NXGamer/IGN: The Witcher 3 Next Gen Patch Analysis: PS5 vs Series S/X

[thelastword]

Graphics Summary:

Two modes on all three next gen consoles. Performance and Quality.
Quality mode has RT Global Illumination and RT Ambient Occlusion on PS5 and Series X. There is no RT on Series S.
Performance mode ranges from 1440p - 1800p on PS5/Series X whilst Quality/RT mode averages around 1440p with highs of 1620p and lows of 1296p.
These modes are upsampled on PS5 and Series X to 4k with a pass of CAS Sharpening. He suspects there is no upsampling used on Series S as the image is a bit muddier.

Series S in performance mode renders at 1080 mostly, whilst Quality mode renders closer to 1440p with some lows to 1080p on occasion.
PS5 seems to carry some legacy PS4 issues like lower LOD over the Series Consoles, Series X/S seem to have higher LOD over PS5 at points, He calls it a bug that may be addressed with the day 1 patch. This analysis was done prior to a day 1 patch if there is one.
Also PS5 has this weird Onscreen UI stutter, that was also present in last gen PS4 versions, it's also on XBOX but not as profound.

Performance Summary:

PS5 has a bit better performance over Series X in both Quality and Performance modes, but it can drop on both. Series X can often fall to lows of 40fps in performance mode and low 20's in quality mode. PS5 dips as well in both modes in dense areas, but not so steeply.
The area where the game drops is mostly dense city settings with lots of geometry and NPC's, Series X struggles there a bit more, mainly CPU bound areas.
It's mostly locked outside of these areas minus some high combat areas with lots of foliage.
Series S seems to hold a locked 30fps in quality mode, It's performance mode drops in dense areas just as Series X, but it's a bit more stable in these parts over it's bigger brother, of course Series S is dialed down over the QHD twins in both modes.

 

[mansoor1980]

looks meh to me

 

[thelastword]

looks meh to me

The game looks improved, however the RT mode to me looks too dark in parts, especially in-doors. I personally would opt for the 60fps performance mode, it's sharper, looks a bit better than the last gen ultra PC version with improved foliage, textures and SSR.


Side Note:

It should be noted that this patch does drastically improve on the shader aliasing and image quality on this game over last gen versions. FSR is doing wonders over last gen AA methods, couple that with advanced textures, AF and other gameplay related improvements to input and camera, this is definitely the best version of the game. NX also mentions a pretty solid Dualsense implementation as well. Moreover, they have implemented an advanced form of SSR on all next gen consoles that looks better over last gen versions including last gen Ultra PC.

 

[mansoor1980]

its free so no complaints , but there is a lot of pop in with the new added textures and foliage
probably will get more patches

 

[thelastword]

Now I mentioned in another thread that I thought PS had better reflections and that it's lighting popped a bit more over the other versions. This is what I meant. In both Quality and performance mode mind you. This is from the Analista video. There are other scenes where I find the lighting and running water reflections look better on PS5. I'm mainly talking PS5 vs Series X...

 

[Darth Vader]

Now I mentioned in another thread that I thought PS had better reflections and that it's lighting popped a bit more over the other versions. This is what I meant. In both Quality and performance mode mind you. This is from the Analista video. There are other scenes where I find the lighting and running water reflections look better on PS5. I'm mainly talking PS5 vs Series X...

Is water not SSR? Because they pointed out that RT was superior on XSX (I couldn't see it, but won't disagree) while SSR was superior on PS5. To me those reflections look like SSR.

 

[thelastword]

Is water not SSR? Because they pointed out that RT was superior on XSX (I couldn't see it, but won't disagree) while SSR was superior on PS5. To me those reflections look like SSR.

Yes, the reflections are SSR, albeit the upgraded SSR they implemented...PC can do RT reflections though, so I imagine it's RT reflections only on PC, can't confirm for their analysis, but they did say PC max.

 

[Lord Mittens]

I booted it up on Series X briefly last night, that performance mode is smooooooooooooooooth

 

[mansoor1980]

really interesting video , pop-in is there but this shows the tech for this game

 

[KiryuRealty]

I wish they'd patched in a better combat system, but some of the new shortcut systems should help a lot. Maybe I will finish this finally if it is improved enough from the PS4 version.

 

[Yobo]

Another better on PS5

 

[KiryuRealty]

Another better on PS5

With the way CDPR has historically favoured Xbox, the fact that this runs better on PS5 is kind of interesting.

 

[Yobo]

With the way CDPR has historically favoured Xbox, the fact that this runs better on PS5 is kind of interesting.

Maybe efforts to fix with the relationship with Sony that they burned

 

[KiryuRealty]

Maybe efforts to fix with the relationship with Sony that they burned

I am thinking it is more likely to be better toolchain and more efficient hardware, honestly.

 

[thelastword]

With the way CDPR has historically favoured Xbox, the fact that this runs better on PS5 is kind of interesting.

Maybe they tried to make it worse on PS, but the PS is so well designed that no matter what they tried PS still runs and looks better over Series X........Cerny said, what you guys did on XBONE vs PS4 is not happening a second time.......I think Cyberpunk runs a bit better on PS too...

 

[KiryuRealty]

Maybe they tried to make it worse on PS, but the PS is so well designed that no matter what they tried PS still runs and looks better over Series X........Cerny said, what you guys did on XBONE vs PS4 is not happening a second time.......I think Cyberpunk runs a bit better on PS too...

I think it is just the PS5 being more efficient for the things W3 is doing than the Xbox, no extra effort or pressure involved.

But I also would be very afraid of what Cerny might be capable of if he got angry...

 

[thelastword]

I think it is just the PS5 being more efficient for the things W3 is doing than the Xbox, no extra effort or pressure involved.

But I also would be very afraid of what Cerny might be capable of if he got angry...

In general I just think PS is better for open world games, RT and high alpha, high bandwidth games.

So much for these extra cpu cycles on XBOX, people thought this would give the XBOX the advantage over PS, but it's clear XBOX had the extra clocks as overhead for their OS.....Seems in every CPU bound game, PS excels.......Oh and it's so sad that some Xfans were so wrong about everything really, the boasting on Series X's RT capability, they said more CU's meant better RT. How wrong were they.

 

[KiryuRealty]

In general I just think PS is better for open world games, RT and high alpha, high bandwidth games.

So much for these extra cpu cycles on XBOX, people thought this would give the XBOX the advantage over PS, but it's clear XBOX had the extra clocks as overhead for their OS.....Seems in every CPU bound game, PS excels.......Oh and it's so sad that some Xfans were so wrong about everything really, the boasting on Series X's RT capability, they said more CU's meant better RT. How wrong were they.

It is similar to the N64. That machine DID have a 64-bit CPU, but it only had a 32-bit data bus, so it ran games like total dog shit.

Series X has a bit more raw grunt, but less bandwidth to feed that CPU, so performance isn't what the theoretical numbers suggest it should be in real operation.

We are really seeing something not too far from the PS2 vs the original Xbox, where the Sony system's insane bandwidth allows it to beat out the seemingly stronger system, but this generation it isn't requiring as much specialization on the Sony system to do it.

I am trying to enable the cross-save, and man, CDPR did this the SHITTIEST possible way. Seriously, WBGames and UBISoft did it better for account linking back in the PS3 days!

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

PS5 has a bit better performance over Series X in both Quality and Performance modes, but it can drop on both. Series X can often fall to lows of 40fps in performance mode and low 20's in quality mode. PS5 dips as well in both modes in dense areas, but not so steeply.
The area where the game drops is mostly dense city settings with lots of geometry and NPC's, Series X struggles there a bit more, mainly CPU bound areas.

If the game's relying a lot on the fixed function pipeline for graphics (which I'd expect it is), then keep in mind PS5 has a higher culling and rasterization rate than the Series consoles (17.8 Gpolys/sec culling//8.9 Gpolys/sec raster PS5 vs 14.6 Gpolys/sec culling//7.3 Gpolys/sec raster Series X vs 12.52 Gpolys/sec culling//6.26 Gpolys/sec raster Series S).

So it could be CPU bound, but it might also be GPU-related on the frontend side. PS5 can simply push out more polygons than the Series systems and the CPU isn't terribly slower than Series when SMT is enabled so I don't know how big a difference the CPU would make. But it might still have some difference if draw calls are limited on the Series systems to what the GPUs can realistically cull for polygons per frame.

It is similar to the N64. That machine DID have a 64-bit CPU, but it only had a 32-bit data bus, so it ran games like total dog shit.

Series X has a bit more raw grunt, but less bandwidth to feed that CPU, so performance isn't what the theoretical numbers suggest it should be in real operation.

We are really seeing something not too far from the PS2 vs the original Xbox, where the Sony system's insane bandwidth allows it to beat out the seemingly stronger system, but this generation it isn't requiring as much specialization on the Sony system to do it.

Personally I don't know if it's a CPU thing. PS5 and Series X's CPUs are roughly the same when SMT is enabled, and when it comes to RAM bandwidth PS5's audio engine uses more bandwidth than Series X's. The CPUs in general are much improved compared to 8th-gen but it's not like they're powerhouses, and I don't think they really need anymore than maybe 90/100 GB/s of bandwidth for peak CPU tasks; desktop CPUs more powerful than the ones in the new consoles don't even have access to RAM setups much higher than 125 GB/s (ex. quad-channel setups for Zen CPUs dropping per-module speeds down to 3600 MT/s giving total bandwidth of ~ 115 GB/s) and the CPUs in the consoles don't need that amount of bandwidth whatsoever regardless what they're doing.

And if a game isn't relying on compute-intensive tasks (either for stuff like mesh shading or GPGPU), then the main advantage Series X's GPU has over PS5's is nullified because its only other real advantage would be texture fillrate and MAYBE specific lower-precision math support (assuming PS5's GPU doesn't have INT support but from what I've heard it's trivial in pretty much all RDNA2 GPUs so no reason for it to be missing in Sony's). In every other area from cache speeds to pixel fillrate to cache memory management/coherency PS5's GPU has the advantage, plus its memory I/O subsystem is more specifically built to help with data management than Xbox's (i.e how the I/O subsystem's coprocessors help work with the GPU's cache scrubbers).

I think those are the real reasons why practical performance is not reflective of theoretical boasts for Series X in quite a few games, but it could also be stuff like certain engines just favoring one system's quirks over the other's, or devs having familiarity with one system's APIs and tools than the other (which you said earlier). Maybe that will start to change if/when mesh shading becomes more widely used but it's not like PS5 can't use mesh shaders and it's not like fixed function can't be used alongside mesh shading, so I doubt even in that scenario Series X ever takes a regular lead.

Speaking of older consoles though, I've been doing some reading on their architectures and while some of it flies over my head, it's fascinating to learn what the real differences were or were not with them compared to commonly accepted beliefs. Like this one: the PS3's RSX was NOT limited to the GDDR3 RAM like it's usually thought. It could use the XDR RAM as well but IIRC it has to go through a different path with the CPU to do so. But the CPU uses the XDR RAM as a setup for graphics data the RSX needs anyway, so it never made sense if the RSX could only use the GDDR3 RAM.

 

[thelastword]

I wish they'd patched in a better combat system, but some of the new shortcut systems should help a lot. Maybe I will finish this finally if it is improved enough from the PS4 version.

I started it many moons ago, but never persevered. I think I will give it a go now. I always thought the foliage was absolutely awful, so when PC gamers was saying this is the best looking game even with many subpar looking textures at points, I was always saying, really? Still, I like games set in Witcher's era and stories of it's ilk, so maybe with a less cumbersome camera I'm about to put it through it's paces.....Also, I love the show.

It is similar to the N64. That machine DID have a 64-bit CPU, but it only had a 32-bit data bus, so it ran games like total dog shit.

Series X has a bit more raw grunt, but less bandwidth to feed that CPU, so performance isn't what the theoretical numbers suggest it should be in real operation.

We are really seeing something not too far from the PS2 vs the original Xbox, where the Sony system's insane bandwidth allows it to beat out the seemingly stronger system, but this generation it isn't requiring as much specialization on the Sony system to do it.

Yep, the interconnects are doing god's work on PS5 too. I remember when GAF mods use to ban folk because they said XBOX simply wanted to bruteforce it's way because of it's higher TF, but there is no way you are doing any bruteforcing with RT with so many bottlenecks. Don't people see what Witcher is doing to PC atm......

PC is taking a beating. A RTX 4090 goes from 148fps in raster at 4k to 47fps with RT effects on, and of course there is no need for me to tell anyone how much this GPU goes for on newegg, it's certainly not MSRP. The 2000 and 3000 series from NV is taking a beating even with DLSS on. I know my PC knights were glad to boast about RT G.I, AO, Shadows and Reflections, but they had to know this would bring the mighty PC warrior to it's knees. Look at how a simple looking portal with RT brought PC to it's knees, Imagine a next only game with high end next gen assets, textures and streaming with high alpha, (Crysis 4) with RT/path tracing or all RT effects, good luck.

I'll play the Raster mode at high resolution for now.