Series X:
- SX version seems to look very washed out with muted color tones
- For some reason, SX's Performance mode runs at 2/3rd of the brightness, adjusting the in-game brightness does not fix this. HDR also shows muted
- Other than the brightness issue, visual features like shadows, textures etc are identical.
- Perf mode is 1080p, Quality mode is 1728p, identical to the PS5's metrics
- Same TAA quality with FSR1 treatment observed
- Performance is also broadly identical to PS5 with 60 in less stress areas and drops to mid to high 40's in stress combat, once again these are metrics roughly identical to PS5
- Though the lower drops to 40's on Xbox are handled better thanks to the broader VRR and Low Framerate Compensation available on a system-level on Xbox
- 30fps Quality mode is practically flawless with only momentary single drops
- PS5 is similarly locked but it suffers poor frame pacing in this mode .
- All consoles have an in-game Performance monitor that DF tested, added to the game sometime after the original release
- This tool shows GPU render time, FPS etc
- It confirms that there is no DRS employed, the game runs fixed resolutions
- At worst, only modestly over-budget but mostly within render times
- The game seems to be more CPU bottle-necked based on these tools, not GPU
- Quality mode also shows no DRS scale and render time budgets
- The above is with Xbox, on PS5 is mostly the same with some caveats
- Though DF did not see any DRS in-game, these metrics do not show that DRS is on or off
- The frame time section on PS5 does not show proper detail, it's 'busted'
Series S:
- Things like foliage and grass density are simplified, simpler shadows with lower resolution and more pop-in. Less animation in swaying foliage
- Certain textures don't appear or take longer to load
- SSR is cut entirely, no cube map fallbacks so it just shows flat colors
- Resolution shows 1080p in tests but output isn't as clean, which DF thinks means this version uses VRS
- Series S is the only console version that uses DRS and scales between 720p to 1080p
- Performance mode is hovering around 40 to 50 in combat and 60 in less stress areas, basically a match for the other versions
- Quality mode has higher visual settings than Performance but still a bit lower then SX/PS5's Quality mode
- Signs of VRS also observed in Quality mode with a resolution of 1440p and no DRS
- Quality mode shows dips to mid 20's, unlike the other consoles
- Quality mode on Series S was also prone to crash when DF toggled the in-game performance metrics
Verdict:
- The Xbox versions are mostly fine with little that stands out except the color grading on Series X and minor crashing on Series S
- In general, DF thinks Helldivers 2 could use better modern anti-aliasing on all versions and DRS to reduce the existing drops
- The game could also use a 40fps mode
- The system-level 120hz support and LFC make VRR coverage better on Xbox and that's something that should be added to the PS5 version as well *
* adam's note: On PS5, there's no system level 120hz support so developers have to patch it into games themselves.
