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Crimson Desert on PlayStation 5 Pro - The Digital Foundry Deep Dive

Wait, so you're calling him out for using 'random bullshots with logos' and the countering with 4K screenshots from CEMU.

Thierry Henry Smile GIF by hamlet
The funny thing is that he can bring 12k pics and they are still gonna look 3 gens behind crimson shittiest Series S pic.
 
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What a fruitcake

Imagine inventing bullshit excuses and not having the balls to tell the truth. I would respect him much more if he just said "JK Rowling is a TERF, that's why I won't be reviewing HL" vs. this pathetic bullshit.

And I wouldn't have any problem with that, everybody has some political bias.
 
Imagine inventing bullshit excuses and not having the balls to tell the truth. I would respect him much more if he just said "JK Rowling is a TERF, that's why I won't be reviewing HL" vs. this pathetic bullshit.

And I wouldn't have any problem with that, everybody has some political bias.
What a world we'd live in if people would just tell the truth, unafraid and unapologetic. Stand their ground, argue their point and if not compatible, just walk away in different directions and let the other person be.
It would be that easy, but most give into societies pressures and rather portray than embody... Living from the outside in instead of from the inside out.
 
I'm not super impressed by the graphic aswell but it does a couple of things impressively:

Water physics
Apparently the light system is pretty good
Robust physics\elements engine
Faux-tesselation for that 3d effect on surfaces

Not a fan of the overall fidelity but we don't know how much yt is killing the details, battaglia on reee specified that yt really kill this game graphic.
The nighttime in the rain is literally what pushed me over the edge into getting this day 1.

It just looks so sick and atmospheric.
 
Who cares when the end result looks better? We are talking about a five year old game here with Forbidden West. And this the problem using RT on current consoles (even Pro), it is resource intensive but if you can get similar results without it which gives you loads more overhead for other stuff then why use it other than for DF to soil their trousers over it.
I don't think the end result looks better when you can't see past 20 meters...
 
I mean from what we saw crimson look better in many aspect that are not physics system and amount of physics and MAYBE puzzles and level design.

Combat? Check
Interesting loot? Check
Traversal? Check
Graphic and production values? Check
Plot? I mean how fucking bad you need to be to have a worse plot than zelda? The voice acting is already 10x times better from what we saw
Boss\enemy variety? Check
Variety of landscape and stuff to see? Check


And i could go on.

This really feel like zelda for adults in more than just graphic.
For real, we might have seen more bosses variety and ennemies in Crimson Desert before launch than in BotW and TotK combined.
Not to mention the absolute abysmal combat and loot in those Zelda.
I'd also mention that there's almost no interiors in BotW and barely some in TotK aside from caves to explore... which is why we get most reviewers saying that open worlds games rely most of the time on outdoors exploration... and they've come to not even expect indoors in those games now. What a shame when some of the first open worlds like Oblivion had plenty.

Sometimes, it really feels like the dumbification of games in mechanics since the 2000's has put an halt to expectations and lowered the bar so much that even when a game is glaringly missing crucial things, those games still get 10/10 scores...

And I'm not sparing Crimson, if it doesn't have underwater diving it will be sorely missed in my view as it was for both BotW and TotK.
It won't make the game bad because of it of course, as it seems very generous to begin with, but man I will be a bit disapointed since they've put already a lot of work in water simulation.

Remember all those discussions about better dungeons, items, underwater diving etc after BotW ? Just to find out nothing had changed in TotK ?

But to be fair, Zelda walked so Crimson could run.
 
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Not gonna play this game but man, THESE ARE THE GRAPHICS WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL GENERATION.

Also, I think PSSR2 drops next week as a toggle and this game is just automatically going to benefit from it just like Alan Wake 2 and Control.
 
Sorry but I don't think the game looks that good. They say RT is implemented but world lighting and interiors especially tend to have that glowing video-gamey look we've come to expect from rasterized games. And the shadows dont look too great either.

OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg
 
OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg

Ray Regeneration can potentialy lower performance just like Ray Reconstruction on nvidia, If standard denoiser is cheap. But if it's not cheap like in for example Cyberpunk, RR sometimes will get you better performance (and quality).
 
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OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg

Answer - part 2 (after watching the video in full).

Looks like another reason is COST, it takes 23% of performance on 9070XT. And unlike FSR Super Resolution, we have no idea if AMD is making int8 version of RR that could run on Pro.

33rUT6J.jpeg
 
So how it compares against next gen TW3?
Isn't TW3's world super static? In CD we can destroy whole buildings like watch towers, fences, trees and whatnot. Might be unfair to compare them just based on visuals.
 
Isn't TW3's world super static? In CD we can destroy whole buildings like watch towers, fences, trees and whatnot. Might be unfair to compare them just based on visuals.

There is a decent amount of things that react with physics, many cloths hanging around, water reacting to spells, gore (body parts) etc.




But Cuberpunk added SHIT TON of objects reacting to physics and destructible environments compared to TW3.
 
OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg

스크린샷 2026 03 14 120112



ray regeneration looks horrible, I don't think it's worth the cost even if it's possible on PS5 PRO
 
OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg
Yes kudos, you were right to call out some of the game's grpahical sins especially on console, most notably the flat lighting in many areas. I didn't realise how bad it was until I saw it being compared to the ray reconstruction shots.
 
According to Alex it doesn't interact properly with Super Resolution unlike Ray Reconstruction.
It's not that it doesn't interact properly. It doesn't interact at all and is not being fed into the upsampling. The current version of Ray regen is decoupled from the upsampler. Supposedly that gives you more granular control on where to run it within the pipeline, but so far what I'm seeing is two games where the output is not being upsampled at all. Don't know if that's a dev issue or an API issue.

Good news is, all signs point to FSR 5 doing both denoising and upsampling simultaneously, so this is something that would at least be resolved then.
 
OK so I knew i wasn't crazy. The denoiser is the actual gamechanger here. In the DF high end PC review, Alex says the AMD/Nvidia denoiser vs the game standard denoiser is like the difference between turning RT on vs off. Now my question is: with PSSR 2.0, what is preventing PS5 Pro from utilizing AMD Ray regeneration, at least in the 30fps quality mode?

4vJQpySoPEQ3KrCk.jpg
yrdfXK0B1tKGNV6b.jpg
The same thing that prevented them from implementing FSR 4 as is at launch. Ray regen is coming out of Redstone, built specifically for RDNA 4, so likely using FP8, and would likely need be ported for PS5 pro's architecture, if AMD is willing.

Given the timing, all this may just wait until next gen
 
They never said they weren't going to show anything from the PS5 version on their discord like eXtas1s claims. Also didn't say anything definitive in their latest video.
 
A lot of folks dramatic and offended over a game they haven't played. You are owed nothing. Just don't buy the game lol. It's not the end of the world.
 
They never said they weren't going to show anything from the PS5 version on their discord like eXtas1s claims. Also didn't say anything definitive in their latest video.
They also said they werent hiding anything, except the fact that they infested the PC version with Denuvo. Could of slipped their minds though.
 
It's obvious if they are using the same resolution than PS5 Pro version on with VRR on it's running usually between 62 and 63, no way the same version on PS5 is running at 60fps unless they have lowered settings.

So there are 2 possibilities:

- They are hiding intentionally because the framerate/image quality.
- They are optimizing until day 1.

The last one indirectly would improve the PS5 pro version compared to DF version. But I would bet it's the first one, I don't believe they can optimize enough in only 10 days.
 
It's obvious if they are using the same resolution than PS5 Pro version on with VRR on it's running usually between 62 and 63, no way the same version on PS5 is running at 60fps unless they have lowered settings.

So there are 2 possibilities:

- They are hiding intentionally because the framerate/image quality.
- They are optimizing until day 1.

The last one indirectly would improve the PS5 pro version compared to DF version. But I would bet it's the first one, I don't believe they can optimize enough in only 10 days.

The settings are not the same for PS5 and PS5 Pro.

PS5 is 1080p native with no upscaling. PS5 Pro is using PSSR (performance hit!) to upscale 1080p to 4K.
PS5 is using LOW raytracing at 60fps, whilst PS5 Pro is using High RT (performance hit!)

These differences should be enough for base PS5 to absorb the performance differences and run nearly the same as PS5 Pro.

Trailers often only showcase the best variation of the game. Nintendo doesn't show handheld footage for their Switch 2 games, even when there is a large difference or no real difference at all.
 
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It's obvious if they are using the same resolution than PS5 Pro version on with VRR on it's running usually between 62 and 63, no way the same version on PS5 is running at 60fps unless they have lowered settings.

So there are 2 possibilities:

- They are hiding intentionally because the framerate/image quality.
- They are optimizing until day 1.

The last one indirectly would improve the PS5 pro version compared to DF version. But I would bet it's the first one, I don't believe they can optimize enough in only 10 days.

I think it's pretty obvious that image quality of base PS5 version in performance mode will be bad. Thanks to FSR3 and low resolution without upscaling and low RT setting.
 
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It's obvious if they are using the same resolution than PS5 Pro version on with VRR on it's running usually between 62 and 63, no way the same version on PS5 is running at 60fps unless they have lowered settings.

So there are 2 possibilities:

- They are hiding intentionally because the framerate/image quality.
- They are optimizing until day 1.

The last one indirectly would improve the PS5 pro version compared to DF version. But I would bet it's the first one, I don't believe they can optimize enough in only 10 days.

we already know the base consoles do not run the same settings.

even their released spec sheet tells us that raytraying in performance mode on base consoles is set to Low, while PS5 Pro has it set to High.

this could in fact mean that the base PS5 has a better framerate, because if that lower RT setting means a simplified BVH, then some CPU strain will be gone, and CPU limited moments will run faster.

also remember that PSSR has a render cost that will not be there on base PS5. so GPU related drops could also be less on base consoles due to lower RT setting and no PSSR overhead.

performance mode on base consoles doesn't even use FSR to reconstruct to any higher res.. it's just a straight and flat 1080p.

so, TLDR: the base consoles might actually have a better framerate than the Pro due to significantly lower GPU strain and slightly lower CPU strain.
 
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I think it's pretty obvious that image quality of base PS5 version in performance mode will be bad. Thanks to FSR3 and low resolution without upscaling and low RT setting.

The PS5 version may not be using FSR at all for the performance mode. Image quality should be the same as the 30fps Series S mode.
 
The PS5 version may not be using FSR at all for the performance mode. Image quality should be the same as the 30fps Series S mode.

I am curious to see the RT off visuals of the game. on Series S

apparently it doesn't look bad according to recent comments by DF on the latest DF Direct episode.

which makes me wonder if an RT off performance mode would be something they could patch in, maybe targeting 90 to 100 fps at 1080p with VRR.
that's of course only viable if the CPU isn't limiting the performance most of the time anyway
 
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PS5 is 1080p native with no upscaling. PS5 Pro is using PSSR (performance hit!) to upscale 1080p to 4K.
PS5 is using LOW raytracing at 60fps, whilst PS5 Pro is using High RT (performance hit!)
PS5 pro is 2x to 4x faster on RT. RT cost in this game at "high settings" on pro could be lower than Base at "low settings". PS5 pro is yet around 25-30% advantage even considering PSSR cost (2ms)
 
Weird. Are they allowing anyone to review of the PS5/Series X versions or is it just PS5 Pro/PC?
 
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스크린샷 2026 03 15 134752



which is unlikely, because in the balanced settings, it's the same RT low vs high, and Pro even runs with higher res, yet the Pro can do 48+ FPS VRR while base PS5 can't.

FSR3, 1280p to 2160p reconstruction takes probably easily 1.5ms to 2ms

the performance mode is a far larger difference between the base and the Pro
PSSR from 1080p to 2160p is easily a 2ms render time cost.

if the base PS5 used FSR3 to target 4k in performance mode, you'd have a point. but without it, it absolutely has the potential to run faster.
 
I hope the devs optimise the frame-rate for those rocky areas that DF showed us in the footage for the Pro. Hopefully the day 1 patch helps. I'd like PSSR 2 to only have to focus on providing a sharper image in performance mode.
 
FSR3, 1280p to 2160p reconstruction takes probably easily 1.5ms to 2ms

the performance mode is a far larger difference between the base and the Pro
PSSR from 1080p to 2160p is easily a 2ms render time cost.

if the base PS5 used FSR3 to target 4k in performance mode, you'd have a point. but without it, it absolutely has the potential to run faster.


PS5 Pro is upscaling from native 1440P which is about 26% more raster than 1280P and yet it runs 20% faster as the target performance is 40 fps vs 48 fps.

Even if we assume that the cost of FSR3 is similar to PSSR (which of course is not true as proven in multiple PS5 Pro games)

There's about 26% (from the res difference) multiplied by 20% (from the performance difference) which sums up to over 50% performance disparity between PS5 and PS5 Pro.

Considering how PS5 Pro is supposed to raster up to 45% faster (which in most cases only about 20~30%) It is safe to assume that

the RT low on base PS5 is a bigger burden than the RT high on PS5 Pro with its 2~3 times RT capability.

And you're expecting not having FSR3 will mitigate that 50% or even exceeds that the game will run faster on base PS5?

Well, we'll find out once the game is available :messenger_winking:
 
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PS5 Pro is upscaling from native 1440P which is about 26% more raster than 1280P and yet it runs 20% faster as the target performance is 40 fps vs 48 fps.

Even if we assume that the cost of FSR3 is similar to PSSR (which of course is not true as proven in multiple PS5 Pro games)

There's about 26% (from the res difference) multiplied by 20% (from the performance difference) which sums up to over 50% performance disparity between PS5 and PS5 Pro.

Considering how PS5 Pro is supposed to raster up to 45% faster (which in most cases about 20~30%) It is safe to assume that

RT low on base PS5 is a bigger burden than RT high on PS5 Pro with it's 2~3 times RT capability.

And you're expecting not having FSR3 will mitigate that 50% or even exceeds that the game will run faster on base PS5?

Well, we'll find out once the game is available :messenger_winking:

we also know that PSSR from 1080p to 4k is 2+ ms of render time gone, literally just due to PSSR alone.
base consoles don't reconstruct at all, so 2ms saved already, and 2ms is a lot when you only have 16ms to hit your target. more than 12% of your render time gone for that alone. then the increased RT cost on both the GPU and CPU...

we don't know if other settings are the same or not. draw distance or foliage density could be lower on base consoles as well.

all I am saying is that it is absolutely possible that the base consoles run either the same or better, due to both the reduction in RT quality and the complete elimination of very expensive image reconstruction.

and also, how do we know that the balanced mode doesn't actually end up running similarly too? we shouldn't assume that their spec sheet is absolutely perfect. even the performance mode was shown to drop below the balanced mode target shown here.
 
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we also know that PSSR from 1080p to 4k is 2+ ms of render time gone, literally just due to PSSR alone.
base consoles don't reconstruct at all, so 2ms saved already, and 2ms is a lot when you only have 16ms to hit your target. more than 12% of your render time gone for that alone. then the increased RT cost on both the GPU and CPU...

we don't know if other settings are the same or not. draw distance or foliage density could be lower on base consoles as well.

all I am saying is that it is absolutely possible that the base consoles run either the same or better, due to both the reduction in RT quality and the complete elimination of very expensive image reconstruction.

and also, how do we know that the balanced mode doesn't actually end up running similarly too? we shouldn't assume that their spec sheet is absolutely perfect. even the performance mode was shown to drop below the balanced mode target shown here.



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