Analyse This: The Rendering Cost of AI...

Unironically, I used AI for this...

The interest surrounding the rumours of the next gen consoles has been slowly boiling over the last few months. Now, with new confirmations from Xbox's newly-minted CEO, Asha Sharma we have a firmer grasp of what the next gen holds for one side of the equation. On the other side, Playstation 6 also has a lot of hardware specification leaks but one thing still confuses me: why all the memory?!

In this post, I'm going to look at the logic of having a lot of RAM in the consoles and why, to my mind, the leaked specs for the memory configurations just don't make sense...

Analyse This: The Steam Machine's Specs are bad, no matter what Valve might say...

 

Mana from heaven or a gift from the devil?

 

Much has been made over Valve's reveal of the Steam Machine. With opinions varying from gaming saviour to irrelevant devil. Okay, maybe things aren't quite that polarising - I'm trying to make the intro a bit spicier! However, it's clear there are two main emerging narratives surrounding the soon-to-be-released Steam Machine - one positive, one negative. 

 

Personally, I lie on the negative side of the equation for a couple of specific reasons with orbit around the fact that it's just not good enough. 

 

So, let's get into why I feel that way...

Analyse This: Simulating the PS5 Pro... (Part 2)

It's the power of...

The Playstation 5 Pro talk is really hogging the headlines but I really wasn't 100% happy with my prior look/simulation of the device. So, I'm back here, today, putting together a quick look at a simulated PS5 base versus a simulated PS5 Pro - with PC parts!

As a side benefit of this, we also get a chance to look at the effect of changing GPU architecture and a potential sly look at an upcoming blogpost where I look at the differences between monolithic RDNA3 versus RDNA 2.

So, let's jump in...

Analyse This: Simulating the PS5 Pro...

Last time, I took a look at the PS5 Pro leaks and came to the conclusion, based on the claimed performance uplift, that the PS5 Pro will likely be heavily CPU-constrained (considering the upgrade in totality) and that it's likely that many titles will not take advantage of any 'RDNA3' architectural improvements on the APU.

It still baffles me why Sony would even bother releasing this thing, as I concluded:

"Honestly, a part of me is wondering why AMD/Sony didn't go with the same 36 CU configuration, but using RDNA 3 instead. They'd get the RT bonus performance and they could have clocked the GPU frequency higher to achieve a similar level of raster performance though at a cost to power use. The die would also be cheaper - and this is doubly important if there is some sort of CPU bottleneck in play - you've got a lot of wasted die area spent without capitalising on the potential performance."

But, let's not dwell on theoreticals, let's do some testing!

Analyse This: Let's look at the PS5 Pro leaks...

Last year, I looked at the possibility of a mid-generation refresh for Sony or Microsoft's current console line-ups and didn't really see any point in one. I posited some easy improvements and reasons why other possible improvements didn't really make any sense.

Now, after a series of rumours from various sources, Moore's Law Is Dead has presented a pretty concrete leak. which is confirmed to originate from Sony's developer portal, confirming the console's existence and also some key performance metrics.

So let's take a look at what we have and if such a console can change my thoughts from last time...

Analyse This: What would a mid-gen console refresh look like...?

There have been a lot of rumours and meanderings surrounding a potential mid-gen "pro" console for both Sony and Microsoft's current consoles. However, I've not really seen much analysis for what  form such a device would take or why such a device might exist. 

For this post, I'm going to delve back into my hardware speculation territory to see if we can't imagine some devices for both companies that might make some sense in the market.

Analyse This: The Technical Performance of Last of Us Part 1...

Where we're going, we don't need roads...

Although I'm fairly sure we do... The Last of Us Part 1 (from here on in: TLOU) has had a rocky start on its PC release. Problems have been reported far and wide, and players have complained, and complained, about performance issues on this PS3 port of a game.

But is this really a fair comparison? Does TLOU really have the performance problems that people ascribe it? Let's find out!

There will be no spoilers here, today, because I have barely played ten minutes of this release. However, I think I know enough to have a very short post on the demands of this game.

So, without further ado:

Analyse This: The Technical Performance of Hogwart's Legacy...

I've never really been a fan of the Harry Potter series - I've never read the books, though I have seen most of the films and thought that they were okay. However, I was immediately interested in Hogwart's Legacy when I saw the game for the first time due to the graphical effects used (i.e. ray tracing) and also once I saw the recommended system requirements for the game. I wanted to test it to see why the requirements were so relatively high and to see how they run.

This isn't a review of the game - I might do one of those at a later point, this is a look at how the game scales with certain system resources...

Analyse This: Forspoken Demo analysis...

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of the first DirectStorage title, mostly to see whether my prediction and/or understanding of the tech was correct or not. However, it seems like this particular DirectStorage implementation, much like Forsaken, itself, is a bit of a disappointment...

In the end, I did not splash out on the main game, given the very mixed reception and absolutely jam-packed release schedule for the first quarter of the year - I chose to spend my limited money on other titles that I actually might want to play/test, instead.

Luckily for me, Sqaure Enix released a PC demo and, while I am not entirely sure that everything is exactly the same between it and the main release, it is what I am able to test in this scenario. Perhaps the conclusions I will draw are limited because of it but I do sort of question whether there will be large codebase or engine optimisations available for the main release that are not part of the demo... But, let's see.

Next Gen PC gaming requirements (2022 update)

It's time for the yearly round-up of game recommended system specifications trending data! 

First up, I want to pay tribute to the person who helped inspire me to begin this yearly endeavour. It was his catalogging of the games released over a ten year period on Steam that jump-started this whole thing. He will be missed...

However, games keep being released and keep requiring more demanding hardware... so my sisyphean task remains.

Let's jump in!

Analyse This: Does RAM speed and latency make a difference for gaming...? (Part 4)

 

Uber RAM...

I've looked at the performance of RAM speed over the last few entries and come to a few conclusions:

• People are wont to interpret data incorrectly - or too little data.
• On mid-range systems (or below): Pushing RAM to get the lowest possible latency (and system latency) in synthetic tests really does not correlate well with actual game performance...
• On mid-range systems (or below): Pushing RAM to get the highest possible bandwidth (and system bandwidth) in synthetic tests really does not correlate well with actual game performance...
• Intel and AMD architectures handle memory access in quite different ways - this may be an indication as to why Intel has historically had better gaming performance than AMD.
• On mid-range systems (or below): RAM speed past DDR4 3200 really doesn't matter too much in gaming applications.
• What DOES matter is the quality of the memory IC!
• Samsung B-die is well-known for its overclocking and latency-reducing ability... but even at the same stock settings as another chip show a marked improvement on both AMD and Intel systems for higher-framerate gaming. No overclocking or tightening of timings required!
• You cannot just look at static metrics like min, 1% low, average and maximum framerates to determine game performance - It doesn't show you the whole picture. 
• Nowadays, we should be looking at the smoothness of the per-frame presenation. You can do this by adding simplistic numbers like standard deviation of the frame-to-frame variance... or you can plot nice graphs of the per frametime distribution during the benchmark run treated with the natural log (in order to normalise the results from the extremes).
• The differences are pretty small... when taking everything into account. Optimising RAM timings and speed is the sort of thing people who are obsessed with an activity will do. I did enjoy seeing synthetic benchmark numbers go up until I realised that, after looking at all the data, it was all pointless anyway. You get more out of your time by buying the best memory IC at a decent speed (DDR4 3600 or 3800) and spending more money on your CPU and GPU and overclocking them than you do from optimising your lower quality RAM. 
• Of course, you probably wouldn't have known what was low or high quality RAM when you bought it! I didn't.

So, with that summary of conclusions out of the way, let's head into the final entry in this series - raytracing.

Analyse This: Does RAM speed and latency make a difference for gaming...? (Part 3)

Who runs 3 dimms?!

Over the last two entries, I've taken a look at the effect of RAM speed, latency and bandwidth on a few gaming applications as well as synthetic gaming benchmarks. Across a Zen 3 and Intel 12th gen platform, I found that DDR4 memory optimisation had effectively zero effect on the minimum, average, and maximum fps values in the applications tested.

There were those pesky fluctuations in Unigine's Heaven benchmark scores and random-looking maximum fps waverings in both Spider-man and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla that could be explainable by conventional wisdom; manual-nature of the Spider-man benchmark; run-to-run fluctuation in Valhalla and Heaven's case... but I'm not content with that.

This time, I'm going to try and apply a statistical look at what I've obtained during the testing of Spider-man for all the various memory optimisation testing I performed in order to see whether I am correct in wanting the review industry to take a more statistical approach to reviewing hardware and software.

Analyse This: The Story of Hyper Light Drifter... (Part 5)

Four lands surrounding a central plan upon which a crown sits...

I think I've covered a lot of things so far in this series. It's really a testament to how much there is in this game to dissect and absorb. Here in this final entry, I'm going even further than last time into mythical and historical parallels that I have seen on display in the world of Hyper Light Drifter. Stay a while and listen...

Just a reminder: this series discusses aspects of the game Hyper Light Drifter and will veer wildly into spoiler territory from the get-go.

Analyse This: Does RAM speed and latency make a difference for gaming...? (Part 2)

Bear with me...

Last time I took a look at the effect of memory tuning and frequency scaling on playing games on a Ryzen 5 56600X system in response to naysayers questioning the benchmarking methodology of various hardware reviewers. I essentially found no benefit for doing so much work on it and, in fact, under my test conditions, found that performance was worse at higher frequencies - even when operating at a 1:1 Infinity Fabric/memory controller frequency. 

That was only half of the equation though, these complaints have also been levied at reviewers for Intel systems, with people criticising them for not pairing Intel 12th gen systems with 4000 MHz or higher Samsung B-die kits.

Well, today we're going to take a look into that...

Analyse This: Does RAM speed and latency make a difference for gaming...? (Part 1)

I've seen increasing numbers of people commenting on various youtuber videos and hardware/game performance reviews complaining about how the reviewer got it wrong and that they're not even using the "best" RAM for the benchmarks. This is especially rampant now, during the cross-gen benchmarking period where there are some systems using DDR4 and some using DDR5.

You might have seen this behaviour, yourself. Especially if you follow bigger techtubers like HardwareUnboxed or PCWorld - but I'm sure it happens on a wider scale, I just haven't seen every instance of it.

So, what is driving this slowly mounting pressure on the tech review sphere and is it really pushing for better testing or are there misconceptions about the importance of RAM speed and latency?

I figured I'd take a look. Please feel free to skip the first two sections where I ramble a lot and get to the actual data!

Analyse This: Performance of Spider-man: Remastered on PC... [Updated]

Released on PS5 a few years ago, Marvel's Spider-man: Remastered made its way to the PC sphere recently and, surprisingly, granted the opportunity to look at the hardware side of things more closely due to the way the engine works and how Nixxes chose to port that engine to the PC. 

Looking into this is especially important, from my point of view,  because the performance of this game on various hardware appears to be poorly understood by many... Additionally, it may provide an indication of where, in the PC hardware, future games may require more brute strength. 

Spider-man is also the third game released on PC with the inclusion of both FSR and DLSS, allowing for us to actually compare different implementations in different game engines to get a handle on how the two stack up in terms of performance increases, as well as power savings. 

[Update]

I've now updated the article with the data from the 12400 system...

[Update 2]

Updated Resizeable BAR results for the 5600X...

Analyse This: FSR 2.0...

This is not a comment on image quality... it is meant to convey us moving forward to new things!

AMD's FSR 2.0 launched* this week, with its inclusion in Deathloop's latest update and with that comes a multitude of analysis in image quality and performance uplifts. However, while those things aren't really my wheelhouse, there are a few things I thought I'd highlight about FSR 2.0 which are actually publicly available information but appear to be overlooked by many commentators and reviewers out there.

*Whatever "launch" means these days - what with both FSR 1.0 and DirectStorage doing the same thing where you can't actually get the software or source code or documentation unless you're in some sort of super secret partner programme with whoever is developing the software...

Analyse This: Dissecting the new RDNA 3 rumours...

Radioactive...

So, one of the reasons why I haven't really had a big technology post in a while (aside from being super busy at work) is that the rumours for RDNA3 have just been all over the place... it has meant that anything I analyse or tried to predict was just going to be out of date in a few days once any given leaker decides to change their leak.

However, with the latest leak, I thought I thought it would be interesting to see how that stacks up against the 3 times the performance of the RX 6900XT claim we repeatedly keep seeing bandied about, as well as my predictions made at the beginning of this year...

Analyse This: The Story of Hyper Light Drifter... (Part 4)

Into the unknown...

I noticed that, recently, this series had been getting a few views again and I remembered that I had practically written two more entries and never posted them. So I figured that I'd finish what I'd started...

From here on out, we're in pure speculative and analytical territory. These are all observations and connections I've made based on what's in the game... but they're just that: Things my mind sees.

Just a reminder that this series discusses aspects of the game Hyper Light Drifter and will veer wildly into spoiler territory from the get-go.

Enjoy!

Fidelity FX Super Resolution's dirty secret... (Updated)

 

AMD have showcased their FSR (Fidelity FX Super Resolution) upscaling technology very briefly this morning to much critical acclaim. It's coming earlier than I had predicted, given AMD's comments at the beginning of the year, and I am optimistic that this will give a boost to AMD's performance in future titles. However, I'm not as bullish on the implementation as others are for two reasons... I believe Paul over at NotAnAppleFan when he says that FSR "has a catch", and I believe that FSR needs driver implementation from the platform vendors.