News Digital Foundry compares UE4 PC and PlayStation 4 ports

This is just ps4 marketing, proof nothing. On PC it could be under-optimized from purpose, simple as that.

 

Warning: wall of text inbound!

Console updates? I know for a fact that ALL the major consoles need upgrade, and judging by the internet's consensus, the PS3 is hateful in that respect. Even more than a PC. In addition, a well-maintained windows install can be supremely stable and virus-free. Hell, just as an example, I haven't caught a single virus in 5 years. Seen and deleted, but never caught.

On the subject of controllers, you make a good point. All gaming PCs should come with a free X360 gamepad.

I don't use my X360 gamepad much these days. Mostly for arcade shoot-em-ups and some more interesting indie games. Shooters get the uber-precise keyboard+mouse combo and driving games get the G25 racing wheel. LOVE that thing.

GRID was a nice game, but IMHO Codemasters has gone too mass-market with the excessively bland handling. Lately I've been looking into full-on simulators like rFactor and iRacing in between my ETS2 drives and Shift 2 fun.

Consoles at the moment render 720p, if not down to SD at a mere 30fps. Compare to s single GTX670 that will do 40+fps average with Crysis 3 with 2x SMAA/FXAA at 1920x1200. Or full triple-screen Deus Ex Human Revolution at 35+fps (5760x1200, FXAA medium since I prefer it to MLAA).

Crytek and DICE push graphics because that's what sells their games. Honestly, how many of you bought Crysis and/or Crysis 2 and/or Crysis 3 purely for the game itself?

API-wise, DirectX and OpenGL are roughly equivalent in terms of manufacturer support (AMD/Nvidia) and features. It is however wrong to claim that consoles can go baremetal. Nobody does baremetal (to my knowledge) on the current consoles due to security and reliability. The Xbox360 for example is a pure Direct3D 9.0c machine that has had engines optimized very, VERY hard for and yet has to downscale many games to 720p or SD just to make 30fps. Much of the same over on the Sony camp with a choice of OpenGL or Sony's own (and faster, due to Sony being bad at making a good OpenGL driver) API. In the end, devs ended up using the CPU cores to do graphics and using the GPU only at a later stage (so I've been told by friends who spent more time tinkering with PS3s), and they suffer from downscaling too. People overstate how much the API does in terms of graphics. Really, they truly do. All the API does is provide a standard way to send commands and datastreams to the GPU.

In fact, modern GPUs NEED an API in order to do any useful work on them because of how complex they are. The more complex your stuff is, the more useful an API becomes to abstract that complexity away. I doubt anyone knows how a PC works from end to end these days. If you do, you are a true genius.

DirectX took up a massive market lead over OpenGL from DX8 upto DX11 due to having better documentation (programmers rely on that). Around DX10, the Khronos consortium (the guys who took over OpenGL development) invested a large amount of effort to improve OpenGL's documentation and succeeded rather nicely in finally matching DirectX. This has led to interest from game engine developers. Not to mention Android/iOS usage pushing OpenGL as well. Linux and Mac gaming will only improve things and OpenGL may well become the platform of choice.

In conclusion, Unreal demos are running on DirectX or OpenGL in some form. They have been optimised, the same way as you can tune any program for any specific processor (calling commands in the right order, timing memory sends/recieves, using specific hardware features like CUDA for cloth, that kind of stuff), not baremetal. I don't think you CAN do baremetal for GPUs to be honest... nvidia CUDA and AMD Stream afaik are the closest you can get to beremetal for the respective makers...

PS: Borderlands 2 is a DX11 game, it just has a DX9 renderer as well for compatibility reasons.

 

did you just compare a 7 year old console to 1 year gfx hardware? really?

 

No kidding , I've got china on the phone here saying there missing a wonder.

Nope,
Borderlands 2 GPU & CPU Performance Test
Post #5 by AdamF

Who me ? PS3 Retail availability November 11, 2006 like i said over 5 years old, not 7 as you say.
GTX 560 Launch 17 May 2011 so that's almost 2 years, not 1 year.

Either way my point stand that Borderlands 2 was developed with 5-6 year old hardware in mind, like most if not all console ports on the PC.
People may rave about the hardware in the PS4, but unless new consoles start to come out every 2-3 years we will always have this cycle of console ports not taking full advantage of newer hardware a few years after there release.

 

wall of text above you compared the xbox 360 (2005) to a gtx 670 (2012)

 

I stand corrected. This is interesting to know, since for some reason, it seems to call the card via the D3D11 API according to EVGA Precision's overlay (which is what I was basing myself on) and not the D3D9 API...

I was referring to rollo quoting John Carmak's claim that consoles are on par with modern PCs:

If you ask me, it was an entirely justifiable comparison to make.

 

People who compare PC vs console price are wrong.
This comparison will work only for casual players someone who buy about 6 games a year.
With new consoles they will try to kill second hand market.
Taking prices of console games and PC games you will save £10-£20 on each side game. If you buy one game a month you will save average £150 in a year or if you buy from steam sales you will buy each game up to £30 chipper then console title. Saving you even more. Today PC have much longer lifespan, my PC it's 4 years old I did upgrade gfx 2 years ago and I can still run all games at max setting. So in 4 years I did buy 128 games if on average I did pay £10 less for each game I did save £1280
This give me new PC if i would need one but I do not. So i will save even more before I have to upgrade.
BTW did buy all my games from steam sales so I did save much more. In my opinion if you buy 2+ games a month PC it's much chipper option. Just people do not see that they pay for there consoles every time they buy game.

 

RE: the 4K TV debate

Sony announces new range of 4K TVs incoming, with cheapest at $5k. We're getting there, and certainly more affordable than $20k. Give it another year and you can halve that again.

 

People are happier paying relatively small amounts vs a big upfront investment. I myself am guilty of that...

 

OK there. I guess I was wrong with my estimate, that there won't be affordable 4k TVs within the next 5 years to come...

Sony opens pre-order for their 4k-screens starting at $4999 for the 55" model. No information when they'll be delivered tho.
They also unveiled their 4k media-player.

Sources:

http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+4K+TVs+Priced+from+4999+Preorders+Start+Apri+21/article30296.htm

http://store.sony.com/p/Sony-4K-TV-Ultra-HD/en/p/XBR55X900A

The TV is ugly as hell with these speakers, but the SimulView feature is very nice tho.

 

Considering its the first generation (new tooling, low yields), its not too bad... I mean, the triple 24" (2xU2410 + 1x2408WFp) setup I run would've cost me about 2400 AUD if I'd bought them new...