- Status
So this has become a stealth console bashing, trashing the game for no reason, lulz, and general trolling thread. I am both proud, and simultaneously ashamed of my participation in it. I should have stuck to my guns, and GTFO several pages ago. Anyway that is what I am doing for reals this time.
Others have, correctly to my technical understanding, pointed out that the consoles exceed the resource handling ability of PCs. So if anything, the textures have to be downgraded for the limited VRAM and additional transfers required only on the PC; the consoles can run textures that only 4GB+ cards can on PC.
Claims that "consoles destroy almost everything they touch" have not enough substance or foundation to bother refuting. There is a stronger claim that venture capital, mergers, and acquisitions are a much stronger force in the demise of quality and innovative games, but that is not on topic here.
I think what he is getting at is the case where the texture resolution can be higher than consoles based on the greater actual VRAM available on PC. But we've been there time and time again ^^".
I really should go, this might be condescending or arrogant but thanks to everyone that has engaged calmly in this. If nothing else, it does feel like you guys listen even if you don't agree.
Actually, the point is there is not greater VRAM available on the PC. The PC is limited to GPU VRAM, because resources must be copied into VRAM before they can be used. The consoles avoid copying resources to VRAM, so they can use more than 4GB of system RAM for GPU resources.
Huh, missed this comment. I wasn't actually sure, I didn't think bump-mapping could simply emboss any surface. Whatever method they use, for some reason its absence is really noticeable to me. Maybe it's just because i'm looking for imperfections. Or maybe, it's because other parts of the scene look so damn good that it just stands out by contrast? That was my first reaction upon seeing the new footage... not bad, not ugly, just weird, inconsistent, something felt off about it.
It's really not important anyway so I don't want to get hung up on this. But if we do the maths, consoles have between 4.5 and 5 gigs to work with. So between physics, sound, game logic and other stuff you end up with something in the ballpark of 2.5 to 3gigs of strictly GPU data. Don't get me wrong, this is insanely efficiently usable data, with special caching and direct write access. But in terms of raw numbers I think the pool is not as large as on PC.
Of course, PCs will have to eat the huge latency cost of swapping data out and back in when they hit the 4GB cap. And that was a cheap shot to the GTX970 earlier on, I laughed sourly at mine
.G'night !
Last edited:
@Xigmus
What makes you think it'll look worse? Most people describe it and they like the scene itself, the visuals there are.... pretty damn bad honestly, everything looks half done/unfinished and very rough. The atmosphere is what captures you, but the individual assets? They are really bad. Look at the wood on the windmill, character models, 2D looking huts, sharp as hell grass that look as if it will cut you, Geralt's hair.
Everytime someone mentions it, they describe the atmosphere, the scene and the liveliness of it and mistake that for visual fidelity is what I've found.
What makes you think it'll look worse? Most people describe it and they like the scene itself, the visuals there are.... pretty damn bad honestly, everything looks half done/unfinished and very rough. The atmosphere is what captures you, but the individual assets? They are really bad. Look at the wood on the windmill, character models, 2D looking huts, sharp as hell grass that look as if it will cut you, Geralt's hair.
Everytime someone mentions it, they describe the atmosphere, the scene and the liveliness of it and mistake that for visual fidelity is what I've found.
Last edited:
Uh, no, an 8GB console has more RAM to work with than an 8GB PC does. They have no operating system, or only a kernel with a minimal userland, not the hippopotamic bloat of Windows. The game code is the same, but the key is the graphical resources, which are the great majority of the game content are kept in RAM either way, only on the consoles there is only one copy.It's really not important anyway so I don't want to get hung up on this. But if we do the maths, consoles have between 4.5 and 5 gigs to work with. So between physics, sound, game logic and other stuff you end up with something in the ballpark of 2.5 to 3gigs of strictly GPU data. Don't get me wrong, this is insanely efficiently usable data, with special caching and direct write access. But in term of raw numbers I think the pool is not as large as on PC.
Of course, PCs will have to eat the huge latency cost of swapping data out and back in when they hit the 4GB cap. And that was a cheap shot to the GTX970 earlier on, I laughed sourly at mine
G'night !
Where consoles can fall behind is the dreadful CPU and slow disks. But they're so much better at using their resources, that now when the resources are comparable to PCs, they can outperform some PCs. Sometimes by a substantial margin.
Last edited:
From what Badowski stated I understand that for example textures will be same across all platforms. What does it mean? For sure high end PC can handle 4k textures and I doubt console can handle 2k. If game would be PC exclusive I am pretty sure we would see much better graphics, same like on early trailers.
Nevertheless game still looks very good thanks to excellent artistic level and attention to details.
So no worries we will enjoy it, even if it was downgraded to console level. It is what it is console market is huge and cdpr can't ignore it if wants to be profitable.
Nevertheless game still looks very good thanks to excellent artistic level and attention to details.
So no worries we will enjoy it, even if it was downgraded to console level. It is what it is console market is huge and cdpr can't ignore it if wants to be profitable.
I must stop checking this thread. Sorry ^^".
I agree about the data duplication and windows bloat. We compensate by throwing more memory at it, but it is as inefficient as it gets. But 5gigs of available game memory is what the devs at naughty dog said the PS4 had. The OS seems to gobble up an awful lot, which I don't pretend to understand.
Good point about the disk and CPU speeds on PS4, I'm getting tired and forgetting about those. We got way sidetricked anyway. Consoles are beautiful pieces of engineering and PCs are glorious workhorses. As long as nothing is pulled in favour of the other, I'm a happy camper
.
Last edited:
Really? I mean the only this that looks worse is geralt's hair. To be honest I have been staring at that gif for a long time now. All of the textures look very shar, nothing really looks blurry. There are really nice particle effects and the vegetation is nice and dense with no spaces in between. The road is a nice sharp texture, the buildings on the side also have nice sharp textures... Maybe I am blind but I really don't see the worse assets that you are talking about. The windmill possibly but that may be because it's pretty far away and the LOD is lower resolution but even then I don't see where it looks bad. *shurgs* Maybe I'm crazy.
Last edited:
No, it doesn't. The PS4 for example has at maximum 5.5GB of memory available for developers. They do run a form of operating system. And that 5.5 GB is shared, it's not exclusively available to the GPU, unlike 4GB in a GTX 980 for example. And that's not even taking into account the gulf in computational power advantage a PC has. Hence why Watch Dogs for example looks, and runs far better on a good PC than any console. At least once its high end graphical features are re-enabled that is.
http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/26/ps4-has-up-to-5-5gb-of-ram-for-developers-4-5gb-guaranteed-1gb-of-flexible-memory/
http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03/11/naughty-dog-explains-ps4s-cpu-memory-and-more-in-detail-and-how-they-can-make-them-run-really-fast/
Last edited:
4K Textures? Uh no, nor does any game exist that uses 4K textures throughout. Max Payne 3 had 2K textures for EVERYTHING on PC and that was 35GB because of it, it wasn't an open-world game, it wasn't extremely big, and it was 35GB. Do you really want to imagine the size of a game that uses 4K textures throughout? Not to forget the we don't have the necessary VRAM available to support such a game either.
That's a strength, not a weakness. On PC, that data has to be copied to both System RAM and VRAM.
Basic fact about VRAM. It's a duplicate of system RAM, not an extension of it. There is not an additional 4GB of RAM in a PC with a 4GB GPU.
A 5GB program including graphical resources takes 5GB on an 8GB console and 5GB on an 8GB PC. Only it also takes maybe 3GB additional VRAM on the PC.
When CPU cycles are not the limiting resource, the performance difference between a Jaguar and a Core i5 is spectacular but quite meaningless.
My point is not that a PC cannot exceed the performance of a console. My point is that we have to drop the prejudice that a console is automatically inferior. And if we do not drop at the same time the unfounded belief that consoles are damaging to PC gaming, we are all in for a hard lesson.
Really, so why exactly does Watch Dogs look and run far superior on the PC, and at higher resolutions I might add.? And that only becomes an issue if the GPU runs out of VRAM. Only having 5.5GB total available, is an issue when it come to performance.
Last edited:
That basic fact changes nothing I've said. The consoles only have 5.5GB of memory available, max. Duplication isn't a problem when your PC is running 16GB system and 4GB VRAM. Despite Microsoft's best efforts with their shoddy API's, brute force wins the day.
Where did I say the consoles were for peasants? I'm simply pointing out, a decent PC will beat them, every time.
- Status