All right, everyone. Sit down and buckle up because we're about to go on one hell
of a high definition ride at 792p.
With its power loss protection, affordability, and performance, the
SP920 from A Data makes upgrading to an SSD remarkably safe and simple. We're
going to try and quantify just how not nextG the nextG consoles are. And we're
going to do this by taking our test bench and figuring out exactly how much
graphics horsepower is needed to deliver the console grade experience in Watchd
Dogs versus how much raw power it would need to deliver a PCRA experience.
Basically, high resolutions and much higher frame rates. We know that our
test bench is overkill and not really comparable to a console, but we chose
these parts in our experiment to remove potential bottlenecks and focus on our
funky thought experiment in terms of GPU clock speeds, an extremely important
factor for gaming. Bear in mind that by removing these bottlenecks, we're
keeping the test as fair as possible. And if anything, our lower graphics
configuration gets an advantage from the OP CPU and RAM. But how do you remove as
many variables as possible and bring everything down to GPU clock speed?
well, by strapping a GTX 480 to it. I chose a GTX 480 because of its ability
to underclock and overclock quite well, giving it a wide range of possible
performance levels. Things to note are that the Xbox One and PS4, while closer
to typical PC architecture than any console generation before, are still
actually quite different. We're also not covering power consumption, and we're
running everything on high settings all the time. We expect the devs want that
experience on any given platform as a baseline. So changing it between runs,
which is add more variables. And again, we're just focusing on GPU clock speed.
The lowest clock speed I could get on my GTX 480 was 405. And this allowed me to
run the game at 792p and about 32 to 33
FPS. Yeah, I actually couldn't underclock my 5-year-old GPU to be as
slow as a nextG console. PC master race
problems. If we don't nerf our 5-year-old GPU quite so hard, we can get
pretty easily to 1080p 30 FPS, but 60
FPS is a completely different ballgame. 1080p 60 FPS wasn't going to happen on
our poor old 480. But good old awkward 792p was able to run at 60 FPS if I
cranked this GPU clock speed up to 875 MHz. So yeah, Ubisoft FPS and resolution
are numbers and so is clock speed. And those so-called nextG consoles should
have had a lot more of all three. Again, guys, I can't stress enough, these are
very different architectures, and we're only interested in seeing how much more
raw power the GPU of a platform that can run at 792p 30fps would need to run at
1080p 30 FPS and 792p 60 FPS. And it was
interesting to see how borderline these nextG consoles actually are, because
going from 792p to 1080p only required about 40% more raw power, while doubling
the FPS required more than double that raw power. Uh, this is bad news for
gamers who think they're going to get 60 FPS beautifully rendered games this gen
because they're not even close. But this was just a quick and dirty thought
experiment. And while it does show a representation of the power needed to
get these consoles up to speed, calling it a perfect representation of the
competitive landscape may be a bit of a stretch. Also, for the console guys,
there are things coming down the line like MS Cloud for Xbox One and DirectX12
for nextG consoles in general that may help them, but after looking at the
performance needed for them to catch up, I think it's possible they're going to
need a little bit more than just that. All right, guys. That was just kind of
some food for thought. I hope you guys liked it. If you want to see more like this, let me know in the comments below.
Like, dislike, comment, subscribe, jump over to the forum and let me know there.
If you PM me, there's even more likeliness that I'll get it. While you're on the forum, if you don't like
the ads, be sure to become a contributor. That gets rid of all the ads at any contribution level. And if
you want a shirt like the one Lionus is wearing, not the one I'm wearing, be
sure to check out our shirts link in the description below to get a shirt. Thanks
a lot for watching and I'll see you guys next time. Take it off. Do it. Do it. Go. We'll get more views. We'll get more
likes. Go. Like for movies.