John (Digital Foundry) on PS5: ''Just talking to developers...I think people will be surprised in a good way about the PS5''

[nib95]

This is why I haven't decided on versions of (non Game Pass) multiplatform games yet despite having both consoles pre-ordered.

I know Microsoft keeps drumming the most powerful console line over and over, and whilst that may be true, they've yet to actually show any new next-gen games running on the system yet, and ultimately the real world differences between versions of multiplat games might still be minor, especially given how marginal the performance difference between the two systems is this time around.

It might end up being the case that differences are minor enough that it's instead things like UI, quality of life options, features, controller preference etc that end up being the deciding factor.

To add to the likelihood of differences being less notable, Richard from Digital Foundry has stated, that some developers he's spoken to have had a touch more friction moving from the Xbox's XDK to the GDK, and on the opposite side we have Richard, Alex, Jason Schreier etc talking about how every Dev they've spoken to about the PS5, has been glowing about it. Which all gives credence to the notion that things might not be as clear cut with every game as first assumed. John is only just adding to that in this new clip.

But who really knows, maybe things will be more different than we assume. It's all up in the air at the moment.

 

[Uzupedro]

Yeah his comment wasn't even about PS5 compared to XSX really

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It was tho.
Go back like 7 minutes in the video to see the full context.
But yeah, this shouldn't be a shitshow.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Then what was it about? I feel like I walked into a movie half-way through and that movie was Fire Walk With Me

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I didn't read it as comparing the two from a hardware/game performance perspective. Just that there's a lot of talk about Xbox because there have been some hands-on features already, and that he's heard stuff from devs working on PS5 that will excite people too when it hits the public. He's not saying anything about comparative game performance specifically I didn't think.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

"More" isn't the case: "worse" is what I said, and in this case, "worse" means "slower." SSD is many more times slower than RAM, and no, that's not what the SSD is designed to do.


On average it's still faster, but I do agree that it may lead to upsets in some games.

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The SSD is design to help with ram .
It will never be a replacement for Ram but the faster IO will allow for better ram usage \management .

 

[Deleted member 46804]

I don't think you can always look at technical specs on paper and say one console will come out better in all cases. Like PS3 was more powerful on paper than 360, but most games ran worse on it and it was mostly Sony first party that was able to take advantage of it. Ease of development can allow you to squeeze more out of a platform. I also heard Sony's dev tools allow for more lower level access to hardware than MS's tools. Some of this might fall down to what was the lead development platform.

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This is all x86. This isn't a PS3, 360 difference.

 

[Deleted member 43]

As long we agree that "nearly identical" is subjective. Probably safe to assume we see similar differences to the Pro/One X which is to say small differences. Obviously most people won't care. If you can only buy one console, buy the one where the games you want to play are. If you buy both it's safe to assume based on specs that Xbox will be the third party platform of choice.

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Smaller.

 

[Marano]

Which is? I didn't know they had preferences other than Alex for pc.

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Dont quote me on that but Ive heard people say he had a back on forth with a fanboy on some other forum(not sure if his username was lastsword or something similar), who accused him of bias in favor of xbox and if IIRC he defended himself by saying he didnt even like xbox and would have prefered it if MS hadnt entered the console market, not entirely sure, someone who knows better could correct me.

Either way, Ive never noticed bias in any digital foundry videos, even if alex likes PC, he is fair in his analysis and very knowledgeable.

 

[hey it's that dog]

"More" isn't the case: "worse" is what I said, and in this case, "worse" means "slower." The PS5's RAM is slower on average. SSD is many more times slower than RAM, and no, that's not what the SSD is designed to do. The PS5's SSD can fill up RAM faster than the Series X's though.


On average it's still faster, but I do agree that the split RAM may lead to upsets in some games.

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If the SSD can stream things in real time as your character turns around 180 degrees, then that would imply to me that less stuff needs to be stored in RAM "just in case" the player encounters it in the near future. A huge part of both these next gen machines' architecture is that you don't need to put as much stuff in RAM based on what the player might encounter in the next 30 seconds. It can now be filled exclusively with what they'll see in the next 3 seconds, or something like that.

 

[bes.gen]

As long we agree that "nearly identical" is subjective. Probably safe to assume we see similar differences to the Pro/One X which is to say small differences. Obviously most people won't care. If you can only buy one console, buy the one where the games you want to play are. If you buy both it's safe to assume based on specs that Xbox will be the third party platform of choice.

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there is much more pronounced difference between ps4pro and onex than these machines.
don't think it'll be similar to that.

 

[dlauv]

The SSD is design to help with ram .
It will never be a replacement for Ram but the faster IO will allow for better ram usage \management .

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Yes, but that really wasn't in question.

If the SSD can stream things in real time as your character turns around 180 degrees, then that would imply to me that less stuff needs to be stored in RAM "just in case" the player encounters it in the near future.

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It can't. It can only send information to the RAM fast enough to keep up with the occlusion culling. However, given the specs of the GPUs and the RAM size (16gb), I don't think there's anything demanding enough that can't be overcome by the SSD's speed.

 

[BAD]

If he's reporting what he's heard from developers, how does his alleged preference for Sony enter into it?

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He's not just reporting, he gave his opinion that he personally thinks people will be surprised. But he really doesn't know what everyone else's expectations are. It's not a wild opinion, but it's nothing measurable and he is expecting pleasant surprise from people reacting based on his own level of care for what differences may arrive. Again, he isn't a robot.

Yeah his comment wasn't even about PS5 compared to XSX really

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That's exactly what they were discussing. Listen to what prompted to him saying he can't wait to see these "both in action."

 

[ArchedThunder]

As long we agree that "nearly identical" is subjective. Probably safe to assume we see similar differences to the Pro/One X which is to say small differences. Obviously most people won't care. If you can only buy one console, buy the one where the games you want to play are. If you buy both it's safe to assume based on specs that Xbox will be the third party platform of choice.

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The differences will be way smaller than PS4 Pro vs XOX. Resolutions and frame rates will be much closer, and even identical in plenty of cases I'm sure.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

Based on what ? This sounds like the secret sauce that people always bring up every gen . The more powerful console will be more powerful

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Where did Matt suggest the more powerful console won't be more powerful? He's saying there won't be any significant differences, and hints that in some cases, PS5 maybe have some slight advantages.

 

[Deleted member 76797]

At the end of the day, I think all that matters is we're going to see amazing things on both consoles. This new generation is the biggest leap we've ever had, IMO.

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not even close to the SNES —> N64 jump into 3d gaming

these consoles are basically giving you the modern day mid range gaming PC experience

 

[Joo]

Is that like "I know which games are going be better on X then Y" kind of insider info
or
just like a general "shit goes weird in game dev sometimes" kind of thing

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I'd say that Matt is basically saying that while XSX does have its advantages over PS5, the same goes for PS5. A surprise would be that depending on the game, some will just have the better version on PS5 and that's it.

Would be kinda weird to even make a point about there being surprises in game performance in a thread like this, if the reason would only be "because devs have problems with one or the other right now". I don't think that would really count as a surprise, or at least I wouldn't characterise it as such.

 

[hey it's that dog]

He's not just reporting, he gave his opinion that he personally thinks people will be surprised. But he really doesn't know what everyone else's expectations are. It's not a wild opinion, but it's nothing measurable and he is expecting pleasant surprise from people reacting based on his own level of care for what differences may arrive. Again, he isn't a robot.

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He's a tech journalist/content creator. I bet he has a decent idea of commonly expressed expectations about the power levels of the PS5 and XSX. We all do, don't we?

 

[Raide]

I feel like both systems are going to be really close. Pros and cons for different areas but still a massive leap o we what we have. I think the real differential factor is probably when RT is used.

 

[Anarion07]

not even close to the SNES —> N64 jump into 3d gaming

these consoles are basically giving you the modern day mid range gaming PC experience

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mid range, really?

 

[Koukalaka]

We're coming into a generation with two excellent pieces of hardware (and one cut down little brother). I think now more than ever it comes down to the choice of games, features and services that each ecosystem offers.

MS and Sony are giving it their all and that competition is good for gamers.

 

[amstradcpc]

I'd say that Matt is basically saying that while XSX does have its advantages over PS5, the same goes for PS5. A surprise would be that depending on the game, some will just have the better version on PS5 and that's it.

Would be kinda weird to even make a point about there being surprises in game performance in a thread like this, if the reason would only be "because devs have problems with one or the other right now". I don't think that would really count as a surprise, or at least I wouldn't characterise it as such.

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If there is something is how caches are managed in PS5, be it the infinity cache, unified L3 in CPU, or other things like cache scrubbers.

 

[Deleted member 76797]

mid range, really?

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high end being rtx 3080 and 3090

 

[CorpseLight]

mid range, really?

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I'd say slightly over midrange, sure.
Really high end gaming you can be hitting 1440p / 4K and 240hz if you really want to spend the money.

 

[VaIdor]

not even close to the SNES —> N64 jump into 3d gaming

these consoles are basically giving you the modern day mid range gaming PC experience

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As someone who isn't close to being an expert in hardware that sounds off.

 

[hey it's that dog]

Yes, but that really wasn't in question.


It can't. It can only send information to the RAM fast enough to keep up with the occlusion culling. However, given the specs of the GPUs and the RAM size (16gb), I don't think there's anything demanding enough that can't be overcome by the SSD's speed.

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In the road to PS5, Cerny said:

So when I talked about the dream of an SSD part of the reason for that 5 gigabytes a second target was to eliminate loads, but also part of the reason for that target was streaming as in what if the SSD is so fast that as the player is turning around. It's possible to load textures for everything behind the player in that split second.


So at the very least textures don't need to be stored in RAM in the same way they once did, right?

 

[lost7]

This will be the first generation where I think being a multiplat owner will really pay off. Owning a PS5 and XSX has become a must if you don't wanna miss out on great games, which is ultimately what it's all about for me

 

[Deleted member 46804]

not even close to the SNES —> N64 jump into 3d gaming

these consoles are basically giving you the modern day mid range gaming PC experience

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I think we should compare the N64 to a midrange PC of the day. 😉

 

[mullah88]

He's basically stirring up the fanboys, it's worked.

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How so?

 

[bbq of doom]

In the road to PS5, Cerny said:

So when I talked about the dream of an SSD part of the reason for that 5 gigabytes a second target was to eliminate loads, but also part of the reason for that target was streaming as in what if the SSD is so fast that as the player is turning around. It's possible to load textures for everything behind the player in that split second.


So at the very least textures don't need to be stored in RAM in the same way they once did, right?

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I've seen it stated that the SSD is fast enough to function as a ton of extremely old, slow RAM.

 

[cantbebothered]

Smaller.

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That's good to hear

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

Where did Matt suggest the more powerful console won't be more powerful? He's saying there won't be any significant differences, and hints that in some cases, PS5 maybe have some slight advantages.

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The more powerful console will always be more powerful . How significant things are will be up to the user. I see lots of people saying you wont be able to tell the difference. Would they see the difference between a 12tf video card vs a 10tf one? Some people might not see the difference between resolutions or cant see 60fps.

His hints mean nothing without something backing it . And Johns vague comment doesnt say anything.

 

[j^aws]

you cant magically produce computing power from nowhere

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You can actually. In a rendering pipeline, everything computed is technically not displayed on your screen. You can be wasting computation on hidden pixels, for example. You can be wasting computation on underutilised execution units as well. You don't magically produce power, but the net effect is the same by not wasting power.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

That's exactly what they were discussing. Listen to what prompted to him saying he can't wait to see these "both in action."

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The entire preceding conversation was about the BS talk about the Series X being abnormally hot. Then they were talking about the power useage of Series X in BC mode compared to the One X. John brings the PS5 up because the discussion about heat and power consumption came up because they were talking about the fact that they had a Series X console they've already gone hands on with, and Sony was still in the process of making that public rollout happen.

In that conversation that prompted John's comment they weren't talking about PS5 game performance vs XSX game performance. They were talking about the size and potential power draw.

 

[Marano]

not even close to the SNES —> N64 jump into 3d gaming

these consoles are basically giving you the modern day mid range gaming PC experience

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I agree the jump isnt that high, but it is not a modern mid range PC experience, with each new gen the baseline increases, PCs get better visual based off of that, current games on modern mid range PCs wouldnt match the series x next gen games for instance (not cross gen), mid range PCs running the same games will of course maybe even surpass it, especially the 30x series of gpus (except 3060 rtx and lower, but that is also dependant on the cpu, ram and ssd setups, it is complicated since PCs, are not linear but highly escalable so the experience will vary a lot compared to softwared developed for specific, fixed hardware.

 

[Deleted member 76797]

As someone who isn't close to being an expert in hardware that sounds off.

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What sounds off about it? RTX 3080 is a 30 teraflop GPU and the 3090 is rendering games in 8k.

 

[jroc74]

I love surprises.

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Aawwa Dayum. Time to bust out the CJ gif...

Weird stuff happens sometimes.

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You know what.....look.

Matt plz.

Isn't the difference suppose to be more between a 9v12tf

haha it's him!!

edit: aw damn it's fake

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More like 8tf vs 12.

Dual console owners stay winning

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I'm still trying to get a Series X.....

Is John implying that ps5 games are going to look and run better than Xbox Series x games, or that despite the raw power differences they are going to be very similar?

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Please pick the less controversial one.

Smaller.

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Some ppl just don't wanna hear it.

 

[dlauv]

So at the very least textures don't need to be stored in RAM in the same way they once did, right?

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Yes that seems to be the case. It's just the way you worded it earlier with "streamed" confused me.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

The CPUs are basically equal.

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Was wondering if the ram set up going to matter much or if that small and the big difference really is just the SSD and GPU .

 

[Anarion07]

What sounds off about it? RTX 3080 is a 30 teraflop GPU and the 3090 is rendering games in 8k.

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Well for pc enthusiasts. But for the average consumber the 20xx line is still high end I'd say. like 90% percentile?

 

[Elandyll]

We had better performing Xbox One games this gen (in fps that is). Weird stuff happens.

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And better PS4pro one vs X too.

People thinking that the series X will always have both better resolution -and- better framerates are probably going to have a rude awakening eventually, particularly if for pr sake MS decides to push devs to be pursuing native 4K at all cost.
I already dread the DF face offs threads.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

The more powerful console will always be more powerful . How significant things are will be up to the user. I see lots of people saying you wont be able to tell the difference. Would they see the difference between a 12tf video card vs a 10tf one? Some people might not see the difference between resolutions or cant see 60fps.

His hints mean nothing without something backing it . And Johns vague comment doesnt say anything.

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You can repeat that line until you're blue in the face, it doesn't refute anything I or anyone else has said.

You're not more qualified to come to conclusions about final real world performance than John or Matt anyway, so I don't understand what you're getting at here. No one is claiming secret sauce. Just that this will be the smallest gap we've seen in performance yet.

 

[BAD]

The more powerful console will always be more powerful . How significant things are will be up to the user. I see lots of people saying you wont be able to tell the difference. Would they see the difference between a 12tf video card vs a 10tf one? Some people might not see the difference between resolutions or cant see 60fps.

His hints mean nothing without something backing it . And Johns vague comment doesnt say anything.

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Series X is about 1/5th more powerful, so I'd be surprised if we rarely see any differences. Maybe John is right if that ends up being the case and the 1/5th jump is nothing, and the gap in CUs for ray tracing is nothing. That would surprise me.

 

[AntiMacro]

Digital Foundry noted that image quality can outweigh raw specs all the way back with their coverage of Ryse. People have finally caught up with the idea that pixel count is great and all, but pixel count isn't image quality.

 

[Hey Please]

Isn't the difference suppose to be more between a 9v12tf

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This shit is so tiresome.

 

[behOemoth]

Which is? I didn't know they had preferences other than Alex for pc.

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Probably all retro consoles combined.

 

[BAD]

And better PS4pro one vs X too.

People thinking that the series X will always have both better resolution -and- better framerates are probably going to have a rude awakening eventually, particularly if for pr sake MS decides to push devs to be pursuing native 4K at all cost.
I already dread the DF face offs threads.

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I don't think many enthusiasts are totally oblivious to some games being optimized worse on Xbox One X than the weaker PS4 Pro, and I don't think people expect this to never happen again sometimes. The question in the air is about the majority of games and if they will do something with the additional ~1/5th power increase of Series X, or if we will be surprised and almost everything stops at parity.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

You can repeat that line until you're blue in the face, it doesn't refute anything I or anyone else has said.

You're not more qualified to come to conclusions about final real world performance than John or Matt anyway, so I don't understand what you're getting at here. No one is claiming secret sauce. Just that this will be the smallest gap we've seen in performance yet.

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What was John even saying? He said nothing. And i will say it because its true. A PC with a faster GPU, CPU and ram will perform better. The same is the case with the consoles.

You dont have to be qualified to know that higher specs = better performance.

 

[Deleted member 76797]

Well for pc enthusiasts. But for the average consumber the 20xx line is still high end I'd say. like 90% percentile?

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2070 is what I would consider midrange now.

Even beyond that, these consoles are just more like modern PCs than ever. SSD's, freesync, supporting high frame rates, etc.

Im actually curious how all that will be handled. Are you gonna have Vsync options, etc? Guess well see in a few weeks.

 

[E.T.]

PS5 is a beast, can not wait to enjot the great games coming to the platform. So soon as well.

 

[brawndolicious]

mid range, really?

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XSX is compared to the RTX 2080 and that's like the fourth or fifth fastest card? PS5 a bit lower than that.

We don't know at this point how well the things like ray tracing and image reconstruction are going to work but so far, it's been super basic RT reflections at a reduced resolution so yeah, it feels like it's best to just go with the expectation that they're going to perform similar to a midrange (~$400) GPU.

 

[ghostcrew]

John's preferred platform isn't really a secret.

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Yeah, I think we all know John is a Jaguar guy. It isn't really a secret.