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DF Weekly: If Xbox Series X is more powerful, why do some PS5 games run better? We finally have some answers.

"""The combination of a more efficient GPU compiler, lower-level APIs and higher clock speeds allows PlayStation 5 to match or even exceed the outputs of Xbox Series X in some scenarios""" It has taken 4 years to listen to Cerny's conference on PS5, better late than never DF.

T-1000-in-Pescadero-hospital-Terminator-2-Remastered-2-G_1_1.gif
 
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PauloRoberto

Neo Member
That's why i simply ignores these muppets.. why product X is worse if in a very speciifc metric, carefully chosen and screamed like a 11th Commandment, is margially better? For God's sake...
 

eNT1TY

Member
Money, time, and talent during development is what keeps relative parity in either direction and the more popular platform tends to receive at least 2 of the 3 100% of the time. The less popular one often needs to make up the difference with brute force; something the more popular one hardly ever has to contend with.
 

Oppoi

Member
Microsoft touting their console the most powerful because they had more teraflops like a car having more horsepower, expecting it to win every race on every circuit around the world. Yeah, they stopped bragging about having "the worlds most powerful" because they got beat time and time again, which Cerny humbly adressed before the races had even begun to show what clowns they were.
 

GHG

Member
well, it is complex, the hardware is definitely better, but if you don't have a way to leverage that power, then it is meaningless. I'm guessing some studios are more invested than others, since Gears 5 looks amazing while running at 60fps, you can create a framework to give precise instructions and take advantage of that extra power but it doesnt make sense for multiplat studios to do it, it is a waste of time, just like the PS3 years ago, thats why you got amazing looking games like Uncharted and TLOU and the rest looked and ran like crap.


It's funny that you find it funny when the vast majority of the time the patches post launch generally improve the XSX version compared to the release. On some occasions the improvement has even been dramatic ( aka The Calisto Protocol)

Then, let's put the context:

1- XSX "enjoys" worse tools (Api) than PS5 that can squeeze the maximum and in less time the capabilities of its hardware (although I don't know if calling them "worse" is correct since the purpose of DX12 is more to be a development tool efficient for a multitude of different hardware and that has its counterpart for specific hardware)

2-As assumed and recognized, PS5 is usually the base development platform for most multiplatform games.

3-XSX is usually the platform that enjoys the lowest optimization time vs PS5 and even XSS.

And despite that, you have to have XSX performing the vast majority of times the same as PS5 and on many many occasions being the console version with the best performance.....

I don't think we have to be very enlightened to know how to draw a conclusion about about the capabilities and power of XSX hardware.

All of this nonsense and you have games that have released from Xbox's own first party studios that which perform on par or better on the PS5. What are the excuses there when the Xbox versions that originally released got all the attention and the subsequent PS5 ports were done in short order?

But fear not guys, Geforce Now is upon you.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
While the console may have fewer compute units than Xbox Series X - 36 vs 52 - the entire GPU runs faster, meaning that certain tasks will complete faster, better suiting certain game engine designs.
We had this part figured out before launch.

I posted this graph many times after the xbox hot chips conference where they themselves revealed the xsx numbers. We extrapolated the numbers for the PS5 and immediately realized the ps5 would have its own advantages.

s0n39Hi.png


7ojMD0x.jpg
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Notice how Alex is desperately trying to find a win for Xbox…

We didn’t forget that you were part of that anti-ps5 discord server around launch.
Pretty sure he leaked the 10 tflops PS5 figure to DukeBlueBalls and Colbert the morning the Road to PS5 went live. Richard had been given an early look at it straight by Cerny himself and had his article go up at 12PM, the same time as the road to ps5 went live. However, colbert and DBB were posting about it at around 10AM on era.

Must be nice to break embargos just to gain some cred on a discord server.
 
All of this nonsense and you have games that have released from Xbox's own first party studios that which perform on par or better on the PS5. What are the excuses there when the Xbox versions that originally released got all the attention and the subsequent PS5 ports were done in short order?

But fear not guys, Geforce Now is upon you.
Uh... the reason has already been stated. Those PS dev kits have the better GPU compiler and optimizations which can be made due to supporting one specific SKU and not 2 (in the case of Xbox consoles) and PC..... I mean, the games you're talking about all use Unreal Engine.. lmao.
 
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Fafalada

Fafracer forever
I have one question: How has DirectX come to this?
Come to what exactly?
DirectX has historically always been the 'less efficient' API - not just next to consoles, but also the other alternatives in PC space (when they existed - the time in DX9 era when OpenGL should have long been put down but Apple insisted on dragging things out way longer than it should have been doesn't really count as viable alternative).

But that's an aside - one of the rare things that hampered OG XBox (not often due to hw advantage - but it happened) was actually DX - as both PS2 and GCN had substantially less overhead to contend with when programming their respective GPUs.

No Nixes needed to port to PC. I can't think of a single other upside for DirectX.
I've been involved in 360 -> PC ports enough to say that DX alone did not preclude the need for a 'nixes'. There was always work - and often substantial amount if you wanted to keep Alexes of the PCMR not raging about the ports.
 

GHG

Member
Uh... the reason has already been stated. Those PS dev kits have the better GPU compiler and optimizations which can be made due to supporting one specific SKU and not 2 (in the case of Xbox consoles) and PC..... I mean, the games you're talking about all use Unreal Engine.. lmao.

Microsoft and by extension their Xbox studios should know how to get the most out of their hardware, better than anyone else.

If even they aren't producing the results that we were led to believe would exist based on the pre-release chatter then what hope do 3rd party devs have?
 
I've been involved in 360 -> PC ports enough to say that DX alone did not preclude the need for a 'nixes'. There was always work - and often substantial amount if you wanted to keep Alexes of the PCMR not raging about the ports.
Is there any upside to DirectX on a console?
 
“On paper, the Xbox Series X is a considerably more powerful piece of hardware than PlayStation 5”


Uh……No, it is not

Why do DF continue to think an 18% higher TF number is in any way considerable?
Because it's been the narrative that they decided to parrott from MS since the consoles launch and changing it now would mean admitting that either : a) they lied through rheir teeth. b) they understand far less of consoles engineering that they like to pretend or c) some sort of combination of the two preceding points
 
Microsoft and by extension their Xbox studios should know how to get the most out of their hardware, better than anyone else.

If even they aren't producing the results that we were led to believe would exist based on the pre-release chatter then what hope do 3rd party devs have?
Sure, but they are beholden to the realities of development just like any other developers. Optimization doesn't just come down to whether or not something is possible technically, it comes down to costs and time and whether it's reasonable. When MS was developing Sea of Thieves for example... they split development between console and PC. They had a finite time and budget for development and optimization. Probably never ever figured that the game would eventually come to any other platforms at that time and would be so scrutinized. Then you have to remember that MS own tools and development kits back then wouldn't be as great as they are today... so those games were potentially made on an older version of the engine with less optimizations. Whereas the PS5 version was likely ported by a smaller team with the only pressures being to port it as well as possible... and so you add that to the fact that Unreal Engine is already highly optimized for Playstation, and PS' better development tools.. and you have the outcome.

I agree with you that MS' teams should be setting the highest standards we see for the device... but outside of all that we know MS' teams have development issues due to management and whatever else. When their teams DO have the management and support they need, you can see some pretty spectacular results from them. Gears of War E-Day should be an obvious example when it hits.
 
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onQ123

Member
We had this part figured out before launch.

I posted this graph many times after the xbox hot chips conference where they themselves revealed the xsx numbers. We extrapolated the numbers for the PS5 and immediately realized the ps5 would have its own advantages.

s0n39Hi.png


7ojMD0x.jpg


Did we because I remember being attacked for trying to explain it

 

Darsxx82

Member
All of this nonsense and you have games that have released from Xbox's own first party studios that which perform on par or better on the PS5. What are the excuses there when the Xbox versions that originally released got all the attention and the subsequent PS5 ports were done in short order?

But fear not guys, Geforce Now is upon you.
Without sense?? What games do you mean by first party? GW Tokyo?? Sea Of thieves?? Hi-fi?? I think you should look at the specific situations in those games before talking about something and accusing people of talking nonsense. Although it is not that miracles can be expected from you and the usual suspects responding with an emoji in the absence of arguments.

That said, it doesn't matter. From the moment you have much more tech advanced Third Party games and many, many of these work better in XSX even despite having worse tools, not being the base development platform and being the platform with the least optimization time, the facts fall into place own weight about the capability and power of the XSX hardware.... Another thing is that you don't want to see it.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Sure, but they are beholden to the realities of development just like any other developers. Optimization doesn't just come down to whether or not something is possible technically, it comes down to costs and time and whether it's reasonable. When MS was developing Sea of Thieves for example... they split development between console and PC. They had a finite time and budget for development and optimization. Probably never ever figured that the game would eventually come to any other platforms at that time and would be so scrutinized. Then you have to remember that MS own tools and development kits back then wouldn't be as great as they are today... so those games were potentially made on an older version of the engine with less optimizations. Whereas the PS5 version was likely ported by a smaller team with the only pressures being to port it as well as possible... and so you add that to the fact that Unreal Engine is already highly optimized for Playstation, and PS' better development tools.. and you have the outcome.

I agree with you that MS' teams should be setting the highest standards we see for the device... but outside of all that we know MS' teams have development issues due to management and whatever else. When their teams DO have the management and support they need, you can see some pretty spectacular results from them. Gears of War E-Day should be an obvious example when it hits.
MS fucked themselves when they went Day One with PC and didnt hire a pc porting studio like Nixxes. Their studios were already stretched thin then were forced to make PC ports then 2 more xbox series ports during the cross gen period.

A next gen only halo built for one console wouldve been far easier to optimize but these first party studios are all being forced to make multiplatform games without scaling up like ubisoft, ea and activision had to at the start of the ps360 era.

sadly, its a self afflicted wound.

to make matters worse, they undershipped the xsx and that resulted in half of the console sales being xss versions so now no dev really wants to put in the effort maxing out a console with just a 10 million userbase.
 
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damidu

Member
what idiot would take digital clownery serious anyways?!
here the same leadbutter is arguing xbox-one can keep up with ps4, pre - 8th gen launch.
they are basically parroting whatever ms pr bullshit is flunged on their way
 
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onQ123

Member
MS fucked themselves when they went Day One with PC and didnt hire a pc porting studio like Nixxes. Their studios were already stretched thin then were forced to make PC ports then 2 more xbox series ports during the cross gen period.

A next gen only halo built for one console wouldve been far easier to optimize but these first party studios are all being forced to make multiplatform games without scaling up like ubisoft, ea and activision had to at the start of the ps360 era.

sadly, its a self afflicted wound.

to make matters worse, they undershipped the xsx and that resulted in half of the console sales being xss versions so now no dev really wants to put in the effort maxing out a console with just a 10 million userbase.


You do realize that Series X & Series S games are the same games with a few lines of code changed right?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Did we because I remember being attacked for trying to explain it



NkWv5GQ.jpeg
 

SonGoku

Member
On paper, the Xbox Series X is a considerably more powerful piece of hardware than PlayStation 5
DF is so biased, their whole premise begins on the wrong foot, 20% theoretical compute advantage can hardly be "considerably more powerful" especially when taking into account PS5s GPU own advantages of higher clocks and more cache per CU
In compute, yes it is. In next-gen compute workloads Series X will beat PS5 every time
For arguments sake even if hypothetically SX were to consistently beat PS5 in most games and its 18 to 20% theoretical compute advantage could scale linearly it still would not be enough to provide considerably better results. 20% is a small difference
 
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StereoVsn

Member
They have also spent a hell of a lot of time integrating new technology into Visual Studio over the years. The number of templates has increased dramatically. This "one size fits all" approach doesn't just incorporate console and PC gaming, but Azure, Windows, web, mobile.....etc. It is a Swiss army knife that is made up of more Swiss army knives. Here's a screenshot....

2mK5ILe.png


Then compare PlayStation's compiler and APIs.......it's 100% dedicated to PlayStation.
Yep, on new install of VS Pro/Enterprise I probably spend hours confiding things just right. Also could never manage moving my environment cleanly between PCs yet.

There is so much crap in there. And I don’t really mean it in the bad way, as I am sure various functions are useful to different folks, but as you mention, it certainly doesn’t help optimization.
 
DF is so biased, their whole premise begins on the wrong foot, 20% theoretical compute advantage can hardly be "considerably more powerful" especially when taking into account PS5s GPU own advantages of higher clocks and more cache per CU

For arguments sake even if hypothetically SX were to consistently beat PS5 in most games and its 18 to 20% theoretical compute advantage could scale linearly it still would not be enough to provide considerably better results. 20% is a small difference
A 20% compute advantage is absolutely considerably more powerful within products belonging to the same generation. The problem is that you need games that push compute to realize it. In games which do push compute, we do indeed see Xbox pulling ahead of Playstation.

It's clear that MS probably expected things to go differently this generation, and expected developers to advance their engines at a more rapid pace. However, it doesn't matter how much compute you have when developers prioritize Playstation because it's the only platform that's selling and selling games. 🤷‍♂️
 
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