Poorly optimized next gen PC games.

kashifme21

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With the new consoles having released. The specs looks very weak for the next generation. Game graphics quality hasnt improved much.

Yet it is very surprising that PC hardware requirements on recent games have gone through the roof:

Shadow of Mordar (4GB VRAM)
Evil Within (4GB VRAM)
Call of Duty AW (4GB VRAM)

The list goes on, pretty much every other game getting released requires a 4GB of RAM, yet the games dont look like they are much of a graphical leap.

Games like Witcher 2, Crysis 3 at most needed 1.5GB of VRAM, So why the sudden leap to 4GB VRAM?

Have the Devs forgotten how to code or is this being intentionally as a way to force PC gamers to upgrade.

All of us know how weak the console hardware is. Any Decent GPU with 2GB of VRAM should be able to run any of these console ports. Yet the requirements have exploded over the last few months.

It begs to question do the hardware makers have a hand to play in this? It almost looks like the hardware makers know (AMD, Nvidia) they are stuck with consoles as the lowest denominator and the only way to force PC gamers to upgrade is by having software developers make poorly optimized games.
 
the console can now use all ram available to them.
it means for a console they add textures etc..then that will be for a PC a need to use more gpu ram.
8gb cards will be common next die shrink generation.
 
They aren't poorly optimized; they are perfectly optimized for the consoles. It's up to the PC hardware designers to make new gear to match the console requirements. What Flopper said. :)
 
Have the Devs forgotten how to code or is this being intentionally as a way to force PC gamers to upgrade.
Neither. The new consoles don't require extremely aggressive resource managers, so the resource managers — in most cases separate from the renderer itself — aren't tuned for severe memory constraints. Add to that much heavier resources themselves and you have the current set of requirements.

You could probably get away with calling them unmotivated to do a better job tuning PC versions for tighter memory footprints, but I don't think anyone's forgotten how to do resource management itself. Everyone who made complex games on the 360/PS3 suffered over it.
 
They also can reserve gpu ram, said they want 4gb in 900p,they can. So it affect the pc version..
 
The thing is, having all those RAM isn't going to do any good if you do not have the processing resources to go along with it. The consoles certainly doesn't have the processing resources to really put those memory to good use.
 
Games are optimized for consoles, if you do not have enough vram just turn down some options on PCs...

With all these uncompressed textures, guess we know one of the reasons why AMD started implementing compression in the Tonga series to help with the bus throughput.
 
The thing is, having all those RAM isn't going to do any good if you do not have the processing resources to go along with it. The consoles certainly doesn't have the processing resources to really put those memory to good use.

I completely agree with your point.

Games like Crysis which came out 7 years back, looked amazing with the memory available on the GPUs in those days.

Infact nothing on last gen consoles could ever top Crysis 1. Yet Crysis 1 only needed 1GB VRAM tops.

If devs expect 4GB of VRAM for new gen games, I am not seeing 4X the improvement over Crysis 1 in the current lot of games. Infact i would arguably say Crysis 1 still puts most games released today to shame.

So why all the inflated hardware requirements. Also yes there is no way the GPUs on new consoles can use all that VRAM, they just dont have the processing power for it.

Games are just being badly tuned for the PC, AMD and Nvidia should do something. Do they just expect us to keep upgrading, when clearly its the Devs who wont make use of our current hardware.

My personal Rig has 3 x GTX 780s in there, it looks like such a waste if all of a sudden Vram requirements are going to go sky high.
 
Not sure know much API and OS has to do with anything. I'm sure the console OS don't have the amount of layers and processes going on in the background. But I would also think something like a core i7 @ 4.0GHz would have more then enough power to overcome it.

I also take into consideration, with the amount of RAM that is available on the consoles is it causing them to be a little lazy on the PC side when it comes to memory management. They're probably on the mind set in a couple years most people will have 4GB or 8GB of VRAM so the problem will go away soon.

I've noticed that games that are on the xbox one (Titanfall, Watch Dogs, and Evolve) use pretty much all the VRAM on my GTX 680 2GB. I'm waiting for the 8GB models of the GTX 970/980, I'm curious to see how much VRAM these titles will consume, how much of an affect there is on performance or visual fidelity.
 
I'm waiting for the 8GB models of the GTX 970/980, I'm curious to see how much VRAM these titles will consume, how much of an affect there is on performance or visual fidelity.

I find it strange that NVidia released their 980 with 4 GB first. I've now run into quite a few games which have massive stuttering because the video RAM just isn't enough.
 
Shadows of Mordor can use around 6GB of Vram on the highest settings for example. The really good thing is that all of the new games have settings that will work with your gear if it is still relevant. Just learn to turn things down until you feel the need to upgrade.
 
I find it strange that NVidia released their 980 with 4 GB first. I've now run into quite a few games which have massive stuttering because the video RAM just isn't enough.

I was wondering the same thing. Nvidia makes some really nice gear, but they do the strangest things sometimes.
 
Would VRAM reduction occur at higher resolutions if Antialiasing was turned off or to a lower setting? I know that people like to crank the graphics to maximum but such may be excessive if a game doesn't do graphics memory management well.
 
This is the exact same conversation I had with a coworker. He was complaining that Watch Dogs and Shadows of Mordor stutter and hitch sometimes with his new 970 GTX. I was explaining to him that it was running out of VRAM. I expected something like this to happen to PC games once the new consoles came out with 8GB's in them.

Seems I am one of the few people who still game at 1080p and I bought a 780 GTX 3GB card and EVGA offered the Step-up to a 780 GTX SC with 6GB for $150 so I bought that. I have personally seen 5.56GB used in Watch Dogs, it runs at a rock solid 57 FPS and I have also personally seen 6.044GB used in SoM, But I will agree with above postings, Crysis 3 with max settings used 1.9GB at 41-55 FPS with a image quality that would put both WD and SoM to shame.

With my current OC'ed 780, I will upgrade when they release a card with more than 4GB.
 
Would VRAM reduction occur at higher resolutions if Antialiasing was turned off or to a lower setting? I know that people like to crank the graphics to maximum but such may be excessive if a game doesn't do graphics memory management well.

adding AA adds more ram usage.
not sure how much it does but its a lot depending on resolution.
 
adding AA adds more ram usage.
not sure how much it does but its a lot depending on resolution.

I usually have to drop down AA settings due to running games at 2560x1440. I've found that it reduces the memory footprint & raises the average FPS quite a bit.
 
I think part of this is just dev slop, but I also think there's a bit more to it too. I just went from a 660Ti to a 970. The Evil Within was completely playable on the 660Ti with a few minor sacrifices in the options. Still looked nearly the same, and ran just fine. Now I've got everything cranked up high with the 970, but I could have easily played through and enjoyed it on the older card. This makes me wonder a few things. One, did they inflate the specs to generate some buzz for the PC crowd? (perhaps misguided, but possible I think) Also, how much of a toll on the system does the lighting engine they tacked on (see John Carmack's comments about the game) hamper what would have otherwise run as well as Wolfenstein or RAGE on the same engine? Really, the game runs just fine, and plays fine too. I can see there being some slop in the porting, or maybe coding a whole new lighting engine was a mistake. Who knows. In the end though, saying the game requires 4GB of video RAM to run well is a bit of an overstatement.

I haven't played the other two games in the OP, so I can't comment on those specifically. It does seem that if they're going to inflate the specs like that, there should be some options to take advantage of it more though. Games are looking better for the most part, but I'm not seeing a perfect ratio of required hardware to higher visual fidelity in all cases. (I have seen some good looking games though lately...)
 
adding AA adds more ram usage.
not sure how much it does but its a lot depending on resolution.

How much does DSR or in-game supersampling options (which now seem to be on almost every new game, including Call of Daycare) affect VRAM usage?

For rendering new multiplatform titles at 150% or 200% for 1080p, for example, would it be important to have more than 4GB VRAM?

I think part of this is just dev slop, but I also think there's a bit more to it too. I just went from a 660Ti to a 970. The Evil Within was completely playable on the 660Ti with a few minor sacrifices in the options. Still looked nearly the same, and ran just fine. Now I've got everything cranked up high with the 970, but I could have easily played through and enjoyed it on the older card. This makes me wonder a few things. One, did they inflate the specs to generate some buzz for the PC crowd? (perhaps misguided, but possible I think) Also, how much of a toll on the system does the lighting engine they tacked on (see John Carmack's comments about the game) hamper what would have otherwise run as well as Wolfenstein or RAGE on the same engine? Really, the game runs just fine, and plays fine too. I can see there being some slop in the porting, or maybe coding a whole new lighting engine was a mistake. Who knows. In the end though, saying the game requires 4GB of video RAM to run well is a bit of an overstatement.

I haven't played the other two games in the OP, so I can't comment on those specifically. It does seem that if they're going to inflate the specs like that, there should be some options to take advantage of it more though. Games are looking better for the most part, but I'm not seeing a perfect ratio of required hardware to higher visual fidelity in all cases. (I have seen some good looking games though lately...)

I was able to run Evil Within at 900p on my laptop with 1GB VRAM, but of course it was pretty laggy in some areas, got much higher frame rate in Wolfenstein New Order and RAGE. Hard to say whether this is due to running out of video memory or simply the dynamic lighting was more than my 5830m could handle. This new lighting system was worth it IMO, however, as it really enhanced the atmosphere of the game.
 
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I wouldn't say "Optimized" is the right word for either the X-Box ONE, PS4, or the PC with the VRAM requirements. Currently it's offering little actual improvement in graphic fidelity and more about allowing them to just use it half-assed by releasing uncompressed textures. They could make far better use of it, but that will take the developers running into a self-inflicted wall were they are forced to make better use of it.
 
It takes more time to optimize for all the various configurations and continually evolving PCs than it does for a couple consoles, time which publishers/devs often do not see as beneficial.
 
Un-possible... Next Gen consoles are weak and should only be compared to cell phones.

It takes more time to optimize for all the various configurations and continually evolving PCs than it does for a couple consoles, time which publishers/devs often do not see as beneficial.

Shhh.... these devs should know their place and spend the time and resources optimizing a game for the uber niche of the PC world. Then be happy that they might pay $5 for it.
 
I'm not seeing a perfect ratio of required hardware to higher visual fidelity
What do you expect? It takes exponentially more processing power each generation to power what results to an exponentially less increase in fidelity. It could very well be 10 years until wee see something much more noticeably "realistic" than what we see today.
 
Un-possible... Next Gen consoles are weak and should only be compared to cell phones.



Shhh.... these devs should know their place and spend the time and resources optimizing a game for the uber niche of the PC world. Then be happy that they might pay $5 for it.

It's people like you that allow developers/publishers to get away with releasing buggy unoptimized crap on the pc. There's a reason a lot of pc gamers end up waiting for Steam sales instead of blindly pre-ordering everything with pretty CGI trailer. Its optimized and patched...and DLC probably comes with it as well.
 
I completely agree with your point.

Games like Crysis which came out 7 years back, looked amazing with the memory available on the GPUs in those days.

Infact nothing on last gen consoles could ever top Crysis 1. Yet Crysis 1 only needed 1GB VRAM tops.

If devs expect 4GB of VRAM for new gen games, I am not seeing 4X the improvement over Crysis 1 in the current lot of games. Infact i would arguably say Crysis 1 still puts most games released today to shame.

So why all the inflated hardware requirements. Also yes there is no way the GPUs on new consoles can use all that VRAM, they just dont have the processing power for it.

Games are just being badly tuned for the PC, AMD and Nvidia should do something. Do they just expect us to keep upgrading, when clearly its the Devs who wont make use of our current hardware.

My personal Rig has 3 x GTX 780s in there, it looks like such a waste if all of a sudden Vram requirements are going to go sky high.

err..I've had it up to 1538MB with some modding :D

That being said.I haven't seen anything that looks like it's twice as good as Crysis1.
 
They also can reserve gpu ram, said they want 4gb in 900p,they can. So it affect the pc version..
No raw video memory allocation on the PC. Not without Mantle, anyway.

adding AA adds more ram usage.not sure how much it does but its a lot depending on resolution.
Generally, a fair amount. 4xMSAA can multiply buffer memory requirements by nearly, but not quite, a factor of four.

Buffer requirements themselves aren't usually that great, however, relative to resource requirements.

How much does DSR or in-game supersampling options (which now seem to be on almost every new game, including Call of Daycare) affect VRAM usage?
Without doing anything clever, SSAA increases buffer storage requirements by the same factor as the number of samples.
 
It's people like you that allow developers/publishers to get away with releasing buggy unoptimized crap on the pc. There's a reason a lot of pc gamers end up waiting for Steam sales instead of blindly pre-ordering everything with pretty CGI trailer. Its optimized and patched...and DLC probably comes with it as well.

Yep, I am single handedly ruining your gaming experience. I am glad to be of assistance.

Or.... Maybe its that you don't understand business and ROI. It is IMPOSSIBLE to release a perfect game to satisfy the niche of PC gamers on this forum. They would run out of time and go broke due to the constant changing of hardware and unlimited combinations.

It is just not worth it. They release they reasonable can and patch issues. That and for some reasons PC gamers who will spends hundreds on hardware every year will only spend $5 on a game via steam sale.
 
Yep, I am single handedly ruining your gaming experience. I am glad to be of assistance.

Or.... Maybe its that you don't understand business and ROI. It is IMPOSSIBLE to release a perfect game to satisfy the niche of PC gamers on this forum. They would run out of time and go broke due to the constant changing of hardware and unlimited combinations.

It is just not worth it. They release they reasonable can and patch issues. That and for some reasons PC gamers who will spends hundreds on hardware every year will only spend $5 on a game via steam sale.

Its not a popular stance but I actually totally agree. Which is why I've some what lowered my standards when it comes to PC games.

Sometimes I'll get around to playing it when I've gone through a few generations of hardware upgrades. It wasn't til like 2011 I played the first crysis, I had dual 5870s and the frame rate and image quality was amazing.
 
I wouldnt buy a gpu that has less video rams than those console toys. Newer console ports will become even more demanding as time goes on. 900 series with its not so nextgen performance and low VRAM will have problems with longetivity.
 
That and for some reasons PC gamers who will spends hundreds on hardware every year will only spend $5 on a game via steam sale.

I'm not saying it's not about the money...

But for me it's about the money. If you are patient, just about every new game eventually drops down to $5 or so including all DLC. And I'm pretty damn patient.

Got so much crap in my Steam library I haven't even installed yet, there are only a couple games per year that I'm willing to pay full price for to pick up at launch time. If a game comes out that requires mods to run at normal resolution / frame rate, etc., I'll wait until the publisher fixes it. I have no problem waiting for that perfect Steam sale price 2 years after launch.

In the case of Evil Within, at least the publisher promptly rolled out official patches to fix this, unlike Dark Souls which had pretty serious issues that have never been patched officially, on top of requiring GFWL at launch.
 
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I tend to spend what I feel is reasonable for the game I want, and what I'm expecting from it. There are some games that I'm excited enough, and trust the dev enough to buy on day one at full price. There are others that look intriguing, but not something I'm clamoring for, which I might buy in at an introductory sale price, or wait a few months for another sale at 20-30% off. These would be something that looks cool, but not worth bumping my current play or backlog for. There are others that look cool, but I've heard they have some issues. I have to think these ones over, decide how important it is to play them right away. These I'm likely to pay $20 for at a later date when they're fixed up a bit, and on sale. Anything less, or maybe I just plain don't have the time, money, room in my backlog, I may grab for $5 or $10 during a big sale. If it sucks completely, I won't buy it period.

Indie games are another story entirely. I buy them left and right.
 
Yep, I am single handedly ruining your gaming experience. I am glad to be of assistance.

Or.... Maybe its that you don't understand business and ROI. It is IMPOSSIBLE to release a perfect game to satisfy the niche of PC gamers on this forum. They would run out of time and go broke due to the constant changing of hardware and unlimited combinations.

It is just not worth it. They release they reasonable can and patch issues. That and for some reasons PC gamers who will spends hundreds on hardware every year will only spend $5 on a game via steam sale.

Nobody is asking for perfect software. You're missing the general point. If you can't make ROI with a pc game without releasing it in alpha/beta stage as completed then don't make the game. It seems to be getting worse and worse. Stick with kiddie consoles where they make tons off of mommy and daddy buying $60 games and dlc later for their kids. And we're not only talking about the 1% that use sli/xfire that demand pretty graphics were also talking about all pc gamers with cheap laptops/pc's getting buggy unoptimized crap. In case your wondering pc gaming is bringing in more money than console gaming now so apparently somebody thinks its worth it because its making a comeback. You think this is the only forum on the Internet that can see what's happening? Aside from acting like an ahole your points are way off base.
 
Title of this thread should be poorly written engines. People instantly call a game a console port all the time cause of this. :rolleyes:
 
Title of this thread should be poorly written engines. People instantly call a game a console port all the time cause of this. :rolleyes:

That could be misleading too. It can also very easily be who's using the engine, what they tried to add on to it, how good their art department is, how good the support is from the engine provider, and even subjective opinions of people playing the game.

A prime example for me is Tech 5. It's actually a well written engine. It has cool features, looks amazing when made good use of, etc. Of course, I think a couple of games that use it look incredible, while many others think they're crap, and think the engine sucks. Well, who's fault is it. Did someone have trouble with the first revision of one game, and then go on a spouting campaign against everything else that's made on the engine until the end of time? (even though they may have had a valid complaint to start with) Did the dev put enough time into really taking advantage of the features available? Did the art team create the best textures they could in all cases? Did they optimize for one use-case, but leave out other potential cases? Did users misinterpret their intentions? Did they code in something aftermarket that may change the intended use of the underlying engine? There are so many aspects to what makes people decide whether an engine is good, a game is good, etc. Sometimes yes, it's a totally garbage console port with no thought into PC controls, PC hardware that's available etc. Other times, the engine was made on a PC in the first place, and was intended to be cross-platform. In which case it's hard to argue that it's a bad port. I hear "system parity" coming from devs a lot now, which I tend to dislike. I can see their point. We want our game to play the same on all hardware, so everyone is happy. Well, you can't make everyone happy. Do the best you can on all individual platforms, and you'll at least make most people happy. I guess then it comes down to the amount of return you get for the additional effort though. reputation goes a lot further than I think some devs/publisher think, but I also know there are people that will keep buying a franchise no matter how bad it gets, so then they tend to not care as much.

Whatever... I've had a blast with the three Tech 5 games I have, and looking forward to Tech 5.5... I mean... Tech 6. :D

An engine that I thought had some serious issues was the Oblivion engine. (can't remember what the internal name for it was) It was pretty damned unstable, and should have run much better from the start (even though it was pushing some boundaries at the time.) I think they did a lot better with the Skyrim version. It runs flawlessly on every system I've put it on even with some heavy modding. I remember getting quite a few crashes in Oblivion. I think there's still some room for improvement though.

Then there's something like the Unreal engine. Nothing super fancy (up through version 3 anyway) but a good all around workhorse engine that's widely adopted, gets the job done, but maybe not to incredible standards. I'm usually impressed by the first game I see with a new Unreal engine, and then less and less so with each subsequent game on it. I think BioShock (first) was the first game to later use the engine that I thought was novel and interesting. (mostly because the water effects were new for the time) Source falls into this category too.

Starbreeze gets major points with me for writing excellent and impressive engines. Butcher Bay was gorgeous then, and still looks good tenish years later. Then again, some of their people came from a demo group, so... they know how to code... :D

Rambling now... sorry. :D
 
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Title of this thread should be poorly written engines. People instantly call a game a console port all the time cause of this. :rolleyes:

Well yeah of course the engine/code has problems, but the titles that have been exceptionally bad afaik were made for console first, or with console in mind.
 
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