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derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:58 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
4K30 is about as heavy as 1440p60 (4K30 is slightly higher pixel rate, but less non-per-pixel work), and most of the people you'll find claiming those cards can't approximate 1440p60 are those who habitually max out all settings. Games may take a bit of settings tweaking to get there, but on consoles the devs are doing that tweaking for you. PC people just like to declare 4K all but impossible because they're trying for 60 fps with maxed settings. XB1X does also pull in some checkerboarding on some games, right?

And settings is a topic we've not yet begun to discuss. How many X1X games at 4K are matching settings to the PC version identically?
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LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:02 am

derFunkenstein wrote:
And settings is a topic we've not yet begun to discuss. How many X1X games at 4K are matching settings to the PC version identically?

Well, from the article I posted about Far Cry 5 we've got
So what's the takeaway then? It should be clear at this point that Ubisoft has done a good job of maximising each platform's respective capabilities. This just leaves the PC version, where first impressions suggest visual improvements over the consoles may be limited, and where attaining a solid 60 frames per second isn't trivial.

and
The good news is that Ubisoft has also deployed HDR on PC, a system often overlooked for high dynamic range support - most recently on the beautiful Sea of Thieves.

as an aside.

It doesn't sound so simple anymore.
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Chrispy_
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:52 am

DancinJack wrote:
Some people like what they like.

For instance, I think 1440p and max details is the sweet spot. I don't really care about 4K if I'm being honest (and I have both a PC that could do some games at 4K and a 4K TV capable). After that I want dem FPS and VRR. Games running 120FPS on an 120Hz screen is so money.


This. I don't even think it needs to be 120FPS. Even back in the CRT days, there was a threshold at around 85Hz beyond which anything else was pointless. I remember Q3A (running at 125fps for the pmove_fixed console command) and my monitor could do 1280x960@72Hz, 1024x768@85Hz, and 640x480@120Hz. 72Hz was fast enough to remove most of the CRT flicker, so the contrast between 72fps, 85fps was stark - 85Hz really was buttery smooth and in a whole different class. The jump from 85Hz to 120Hz was barely noticeable.

I guess everyone's eyes are a bit different, but whilst 60Hz is adequate and 75Hz is bettter, 85Hz might well be the upper end of the "sweet spot" for most people. If anything, I was particularly affected by 60Hz flicker and even found 72Hz a little bit flickery, so my guess is that I'm more sensitive than others - possibly a side effect of having no green cones in my retina?

Crucially, VRR is what stops the fluidity of 85fps from suddenly dropping into the 40's, and 85fps obviously allows more detail to be rendered than the same GPU trying to output 120fps. I was pretty much in heaven with an ultrawide 144Hz screen, but the GPU I had was only knocking out 90-110fps at typical settings; The key thing being that it was >60Hz and buttery smooth.
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Glorious
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:14 am

LostCat wrote:
Err, I never said it was the fastest thing on Earth? All I've been saying was I was amused that people still act like it isn't better than the competition.


Right, but no one disputed that it was more powerful than the PS4 Pro. DancinJack even said outright at the very beginning that he didn't even understand how there was an argument. I explicitly agreed, and no one implicitly disagreed.

It's just that, this being a computing technology enthusiast forum, people took polite issue with how you were overstating the case about performance in relation to PCs. It's not anti-console bias. It's not anti Xbox bias. It's just people trying to tell you, straight, the rough equivalent performance numbers. No one is going all PC Master Race, it's not mean to be flames & fanboyism, just the facts. No animus.

LostCat wrote:
Then, practically every person who buys one is shocked how good it is and people who already have one roll their eyes at them.


Like, is this sort of statement even necessary? It really just makes it seem like you have a huge chip on your shoulder---even towards people who BUY the thing!

It just... you know, reeks of fanboyism and disdain?

LostCat wrote:
I wasn't referring to every gaming machine. I was referring to the market overall. Most gaming PCs in use today are far less capable.


"Gaming PC" is a bit of an amorphous term, but any mid-level card from the last 3-4 years is competitive if not better.

But even that doesn't particularly matter, because regardless of how we define "Gaming PC", the X1X simply isn't out of line historically when it comes to comparative GPU performance of Console/Discrete cards. If anything, it tends towards being less powerful relative to the existing market.


---

I'm firmly in the Derfunkenstein wing here, in which the point is the games. But I like accurate information and I dislike fanboyism.

It's a great console. You can't build a comparative gaming PC for the same price.

Can we leave it at that? Without the fanboyism and disparagement?
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:38 am

Why are we all rolling our eyes at each other? I'm sure it's great, but for $500 it darn well better be. And it needs to have exclusive games I want to play. IGN had a great example a couple days ago of how God of War looked on PS4 vs how it looks on Xbox One. Looks a lot like MLB The Show on Xbox One. Seriously, need some art direction here. :lol:
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Glorious
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:47 am

Derfunk wrote:
And it needs to have exclusive games I want to play.


Yeah, as I said, I am firmly in this wing.

I have a PS4 solely because it has the exclusives I want to play and because my friends & family are in that ecosystem too.

The performance really didn't have anything to do with it.

I'm not really invested in the schoolyard arguments (And haven't been since like middle school when I learned what 8-bit and 16-bit really meant) about consoles etc..., but I am interested in discouraging fanboyism specifically and providing accurate depictments generally.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 10:28 am

Glorious wrote:
I'm not really invested in the schoolyard arguments (And haven't been since like middle school when I learned what 8-bit and 16-bit really meant) about consoles etc..., but I am interested in discouraging fanboyism specifically and providing accurate depictments generally.

I didn't really get to have any of those even in school. I didn't get the NES until mid-1990 and I didn't get a Genesis until late 1994. At those points nobody cared and the next system was right around the corner.
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DancinJack
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 10:40 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
This. I don't even think it needs to be 120FPS. Even back in the CRT days, there was a threshold at around 85Hz beyond which anything else was pointless. I remember Q3A (running at 125fps for the pmove_fixed console command) and my monitor could do 1280x960@72Hz, 1024x768@85Hz, and 640x480@120Hz. 72Hz was fast enough to remove most of the CRT flicker, so the contrast between 72fps, 85fps was stark - 85Hz really was buttery smooth and in a whole different class. The jump from 85Hz to 120Hz was barely noticeable.

I guess everyone's eyes are a bit different, but whilst 60Hz is adequate and 75Hz is bettter, 85Hz might well be the upper end of the "sweet spot" for most people. If anything, I was particularly affected by 60Hz flicker and even found 72Hz a little bit flickery, so my guess is that I'm more sensitive than others - possibly a side effect of having no green cones in my retina?

Crucially, VRR is what stops the fluidity of 85fps from suddenly dropping into the 40's, and 85fps obviously allows more detail to be rendered than the same GPU trying to output 120fps. I was pretty much in heaven with an ultrawide 144Hz screen, but the GPU I had was only knocking out 90-110fps at typical settings; The key thing being that it was >60Hz and buttery smooth.

For sure this. I didn't mean to say that 120FPS@120Hz was where we need to be, just that it's really awesome when you have the power and capability. Having that kind of responsiveness and fluidity is really wonderful.

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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 11:28 am

I don't have an XBox anymore; I realised that the best part of the XB360 was the gamepad, and that 95% of what I wanted to play was on Steam, for half the price and with better graphics, but flawless XBox controller support.

Honestly, XB360 Elite Gamepad + Steam is enough games to mean I'll never have even half the amount of time I need to play them all.

The nail in the coffin for my Xbox was that although cloud-save was a thing, I couldn't login to someone else's machine, install the game and carry on my campaign where I left off. Consoles are still tied to physical-media DRM like the bad old days of PC gaming (only 10 years ago, actually)
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synthtel2
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:40 pm

LostCat wrote:
It doesn't sound so simple anymore.

HDR is a competing standards issue, not a performance issue - games already store stuff for all the heavy stages in linear 16-bit floats, and it doesn't much matter from a performance perspective whether they map that down at the end to gamma-curved 8-bit ints, linear 10-bit ints, or something else.

On settings, it depends what we're trying to match. The top stuff on PC is often as not either "we're gonna have cycles to burn on some hardware, might as well expose some pointlessly high sample counts for foo and bar as ultra" or "the performance budget on consoles won't fit the effect we'd really like for foo, but it wouldn't take long to create a brute-force solution we can use for cinematics and call ultra for in-game use". On average, when you slam all the settings to maximum in a PC game you're getting something very much less finely tuned than what's running on consoles. It's a lot of extra weight for little visual gain, but the PCMR spends tons of money on graphics cards for it anyway, because they've gotta have the very best or something. Anyway, I don't think matching settings is usually even a desirable goal in the current state of things.

$500 is good, but it only looks spectacular due to mining and the memory cartel. Try something along the lines of this $260 base, then add $200 for a 4GB RX 580 at MSRP and $40 for what 8GB of decent RAM really ought to cost. It'd certainly be lacking finesse (and a good controller) compared to an XB1X, but it wouldn't be weaker.
 
LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:02 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
HDR is a competing standards issue, not a performance issue - games already store stuff for all the heavy stages in linear 16-bit floats, and it doesn't much matter from a performance perspective whether they map that down at the end to gamma-curved 8-bit ints, linear 10-bit ints, or something else.

He was talking about PC having the better visual featureset, though. I wasn't referring to perf there.
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LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:03 pm

Chrispy_ wrote:
The nail in the coffin for my Xbox was that although cloud-save was a thing, I couldn't login to someone else's machine, install the game and carry on my campaign where I left off. Consoles are still tied to physical-media DRM like the bad old days of PC gaming (only 10 years ago, actually)

You've been able to do that ever since the X1, at least. And continue the same save on PC, if it's Play Anywhere.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:26 pm

Play Anywhere is *pretty* new. Not even Gears 4 supports it, even though it launched after the announcement...gotta get newer games, or games they retroactively added to the program (Killer Instinct). Lots of games you can't even buy and play everywhere in the first place. Just relatively recent ones. It's a cool program. Nobody else does that sort of thing. Sony does PS3/Vita/PS4 cross-play, so maybe it's similar, but two out of three of those platforms are dead, and it was done to spur PS4 sales.
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LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Tue Apr 24, 2018 11:08 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Play Anywhere is *pretty* new. Not even Gears 4 supports it, even though it launched after the announcement...gotta get newer games, or games they retroactively added to the program (Killer Instinct). Lots of games you can't even buy and play everywhere in the first place. Just relatively recent ones. It's a cool program. Nobody else does that sort of thing. Sony does PS3/Vita/PS4 cross-play, so maybe it's similar, but two out of three of those platforms are dead, and it was done to spur PS4 sales.

Well...Gears 4 definitely supports it. Has for a long time.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/xbox-play-anywhere

But yes, it is new.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 1:53 am

I own GoW4 on xbone but not Win store. How is that possible if it’s play anywhere?
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LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:28 am

derFunkenstein wrote:
I own GoW4 on xbone but not Win store. How is that possible if it’s play anywhere?

You're askin the wrong guy. I only bought mine once and have both. You might be looking at the wrong page in the Store (the seperate editions can trip you up on this and some other titles) or just need to check My Library for the game.

It does amuse me how MS manages to make simple things confusing and not improve it for at least a year, but heh.
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:33 am

derFunkenstein wrote:
I own GoW4 on xbone but not Win store. How is that possible if it’s play anywhere?

Do you own a physical copy or digital? Physical games don't qualify for play anywhere, of course. if you own digital contact MS and get support to work it out. it has been a play anywhere title since launch iirc. I've personally used it as a play anywhere title.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:38 am

Digital. Not that it matters. I don't actually own an Xbone anymore, and my PC with its IGP is not capable of running it.
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Chrispy_
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:29 am

LostCat wrote:
It does amuse me how MS manages to make simple things confusing and not improve it for at least a year, but heh.


Which is why, after 10 years of concurrent Xbox and Steam, I ditched the Xbox.

There's nothing wrong with the Xbox, but if you already have a gaming-capable PC the only reason to own an Xbox is for the console exclusive titles, and as far as I know, the only Xbox exclusive worth talking about is Halo, and Bungie defected from Microsoft several years ago.

Crackdown 3 *might* be good but it's already been delayed twice and Crackdown 2 was a total disaster. CD3 is also looking a lot like Saint's Row, but I'll reserve judgement until it's actually out.
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:34 am

Or to use it more as a Set-Top-Box that also does casual gaming. The Xbox One S isn't that much more expensive than a UHD-Capable Blu-Ray player. In fact, the PS3 was the best Blu-Ray play for quite awhile.
 
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:19 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Or to use it more as a Set-Top-Box that also does casual gaming. The Xbox One S isn't that much more expensive than a UHD-Capable Blu-Ray player. In fact, the PS3 was the best Blu-Ray play for quite awhile.

This is true of me as well. My computer is starting to show its age a bit (decent rig in 2011), so the Xbox One S gets used sometimes to play games, but more often it's used for Amazon Video or Youtube, while I do something with my computer. I got mine for less than $200 and have really enjoyed playing some of the exclusives (e.g. Halo MCC), but now it's mostly just a set-top-box.
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Glorious
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:24 am

kvndoom wrote:
This is true of me as well. My computer is starting to show its age a bit (decent rig in 2011), so the Xbox One S gets used sometimes to play games, but more often it's used for Amazon Video or Youtube, while I do something with my computer. I got mine for less than $200 and have really enjoyed playing some of the exclusives (e.g. Halo MCC), but now it's mostly just a set-top-box.


If you remember the all the launch presentations and media positioning, Microsoft clearly pushed for this use case, to the point where Sony was basically counter-positioning.
 
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 9:31 am

I bought a OneS for my brother-in-law this Christmas precisely as a set top box (which could run Fifa '18)

He does also have a gaming laptop, but some games are just better on a TV/HTPC and the OneS is better value than most HTPCs, regardless of gaming credentials (and Fifa runs on IGPs anyway).
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LostCat
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Re: Xbox One X

Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:08 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
Crackdown 3 *might* be good but it's already been delayed twice and Crackdown 2 was a total disaster. CD3 is also looking a lot like Saint's Row, but I'll reserve judgement until it's actually out.

I admit to actually being worried about that. I'm not sure what the holdup is, but if the single player is as iffy as 2s was...I don't expect it to be, but we're at the point with many barely/notatall explained delays that I don't know what's going on.

Hopefully it's just problems with the multiplayer which I don't even remotely care about since my brother won't be joining me.
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