1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:07,359
even though arguments between console and pc gamers still happen all the time

2
00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:12,960
consoles are more pc-like than ever before the xbox series x and series s

3
00:00:10,559 --> 00:00:16,640
are based on AMD's zen 2 architecture and you can even buy off-the-shelf ssds

4
00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:21,840
to expand the storage of your playstation 5. but if consoles are so

5
00:00:19,359 --> 00:00:26,080
similar to pcs now why the heck do ports of console games still have all sorts of

6
00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:30,240
performance issues when you try to run them on a regular desktop to find out we

7
00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:36,559
reached out to our friends over at digital foundry and we'd like to thank alex battaglia and richard ledbetter for

8
00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:39,280
their assistance with this deeper dive as well as some of the footage you're

9
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:43,120
about to see one issue might be familiar to you if

10
00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:48,800
you played horizon zero dawn at launch or final fantasy 7 remastered problems

11
00:00:46,079 --> 00:00:52,800
with how pcs handle the game's shader a shader is the code that handles how to

12
00:00:50,719 --> 00:00:57,440
illuminate and color each pixel on the screen on a console the shader is just a

13
00:00:55,600 --> 00:01:02,559
file that the console loads when the game starts up and because each model of

14
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:07,040
console has exactly the same hardware in each unit programmers know how to write

15
00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:11,280
the shader for that specific hardware configuration

16
00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:16,640
but because pcs can have nearly endless combinations of processors memory

17
00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:19,439
graphics cards etc the shaders in pc

18
00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:24,159
ports are instead recompiled as you play the game so each time you encounter a

19
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:28,479
new area or object there's a good chance that the game will stutter while the

20
00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:33,040
shader recompiles and renders the scene but the good news is that once a shader

21
00:01:30,479 --> 00:01:37,439
gets recompiled it is saved to your SSD or to your hard drive so your CPU won't

22
00:01:34,960 --> 00:01:41,360
have to do that extra work ever again however there are other problems that

23
00:01:39,200 --> 00:01:46,159
can appear over and over again because of differences in how memory works on a

24
00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:50,320
console versus on a pc modern gaming pcs tend to have more

25
00:01:48,159 --> 00:01:57,439
memory than consoles it's not uncommon to find 16 gigs of system RAM plus 8 or

26
00:01:54,240 --> 00:01:59,840
more gigs of vram in a gaming computer

27
00:01:57,439 --> 00:02:04,960
but modern consoles have a shared pool of typically between 10 and 16 gigs of

28
00:02:02,719 --> 00:02:09,200
memory in total meaning that games written for consoles often work by

29
00:02:06,719 --> 00:02:13,040
constantly streaming the necessary data into RAM since there just isn't as much

30
00:02:11,599 --> 00:02:16,640
of it to work with now pcs could give you better

31
00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:21,200
performance simply by loading in more assets ahead of time thanks to their

32
00:02:18,319 --> 00:02:25,760
extra RAM but games have to be recoded to take advantage of this and that would

33
00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:29,920
be a lot of extra work that publisher timetables may not allow for

34
00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:33,760
and while this might not create graphical glitches it does mean that

35
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:38,400
you're leaving performance on the table even if your GPU is more powerful than

36
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:42,160
what you would find in a console god of war is a great example of a title where

37
00:02:40,480 --> 00:02:46,239
this limitation is visible with the game becoming dramatically slower at

38
00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:51,120
dedicated loading portals and the fact that pcs have separate system RAM and

39
00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:55,360
video memory also means that data like textures and geometry information is

40
00:02:53,599 --> 00:03:00,400
getting shuttled between those two RAM pools quite often which takes time

41
00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:04,720
generally speaking the CPU has to handle this information including decompressing

42
00:03:02,959 --> 00:03:09,519
all this visual data consoles on the other hand have just one

43
00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:13,440
pool of memory where the data goes and they usually have a dedicated

44
00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:16,400
decompression chip that just handles this visual data lessening the load on

45
00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:21,360
the CPU the fact that pc cpus have to do this

46
00:03:18,640 --> 00:03:25,840
extra legwork can you guessed it cost you performance though hopefully the new

47
00:03:23,680 --> 00:03:30,480
direct storage API for Windows will help alleviate this burden since it offloads

48
00:03:27,840 --> 00:03:34,400
decompression work to the GPU which wouldn't tax your performance very much

49
00:03:32,319 --> 00:03:37,680
due to the way that gpus are designed we're just waiting for developers to

50
00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:41,040
take advantage of this feature in newer titles we'll tell you more right after

51
00:03:39,440 --> 00:03:45,440
we thank ifixit for sponsoring this video all month long ifixit is

52
00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:50,560
challenging our youtube community to fix or make something instead of buying new

53
00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:55,040
for fixit february ifixit is giving away a protect toolkit to one lucky fixer

54
00:03:52,959 --> 00:04:00,319
every week all you have to do is share photos or videos of your repairs with

55
00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:02,159
the hashtag fixitfeb for a chance to win

56
00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:06,640
so save yourself money by fixing your tech while entering for a chance to win

57
00:04:04,319 --> 00:04:10,239
with fixit feb get your ifixit kits today using the link in the video

58
00:04:08,319 --> 00:04:16,560
description now it isn't uncommon anymore to see pc processors with 12 16

59
00:04:13,519 --> 00:04:18,720
or even more threads but console games

60
00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:23,520
are written with fewer threads in mind even though the new xbox series x has 16

61
00:04:21,519 --> 00:04:29,440
threads the previous generation of consoles which many games are still

62
00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:31,520
being made in mind for didn't have

63
00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:35,759
nearly that many and because it would be a massive amount of effort to re-code

64
00:04:33,840 --> 00:04:40,400
these games to scale to higher numbers of threads most developers don't bother

65
00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:44,560
and the gameplay experience suffers as a result far cry 6 is a good example of a

66
00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:49,440
recent game that suffers from this problem although it can definitely take

67
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:53,520
advantage of high-end modern gpus it can still stutter if you're getting a high

68
00:04:51,199 --> 00:04:58,000
frame rate because the CPU is trying to load assets and it can't use all of its

69
00:04:56,400 --> 00:05:02,479
threads to do so because developers have been so used to

70
00:05:00,080 --> 00:05:06,479
coding mostly for a single thread until about the mid-2010s

71
00:05:04,160 --> 00:05:09,360
this paradigm shift is taking a long time

72
00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:13,520
now how games use or don't use multi-threading leads us into our last

73
00:05:10,960 --> 00:05:18,080
topic the directx API on the surface you might think that the

74
00:05:15,199 --> 00:05:22,320
fact that both the xbox and Windows use directx might make it easier to port

75
00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:28,160
games between them but the problem is that both directx 11 and directx 12 are

76
00:05:25,759 --> 00:05:31,199
widely used in game development and they are

77
00:05:29,039 --> 00:05:36,080
very different from each other under the hood directx 12 gives developers more

78
00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:40,560
granular control over their games and it's become especially popular with xbox

79
00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:45,039
titles because as we mentioned before everybody already knows exactly what's

80
00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:48,880
inside of an xbox so programming specifically for that fixed set of

81
00:05:46,880 --> 00:05:54,160
hardware isn't too difficult but when those titles get ported over to pc

82
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:57,840
many games instead use directx 11 like assassin's creed odyssey for example

83
00:05:55,840 --> 00:06:02,240
directx 11 doesn't provide as much granular control and instead takes care

84
00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:06,639
of more tasks automagically that's important because pcs can have such a

85
00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:11,600
wide range of hardware but it isn't always a good thing more specifically

86
00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:15,680
directx 11 by default uses only one thread for rendering meaning that games

87
00:06:13,520 --> 00:06:21,360
that get a direct x11 port released for pc often have poorer CPU performance

88
00:06:18,800 --> 00:06:25,840
especially on AMD with its directx 11 driver being slower on the CPU

89
00:06:23,759 --> 00:06:28,960
using directx 12 for pc ports could solve this issue but again because of

90
00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:32,880
all the different hardware configurations possible on a pc that

91
00:06:31,039 --> 00:06:37,039
would necessitate a great deal of coding maintenance from the developer

92
00:06:34,639 --> 00:06:41,840
directx 11 also does not support a feature called asynchronous compute this

93
00:06:39,680 --> 00:06:47,039
feature allows one part of the GPU to render a scene's geometry while another

94
00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:50,960
takes care of compute tasks like physics or ambient occlusion

95
00:06:48,880 --> 00:06:54,960
consoles rely heavily on asynchronous compute to increase performance but

96
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:59,759
since so many pc ports are written with directx 11 the result is that many games

97
00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:04,560
released in the mid-2010s have lower than expected performance especially on

98
00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:08,880
AMD gpus which historically tend to be designed more with compute tasks in mind

99
00:07:07,440 --> 00:07:14,400
compared to their counterparts from NVIDIA in fact there were a number of

100
00:07:11,039 --> 00:07:16,960
games where a gtx 1060 and an rx 580

101
00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:21,840
performed similarly under directx 11 even though the rx 580 from AMD is a

102
00:07:19,199 --> 00:07:25,599
more powerful GPU on paper the lack of asynchronous compute is probably playing

103
00:07:23,680 --> 00:07:29,680
a big role there so yeah there's a lot that prevents our

104
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:34,639
pc ports from playing the way that we expect but hopefully as time goes on developers

105
00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:38,880
will be able to take advantage of new tools to make coding for both platforms

106
00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:43,360
far less tedious i would say to just try and exercise

107
00:07:40,880 --> 00:07:48,960
some patience until then but i do think we used up a lot of that on cyberpunk

108
00:07:45,440 --> 00:07:50,319
2077 and the GPU shortage and this darn

109
00:07:48,960 --> 00:07:53,319
pandemic subscribe