Digital Foundry: Baldur's Gate 3 - Xbox Series X|S + PS5 Patched Performance - DF Tech Review

[Gamernyc78]

Baldur's Gate 3 is a qualified success on Xbox Series X and S

Baldur's Gate 3 has finally arrived on Xbox - so how does it hold up to the patched PS5 version on Series X and Series S? Oliver investigates the GOTY candidate

www.eurogamer.net

00:00 Overview
00:54 PS5 update
04:22 Series X
08:03 Series S
10:50 Analysis and conclusion

One of the most fantastic games of the year, Baldur's Gate 3 has finally arrived on Xbox Series consoles. In this video, Oliver Mackenzie revisits the PlayStation 5 version of the game to revisit visuals and performance, before stacking up the revised code against the newly released Xbox version. It's all here.

Overall I'd consider the Baldur's Gate 3 Xbox Series ports to be a qualified success. There are still some issues here, but this is a perfectly playable and reasonably performant version of Larian's acclaimed RPG.

Brief summary:

Between PS5/XSX

- The game on PS5 has improved its performance since its launch.

- Quality mode at 1440p on PS5/XSX and 1080p in performance mode (as a curiosity, the XSX HUD has a lower resolution)

- Visually there are few differences. For example, in the XSX version the characters are on surfaces in a more realistic way; On PS5 they seem to "float", but the geometry is very similar. The XSX version has worse texture filtering. The water also looks slightly different, which they believe is because they've tried to make it look more realistic, but up close they look identical.

- Performance is similar, but in CPU-limited areas like the third act, PS5 performs better. It should be mentioned that PS5 has improved performance since its launch.

XSS:

- The quality of shadows is lower than that of XSX. There are no more visual differences apparently, the texture filtering for example is identical.

- 1080p native.

- 30fps, performance is the same as Xbox Series X.

 

[ethomaz]

Series X

- Struggles with AA
- Lower resolution HUB
- Lower resolution shadows
- The ground is higher than it is suppose to be
- Lower level or details at distance
- Lower performance in both modes

Comparing launch versions PS5 has the Edge and it only increased with the performance patch.

 

[Sircaw]

I hope the game sells well on Xbox as Larian studies deserve as many copies of the game to be sold as humanly possible.
Such a Magnificent Studio.

 

[Entropi]

Why apologize for PS5's performance advantage due to being out longer when XSX was also in development for a longer time?

 

[Airbus]

For baldurs gate 3 go with quality mode for best graphics quality

The game is slow paced turn based rpg with lots of conversation dont really demand constant 60 fps for action adventure game like spiderman 2

 

[anonpuffs]

Why apologize for PS5's performance advantage due to being out longer when XSX was also in development for a longer time?

They're on the same patch version so this "being out longer/more patches" business is nonsense.

Series X is simply being severely hamstrung by the S.

 

[Entropi]

They're on the same patch version so this "being out longer/more patches" business is nonsense.

Series X is simply being severely hamstrung by the S.

That's what I think too.

 

[Lord Mittens]

I hope the game sells well on Xbox as Larian studies deserve as many copies of the game to be sold as humanly possible.
Such a Magnificent Studio.

It's #1 on the store ATM so I'd say it's doing well

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

I hope the game sells well on Xbox as Larian studies deserve as many copies of the game to be sold as humanly possible.
Such a Magnificent Studio.

please don't derail the thread, this is about making fun of the performance of the series X.

 

[Shmunter]

Flop Box, without the Terra

 

[Nhomnhom]

Game performed like shit on my PC, even made me buy a new GPU. The only thing that ended up solving it was playing on Linux where it surprisingly was butters smooth, high frame rate, with no bugs and no crashed (weirdly running on DX11).

Windows actually sucks and might actually explain why Xbox usually performs bellow expectations. Stutter is also a common issue on Windows that to me seems to disappear when playing on Linux (no idea how that can be possible even for games that don't use Vulkan).

I put all my hundred of hours before the last big patch so I don't know how it is know, but it really sucked on Windows for me, enough to scare me away from ever gaming on Windows again.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Game performed like shit on my PC, even made me buy a new GPU. The only thing that ended up solving it was playing on Linux where it surprisingly was butters smooth, high frame rate, with no bugs and no crashed (weirdly running on DX11).

Windows actually sucks and might actually explain why Xbox usually performs bellow expectations. Stutter is also a common issue on Windows that to me seems to disappear when playing on Linux (no idea how that can be possible even for games that don't use Vulkan).

I put all my hundred of hours before the last big patch so I don't know how it is know, but it really sucked on Windows for me, enough to scare me away from ever gaming on Windows again.

They have scripts that remove or disable the garbage from Windows 10/11.

Ideally we would all still be under windows 7.

Edit: which distro did you use? is it a native Linux port or you use some conversion layer?

 

[Nhomnhom]

They have scripts that remove or disable the garbage from Windows 10/11.

Ideally we would all still be under windows 7.

Edit: which distro did you use? is it a native Linux port or you use some conversion layer?

Nobara. It's Fedora but with some gaming specif tweaks maintained by GloriousEggroll the guy behind Proton GE.

At this point I don't even have windows installed on my machine and have being using Linux for gaming for almost two years I think.

It's not a native port (there are very few native Linux games) but somehow at this point in my experience I have more success running Windows games on Linux then I do running Windows games on Windows.

I had problems with Elden Ring as well on release (stutter mostly) and got a much smoother experience (that required less tweaking) on Linux. It's not just BG3. I'm surprised by how little coverage gaming on Linux gets given how impressive and cool it is.