me is first and foremost keyboard and mouse. And that applys to the bulk of pc gamers that i know and play with.

We would not get our gamepads out for borderlands 2 or crysis 3 i can tell you that for certain. There has not been a good driving game on pc since grid was made.

The fact that to play and beat darksiders 2 on its max difficulty you need a xbox 360 controller is kinda sad in a way. That applys to so many games though of its type. GTA4 plays better with a 360 pad than it does with a keyboard and mouse.

MMOs and strat games are the home of macro land and 16 button mouses to use most of them if your playing at a decent level they are kinda required.

 

It's not about coding around weaknesses, it's about efficiency. Code that works on multiple different hardware configurations is inherently inefficient.

 

Just like PC game sales, console games that have past there hype date so release the game that was £50 which only the crappiest shops would sell a game for become £20 which again only the crappiest shops sell for, all the games go for cheaper if you shop around otherwise I would agree with the price of console games being harsh but for current gen console games the prices are quite a joke, PSN are stingy as hell compared to steam lol & DLC unless it's as awesome as what rockstar did for GTA IV then I'll just pass unless it's going really cheap.

I'm a busy person though & have an awesome steam backlog of games which will take me a long time to play through so waiting for prices to come down is no problem but a lot of PC games have been trying to push up to console like prices & then weeks later can be grabbed for half or less price which isn't very nice for keen supporters, I think keen supporters who buy on pre order or while the game is new like within 2 weeks of release should get a very nice discount on DLC for extra incentive but I doubt they will do that, some are giving extra incentive to pre orders though which is nice but I think discount DLC would be better or even a discount on the publishers future games.

I still buy pre orders if it's something I'm very keen on playing & I'd kinda happily pay £40 for a console game knowing it will be superior on ps4 compared to a ps3, I do mostly go for exclusives on console, as a gamer you miss out on some excellent games if you restrict yourself to PC.

 

so less ports to PC then since it has that awefull bloatware called windows and directx slowing things down


will dig out the article , but some games are actually something like 150% slower because of DX than they have to be

 

John carmack wrote an article about direct x and windows and OpenGL where he pretty much slaughtered then all for the shocking efficiency of the code.

As he said himself you have a 7 year old console producing games that look up to scratch with the pcs top sellers.( at the time of the quote bf3 was not released, COD was top selling pc game followed by wow and Starcraft 2)

Only dice and crytek have really pushed pc graphics in the last 5 years.

Redengine by the people making witcher also looks awesome.

All 3 have something in commen they all require high end SLI or cfx systems to get decent FPS at max settings.( witcher 2 needs 2 titans to obtain playable FPS with uber sampling on)

 

I agree they have achieved a lot and that the PS4 even this early on looks pretty impressive but then we still haven't seen actual in-game graphics. A comparison with a mid-range spec'd PC would have been more appropriate that much is certain. As for OS, not everyone out there runs Windows, the majority perhaps, but not everyone

As for the cost of the whole monitor, keyboard, mouse, OS, etc, Well most people already have a monitor the same as most PSx owners already have TV's and peripherals, well they cost as much or as little as people want to spend on them, except that al existing pc owners already have those too.

For the £300+ cost of the PS4 I can upgrade my existing and aged PC to an quad core i5 with new mobo and memory even with my AMD 68xx card I'll still get a decent performance and quality improvement at 1080. The difference being is that I can pick up another mid-range card usually for around the £100-£120 that further boosts performance and the look of games, with the PS4 all they can do is grind down to the metal to squeeze out some extra performance.

Who really needs an auction house, loot-distribution is relative to the game, forced online mode is still in debate and as for controls, PC's have the largest choice of controls out there, mouse, keyboard, game pad, flight sticks, steering wheel and pedals, remote control and so on it goes.

Not to mention that people have the choice of buying the games they like from any Game type store as well as the likes of Origin or Steam if they so choose.

 

This^^.

I'm really intrigued by the Epic demos on PC : Samaritan , Elemental and Infiltrator. Undoubtedly they look gorgeous and Epic have some fabulously talented people, that's not in question.

But take the recent Infiltrator demo ,according to CVG, they were running it in real time on a single GTX680 coupled with an I7 and 16GB ram. Apparently switching to wire frame to prove it... and it ran silky smooth, even in the heavy action parts. Yet , there are highly optimized DX11 benchmarks that only look a fraction as good and suffer severe frame rate dips on similar rigs?
Just what runtime environment were they using? It's hard to believe it was being rendered through clunky DirectX, Nvidia low-level magic?

 

They most likely coded the game to the gtx 680 to show what could be done. Its easier to code to a single GPU if you know what it is then you no longer need a API. They would of known what hardware they were running it on so would of coded for it. Likely it is highly threaded and using nvidias GPGPU Encoding ( aka cuda)

The API is only there because of how much choice there is in the pc market for a video card.

If they were only Nvidia or only AMD cards direct x would of probably disapeared a long time ago. As the overhead would likely of been nullified at one point or another.

Choice in the pc hardware sector has created alot of nice things for us but also caused alot of problems.

Direct X or Open GL both suffer from having to support Multiple video card vendors from intel to Nvidia. Direct x overhead is rather large of devs like john carmark are to be bielived and we have no reason not to think he is telling the truth.

 

I'm finding it difficult to find any information on the massive DirectX overheads that have been referenced here, beyond the AMD PR story and related articles.

Given that OpenGL has never appeared to offer any better performance, I personally doubt there's much real substance to the claim.

It's the advantage of being able to code for specific hardware instead of for an API that supports a vast range of hardware combinations that brings the performance advantages we've seen with the consoles, rather than some issue with DirectX in itself.

 

I've always thought pc gaming is so inefficient the answer always seems to be lets throw more power at the problem...more cores, more ram, more stream processors.

Whatever the hardware the ps4 will be efficient.