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Digital Foundry: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 - PS5/Xbox Series X|S/PC Tech Review - Is 60FPS Viable on Consoles?

After watching that review, I'm definitely glad I'm holding out for the PS5 Pro before playing.

UGhB26h.gif
 

ZehDon

Member
- Current gen only
- PS5/SX have 2 modes, "Speed" and "Quality"
- Series S only has a singular mode

Visuals:
- Speed mode targets 60 FPS with DRS 720p to 1080p which upscales to 4K with FSR2
- Quality mode targets 30 FPS with DRS from 1080p to 1440p which upscales to 4K with FSR2
- Series S 720p to 1080p DRS with FSR2 upscale to 1440p
- Visual quality and features broadly the same across all consoles and modes
- Quality mode has marginal improvement in shadow quality but it's nothing too big
- Performance mode can look 'fuzzy'

- Quality mode's 30 FPS is pretty tightly locked with a single drop here and there and during camera cuts in cut-scenes
- Series S has a few more blips comparatively but is otherwise just as equally well locked to its only 30 FPS mode

Performance:
- PS5 Performance mode targets 60 but has frequent drops to 50's and mid 40's (even in 30's)
- As more enemies come on screen, the performance drops more. When sparsely populated, the game can hit 60 FPS
- One segment with a flame thrower and lots of enemies on screen dips to the mid 30's during combat

- Series X is a marked improvement over PS5 with 10 to 15 FPS higher in same situations
- At worse the flame thrower segment which drops to mid 30's on PS5 drops to mid 40's on SX
- Cut-scenes can run 21% faster on SX compared to PS5
- SX's broader VRR window additionally helps smooth out the drops where PS5 is limited to 48hz (the game does not have native 120hz support)

PC Shader Compilation:
- Alex does not recommend using the TAA option cause it uses FSR 1
- PC version has a robust DRS toggle that helps keep performance on target
- The game is more CPU limited
- Launch version still has shader comp stutters
It reads like Cerny's "most demanding" situation has finally arrived.

Due to the variable clocks of the PS5's hardware, if you tax both the GPU and CPU at the same time, on paper you'd expect to see the frame rates drop quite harshly compared to Xbox Series' static clocks. We saw this with Alan Wake 2, but I figured it was just another game prioritising the larger platform for optimisation and some kind of mishap. This is the second title with a similar performance difference. Cerny alluded to a scenario where a game could tax both the CPU and GPU at the same time, but that typically games don't actually do that. To his absolute credit, he was dead on - his design allowed the PS5 to go toe to toe with, and even out pace, the on-paper specs of the Xbox Series X for years. Now, it looks like we're starting to see these consoles pushed to their limits, and the on-paper spec advantage of the Xbox Series X is materialising. I'll give mad props to Sony though: not only was Cerny's design sensibilities dead on, Sony's timing with the PS5 Pro seems to line up pretty close to where games are starting to outstrip what the hardware can deliver. There's a reason Sony won the console war: they know their shit.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
XSX: 720~1080p/40~60fps, PS5 version is more broken.
ZEN2 and RDNA2 don't have enough performance to run the latest game engines.
This is why we need PS5Pro and XSX2.
ps5 pro only got a 10% boost to cpu. this game is cpu bound even on pc. the extra gpu wont help much if the game is cpu bound.
 

DanielG165

Member
I’m honestly a bit surprised by the console performance here, as I found this game pretty easy to nearly max out on my machine (2080 Super, 9700k), at 1440p DLSS Balanced. 60fps is onscreen for 99% of the time, outside of the truly busy stuff, but I never see drops to the 40s or low 50s(outside of the flamethrower mission, 50s there). Zero stutters either; it’s a damn good port.

That said, the Series X has a really nice showing overall, even the SS, paired back as it may be. The past few current gen only games, Outlaws, Wukong, and now Space Marine 2 have really stretched the current slew of consoles to their limits in different ways.
 
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S0ULZB0URNE

Member
Focus game engine may consume an unusual amount of memory bandwidth.
PS5 (CPU & GPU): 448GB/s, RTX2070S: 448GB/s, XSX: 560GB/s
If bandwidth had a big impact, a 20% performance difference would make sense.
PS5 has ram advantages with non split ram so this doesn't work.
Japanese physical version releases Monday and I was going to pick it up day 1 but the PS5 Performance issues mean I will be waiting for the Pro version instead.
It's a must play game.
This game's probably got one of, if not the, biggest gaps in multi-platform performance I've seen in a long while, since the days of Bayonetta PS3.

Za6eYxG.png





Awkward Jay Z GIF by Complex
The Touryst 8K PS5 vs 6K XBSX
Posting the most cherry-picked screenshot you could have possibly found in the video to make this post is actually hilarious but not surprising.
It's been brutal for them this generation so they gotta take the wins when they come.
I don't know what you are on but PS1 had more 60fps games than PS5
Really?
Seems awful on console.
An easy "wait for $20 or Ps+/gamepass" game.

Oh well, the year has been great to me so I can't really complain about a few games I was looking forward to becoming and easy skip.
It's a amazing game that deserves a purchase
Any word on HDR support or none? I believe Dark Tide didn't have any, but that wasn't Saber.
It has HDR on PS5. You can simulate it on Win 11.
Pretty big
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I’m honestly a bit surprised by the console performance here, as I found this game pretty easy to nearly max out on my machine (2080 Super, 9700k), at 1440p DLSS Balanced. 60fps is onscreen for 99% of the time, outside of the truly busy stuff, but I never see drops to the 40s or low 50s(outside of the flamethrower mission, 50s there). Zero stutters either; it’s a damn good port.

Well .. 9700K isn't new but on paper it's still better than the Ryzen 3600, which is generally considered the closest CPU to the current consoles. Plus you're pairing it with a 2080, which is faster than the consoles and you're using machine learning on top.

Kinda not surprising that you have less drops comparatively to be honest.

That said, the Series X has a really nice showing overall, even the SS, paired back as it may be. The past few current gen only games, Outlaws, Wukong, and now Space Marine 2 have really stretched the current slew of consoles to their limits in different ways.

We're out of the cross-gen grace period, as games start using newer taxing methods, these consoles will start showing their limitations with each big new release.


>It has HDR on PS5

The fuck it does lol

Our guy posted with the fury of a wet fart :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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SKYF@ll

Member
Due to the variable clocks of the PS5's hardware, if you tax both the GPU and CPU at the same time, on paper you'd expect to see the frame rates drop quite harshly compared to Xbox Series' static clocks.
I thought the same thing at first, but I don't think that's the case because the Ryzen 5 3600 PC has the same benchmark as the PS5.
ORdxDlX.jpg
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Is FSR2 got any perfomance penaulty?

I presume PSSR will automatic force replace FRS games.
yes. but its the same as PSSR. so while they should be able to stick to the 1080p internal target thanks to the more powerful gpu, if the cpu is the bottleneck to getting to 60 fps then the 10% cpu bump wont do much good.
 

hlm666

Member
I don't know how some of you are managing to put up with stuff hitting 720p sub 45hz on oleds, modern displays are really compounding the image quality and performance issues this gen.

I thought the same thing at first, but I don't think that's the case because the Ryzen 5 3600 PC has the same benchmark as the PS5.
This is Alex sinking the boot in and people arn't even noticing, the narrative was consoles got more out of their cpu because of low level api's and no windows bloat so pc needs an 8 core cpu and more frequency to compete and here he is slipping in a 6 core none x cpu and it's oh yeh consoles performing as expected.
 
I don't know how some of you are managing to put up with stuff hitting 720p sub 45hz on oleds, modern displays are really compounding the image quality and performance issues this gen.


This is Alex sinking the boot in and people arn't even noticing, the narrative was consoles got more out of their cpu because of low level api's and no windows bloat so pc needs an 8 core cpu and more frequency to compete and here he is slipping in a 6 core none x cpu and it's oh yeh consoles performing as expected.
If this was DX11 than yes it would have been turd port but due to DX12 draw call and low level API the gap of Console API vs PC API has al most no difference now.

DF did a video on this.
 

Bojji

Member
It reads like Cerny's "most demanding" situation has finally arrived.

Due to the variable clocks of the PS5's hardware, if you tax both the GPU and CPU at the same time, on paper you'd expect to see the frame rates drop quite harshly compared to Xbox Series' static clocks. We saw this with Alan Wake 2, but I figured it was just another game prioritising the larger platform for optimisation and some kind of mishap. This is the second title with a similar performance difference. Cerny alluded to a scenario where a game could tax both the CPU and GPU at the same time, but that typically games don't actually do that. To his absolute credit, he was dead on - his design allowed the PS5 to go toe to toe with, and even out pace, the on-paper specs of the Xbox Series X for years. Now, it looks like we're starting to see these consoles pushed to their limits, and the on-paper spec advantage of the Xbox Series X is materialising. I'll give mad props to Sony though: not only was Cerny's design sensibilities dead on, Sony's timing with the PS5 Pro seems to line up pretty close to where games are starting to outstrip what the hardware can deliver. There's a reason Sony won the console war: they know their shit.

I didn't think about that but yeah.. This makes sense. Cerny was talking about hammering CPU as a scenario that would engage smartshift, so in this VERY CPU limited game console could be dropping clocks on the GPU.

The tools have arrived at last
Party Dancing GIF by Florida Georgia Line

banana-eating.gif
 
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Question: would patching a 120Hz mode in (like Capcom did with Dragon's dogma 2) help things on the PS5 side ?

Question 2 : to those that have it/ have played it, does the game feel rushed in any way both technically and content wise ? Maybe some patches could fix things up ?

Gonna wait for the Pro personally, these resolutions and framerates aren't cutting it for me anymore
 

winjer

Gold Member
Well .. 9700K isn't new but on paper it's still better than the Ryzen 3600, which is generally considered the closest CPU to the current consoles. Plus you're pairing it with a 2080, which is faster than the consoles and you're using machine learning on top.

Kinda not surprising that you have less drops comparatively to be honest.

Remember that DF's 3600 is underperforming by a good margin. Due to memory latency.
And the 3600 is not the closest PC CPU to what the consoles have. That would be the Ryzen 5 4650G.


A regular 3700X can maintain over 60 fps average in this game.
 
Are the stutters on PC that bad? I'll wait for a sale if that's the case, maybe they've patched up the game by then.

No, they’re not on my PC (i5-13600KF, 32 GB DDR4 3600, RTX 4080 FE, Windows 11 Pro 24H2), where it runs smoothly 99.99% of the time at maxed out 1440p settings using DLAA. It’s nowhere near as bad as, say, Star Wars Jedi: Suvivor or other unoptimised Unreal Engine 4 games on PC.
 
Question 2 : to those that have it/ have played it, does the game feel rushed in any way both technically and content wise ? Maybe some patches could fix things up ?

I'm almost done with the game, I think (on the third and final world). Playing maxed out on PC, and it is smoooooth. In terms of technical polish and content I have no complaints. The game looks really, really good and plays great! The campaign is a lot of fun with very good production values. I think it'll be a 10 hour game for me, which is perfect.

People saying this is a six hour game, must have rushed it to be first above all. I soak up the great atmosphere and listen to the nice little ambient conversations going on at the hubs. There's so many cool details in this game.
 

PeteBull

Member
ps5 pro only got a 10% boost to cpu. this game is cpu bound even on pc. the extra gpu wont help much if the game is cpu bound.
What if the difference between series x and ps5 performance is coz ps5 gives max boost to the gpu and that reduces cpu performance by proxy? Ps5pr0 would totally solve this problem coz it has plenty more gpu power, on top of bit more cpu power too?
 

FireFly

Member
This is Alex sinking the boot in and people arn't even noticing, the narrative was consoles got more out of their cpu because of low level api's and no windows bloat so pc needs an 8 core cpu and more frequency to compete and here he is slipping in a 6 core none x cpu and it's oh yeh consoles performing as expected.
The 3600 has a boost clock of 4.2 GHz, so potentially 20% more frequency than the PS5, albeit all core clocks will be lower. And the console CPUs only have 8 MB of cache compared to 32 MB on the 3600, as well as suffering due to the higher latency of GDDR6. So realistically we should expect the console CPUs to perform like the 2700, on PC at least.
 

Stu_Hart

Banned
Series x finally flexing its 12 tf muscle. Just in time for the ps5 pro now that the ps5 is starting to show some weakness after beating the series x in most of the comparisons the last 4 years.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Interesting you’re the second person who says that here. Alex said there are shader compilation stutters and showed them on screen.
If there was on that explosion, it was so fast that I missed as I don't play looking on a frame time graphic.
 

Fbh

Member
It's a amazing game that deserves a purchase

I'm sure it's an amazing game on PC.
On console it seems subpar. Unstable 60fps at 720p or shitty 30fps at 1080p? With the trademark horrible IQ of FSR too? No thx.

The game was clearly designed for more powerful hardware than current consoles, which is fair. It's their game, I can't blame them for designing it however they want.
But they also can't blame me for waiting until I have access to that superior hardware before buying it, or waiting until the price of the console version reflect the subpar experience it's offering.
 

Liljagare

Member
Ending up playing it on PC with the PS5 controller. It's great fun, but the mouse and keyboard control scheme irks me, using middle mouse button, really?? Works so much better with controller..
 
Bummer.. everyone wanted cross gen to be over and i get it we should move on but man we had such great looking games like Metro Exodus, Ghost of Tsushima or even Dead Island 2 and many others looking great and running at flawlessly 60fps on consoles, both this and Outlaws really bumps me out.
 

DanielG165

Member
Question 2 : to those that have it/ have played it, does the game feel rushed in any way both technically and content wise ? Maybe some patches could fix things up ?
Not rushed at all in either area. This is a very polished, very stable, and very good looking game that’s not super tough to run, despite being CPU heavy. Content wise, there’s a ton here already in the base product, with the campaign alone being 10-12 hours if you’re not actively trying to bumrush through it. Then you have MM and operations on top of that.

Excellent game with really really good performance on PC.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
I'm sure it's an amazing game on PC.
On console it seems subpar. Unstable 60fps at 720p or shitty 30fps at 1080p? With the trademark horrible IQ of FSR too? No thx.

The game was clearly designed for more powerful hardware than current consoles, which is fair. It's their game, I can't blame them for designing it however they want.
But they also can't blame me for waiting until I have access to that superior hardware before buying it, or waiting until the price of the console version reflect the subpar experience it's offering.
It's not 720p on consoles.

If consoles are a issue get the PC version.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Ending up playing it on PC with the PS5 controller. It's great fun, but the mouse and keyboard control scheme irks me, using middle mouse button, really?? Works so much better with controller..
Just change it. LOL. Nothing works better with controller.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
I miss rofif rofif

Rofif: Console version sucks! Poor IQ, high latency, FSR looks like smeared shit. Devs don't give a fuck about optimizing anymore. Compared to the perfect IQ of Forspoken, Warhammer looks like crap.

Gaf: Don't you have a PC with a 3080? Use that instead.

Rofif: PC sucks and I hate gaming on PC.

Good times.
 
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LostDonkey

Member
Obviously a 30fps title at its core but those performance metrics in favour of X are quite substantial in the "speed" mode.
 

LordCBH

Member
I’m curious how this game will perform on the PS5 Pro. I’m certain my PC can’t run it very well at least.

As I really want to play it I have to decide Series X version now, or hold out that it’ll get Pro enhancements later (which likely isn’t a guarantee )
 

kevboard

Member
I’m curious how this game will perform on the PS5 Pro. I’m certain my PC can’t run it very well at least.

As I really want to play it I have to decide Series X version now, or hold out that it’ll get Pro enhancements later (which likely isn’t a guarantee )

if it is truly CPU bound then the framerate will only marginally improve. But it could be enough to get closer to a locked 60fps
 
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XSX coming out best in the 2 most technologically demanding multiplatform games recently released.

XSS with a very decent version.

Surprising that the PS5 version is so far from XSX in a comparison and at this point in the generation and the situation being what it is. I suppose they are one of those strange cases that always occur far from the norm.
What was the other game?
 
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