Digital Foundry: The Last of Us Part 2 PC Review - We're Disappointed - Analysis + Optimised Settings

pcmr crowd love to wave steam userscore, and looking at it, the vast majority of players don't support battaglia's sentiment
 
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What people don't understand is that Naughy dog have always been very good at exploiting Playstation hardware since PS1. On PS4 TLOU2 was considered by many (including me) the most technically impressive game on this hardware, which is still one of the most impressive (those animations) on PS5 running uncapped. This engine is fully tailored to unified memory pool and multithreading using fibers (they have created with the PS3 to PS4 TLOU port) with custom stuff for Playstation Jaguar / unified memory. So that explains why it runs so good on PS4, but with a 3060 you still get twice the framerate (and don't talk about those dual issue bullshit to compare with PS4 Tflops).

On PS5 the game still benefit from the unified pool of memory (those big 1 second pauses on PC are typical memory problems) and PS5 has custom I/O hardware that would explain the rest. In their own video DF showed the big open areas where the constant I/O (not PSU) was causing mini frame-time spikes and reduced FPS, but they never talk about how PS5 has basically free I/O abilities thanks to Cerny I/O systems...

When you combine Naughty dog masters at coding to the metal using a unified memory system + custom decompression and I/O streaming hardware + years (decades) of experience of exploiting AMD GPUs (and PS5 GPU is still fully compatible with PS4 GPU), then you get that performance gap.

But as seen above, you still can get higher framerates on PC or locked 60fps with modest GPU if you really want it but obviously to get very high framerates you'll need a high end CPU (ideally with 3D cache) to take care of the realtime I/O, decompression and shader compilation stuff.
 
mathello said:
No there is no more blood squirting shader effect, that would retexture clothes and drip on the floor, its the last missing details of the gore on PS4 and PS5.
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Oh, okay. I didn't play the game on either console so I couldn't tell.
Hopefully a hotfix will work it out!
 
bender said:
joelremember.png
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This version of Joel would go toe to toe against abby and win in a rupaul drag race type of competition
 
Granted, I'm on 7700x and 4080, but I don't see a shit of what Battaglia is even talking about. Like at all.

Works fine on my wife's PC too (12th gen i5 and RTX 3060 12g)
 
ShaiKhulud1989 said:
Granted, I'm on 7700x and 4080, but I don't see a shit of what Battaglia is even talking about. Like at all.

Works fine on my wife's PC too (12th gen i5 and RTX 3060 12g)
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Battaglia wants a 6tflops PC GPU to perform 3 times better than a 2tfops console GPU. He is still on the Tflops old metrics and purposefully wants to ignore all the coding to the metal and custom and modern hardware / architectures advantages of Playstation consoles.

He still doesn't want to acknowledge than his adored and incredibly expensive PC technology is ancient, dated, like a dinosaur that hasn't evolved, and need twice more raw power to match a Playstation that uses better architectures, better APIs and smarter hardware solutions to run the same games (in the games that fully exploit the hardware obviously).
 
Physiognomonics said:
Battaglia wants a 6tflops PC GPU to perform 3 times better than a 2tfops console GPU. He is still on the Tflops old metrics and purposefully wants to ignore all the coding to the metal and custom and modern hardware / architectures advantages of Playstation consoles.

He still doesn't want to acknowledge than his adored and incredibly expensive PC technology is ancient, dated, like a dinosaur that hasn't evolved, and need twice more raw power to match a Playstation that uses better architectures, better APIs and smarter hardware solutions to run the same games (in the games that fully exploit the hardware obviously).
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Him, ignoring the fundamental Windows IO issues is hilarious at this point.
 
bitbydeath said:
None of that takes away from it still being one of the best looking games today, of which you'd expect means powerful hardware is required to run it.

If anything that just shows the difference coding to the metal makes, and this is not a first. Both TLOU1 and GoW2 releasing at the end of their generations also showed this.
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What does neogaf want? Everything to be Unreal engine?

Well congratulations everyone that's exactly what is happening.
 
Physiognomonics said:
Battaglia wants a 6tflops PC GPU to perform 3 times better than a 2tfops console GPU. He is still on the Tflops old metrics and purposefully wants to ignore all the coding to the metal and custom and modern hardware / architectures advantages of Playstation consoles.

He still doesn't want to acknowledge than his adored and incredibly expensive PC technology is ancient, dated, like a dinosaur that hasn't evolved, and need twice more raw power to match a Playstation that uses better architectures, better APIs and smarter hardware solutions to run the same games (in the games that fully exploit the hardware obviously).
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Ancient. You mean like a PS4 with an HDD and a 13-year-old GPU? Smarter hardware solution is a 5400 RPM drive?

It would be something if he was comparing a PS5 game to the PC version. He compared the PC version to the PS4 version.

Muddy said:
How has this game got 86% positive reviews if according to DF it is an average port?
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86% is quite average for a Steam user score.
 
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Physiognomonics said:
Battaglia wants a 6tflops PC GPU to perform 3 times better than a 2tfops console GPU. He is still on the Tflops old metrics and purposefully wants to ignore all the coding to the metal and custom and modern hardware / architectures advantages of Playstation consoles.

He still doesn't want to acknowledge than his adored and incredibly expensive PC technology is ancient, dated, like a dinosaur that hasn't evolved, and need twice more raw power to match a Playstation that uses better architectures, better APIs and smarter hardware solutions to run the same games (in the games that fully exploit the hardware obviously).
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Top of the line Sony hardware with the newest apis = PS4?

PS4 has generic AMD GPU from 2012 and x86 CPU. Naughty dog was doing crazy shit on PS3 CPU but PS4 is super standard piece of hardware. Some of you folks are really delusional...
 
I/O, smart design, unified memory, ancient PC standards, blah, blah, blah.

It's a fucking PS4 game. No other PS4 games perform as poorly as this. It's an obvious outlier. There are PS5 games that even perform better on PC, like Ratchet & Clank.
 
Muddy said:
For an average port with performance issues according to DF?
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The performance issues aren't that bad. It's relatively stable. The big problem are the hardware requirements relative to the PS4 version. Of course, you won't see as many complaints when the average Steam user probably has a 4060-tier GPU which is just enough for 1080p60. If this had been released 5 years ago when people still rocked 1060s, the game would have gotten eviscerated for poor performance.
 
DenchDeckard said:
I don't think there's really any excuse to be made up for this. This isn't a ps3 game it's a ps5 game that is x86. The pa5 is just a cheaper APU by amd. It's just a pc.

How can it run well on a small console pc vs a fully high end pc?

Something doesn't add up.
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PS5 has a unique I/O subsystem, and runs on a software stack that not only is specifically designed for the hardware (not generic) but is way thinner in terms of OS and driver load than PC.

This stuff is so obvious I truly cannot believe its being overlooked out of ignorance.

Some of the silly points I can kinda, sorta, forgive because non-developers have an ultra simplistic idea of what optimization actually is, but I'm sorry to say the notion that just because a game was designed for a certain piece of hardware all games built for that system should show an identical degree of uplift when transplanted onto PC is moronic.

Remember at the start of the gen when claims were made about the relative performance of PS5 versus Xbox X based on metrics like TF counts and other crude metrics and the actual result turned out to be quite different from what was expected, and then the DF clown-car had to start scrambling for reasons as to why their predictions were wrong?

Did that not clue you in to the fact that there's a whole lot more to performance than just looking at component spec-sheets?

Its not about "coding to the metal", which specifically invokes the idea of writing code at machine level, its about *planning* to lean towards the strengths, and away from the shortcomings, of the host hardware.
 
Gaiff said:
The performance issues aren't that bad. It's relatively stable. The big problem are the hardware requirements relative to the PS4 version. Of course, you won't see as many complaints when the average Steam user probably has a 4060-tier GPU which is just enough for 1080p60. If this had been released 5 years ago when people still rocked 1060s, the game would have gotten eviscerated for poor performance.
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4060 is a 1080p card though, did people expect 4k 120?
It might be a PS4 game, but it wasn't the PS4 version ported.
 
Physiognomonics said:
What people don't understand is that Naughy dog have always been very good at exploiting Playstation hardware since PS1. On PS4 TLOU2 was considered by many (including me) the most technically impressive game on this hardware, which is still one of the most impressive (those animations) on PS5 running uncapped. This engine is fully tailored to unified memory pool and multithreading using fibers (they have created with the PS3 to PS4 TLOU port) with custom stuff for Playstation Jaguar / unified memory. So that explains why it runs so good on PS4, but with a 3060 you still get twice the framerate (and don't talk about those dual issue bullshit to compare with PS4 Tflops).

On PS5 the game still benefit from the unified pool of memory (those big 1 second pauses on PC are typical memory problems) and PS5 has custom I/O hardware that would explain the rest. In their own video DF showed the big open areas where the constant I/O (not PSU) was causing mini frame-time spikes and reduced FPS, but they never talk about how PS5 has basically free I/O abilities thanks to Cerny I/O systems...

When you combine Naughty dog masters at coding to the metal using a unified memory system + custom decompression and I/O streaming hardware + years (decades) of experience of exploiting AMD GPUs (and PS5 GPU is still fully compatible with PS4 GPU), then you get that performance gap.

But as seen above, you still can get higher framerates on PC or locked 60fps with modest GPU if you really want it but obviously to get very high framerates you'll need a high end CPU (ideally with 3D cache) to take care of the realtime I/O, decompression and shader compilation stuff.
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The game is simply this good looking and demanding.
Nd were gods at coding to metal on ps4 and ps5. So no wonder.
The game looks great and not at all it's age
 
Mr Moose said:
4060 is a 1080p card though, did people expect 4k 120?
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Is there nothing between 1080p60 and 4K120? 1080p120? 1440p60?
Mr Moose said:
It might be a PS4 game, but it wasn't the PS4 version ported.
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This is not a GOWR or HFW situation where the PS5 version looks markedly superior. It looks 95% the same in this case.

rofif said:
The game is simply this good looking and demanding.
Nd were gods at coding to metal on ps4 and ps5. So no wonder.
The game looks great and not at all it's age
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Except they didn't code to the metal. GNM and GNMX are still APIs. As mentioned before, DX12 is also a (relatively), low-level API, at least compared to DX11, but obviously not like GNM/X. Closer to the metal, sure, but there's still a degree of abstraction.

Last time they used assembly language was with what, the PS2 with MIPS?
 
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Mr Moose said:
4060 is a 1080p card though, did people expect 4k 120?
It might be a PS4 game, but it wasn't the PS4 version ported.
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They are able to match PS4 equivalent settings in the graphics, so I reckon it's just a case of PS4 -> PS5 with slight tweaks and that's the one that's on PC.
 
rofif said:
doesn't matter.
If you take cyberpunk and replace every texture with minecraf textures, it won't run faster.
The look of the game is often not correlated to how it runs.
it is a ps5 port indeed. Perhaps moving code from ps4 to ps5 was more involving than we thought
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Your statement about the textures is only ever true if things are well done.

A PS4 game should run on a 750ti (at least 1050) level hardware, that kind of ports only show the rot in gaming development in the current era. I mean, the GTX 1050 is a 5TF GPU, always paired with a CPU that is much faster than the PS4's.

Even the Steam deck, it has more memory than a PS4, a much faster CPU, a GPU that offers 1.6TF on newer tech (v.s. 1.84 for the PS4) and it has a lower resolution screen... this game should run pretty well at equivalent settings @800p at 30fps on it.

For whatever reason, it's not the case.

For the PS5 port, they must have repackaged it with the new compression technique, with the unlocked frame rate and tweaks it's all I would have asked for in this kind of port. Put more efforts in the next game(s).
 
alabtrosMyster said:
For the PS5 port, they must have repackaged it with the new compression technique, with the unlocked frame rate and tweaks it's all I would have asked for in this kind of port. Put more efforts in the next game(s).
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After the Nixxes Purchase quality has gone down a bit. Sony seams to be stacking this developer with work. Usually Iron Galaxy helps porting naughty dog games and they aint perfect at it either.
 
R3TRO said:
It's weird because this is running flawlessly on my pc so far so I'm expecting it to shit the bed the further I get.
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It runs great don't worry, some fanboys are just upset that it doesn't trounce the PS5 version. Otherwise the experience is fine on PC. Even better on PCs that you and I own.
 
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Lysandros said:
Tflops ≠ 'Raw performance'
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Correct. It's actually just over 2x if use the RX 470 as a baseline which is the closest to the Pro's equivalent. 2x is more accurate.

I don't even think the PS5 has 3x the GPU horsepower of the Pro and it's faster than the 3060. Probably more like ~2.5x.
 
mathello said:
After the Nixxes Purchase quality has gone down a bit. Sony seams to be stacking this developer with work. Usually Iron Galaxy helps porting naughty dog games and they aint perfect at it either.
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Ultimately, that will calm down a bit. I do think they were probably overworked. Their numbers didn't increase significantly on LinkedIn, so it just seems like their workload increased.

The "lull" in AAA games from Sony first party will result in a natural easing period here, especially with a game like Astro Bot probably not going to PC, but even if it did, wouldn't require a ton of work relative to some of these other games.

Right now there are only a handful of games for Nixxes to even work on, so my guess is they'll be largely shifting to a support role to fill the gap in workload before moving on to titles like Ghost of Yotei and Saros. I think they're unlikely to be involved with the PC Port of Death Stranding 2.

The question for them is whether you have them go further into back catalog projects, remasters, or just reduce their workload overall.

Demon's Souls still hasn't hit PC yet, so there's absolutely projects that they can work on, but the list really starts to thin out after that, especially with Bluepoint probably going back to their bread and butter. Excluding Bloodborne, which I don't think Nixxes would be chiefly involved in especially if Sony is waiting for FromSoftware to lead on it, the only real projects that make sense would be infamous Second Son or maybe bringing Ico/SOTC to PS5/PC. There just aren't a lot of worthwhile projects at this point. At least if they're not going to do GT7, which just seems like a major undertaking.
 
Gaiff said:
Yeah, so it doesn't require powerful hardware to run. 1080p30 is quite respectable, especially given what the PS4 targeted, 1080p30.

You guys seem to be forgetting that this game is running on a HD Radeon 7850-like GPU, an anemic 1.6Ghz tablet CPU, and a 5400 RPM HDD on a USB 2.0 interface. Even by 2012 PC standards, this wasn't exactly impressive. Here we are, over 11 years after the PS4 release and an almost PS5-tier GPU cannot run it at 1080p60. Yet Alex is the whiner. The fuck?
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I get the argument. What was truly impressive even by 2013 PC standards was the 8 GB of GDDR5 V/RAM at 176 GB/s of bandwidth and custom GPGPU enhancements. That was a much better balanced hardware in the context of compute to bandwidth/fill rate ratios compared to all later Sony gaming systems including PS5/PS5 PRO. That's a pretty big aspect of the design's exceptional longevity i think.
 
Gaiff said:
Is there nothing between 1080p60 and 4K120? 1080p120? 1440p60?

This is not a GOWR or HFW situation where the PS5 version looks markedly superior. It looks 95% the same in this case.


Except they didn't code to the metal. GNM and GNMX are still APIs. As mentioned before, DX12 is also a (relatively), low-level API, at least compared to DX11, but obviously not like GNM/X. Closer to the metal, sure, but there's still a degree of abstraction.

Last time they used assembly language was with what, the PS2 with MIPS?
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Stop talking facts.

You are breaking their tiny minds.
 
Nfactor_AF said:
DF is getting more and more useless for tech reviews of graphics with each new release.
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Honestly speaking, skipping Digital Foundry and GamersNexus entirely has been extremely beneficial for my mood and outlook on gaming. It's all pseudo-technical jargon that aims to make you feel bad about something somewhere at this point.

DF's only actual value rn is if you have multiple systems that are roughly equivalent (like a PS5/XSX or a Steam Deck/Switch 1/2) and want to choose a version of a multiplat to buy day 1 (because they get advanced access and can test the game pre-launch).

The problem with the above is if you have a PS5 Pro the answer is extremely obvious to the point where you don't have to watch any videos, especially when they're pulling this weird thing of putting it into its own later video that doesn't arrive day 1. They are also useless for (timed) exclusives because you can only buy them in one place day 1, so why care about some framerate drops or whatever that might get patched out?
 
Astray said:
Honestly speaking, skipping Digital Foundry and GamersNexus entirely has been extremely beneficial for my mood and outlook on gaming. It's all pseudo-technical jargon that aims to make you feel bad about something somewhere at this point.

DF's only actual value rn is if you have multiple systems that are roughly equivalent (like a PS5/XSX or a Steam Deck/Switch 1/2) and want to choose a version of a multiplat to buy day 1 (because they get advanced access and can test the game pre-launch).

The problem with the above is if you have a PS5 Pro the answer is extremely obvious to the point where you don't have to watch any videos, especially when they're pulling this weird thing of putting it into its own later video that doesn't arrive day 1. They are also useless for (timed) exclusives because you can only buy them in one place day 1, so why care about some framerate drops or whatever that might get patched out?
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Gave you a like but had to upgrade it.

DF is one of the most bullshit influencers on the market right now and I've been calling them out for years now. Stop moving and zoom and enhance.

I think maybe at some point they were useful, but they're struggling in a world where most games are a solid 60 fps on console and their only recourse is to nitpick at 4x zoom when most gamers are sitting at least 10 ft from their screens and won't see most of the stuff they're complaining about.

They have clear biases and it's constantly shown over and over again. The "disappointing" port with 90% approval on Steam... I wish people would wake up to moments like this and see the clear disconnect.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
They have clear biases and it's constantly shown over and over again. The "disappointing" port with 90% approval on Steam... I wish people would wake up to moments like this and see the clear disconnect.
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They've been getting worse too ever since IGN bought them.
 
Astray said:
They've been getting worse too ever since IGN bought them.
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I would love to see anyone who defends DF to explain why/how the game has a 90% approval rating on Steam, which is actually pretty wild for a game that was this divisive.

Like a genuine discussion on this would be actually interesting. DF is obviously entitled to their opinion, but to be so off the mark should give everyone pause...
 
Mibu no ookami said:
I would love to see anyone who defends DF to explain why/how the game has a 90% approval rating on Steam, which is actually pretty wild for a game that was this divisive.

Like a genuine discussion on this would be actually interesting. DF is obviously entitled to their opinion, but to be so off the mark should give everyone pause...
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The main issue raised in the video is that the game scales very poorly relative to PS hardware. Here's the thing though, most PC players no longer have PS4-tier hardware. The average is 3060-4060 which can run this game at 1080p/60. Most customers don't care that their GPUs from 8 years ago are getting outclassed by a PS4 because they no longer use them. That is the reason the approval rating isn't in the gutter. As I said, if you had the same performance profile but in 2020, people would shit on it and wonder why they can't run a PS4 game on their 1060s.

This, of course, in no way erases the very valid points mentioned in the video.
 
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