The PS5 and Xbox 2 thread - it's happening

[abija]

I don't know if they hit $200 price point but similar cpu/ram, slower/smaller ssd and 1080p gpu at lower price would make sense for a lot of people. Especially if you don't sit really close to the TV.

 

[AwesomeButton]

That and ray tracing are why I do think 30fps will remain the console standard, because pretty images sell much more than high framerates and that will always be the case.

Digital Foundry seem to be making the opposite argument, although not categorically, it's more presented as a personal opinion:

 

[DalekFlay]

Digital Foundry seem to be making the opposite argument, although not categorically, it's more presented as a personal opinion:

I watched that video a few days ago but don't remember it making an argument relevant to what I said. Don't want to watch it again but feel free to summarize if you like. As far as I remember it was an nVidia sponsored video about what kind of GPU upgrade you need to match 1080p performance at 4k.

Digital Foundry though has been a big advocate of "the end of resolution," using processing and upscaling like DLSS to pack in more graphical effects they think matter more. Maybe they reference that in the video. It's true this seems to be the future, or even present, but I still think console developers will use such techniques to enable ray tracing and other such things, rather than 60 or 120fps. Pretty pictures sell games more than high framerates do, especially for singleplayer. It's been the standard operating procedure since 3D graphics started... every generation people think it will change and then it doesn't.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I watched that video a few days ago but don't remember it making an argument relevant to what I said. Don't want to watch it again but feel free to summarize if you like. As far as I remember it was an nVidia sponsored video about what kind of GPU upgrade you need to match 1080p performance at 4k.

Well, in the end he says that for him it's questionable how important 4k is in terms of image quality, and it's far more important how smooth and at what fps/refresh rate the game is running than whether you get a bit more detailed far-away shadows or no. BTW, it's quite a thing to hear from the sort of outlet that is usually expected by people to shill the more expensive hardware. He still cocludes that it's his personal opinion, but makes the prognosis that the industry and market may be on the verge of a mentality shift where the chasing of resolutions (because 8k is also on the horizon), to chasing smooth gameplay and high refresh rate/fps.

So, it's not exactly a counter to your argument, but maybe it could translate as "the shift to 4k won't be as pronounced as the shift to 1080p has been, or the shift from 1080 to 1440p".

From a purely physics point of view, looking at a 4k screen won't make much difference if you are standing more than a 1m away from a ~30" screen. I can dig up the infographic that explains the equation - it's screen size vs resolution vs viewer distance. Ofc most customers have no idea about it.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Smaller screens are becoming rarer and rarer these days though. I do prefer to have 4k30fps with rt than 1440p or lower with no rt, upscaling or not(unless I'm playing competitive games). Since my Dell S2716DG died a few months ago I've been using a 4k 40' TV(not even high-end) as a gaming monitor and having never played on 4k+HDR before I can say that, in some games(like RDR2) the difference to my eyes is night and day. I never though I'd be so impressed the way I did and would gladly sacrifice fps for image quality. This TV was supposed to be a placeholder until I got another monitor but now I'm thinking about getting a C9 or Q90 instead.

And yes, upscaling techniques are the future. The performance gain on Control, for example, is huge with little to no quality loss. If that becomes a standard it'll likely increase gpu's lifespan by quite a bit.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Here is the science: http://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution-matter/

Therefore, on my 27" 4K display, I will be able to see the benefit of 4k at about 2.3' distance or less, but above 2.3, it will not matter that much or at all.

 

[DalekFlay]

I watched that video a few days ago but don't remember it making an argument relevant to what I said. Don't want to watch it again but feel free to summarize if you like. As far as I remember it was an nVidia sponsored video about what kind of GPU upgrade you need to match 1080p performance at 4k.

Well, in the end he says that for him it's questionable how important 4k is in terms of image quality, and it's far more important how smooth and at what fps/refresh rate the game is running than whether you get a bit more detailed far-away shadows or no. BTW, it's quite a thing to hear from the sort of outlet that is usually expected by people to shill the more expensive hardware. He still cocludes that it's his personal opinion, but makes the prognosis that the industry and market may be on the verge of a mentality shift where the chasing of resolutions (because 8k is also on the horizon), to chasing smooth gameplay and high refresh rate/fps.

I agree that developers will use lower resolutions and post-processing to make "4k" games on consoles with ray tracing and everything else. I just think they'll do it with a 30fps target most of the time (in singleplayer), so they can pack even more into the visual pipeline at whatever base resolution then can get away with. The "post-resolution" era Digital Foundry constantly talks about doesn't necessarily mean higher framerates on consoles, it just means they feel they can sacrifice resolution for other things. What those "things" are will depend, and I think devs will mostly choose prettier overall pictures because... well, they almost always do.

It's going to be an interesting dichotomy though with PC offering native resolution options on 144hz monitors. If the average console experience focuses on ray tracing and high resolutions at 30fps (or even 60) while PC is still focused on 1080p/1440p and 144fps, it'll make for a real difference in experience that we haven't had for a while.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Another - financially - significant takeaway from the above article and chart is that if you buy a 55" 4K TV and then go on to dish out the money to be able play console games on it at 4K resolution, but your couch or chair is 6 feet from that 55" screen... you could have played at 1440p, would have cost you less and the picture your eyes would be seeing wouldn't be different.

 

[Tehdagah]

I use a PC monitor to play consoles, it's much better

 

[DalekFlay]

Another - financially - significant takeaway from the above article and chart is that if you buy a 55" 4K TV and then go on to dish out the money to be able play console games on it at 4K resolution, but your couch or chair is 6 feet from that 55" screen... you could have played at 1440p, would have cost you less and the picture your eyes would be seeing wouldn't be different.

Pretty sure most of those charts are based on video content. I have a 60" 4k TV and the resolution difference is pretty minor for movies and such at 7-8', yes. HDR is the real reason to watch 4k movie discs/streams. With video game content though the resolution difference is much, much more obvious in my opinion.

 

[AwesomeButton]

And what differentiates the picture on that screen produced by the movie from the picture produced by the game? You mean the game frames are more crisp?

 

[DalekFlay]

And what differentiates the picture on that screen produced by the movie from the picture produced by the game? You mean the game frames are more crisp?

I mean... recorded video content and polygon video game engines are entirely different things. If you record something, even in 4k, there is a limited amount of detail information that is obvious to the human eye. 3D rendered polygons though, the higher the resolution the less aliasing you'll have and more crisp the game world will look. You can test this even on a 1080p screen by using nVidia DSR. The difference between rendering at 2k and 4k is pretty obvious.

DLSS and other processing methods try and fudge this and make lower-res rendering look like higher-res rendering, but how effective they are is very subjective.

 

[tritosine2k]

Upscaling is all over the place even without DLSS ( frequently "bilateral" ).
Lot of processing is not done on full grid so you can argue lower resolution grid and supersampling with subsequent upsample is better than native with upscaled processing.

 

[taxalot]

Lockhart is real, and getting real-er.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/26/...eries-x-lockhart-leaked-document-specs-rumors

Very interested in this, as it will be my ticket for not upgrading my desktop during the entirety of next gen.

 

[Markman]

Lockhart is real, and getting real-er.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/26/...eries-x-lockhart-leaked-document-specs-rumors

Very interested in this, as it will be my ticket for not upgrading my desktop during the entirety of next gen.

Looks weaker than the One X they are selling right now.
While better CPU and SSD will boost performance vs One X I dont see the logic or point of it, you'll still gonna get subpar experience compared to the real deal.
And Phil is really pushing on the "feel" of games, better framerates and lower response times, dont think they can promise that with this welfare model.

Could be something they push with that subscription model for like 25 bucks/month, 10 for console and 15 for gamepass for 2 years.

 

[mk0]

The point is reducing cost, if you look at current PC component prices then a next-gen capable PC will set you back at least 1200€. Something has to give, either the PS5 and XSX will be the most expensive consoles in a long while(800€~) or CPU and GPU prices are set to dive to half their current value. The existence of Xbox Series S suggests that Microsoft saw cost as a big enough issue that having a cheaper SKU was necessary to sell the platform to the console crowd.

GPUs are made for parallel rendering workloads which can be scaled back(4k30fps to 1080p30fps) to fit weaker GPUs. CPU and SSD requirements impose hard limits, either you have enough clocks(3.6GHz~), threads(8c/16t) and bandwidth(2.4GB/s+) or you simply can't run the game properly, on PC you also need to take into account overhead like Win10, Denuvo DRM, Steam etc. which consoles don't have to deal with. As a general rule you should assume that software developers will use all available resources given to them, optimization is time that could be spent elsewhere after all.

Since we can assume that XSS shares components with XSX, then it should be at least running its 10GB(7.5GB left after OS) of GDDR6 at the lower 336GB/s memory bandwidth speed. That's around GTX 1660 Super performance for 1080p30fps target, for comparison something like a GTX 980 /w 4GB GDDR5 @ 224GB/s could probably run the same titles at 720p30fps(2/3 of 1080p resolution for 2/3 the bandwidth).

 

[DalekFlay]

And Phil is really pushing on the "feel" of games, better framerates and lower response times, dont think they can promise that with this welfare model.

Graphics sell new AAA games. Phil can say what he wants, the developers will go 30-60fps max.

The point is reducing cost, if you look at current PC component prices then a next-gen capable PC will set you back at least 1200€. Something has to give, either the PS5 and XSX will be the most expensive consoles in a long while(800€~) or CPU and GPU prices are set to dive to half their current value. The existence of Xbox Series S suggests that Microsoft saw cost as a big enough issue that having a cheaper SKU was necessary to sell the platform to the console crowd.

If they sell one model and it's over $500, they're crazy. Consumers won't hear "cutting edge SSD" and "better processor than before," they'll just hear "$599" or even higher and do a wtf am I reading face. Not that I doubt they're capable of that kind of stupidity.

 

[taxalot]

And Phil is really pushing on the "feel" of games, better framerates and lower response times, dont think they can promise that with this welfare model.

Graphics sell new AAA games. Phil can say what he wants, the developers will go 30-60fps max.

And here is the problem. You have seen the graphics of the next gen consoles. It is going to be VERY hard to convince a lot of gamers (the majority, the kind that don't hang out on nerd social online places like us) to shell out 500 or 600 bucks for that kind of minimal improvement.

The cheap and minimal solution considering 4K and RTX are not that noticeable for the general public. I know, at least I, that I don't give a fuck about that.

 

[aweigh]

if you look at current PC component prices then a next-gen capable PC will set you back at least 1200€

This is patently untrue.

An AMD 5700 XT (or alternatively RTX 2700/Super) and a Ryzen 5 3xxxx combo will already be better than next-gen consoles in terms of raw specs and output. Both the 5700 XT and the PS5 are rated for 10 TFLOPS, and besides that the Ryzen 5 3xxx line of CPUs easily surpasses the specced CPU inside the PS5.

Now sure you can make an argument that raw specs aren't everything, and that you can wring more out of the consoles, and that's totally valid, but I just wanted to address the "a next-gen equivalent PC will cost 2500 dollars" meme because it simply isn't true. You can get a next-gen equivalent PC right now for around 800 bucks, at least in terms of TFLOPS, and it will be far more flexible and useful for gaming and other tasks than any console.

 

[mk0]

An AMD 5700 XT (or alternatively RTX 2700/Super) and a Ryzen 5 3xxxx combo will already be better than next-gen consoles in terms of raw specs and output. Both the 5700 XT and the PS5 are rated for 10 TFLOPS, and besides that the Ryzen 5 3xxx line of CPUs easily surpasses the specced CPU inside the PS5.

Ryzen 5 3600, 6c/12t @ 3.6Ghz Base, 4.2GHz Boost.
XSX R7 CPU, 8c/16t @ 3.6Ghz Base, 3.8Ghz(without SMT).
PS5 R7 CPU, 8c/16t @ ?.?Ghz Base, 3.5Ghz Boost.

Even with a good cooling setup, a +0.6Ghz(16.7%) increase in single-thread thanks to boost clocks is not going to make up the difference of having 4 more threads on PS5/XSX. This is one of the pain points when it comes to trying to match next-gen consoles, the other being the SSD, also we still don't know any technical details about the RTX features in either consoles.

The PS5 has a bit of shenanigans going on with its CPU/GPU boost clocks too, GPU is probably around 9TF Base.

You can get a next-gen equivalent PC right now for around 800 bucks, at least in terms of TFLOPS, and it will be far more flexible and useful for gaming and other tasks than any console.

I wish, I've been hoarding my jew gold for the past year while waiting for the opportune time to upgrade. With the information currently available, I'm not convinced that now is a good time to build.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wish, I've been hoarding my jew gold for the past year while waiting for the opportune time to upgrade.

Pic from my basement:

Spoiler

You wouldn't say the 30x generation is a good spot for upgarde? IMO the 20x was too early, but in '21-23 the race is about to settle down. I don't imagine new 2-year cycles with 30% gain happening soon, but I'm not qualified for the technical analysis to back this up.

 

[aweigh]

Even with a good cooling setup, a +0.6Ghz(16.7%) increase in single-thread thanks to boost clocks is not going to make up the difference of having 4 more threads on PS5/XSX.

Cool, then spend 50 bucks more and get a Ryzen 7 which blows the PS5 CPU out of the water in every possible metric.

I'm not convinced this is a good time to build

Why not? You can buy PC hardware right now that is 2x times more powerful than the specced PS5 hardware. If you only want to match it, not surpass the PS5, then you can probably build a rig for around 700 bucks, obviously not including a monitor display.

The gap will only increase further when the new NVIDIA/AMD cards roll out and the prices for the current flagships and mid-tiers drops. I assume that's what you meant when you say you want to wait? That you're waiting until the new cards roll out so you can buy the current GPUs for cheaper.

 

[DalekFlay]

And here is the problem. You have seen the graphics of the next gen consoles. It is going to be VERY hard to convince a lot of gamers (the majority, the kind that don't hang out on nerd social online places like us) to shell out 500 or 600 bucks for that kind of minimal improvement.

I think it depends. Wii and Switch were the best selling systems of their time despite lesser visuals. Also a lot of people like yourself hold on to older PCs and play at lower settings for a long time. However there are also people super hyped about the new and more powerful stuff, who see ads on MTV and go "wow I have to have that" or who watch Youtube channels devoted to pretty visuals. I don't know how many of who is in what category, but my guess is how driven the visual lovers will be to get the new thing will depend on price. Sony shot themselves in the foot with $599 before, and that wasn't during a pandemic that's left a ton of people out of work. They'd be complete idiots to launch at that price now without an alternative, same for Microsoft.

I feel like the download only PS5 will be $100 cheaper, despite the drive only costing ~$20, because they can make up the difference in greater digital sales. Still... even $499 with less functionality would look bad I think. PS3 had one of those too, iirc.

Why not? You can buy PC hardware right now that is 2x times more powerful than the specced PS5 hardware. If you only want to match it, not surpass the PS5, then you can probably build a rig for around 700 bucks, obviously not including a monitor display.

You could upgrade an existing PC to beat the CPU/GPU for that price I guess, but not build a whole new one. Also even then, with say an AMD 5700xt and Ryzen 3700, you would likely still be behind due to console optimizations. I mean we'll see what the final clock speeds and such are, but that would be my guess. This isn't even mentioning the SSD, which very, very few PC gamers will be able to match anytime soon. We're getting new cards and processors soon enough though, so this conversation isn't really that relevant until the Fall. At that point $700 might do it, depending on how aggressive nVidia, Intel and AMD are.

 

[abija]

I seriously doubt the difference between a run of the mill ssd and whatever is in consoles will be put to much use. I have 3 generations of drives in my PC now and gaming wise differences seem minimal.

 

[aweigh]

Here is the science: http://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution-matter/

Therefore, on my 27" 4K display, I will be able to see the benefit of 4k at about 2.3' distance or less, but above 2.3, it will not matter that much or at all.

I wonder if this study takes into account texture crawl and texture shimmer, which is the biggest and most relevant detriment to good image quality in modern graphics. Most people (normies, non-gamers, and even a surprising amount of actual gamers) don't even know what texture shimmer and crawl is, unfortunately. Currently the best tech to battle crawl/shimmer is a good temporal anti-aliasing solution, either TAA or TXAA or SMTXAA.

Upscaling/higher resolutions do fix a lot of aliasing but they don't touch (or barely touch) texture crawl and shimmer, so 4k doesn't magically fix anything or make image quality "perfect".