I think we are at the point where Xbox is dead as a platform, it just does not realise it yet. Within five years they will be a large multiplatform developer and publisher, possibly with as Xbox hardware being just a certification option for hardware and emulation system for older games to run on.
@Solegor Yep, they said it was due to the head tracking changes, but modders did proof of concept that it could be made to work as a translation layer and there was more than enough power on the PS5 to run that. Combined with Sony just not bothering to make games it was more really good hardware that Sony abandoned far too early, the same as the Vita.
It will be interesting to see how this behaves. I don't have any handhelds but I have a Strix Halo mini PC in the office at work for local AI due to the 128GB of RAM. It is RDNA 3.5 and the 8060s version so I might have to pop Steam on it just to have a play around once this is released. Full fat FSR4 looked really good and comparable to DLSS4.0 in most cases so it could be fun to experiment a bit with this.
The performance and quality difference between modded full fat FSR4 and the official Diet FSR4 will be interesting as well.
@Darren1967 The reason no one complains about the consoles use is that it is fundamentally different. You proposed downloading then deleting shaders each time the game was played, that is not what consoles do. Consoles are fixed hardware, fixed pipeline and they do not have driver upgrades in the same way as a PC, the drivers for each game are in pretty much baked into the game (based on the API version it uses), so the shaders are fixed, they never change. If you never changed your PC hardware or upgraded your GPU drivers you would have sort of solved things in the same way, you would never need to recompile shaders and you would only need to do one burn (and in theory they could be downloadable).
It does also depend on hardware, TLOU P1 completes the shader burn for me in a little over three minutes (current patch), and they are 2.9GB (I never played the launch version, but that had 12GB of shaders), so I could download them in about a minute, with another 30 or so seconds for Steam to unpack them into place. The hugely increased data usage, server load etc. just is not going to be worth it for the small time saving and zero gain for Steam or the developer.
Auto Shader Compilation solves the recompile issue after a driver install and the burn time on fresh install is going to be a non-issue for most people.
Downloading them each time someone plays is just not sensible, huge data and data centre usage and requires the local app to check the GPU and driver version, then download the relevant shaders. It is not a viable solution to the problem and a full shader burn that eliminates stutter is top of most people's list.
@Darren1967 There is supposed to be an update* coming to the Nvidia app at some point that should automatically handle updating shaders after a driver update, they will not need to be recompiled, just mildly tweaked, so it in theory it should do it in the background after installing a driver update. I tested it when Alex first mentioned it on a few games and it seemed to work well, but I had turned it off after a reinstall and kind of forgot about it, I should probably turn it on again.
*Auto Shader Compilation, it is currently available in beta in the Nvidia app. The game needs to have already completed an initial shader burn and it will only update ones that already exist, but it does remove the majority of the issues.
Only works for Nvidia GPUs of course, but I am fairly sure AMD and Intel will have something similar in the works. I know Intel were looking at a version of shader delivery for their GPUs (discrete and integrated).
I actually do not care about shader pre-compilation, waiting a few minutes for a game to properly compile the shaders is fine and far more preferable to stutter. If there is a choice I would always go for a pre-comp rather than anything that impacts actual gameplay. I think the real test will be/is does this deal with the shaders that get missed during pre-compilation burns, otherwise it just trades a few minutes CPU time for a few minutes downloading time.
I agree with the above to an extent, though I can see a Deck 2 being x86 and a Deck Light being ARM. However I think they will not launch a Deck 2 before RDNA5/UDNA is available. Full fat RDNA4 was a huge improvement over 3 and 3.5 and as Will mentions this is basically 3.5 with a small ML block bolted on. If they wait for 5, because proper 4 is not getting a mobile/SOC release then they will get much better performance from a smaller die area, so saving on both cost and power draw.
@wsjudd Hey will, do you know with the letterbox, does it actually lower the rendered resolution and so increase performance, or does it render the full screen and then just blank it off?
@themightyant I totally agree different people have different sensitivity to these kinds of things. I know people who do not see/feel the point in VRR but for me it is great. Some people don't even notice traversal, shader comp or PSO stutter which I find crazy.
After the first comments from the DF team, I think around the time of Wukong I had a play with it and totally agrees with everything that you said and another test when MFG went higher. Using it to push a 100fps game higher was totally fine and I do use it for that purposes but even pushing a 60fps game higher I could feel the additional latency on a mouse and using it on a base 30 to anything higher was awful, base 30 was better. I can see it being useful on CPU heavy games where GPU is otherwise left idle, as you mention also RPGs and others where input latency does not really have an impact.
I know when Rich talked about MFG to high refresh rates having issues and it would be really good if Nvidia could make it an easy option to just dial a rate, set it at 235 for 240hz VRR and have the driver just take care of it.
@Someguyperson that is the hardware Steam Link, the app does 4k60.
The latency thing is weird as I was playing around with it this weekend, Sunshine/Moonlight was much lower to the point I did not perceive it with a controller, although I could on a mouse, but with Steam Link it felt almost unplayably laggy. Same network, same hardware, just the difference between Steam Link and Sunshine/Moonlight.
I have a really busy week with work, but when I stop drowning I am happy to pull together what I can and I will send it over to Will so he can see if there is anything interesting in it all. I should be able to measure latency reasonably well using a 240fps camera, I can figure out a way to show the macro blocking with Steam Link and see if there is anything interesting in any of that.
@SL0MAR Setting up both Sunshine and Moonlight is easy, Moonlight was just an install from the Play Store onto an Android TV and Sunshine is just installed onto the PC as a service and configured via a browser. I think the total process took less than a couple of minutes. By default it was set to 540p, but I changed that to 4k, 60hz and enabled HDR and I was up and running. The only other thing that might be different is I disabled the HID prompt from Sunshine as am using my Steam Controller connected to my PC and not using a controller connected to the TV.
Just make sure you get the current version of Sunshine and it should be easy enough, there is a rough guide on the official GitHub, but it mostly just fire and forget once one picks the right resolution.
@wsjudd Quality always seems good but I have no way to capture directly from the TV but I will see if I can figure anything out. I tested latency by videoing with a GoPro at 240fps as I wanted to see what it was like with my Steam Controller (as an aside it finally turned up and I think it is excellent).
It might take me a while with work and a few other bits but I will see if I can pull anything useful together and send it over.
This is interesting as I already use Sunshine/Moonlight to stream from my PC to my TV (Android) and it works brilliantly, no perceptible lag on a controller and from having tested it as best as I can with a 240fps camera it only seems to add around 25ms when streaming at 4k60HDR and only with occasional drops. On a controller game that is totally fine, I am usually playing older games this way, high end PC games I usually play at the desktop.
Years ago I used to use Steam Link to the TV but it has huge latency now and seems to struggle with anything over 1080p and even at times 720p on exactly the same hardware and connection, when Sunshine/Moonlight are happy at 4k with near zero blips. This new codec might be a huge boost but I would also recommend anyone wanting to tinker with streaming to a TV from their desktop to give Sunshine/Moonlight a go, it is relatively simple to set up on both, maybe even an opportunity for a small article if @wsjudd gets a chance at some point?
I agree with the others, it looks interesting technically, but the gameplay looks incredibly repetitive and simplistic, which was one of the fears with a Wolverine game right from the start. All the Insomniac Spiderman games have been great, but I just cannot see me buying this. I will likely give it a go on PS Plus when it eventually appears on there, but so far from all the footage it holds very little interest for me.
@wsjudd Thanks, I guess the next question is, is it a memory bandwidth, compute or both that is the bottleneck? I am wondering where there is a point where the option to turn down settings to gain headroom to gain back more from DLSS5 exists? Sorry for all the questions, I am away on holiday so not able to have a play around myself at the moment, plus you guys can usually answer much better than my fumbling though the settings!
Will, out of interest (it might be in the video), but what does the latency go from and to using normal DLSS vs DLSS 5, how does it play with frame gen and in the official vs modded support is there any difference in the performance impact? Do you think it will need a direct developer integration to reduce performance impact or does it play nice when injected via mods?
@HaraldC Rockstar games have always had that sluggish response to controls though, it has never been primarily a shooter and all their games had has controls that look/feel like that, they are a long way from twitch shooters.
I do not expect them to change that part of their controls, but I really hope that they fix their normally awful choice of button layouts, having to mash X to run etc.
@dabisbesh first it is a 30fps game, in a beat case scenario it will run in a 120hz container with VRR and LFC, but at the moment all we know is 30fps, you will gain absolutely nothing from a 360hz display. The next is resolution, it is designed around a 4k output, but we do not know the internal resolution. You will likely gain nothing from stepping down the 4k to 1440p, it will probably just mean the console itself has to down sample, very unlikely to alter the native or even the upscaled engine resolution, so the only difference will be maybe some down sampling artifacts and an additional single frame of lag from the console downsampling to 1440p.
The game was built to output at 4k 30 fps on current generation full fat consoles and likely output at an upscaled 1080p on Series S. Rockstar have heavily hinted (not sure if they have confirmed) the PS5 Pro will not get a 40 or 60 fps mode (at least at launch), there will not be a way to game the engine to get higher fps.
@Johnhonza The Series X will be almost exactly the same as the, they are not far off the same hardware and have been within almost unnoticeable margins in virtually every game. I doubt anyone is expecting any real difference between PS5 and X, certainly not enough to care about.
In relation to the cable tech, I have a Thermal Grizzly Wireview Pro II, my 5090 sits really balanced across the pins now, but it did let me see that pressure on the cable sideways when the cable routing was not finished made a huge difference on the pin draw. From what I understand, the biggest issue with the 12VHP cables is being plugged and unplugged and bent a lot, so if you are switching out cards to benchmark I would really consider getting one, from what I have seen a really good indicator of when a cable is getting damaged and needs replacing.
@Darren1967 My understanding is that it is not just consoles, plenty of PC games have the same issues, Elden Ring and Capcom games being the obvious one I can think of off the top of my head.
A lot of internal developer tools are far less useful than the analysis DF conducts, they just measure raw FPS data and a lot of people do not seem to pick up on frame pacing issues, I am at the other end of that so I feel it straight away, I would rather have a rock solid 30 or 40fps game on console than an improperly paced 60, but equally I know people who do not pick up on huge frame time differences. With Rich saying that they are going to open source a bunch of their tools, hopefully more developers will look to get the DF approved levels of frame pacing.
From what I know improper frame pacing is often a CPU issue, so when games are pushing open world stuff, lots of NPCs or ray tracing where the CPU takes on the BVH calculation then the consoles are generally pushed harder than most PC CPUs. Consoles also seem to be more likely to use double or triple buffering.
I think in some games VRR can solve it, there have been games where VRR seems to fix it entirely, where as others VRR seems to make no difference, I don't know if that is due to a poor VRR implementation or something inherent to improper frame pacing vs frame time variance.
For me there would be a couple of key things, better RTGI and reflections on water would be great, but tied in with that and especially at night a proper HDR implementation would be ideal, KCD2 is great as it is apart from the HDR, which I find so poor, blacks are crushed, especially shadows, the tone mapping is really bad and there is no way to calibrate it either and a solid HDR implementation would be great for everyone regardless of platform or hardware spec.
The problem with Bethesda is there were some early patches that they claimed improved performance but did nothing and then there has been total silence from them for more than a year, the last patch was in July 2025 and did nothing to improve performance.
Much of the root cause of the traversal stutter is based on the legacy code and it's use of cells/zones that load in and out, but there is absolutely zero management of that process, if they pre-cached the adjacent cells then it would increase RAM usage but it would remove the traversal stutters. There are PSO compilation stutters because it does not have a compilation burn or use in game compilation properly There are bugs from the original game that were never fixed and performance wise it is a total mess.
Modders have tried but the fundamental issues require access to the pre-compiled game code, but Bethesda should be able to write a caching system for the cells and a PSO burn very easily, that combined with a bit more (any?) thread management should be able to improve things dramatically without needing a huge amount of developer time. I suspect the actual issue is they subbed it out, did not care at the time and now do not want to pay to have it fixed, as they do not have enough internal tech staff to spare because they made most of them redundant.
It seems insane to buy a controller that is half the price of the console. The only "Pro" controller I have ever bought is the Switch 2 Pro controller, it is really good and value for what it offers. I tried a Dualsense Edge and did not see the point, I got given one of the Razer Xbox style ones and it did not feel great either. I would like back buttons on the PS5 and PC, hopefully the latter via the Steam Controller if it is ever actually available, but I just cannot justify spending £200 to get them.
I currently have eight cores, a 9800X3D, although I am looking forward to the 10800X3D almost certainly having twelve cores, it will be better for software encoding and about the only upgrade worth making in the next year or two.
I look at this and do not think it is a bad chip, but is it value for money? The 9800X3D can be had for around £30 more if shopping around, on that basis, why would anyone buy the 77/7800X3D?
@Someguyperson I did a quick PC Part Picker and came out around £1,720 with the case vs the 2TB Steam Machine at £1,149. The difference is a much more capable system.
The ambient temperature thing is not something I have ever really found makes that much if any difference on a full size desktop, but I guess it is a much bigger issue for SFF?
@SeanPeterson It might be a slightly different area to hold the battery, it might be just a redesign, it might be cost saving. I guess once they release there will be teardowns and some definitive answers.
I think it is really a case of anyone who is budget constrained just sits tight for a few years. If I absolutely had to buy/build a new PC now it would be something very middling to get me through and reusing as many existing parts as possible.
@TheFellowFox I am fairly sure the PS4/5 versions are from the x86 PC codebase not the PS3 code because Cell emulation on the PS5 when the game uses the SPEs is not performant on the PS5. This is the PC code cut down and limited for the PS5.
@themightyant PS4/5 discs do not, one of the team said it a few Directs and that matches what is online as well. They could offer a trade in program, they did that with PSP UMDs when they released the digital only version of that.
@themightyant I am probably lucky in that respect, my PC at home is in an area with little natural light if I shut the blinds and in the office I removed the lights above my desk and so do not need the office that bright, the other end of the office is a huge window but that is far enough away to not cause issues.
I totally get the separation of work and pleasure, I sometimes find the same, but more even that I do not want to look at a screen at all sometimes after a lot of intense work, at those points I end up going back to reading books to relax as at that point my brain seems to associate lit screen with work, regardless of it being a monitor, TV or phone.
@TemsOrrough You could insert it into an existing PS5, 4, 3, 2, 1 etc. Releasing a new console does not stop the disc working on the old one. PS1 and PS2 are fully emulated, PS3 is pretty good for most games, excellent for some (able to add in higher resolutions, ultrawide, new textures, much better UI, higher FPS), but struggles on others. PS4 can be emulated very well on high end PCs (ShadPS4), the PS5 emulation is the only one significantly lacking at the moment.
@themightyant I am lucky enough to have 4K OLED monitors at home, in the office and on my laptop, I use Office a reasonable amount, at work Outlook is pretty much always open on my laptop (Asus ProArt P16) and it has zero burn in after more than a year. At home I have an MSI gaming OLED, and at work the monitor connected to my laptop is a 32" ProArt OLED. Even though the work ones are in use a lot with Illustrator open for probably 3-5 hours a day and I have never hidden the taskbar that has zero burn in either. I think overall current OLEDs seem to be much more resistant to burn in than the very early models.
Have you thought about dual booting your PC and using Bazzite, or just Big Picture mode? At home I have also streamed my PC to my TV, minor delay but with a controller it does not feel noticeable and I do not want to use a keyboard and mouse on the sofa anyway (although I have a wireless one for when something Windows based decides to be difficult), part of why I really want a Steam Controller, the others just never seem to get things quite right.
With regard to 1440p at monitor distance I really notice it, I have 32" and 34" and at that size I can see the pixels on a 1440p monitor, but not on a 4k so for me that was the reason I upgraded. I also have become a bit of an OLED diehard for everything now.
@themightyant How have you found the switch to ultrawide? I keep thinking about getting a 5k/2k monitor as there finally is an OLED version, but still not really sure how much it adds to gaming?
I am surprised that 4k sits below 5%, I did not expect it to be that low, although still not in double digit percentages. I wonder if that will change with the Machine and various similar SFF SteamOS PCs launching, which are are more likely to be connected to TVs and the majority of TVs sold now seem to be 4K.
@paretje The 20% figure is over the generation to date, in 2021 it was 34/66, in Q4 2025 it was down to 15/85 and current estimates for 2026 are that it has dropped below 10%. Sony will not be expecting to lose that 10% when the discontinue in 2028, they will be expecting to loose 1-5% of potential sales, but that will be more than made up by much higher margins on digital sales vs physical sales. When physical sales made up 22% of overall sales they only accounted for 3% of revenue, that difference was because of DLC, microtransactions, skins, season passes, which admittedly some of those will be linked to games people are using a physical disc for.
The relevance of Xbox and PC (as well as other forms of media) is that they show that the overall resistance to digital vs physical is tiny. Businesses use wider available data to inform their decisions, estimate the impact of the changes they make on their current business model and project revenues based on that.
Gamers have chosen, either directly or by proxy. Choices do not get to be granular, that is not how the economics of these things work, nor market pressures. Nintendo are a somewhat different proposition, they approach the market in general very differently, but they have already started the move with the £10 differential between digital and physical and that will likely get wider over time.
You might not have, but many did, there has been speculation for around a year now that the PS6 will include an optional disc drive but only for back compatibility purposes, as well as Sony having some kind of physical to digital trade program (and that looks highly likely for Xbox as well).
If there was a sudden surge in physical sales, if they got back to 50% over the next two years, then I expect Sony would reconsider, they might even choose to push the timeline out a year or two for PS5 games if they see enough demand.
Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people do not like this decision, but I really cannot see why people did not see it as inevitable, or why they view it as a personal attack, not just a business responding to changes in consumer habits.
@NetshadeX I am also in the same fortunate position, built a new gaming PC at the start of last year, bought a PS5 Pro when it was released, I am almost certainly in a position to sit out the next few years without needing to upgrade anything. I think realistically anyone on a PS5, RDNA4 or RTX 40XX GPU is on a similar position though, the PS5 install base is so large and cross gen will likely be even longer next gen that many people do not need to worry about upgrading.
@Simplex_ You seem to be missing the point that it makes sense for Sony, the same as it made sense for PC publishers, not because of some desire to be anti-consumer, but because the vast majority of gamers had already made their choice by moving to digital. Sure it would be better for a small minority if physical continued to exist, but in reality most outside of a very vocal group do not care because they had already long abandoned it for digital only.
I understand why some people might not like this, but it has been made inevitable because of consumer choices, not because of some conspiracy by evil overlords.
You seem to dislike the idea that someone can hold an objective, rational view of something. Or you could just accuse people of being "ignorant" because they present a viewpoint you disagree with..Do I think there are some benefits to physical media? Yes. Do I think there is a business case for it? No. Will the vast majority of consumers care when it goes? No, they will not even notice.
I get that some people do not like this and they are likely to be more of them on here, but it also makes total sense from a Sony perspective. PS5 has been 80% digital over the whole generation and they is from a lower starting point at the beginning of the generation. Series S never had an optical drive and for Series S/X, digital over the generation is 90%. PC has been digital only for around fifteen years.
Some people make a lot of noise about wanting physical, but it makes up very small and ever diminishing percentage of total console game sales, let alone total game sales. If things were reversed and the majority, or even a significant minority of console sales were still physical I could see this being an issue for Sony, but in reality gamers have made the choice for them with their own purchasing decisions.
@Jimbojones You are correct, I was out of date. Initially it was thought to be a dock issue, but now it is an issue with the Nvidia translation layer from DP through to HDMI and a problem with they could in theory solve it in software (or firmware), so there is hope. I am guessing it is technically feasable that is why it was originally stated by Nintendo as working in docked mode. Tech analysis seems to indicate that it should be totally solvable, but then it also took Sony two years to get VRR working on the PS5 and they are usually a lot more technically proactive than Nintendo.
@Tobility loads will on potato settings, which is why 4k/60 is not a useful metric and needs all the usual detail DF go into when they review performance.
Both Death Stranding games are games that I hugely enjoyed. The first I bounced off when it was released, but during lockdown I went back to it and it just gelled, I think it is really a game that needed time to be played rather than jumped in and out of. I walked every hill, completed every delivery, built all the roads, built a full network of zip lines, it was a game that I felt far more than I had felt any game in a long time. I replayed it when the Director's Cut was released and again before DS 2 released and it is still a beautiful game. I also played DS2 on release, again when the Pro version came out and then the PC version, all are beautiful, the story hit me in a similar way the first did, something about it just hooked me.
DS and DS2 and the Horizon games, but especially the first, are stories that really made me feel, in worlds that felt real and alive in a way most fail to. There is something about the presentation style within Decima that must lead to an element of that because those series are both very different in gameplay, visuals and their design philosophy, yet they both work exceptionally well, with amazing attention to detail.
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Re: Xbox CEO Asha Sharma Confirms "Family of Devices" for 10th Console Generation in Microsoft Town Hall Meeting
I think we are at the point where Xbox is dead as a platform, it just does not realise it yet. Within five years they will be a large multiplatform developer and publisher, possibly with as Xbox hardware being just a certification option for hardware and emulation system for older games to run on.
Re: Sony Sells Dozens of Patents to Meta, Seemingly Signifies End of VR Efforts
@Solegor Yep, they said it was due to the head tracking changes, but modders did proof of concept that it could be made to work as a translation layer and there was more than enough power on the PS5 to run that. Combined with Sony just not bothering to make games it was more really good hardware that Sony abandoned far too early, the same as the Vita.
Re: AMD's Jack Huynh: FSR 4 Is Coming to Handhelds via a New Lightweight Model
It will be interesting to see how this behaves. I don't have any handhelds but I have a Strix Halo mini PC in the office at work for local AI due to the 128GB of RAM. It is RDNA 3.5 and the 8060s version so I might have to pop Steam on it just to have a play around once this is released. Full fat FSR4 looked really good and comparable to DLSS4.0 in most cases so it could be fun to experiment a bit with this.
The performance and quality difference between modded full fat FSR4 and the official Diet FSR4 will be interesting as well.
Re: Advanced Shader Delivery Adds Nvidia GPU Support Later This Month To Banish Shader Compilation Stutter
@Darren1967 The reason no one complains about the consoles use is that it is fundamentally different. You proposed downloading then deleting shaders each time the game was played, that is not what consoles do. Consoles are fixed hardware, fixed pipeline and they do not have driver upgrades in the same way as a PC, the drivers for each game are in pretty much baked into the game (based on the API version it uses), so the shaders are fixed, they never change. If you never changed your PC hardware or upgraded your GPU drivers you would have sort of solved things in the same way, you would never need to recompile shaders and you would only need to do one burn (and in theory they could be downloadable).
It does also depend on hardware, TLOU P1 completes the shader burn for me in a little over three minutes (current patch), and they are 2.9GB (I never played the launch version, but that had 12GB of shaders), so I could download them in about a minute, with another 30 or so seconds for Steam to unpack them into place. The hugely increased data usage, server load etc. just is not going to be worth it for the small time saving and zero gain for Steam or the developer.
Auto Shader Compilation solves the recompile issue after a driver install and the burn time on fresh install is going to be a non-issue for most people.
Downloading them each time someone plays is just not sensible, huge data and data centre usage and requires the local app to check the GPU and driver version, then download the relevant shaders. It is not a viable solution to the problem and a full shader burn that eliminates stutter is top of most people's list.
Re: Advanced Shader Delivery Adds Nvidia GPU Support Later This Month To Banish Shader Compilation Stutter
@Darren1967 There is supposed to be an update* coming to the Nvidia app at some point that should automatically handle updating shaders after a driver update, they will not need to be recompiled, just mildly tweaked, so it in theory it should do it in the background after installing a driver update. I tested it when Alex first mentioned it on a few games and it seemed to work well, but I had turned it off after a reinstall and kind of forgot about it, I should probably turn it on again.
*Auto Shader Compilation, it is currently available in beta in the Nvidia app. The game needs to have already completed an initial shader burn and it will only update ones that already exist, but it does remove the majority of the issues.
Only works for Nvidia GPUs of course, but I am fairly sure AMD and Intel will have something similar in the works. I know Intel were looking at a version of shader delivery for their GPUs (discrete and integrated).
Re: Advanced Shader Delivery Adds Nvidia GPU Support Later This Month To Banish Shader Compilation Stutter
I actually do not care about shader pre-compilation, waiting a few minutes for a game to properly compile the shaders is fine and far more preferable to stutter. If there is a choice I would always go for a pre-comp rather than anything that impacts actual gameplay. I think the real test will be/is does this deal with the shaders that get missed during pre-compilation burns, otherwise it just trades a few minutes CPU time for a few minutes downloading time.
Re: Steam Deck 2 Rumours Heat Up As AMD Gainsborough APU Breaks Cover
I agree with the above to an extent, though I can see a Deck 2 being x86 and a Deck Light being ARM. However I think they will not launch a Deck 2 before RDNA5/UDNA is available. Full fat RDNA4 was a huge improvement over 3 and 3.5 and as Will mentions this is basically 3.5 with a small ML block bolted on. If they wait for 5, because proper 4 is not getting a mobile/SOC release then they will get much better performance from a smaller die area, so saving on both cost and power draw.
Re: Review: Silent Hill: Townfall Largely Delivers on PS5 and Pro, Falls Short on PC
@wsjudd Hey will, do you know with the letterbox, does it actually lower the rendered resolution and so increase performance, or does it render the full screen and then just blank it off?
Re: Review: Control Resonant: Remedy's Tech Makes the Leap to a Wider Urban Sandbox
@Kingsbane Upscaling
Re: 30fps Frame Generation On Switch 2: Does Interpolating to 60fps Make Sense?
@themightyant I totally agree different people have different sensitivity to these kinds of things. I know people who do not see/feel the point in VRR but for me it is great. Some people don't even notice traversal, shader comp or PSO stutter which I find crazy.
Re: 30fps Frame Generation On Switch 2: Does Interpolating to 60fps Make Sense?
After the first comments from the DF team, I think around the time of Wukong I had a play with it and totally agrees with everything that you said and another test when MFG went higher. Using it to push a 100fps game higher was totally fine and I do use it for that purposes but even pushing a 60fps game higher I could feel the additional latency on a mouse and using it on a base 30 to anything higher was awful, base 30 was better. I can see it being useful on CPU heavy games where GPU is otherwise left idle, as you mention also RPGs and others where input latency does not really have an impact.
I know when Rich talked about MFG to high refresh rates having issues and it would be really good if Nvidia could make it an easy option to just dial a rate, set it at 235 for 240hz VRR and have the driver just take care of it.
Re: Steam Client Beta Adds Pyrowave for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Game Streaming
@Someguyperson
Your details seems to be for the physical Steam Link device which is a legacy product.
https://ibb.co/TBvrXyKX
That is the Android TV app, there are a bunch of options in customise, but it does do 4k.
Re: Steam Client Beta Adds Pyrowave for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Game Streaming
@Someguyperson that is the hardware Steam Link, the app does 4k60.
The latency thing is weird as I was playing around with it this weekend, Sunshine/Moonlight was much lower to the point I did not perceive it with a controller, although I could on a mouse, but with Steam Link it felt almost unplayably laggy. Same network, same hardware, just the difference between Steam Link and Sunshine/Moonlight.
I have a really busy week with work, but when I stop drowning I am happy to pull together what I can and I will send it over to Will so he can see if there is anything interesting in it all. I should be able to measure latency reasonably well using a 240fps camera, I can figure out a way to show the macro blocking with Steam Link and see if there is anything interesting in any of that.
Re: Steam Client Beta Adds Pyrowave for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Game Streaming
@SL0MAR Setting up both Sunshine and Moonlight is easy, Moonlight was just an install from the Play Store onto an Android TV and Sunshine is just installed onto the PC as a service and configured via a browser. I think the total process took less than a couple of minutes. By default it was set to 540p, but I changed that to 4k, 60hz and enabled HDR and I was up and running. The only other thing that might be different is I disabled the HID prompt from Sunshine as am using my Steam Controller connected to my PC and not using a controller connected to the TV.
Just make sure you get the current version of Sunshine and it should be easy enough, there is a rough guide on the official GitHub, but it mostly just fire and forget once one picks the right resolution.
Re: Steam Client Beta Adds Pyrowave for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Game Streaming
@wsjudd Quality always seems good but I have no way to capture directly from the TV but I will see if I can figure anything out. I tested latency by videoing with a GoPro at 240fps as I wanted to see what it was like with my Steam Controller (as an aside it finally turned up and I think it is excellent).
It might take me a while with work and a few other bits but I will see if I can pull anything useful together and send it over.
Re: Steam Client Beta Adds Pyrowave for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Game Streaming
This is interesting as I already use Sunshine/Moonlight to stream from my PC to my TV (Android) and it works brilliantly, no perceptible lag on a controller and from having tested it as best as I can with a 240fps camera it only seems to add around 25ms when streaming at 4k60HDR and only with occasional drops. On a controller game that is totally fine, I am usually playing older games this way, high end PC games I usually play at the desktop.
Years ago I used to use Steam Link to the TV but it has huge latency now and seems to struggle with anything over 1080p and even at times 720p on exactly the same hardware and connection, when Sunshine/Moonlight are happy at 4k with near zero blips. This new codec might be a huge boost but I would also recommend anyone wanting to tinker with streaming to a TV from their desktop to give Sunshine/Moonlight a go, it is relatively simple to set up on both, maybe even an opportunity for a small article if @wsjudd gets a chance at some point?
Re: Review: Marvel's Wolverine is a superbly crafted adventure that plays well on PS5, but best on PS5 Pro
I agree with the others, it looks interesting technically, but the gameplay looks incredibly repetitive and simplistic, which was one of the fears with a Wolverine game right from the start. All the Insomniac Spiderman games have been great, but I just cannot see me buying this. I will likely give it a go on PS Plus when it eventually appears on there, but so far from all the footage it holds very little interest for me.
Re: DLSS 5 Mod Shifts Load to Second GPU, Doubling Frame-Rates and Latency
@wsjudd Thanks, I guess the next question is, is it a memory bandwidth, compute or both that is the bottleneck? I am wondering where there is a point where the option to turn down settings to gain headroom to gain back more from DLSS5 exists? Sorry for all the questions, I am away on holiday so not able to have a play around myself at the moment, plus you guys can usually answer much better than my fumbling though the settings!
Re: DLSS 5 Mod Shifts Load to Second GPU, Doubling Frame-Rates and Latency
Will, out of interest (it might be in the video), but what does the latency go from and to using normal DLSS vs DLSS 5, how does it play with frame gen and in the official vs modded support is there any difference in the performance impact? Do you think it will need a direct developer integration to reduce performance impact or does it play nice when injected via mods?
Re: GTA 6: An Extended Look Analysis - "Perhaps the Most Impressive Showcase We've Ever Seen in Real-Time Rendering"
@HaraldC Rockstar games have always had that sluggish response to controls though, it has never been primarily a shooter and all their games had has controls that look/feel like that, they are a long way from twitch shooters.
I do not expect them to change that part of their controls, but I really hope that they fix their normally awful choice of button layouts, having to mash X to run etc.
Re: GTA 6: An Extended Look Analysis - "Perhaps the Most Impressive Showcase We've Ever Seen in Real-Time Rendering"
@dabisbesh first it is a 30fps game, in a beat case scenario it will run in a 120hz container with VRR and LFC, but at the moment all we know is 30fps, you will gain absolutely nothing from a 360hz display.
The next is resolution, it is designed around a 4k output, but we do not know the internal resolution. You will likely gain nothing from stepping down the 4k to 1440p, it will probably just mean the console itself has to down sample, very unlikely to alter the native or even the upscaled engine resolution, so the only difference will be maybe some down sampling artifacts and an additional single frame of lag from the console downsampling to 1440p.
The game was built to output at 4k 30 fps on current generation full fat consoles and likely output at an upscaled 1080p on Series S. Rockstar have heavily hinted (not sure if they have confirmed) the PS5 Pro will not get a 40 or 60 fps mode (at least at launch), there will not be a way to game the engine to get higher fps.
Re: GTA 6: An Extended Look Analysis - "Perhaps the Most Impressive Showcase We've Ever Seen in Real-Time Rendering"
@Johnhonza The Series X will be almost exactly the same as the, they are not far off the same hardware and have been within almost unnoticeable margins in virtually every game. I doubt anyone is expecting any real difference between PS5 and X, certainly not enough to care about.
Re: Corsair Introduces RMe Series Platinum PSUs with ThermalProtect Power Cable
In relation to the cable tech, I have a Thermal Grizzly Wireview Pro II, my 5090 sits really balanced across the pins now, but it did let me see that pressure on the cable sideways when the cable routing was not finished made a huge difference on the pin draw. From what I understand, the biggest issue with the 12VHP cables is being plugged and unplugged and bent a lot, so if you are switching out cards to benchmark I would really consider getting one, from what I have seen a really good indicator of when a cable is getting damaged and needs replacing.
Re: Review: Switch 2 Oblivion Remastered Frustrates as Much as It Impresses
@Darren1967 My understanding is that it is not just consoles, plenty of PC games have the same issues, Elden Ring and Capcom games being the obvious one I can think of off the top of my head.
A lot of internal developer tools are far less useful than the analysis DF conducts, they just measure raw FPS data and a lot of people do not seem to pick up on frame pacing issues, I am at the other end of that so I feel it straight away, I would rather have a rock solid 30 or 40fps game on console than an improperly paced 60, but equally I know people who do not pick up on huge frame time differences. With Rich saying that they are going to open source a bunch of their tools, hopefully more developers will look to get the DF approved levels of frame pacing.
From what I know improper frame pacing is often a CPU issue, so when games are pushing open world stuff, lots of NPCs or ray tracing where the CPU takes on the BVH calculation then the consoles are generally pushed harder than most PC CPUs. Consoles also seem to be more likely to use double or triple buffering.
I think in some games VRR can solve it, there have been games where VRR seems to fix it entirely, where as others VRR seems to make no difference, I don't know if that is due to a poor VRR implementation or something inherent to improper frame pacing vs frame time variance.
Re: Kingdom Come Salvation Targets 2028: The Engine Upgrades We Need to See
For me there would be a couple of key things, better RTGI and reflections on water would be great, but tied in with that and especially at night a proper HDR implementation would be ideal, KCD2 is great as it is apart from the HDR, which I find so poor, blacks are crushed, especially shadows, the tone mapping is really bad and there is no way to calibrate it either and a solid HDR implementation would be great for everyone regardless of platform or hardware spec.
Re: Bethesda Acknowledges Demand for Oblivion Remastered Patch, Calls for Calm
The problem with Bethesda is there were some early patches that they claimed improved performance but did nothing and then there has been total silence from them for more than a year, the last patch was in July 2025 and did nothing to improve performance.
Much of the root cause of the traversal stutter is based on the legacy code and it's use of cells/zones that load in and out, but there is absolutely zero management of that process, if they pre-cached the adjacent cells then it would increase RAM usage but it would remove the traversal stutters. There are PSO compilation stutters because it does not have a compilation burn or use in game compilation properly There are bugs from the original game that were never fixed and performance wise it is a total mess.
Modders have tried but the fundamental issues require access to the pre-compiled game code, but Bethesda should be able to write a caching system for the cells and a PSO burn very easily, that combined with a bit more (any?) thread management should be able to improve things dramatically without needing a huge amount of developer time. I suspect the actual issue is they subbed it out, did not care at the time and now do not want to pay to have it fixed, as they do not have enough internal tech staff to spare because they made most of them redundant.
Re: Review: Scuf Omega Is a Tremendous (and Tremendously Expensive) PS5 Controller For Competitive Players
It seems insane to buy a controller that is half the price of the console. The only "Pro" controller I have ever bought is the Switch 2 Pro controller, it is really good and value for what it offers. I tried a Dualsense Edge and did not see the point, I got given one of the Razer Xbox style ones and it did not feel great either. I would like back buttons on the PS5 and PC, hopefully the latter via the Steam Controller if it is ever actually available, but I just cannot justify spending £200 to get them.
Re: Steam Hardware Survey: octa-core CPUs become most popular, RAM counts shrink, 1080p on the way out
@StooMonster It counts cores and reports them as "CPUs".
Re: Steam Hardware Survey: octa-core CPUs become most popular, RAM counts shrink, 1080p on the way out
I currently have eight cores, a 9800X3D, although I am looking forward to the 10800X3D almost certainly having twelve cores, it will be better for software encoding and about the only upgrade worth making in the next year or two.
Re: Halo: Campaign Evolved PC Looks Stunning - But Requires Further Optimisation
@MemuAccount Do you ever actually watch the videos? Do you ever actually read the articles? Do you have any understanding of video games graphics?
Or, realistically, are you just a troll?
Re: Which PlayStation 3 Games Deserve a Full Black Flag Resynced Style Remaster?
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
InFamous 1 +2
Killzone 2 + 3 (and 1 from PS2)
Resistance 1 + 2 + 3
Re: Review: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D: The New Go-To Best Value Gaming CPU for AM5 PCs
I look at this and do not think it is a bad chip, but is it value for money? The 9800X3D can be had for around £30 more if shopping around, on that basis, why would anyone buy the 77/7800X3D?
Re: AMD's Ryzen 7 7700X3D Is the Heart of My New SteamOS Gaming PC
@Someguyperson I did a quick PC Part Picker and came out around £1,720 with the case vs the 2TB Steam Machine at £1,149. The difference is a much more capable system.
The ambient temperature thing is not something I have ever really found makes that much if any difference on a full size desktop, but I guess it is a much bigger issue for SFF?
Re: Nintendo Explains How to Replace Its New User-Serviceable Joy-Con Batteries in 12 (or 13) Easy Steps
@SeanPeterson
It might be a slightly different area to hold the battery, it might be just a redesign, it might be cost saving. I guess once they release there will be teardowns and some definitive answers.
Re: Nintendo Explains How to Replace Its New User-Serviceable Joy-Con Batteries in 12 (or 13) Easy Steps
It just looks like they used tape instead of glue and did their own version of their an iFixit guide.
Re: Samsung Follows Up 990 Pro, 990 Evo and 990 Evo Plus SSDs with Vanilla 990
I think it is really a case of anyone who is budget constrained just sits tight for a few years. If I absolutely had to buy/build a new PC now it would be something very middling to get me through and reusing as many existing parts as possible.
Re: The New Call of Duty Black Ops Port Charges $40/£35 for a Basic 1080p Upgrade
@TheFellowFox I am fairly sure the PS4/5 versions are from the x86 PC codebase not the PS3 code because Cell emulation on the PS5 when the game uses the SPEs is not performant on the PS5. This is the PC code cut down and limited for the PS5.
Re: Report: Xbox Disc-to-Digital Feature in Testing, Microsoft "Likely" to Stop Disc Production Too
@themightyant PS4/5 discs do not, one of the team said it a few Directs and that matches what is online as well. They could offer a trade in program, they did that with PSP UMDs when they released the digital only version of that.
Re: June Steam Hardware Survey Results: RAM/SSD Crisis Continues, 1440p Gains on 1080p and Windows 11 Rolls On
@themightyant I am probably lucky in that respect, my PC at home is in an area with little natural light if I shut the blinds and in the office I removed the lights above my desk and so do not need the office that bright, the other end of the office is a huge window but that is far enough away to not cause issues.
I totally get the separation of work and pleasure, I sometimes find the same, but more even that I do not want to look at a screen at all sometimes after a lot of intense work, at those points I end up going back to reading books to relax as at that point my brain seems to associate lit screen with work, regardless of it being a monitor, TV or phone.
Re: Sony Kills Physical PS5 Games, Starting in January 2028: A Gigantic Hint That PS6 Will Be "Adorably All-Digital"
@TemsOrrough You could insert it into an existing PS5, 4, 3, 2, 1 etc. Releasing a new console does not stop the disc working on the old one. PS1 and PS2 are fully emulated, PS3 is pretty good for most games, excellent for some (able to add in higher resolutions, ultrawide, new textures, much better UI, higher FPS), but struggles on others. PS4 can be emulated very well on high end PCs (ShadPS4), the PS5 emulation is the only one significantly lacking at the moment.
Re: June Steam Hardware Survey Results: RAM/SSD Crisis Continues, 1440p Gains on 1080p and Windows 11 Rolls On
@themightyant I am lucky enough to have 4K OLED monitors at home, in the office and on my laptop, I use Office a reasonable amount, at work Outlook is pretty much always open on my laptop (Asus ProArt P16) and it has zero burn in after more than a year. At home I have an MSI gaming OLED, and at work the monitor connected to my laptop is a 32" ProArt OLED. Even though the work ones are in use a lot with Illustrator open for probably 3-5 hours a day and I have never hidden the taskbar that has zero burn in either. I think overall current OLEDs seem to be much more resistant to burn in than the very early models.
Have you thought about dual booting your PC and using Bazzite, or just Big Picture mode? At home I have also streamed my PC to my TV, minor delay but with a controller it does not feel noticeable and I do not want to use a keyboard and mouse on the sofa anyway (although I have a wireless one for when something Windows based decides to be difficult), part of why I really want a Steam Controller, the others just never seem to get things quite right.
With regard to 1440p at monitor distance I really notice it, I have 32" and 34" and at that size I can see the pixels on a 1440p monitor, but not on a 4k so for me that was the reason I upgraded. I also have become a bit of an OLED diehard for everything now.
Re: June Steam Hardware Survey Results: RAM/SSD Crisis Continues, 1440p Gains on 1080p and Windows 11 Rolls On
@themightyant How have you found the switch to ultrawide? I keep thinking about getting a 5k/2k monitor as there finally is an OLED version, but still not really sure how much it adds to gaming?
Re: June Steam Hardware Survey Results: RAM/SSD Crisis Continues, 1440p Gains on 1080p and Windows 11 Rolls On
I am surprised that 4k sits below 5%, I did not expect it to be that low, although still not in double digit percentages. I wonder if that will change with the Machine and various similar SFF SteamOS PCs launching, which are are more likely to be connected to TVs and the majority of TVs sold now seem to be 4K.
3840 x 2160 4.95%
Re: Sony Kills Physical PS5 Games, Starting in January 2028: A Gigantic Hint That PS6 Will Be "Adorably All-Digital"
@paretje The 20% figure is over the generation to date, in 2021 it was 34/66, in Q4 2025 it was down to 15/85 and current estimates for 2026 are that it has dropped below 10%. Sony will not be expecting to lose that 10% when the discontinue in 2028, they will be expecting to loose 1-5% of potential sales, but that will be more than made up by much higher margins on digital sales vs physical sales. When physical sales made up 22% of overall sales they only accounted for 3% of revenue, that difference was because of DLC, microtransactions, skins, season passes, which admittedly some of those will be linked to games people are using a physical disc for.
The relevance of Xbox and PC (as well as other forms of media) is that they show that the overall resistance to digital vs physical is tiny. Businesses use wider available data to inform their decisions, estimate the impact of the changes they make on their current business model and project revenues based on that.
Gamers have chosen, either directly or by proxy. Choices do not get to be granular, that is not how the economics of these things work, nor market pressures. Nintendo are a somewhat different proposition, they approach the market in general very differently, but they have already started the move with the £10 differential between digital and physical and that will likely get wider over time.
You might not have, but many did, there has been speculation for around a year now that the PS6 will include an optional disc drive but only for back compatibility purposes, as well as Sony having some kind of physical to digital trade program (and that looks highly likely for Xbox as well).
If there was a sudden surge in physical sales, if they got back to 50% over the next two years, then I expect Sony would reconsider, they might even choose to push the timeline out a year or two for PS5 games if they see enough demand.
Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people do not like this decision, but I really cannot see why people did not see it as inevitable, or why they view it as a personal attack, not just a business responding to changes in consumer habits.
Re: Sony Kills Physical PS5 Games, Starting in January 2028: A Gigantic Hint That PS6 Will Be "Adorably All-Digital"
@NetshadeX I am also in the same fortunate position, built a new gaming PC at the start of last year, bought a PS5 Pro when it was released, I am almost certainly in a position to sit out the next few years without needing to upgrade anything. I think realistically anyone on a PS5, RDNA4 or RTX 40XX GPU is on a similar position though, the PS5 install base is so large and cross gen will likely be even longer next gen that many people do not need to worry about upgrading.
Re: Sony Kills Physical PS5 Games, Starting in January 2028: A Gigantic Hint That PS6 Will Be "Adorably All-Digital"
@Simplex_ You seem to be missing the point that it makes sense for Sony, the same as it made sense for PC publishers, not because of some desire to be anti-consumer, but because the vast majority of gamers had already made their choice by moving to digital. Sure it would be better for a small minority if physical continued to exist, but in reality most outside of a very vocal group do not care because they had already long abandoned it for digital only.
I understand why some people might not like this, but it has been made inevitable because of consumer choices, not because of some conspiracy by evil overlords.
You seem to dislike the idea that someone can hold an objective, rational view of something. Or you could just accuse people of being "ignorant" because they present a viewpoint you disagree with..Do I think there are some benefits to physical media? Yes. Do I think there is a business case for it? No. Will the vast majority of consumers care when it goes? No, they will not even notice.
Re: Sony Kills Physical PS5 Games, Starting in January 2028: A Gigantic Hint That PS6 Will Be "Adorably All-Digital"
I get that some people do not like this and they are likely to be more of them on here, but it also makes total sense from a Sony perspective. PS5 has been 80% digital over the whole generation and they is from a lower starting point at the beginning of the generation. Series S never had an optical drive and for Series S/X, digital over the generation is 90%. PC has been digital only for around fifteen years.
Some people make a lot of noise about wanting physical, but it makes up very small and ever diminishing percentage of total console game sales, let alone total game sales. If things were reversed and the majority, or even a significant minority of console sales were still physical I could see this being an issue for Sony, but in reality gamers have made the choice for them with their own purchasing decisions.
Re: Review: Star Fox On Switch 2 Is a Refined Return to an Iconic Game - and the Rail Shooter Genre
@Jimbojones You are correct, I was out of date. Initially it was thought to be a dock issue, but now it is an issue with the Nvidia translation layer from DP through to HDMI and a problem with they could in theory solve it in software (or firmware), so there is hope. I am guessing it is technically feasable that is why it was originally stated by Nintendo as working in docked mode. Tech analysis seems to indicate that it should be totally solvable, but then it also took Sony two years to get VRR working on the PS5 and they are usually a lot more technically proactive than Nintendo.
Re: Will the Steam Machine Age Like Fine Wine? Anti-Cheat, FSR 4, Driver Optimisation, Remote Play and More
@Tobility loads will on potato settings, which is why 4k/60 is not a useful metric and needs all the usual detail DF go into when they review performance.
Re: Death Stranding 2, One Year On: A Technical Philosophy That Continues to Impress
Both Death Stranding games are games that I hugely enjoyed. The first I bounced off when it was released, but during lockdown I went back to it and it just gelled, I think it is really a game that needed time to be played rather than jumped in and out of. I walked every hill, completed every delivery, built all the roads, built a full network of zip lines, it was a game that I felt far more than I had felt any game in a long time. I replayed it when the Director's Cut was released and again before DS 2 released and it is still a beautiful game. I also played DS2 on release, again when the Pro version came out and then the PC version, all are beautiful, the story hit me in a similar way the first did, something about it just hooked me.
DS and DS2 and the Horizon games, but especially the first, are stories that really made me feel, in worlds that felt real and alive in a way most fail to. There is something about the presentation style within Decima that must lead to an element of that because those series are both very different in gameplay, visuals and their design philosophy, yet they both work exceptionally well, with amazing attention to detail.