News Forget PS5: PCs With RTX 2070 Super Can Handle Unreal Engine 5 Demo

[Alex_Connor]

There's no doubt that both consoles are doing a great job for the cost. The idea that the technology crushes a PC's performance was laughable. The statement in the video seemed nothing more than a paid promotion. Many people won't look to see if things are true or not. The RTX 2070 is a midrange card for the somewhat current / last generation of GPU's, NVME M.2's are pretty easy to come by. The new AMD Navi GPU's and Nvidia 3000 series will be way ahead of the upcoming consoles. For a price though, which is usually the case for high end PC gaming. Only people they were fooling are people who just hear what they want to hear instead of accepting reality. I don't get the attacks these days. Everyone is going to win this generation regardless of platform.

PS5 GPU has raw specs equivilent to a 2080 Super, with newer architecture it may well give the 2080 ti a run for it's money. And for the record, the 2070 Super is current gen and can borderline be considered a high end card, so the PS5 GPU clearly beating it is really impressive.

Then consider that the rest of the PS5 hardware is equally impressive, got a 3rd gen Ryzen 5/7 and all PS5 games will be run off a next gen SSD which offers unprecedentedly fast abilities to load/unload assets as needed.

On top of that, the PS5 is a standardised platform. PC devs are working around the average gaming PC, which is far lower specced than a PS5. All you get for having a high end gaming PC are fps/resolution and graphics features. PS5 devs will be able to build their games around a much higher hardware baseline (crucially that SSD tech).

Even though next gen GPUs will probably eclipse the PS5's base specs fairly easily, it will take a fair time before PC developers can start making games that are designed for PS5 equivilent recommended specs. That means a couple of years of console exclusive games that push technical limits beyond what can be released as a PC title, some of the first party exclusives are going to be incredible.

Example, the Unreal 5 demo could be released as a PS5 title because every single PS5 will have the specs to run it. But not a PC title, because it will be years before 2070 Super + NVMe SSD becomes reasonable minimum requirements on PC.

 

[Martin7898]

I love it how PS fanboys honestly believe the hype, it's the Cell all over again. Going to be funny when mid ranged pc's outperform consoles, again. Especially when the 30 series GPU's launch.

This "demo" was running at around 30fps and my guess is that means 20-30fps. I don't care how good a game looks, no self respecting high end PC gamer would EVER lower their standards to that level. Embarrassing.

 

[errandum]

I love it how PS fanboys honestly believe the hype, it's the Cell all over again. Going to be funny when mid ranged pc's outperform consoles, again. Especially when the 30 series GPU's launch.

This "demo" was running at around 30fps and my guess is that means 20-30fps. I don't care how good a game looks, no self respecting high end PC gamer would EVER lower their standards to that level. Embarrassing.

To be clear, "the cell" was awesome and pushed the boundaries of could be done. Some first party titles were so optimised for it that porting them to the PS4 itself was hard (eg: the last of us).

I even remember that having access to a linux distro people were building server farms out of PS3s since it was extremely cost effective for the power it brought.

You can try and minimize the power of the new generation of consoles all you want, but what was achieved then and what is being achieved now (assuming a <500$ price) is remarkable. Sure, high end PCs can push more pixels after being loaded, but if this new strategy of a close synergy between the RAM and the SSD catches on, you'll probably see a bump in performance in PCs close to what happened when discrete graphic cards were introduced. We'll wait and see.

And Ii's not fanboyism, it's breaking the mold of the current pc architecture to have gains somewhere else. If it works, you can bet that the new PC architectures will follow suite.

 

[Tosslehoffle]

<Mod Edit>
they're using quixel megascans assets and bounding boxes, every single detail that was shown on the PS5 demo should run at 1080p60 on a GTX 1080 on unreal 4.25. unreal 5 was not necessary for a single element of this demo. the bounce lighting is voxel based, we've had that for half of the current console generation. look at Ghost Recon Wildlands on PC for an example of voxel based global illumination. I'm not saying it doesn't look incredible, it made Ghost Recon Wildlands feel like the first time I launched Crysis, but none of this requires a 2070. The ONLY aspect of this that requires an nvme SSD is the 8k assets at LOD0. But again, quixel megascan assets work in unreal 4.25.. as does their ninite tech and lumen tech. and nvme ssds work with any build of unreal.
this actually speaks to some rather incredibly poor performance on the PS5. like, utterly abysmal. high end hardware from 2016 should be able to manage this without issue, even with full prop physics. if you doubt it, I challenge you to recreate the scenes featured in the demo in 4.25 - you'll find all of the props on the front page of quixel bridge. you'll also find that these scenes run at 60fps on a 1080

 

[Tosslehoffle]

You can try and minimize the power of the new generation of consoles all you want, but what was achieved then and what is being achieved now (assuming a <500$ price) is remarkable. Sure, high end PCs can push more pixels after being loaded, but if this new strategy of a close synergy between the RAM and the SSD catches on, you'll probably see a bump in performance in PCs close to what happened when discrete graphic cards were introduced. We'll wait and see.

lol
I spit out my coffee
you realize all of this tech is has existed on PCs for years, right? a 1080 is all that you need to run scenes like this, the storage is more important because of 8k assets, but you're joking if you think the nvme ssd inside a $500 console is going to match a $500 nvme ssd. if you legitimately think this will be as large a leap as the first discrete graphics card.. I dunno what to say. never invest your money, it'll be better used as kindling to start fires.

 

[cryoburner]

So the technically best games on the PS5 and Series X will be remarkable for a while, until PC developers feel confident they can ship a game with base requirements far in excess of what could currently hope to turn a profit. That time is approaching fast and the window for the consoles to exploit their base hardware advantage is possibly less than a year.

Except that won't happen, because developers are still designing their games first and foremost for the couple hundred million current-gen consoles and gaming PCs, not the next-gen consoles that may not number much more than 10 million within the first year. The vast majority of titles will be multi-generational for the first couple years, designed to run reasonably well on 7 year old console hardware and lower-end gaming PCs, because developers don't want to limit their sales to the relatively tiny market of those owning the new console hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a couple first-party exclusives within the first year or so that really push the new hardware, but those will be few and far between.

PS5 GPU has raw specs equivilent to a 2080 Super, with newer architecture it may well give the 2080 ti a run for it's money. And for the record, the 2070 Super is current gen and can borderline be considered a high end card, so the PS5 GPU clearly beating it is really impressive.

Where do people get these random specs from? Not a lot is known about the exact performance level of the hardware yet, aside from that 9-ish teraflops number that's been getting thrown around. If the RDNA2 architecture ends up offering a relatively similar amount of gaming performance per teraflop compared to the RDNA architecture already found in AMD's RX 5000-series cards, then the PS5's raw graphics capabilities may be about on par with those of a 5700 XT, a card that's a little slower than a 2070 SUPER, and launched for $400 a year ago. And for anyone fine with 1080p resolution, a sub-$300 graphics card like a 2060 should run just as well at 1080p as a 2070 SUPER does at 1440p. Later this year, around the time the PS5 launches, there may be new graphics cards offering more performance for less. There are still some unknowns of course, like how well the console's raytracing abilities compare to those of something like a 2070 SUPER, but it sounds like the next generation of graphics cards launching later this year will greatly improve on that as well.

Example, the Unreal 5 demo could be released as a PS5 title because every single PS5 will have the specs to run it. But not a PC title, because it will be years before 2070 Super + NVMe SSD becomes reasonable minimum requirements on PC.

A demo streaming full-detail assets in realtime might seem like an impressive use of the PS5's hardware, but the file sizes of games designed like that would be huge, perhaps a couple-hundred gigabytes in size, so that's not going to be all that practical on the PS5's relatively limited 825 GB of SSD storage. So, those assets will be simplified even for the PS5, and thus should be able to run well enough on lower-end hardware as well.

 

[Alex_Connor]

Where do people get these random specs from? Not a lot is known about the exact performance level of the hardware yet, aside from that 9-ish teraflops number that's been getting thrown around. If the RDNA2 architecture ends up offering a relatively similar amount of gaming performance per teraflop compared to the RDNA architecture already found in AMD's RX 5000-series cards, then the PS5's raw graphics capabilities may be about on par with those of a 5700 XT, a card that's a little slower than a 2070 SUPER, and launched for $400 a year ago. And for anyone fine with 1080p resolution, a sub-$300 graphics card like a 2060 should run just as well at 1080p as a 2070 SUPER does at 1440p. Later this year, around the time the PS5 launches, there may be new graphics cards offering more performance for less. There are still some unknowns of course, like how well the console's raytracing abilities compare to those of something like a 2070 SUPER, but it sounds like the next generation of graphics cards launching later this year will greatly improve on that as well.

Series X 12 Teraflops (confirmed by Microsoft)
PS5 10.3 Teraflops (unconfirmed but very believable)

Series X is an RTX killer, even the 2080 ti is only pulling 13.45 Teraflops and RDNA 2 is substantially more modern architecture. Outright beats the 11 Teraflop 2080 Super, 2070 Super with 9 Teraflops gets left in the dust, and in practical terms the Series X is about twice as powerful as the base 6.5 Teraflop 2060.

PS5 looks like it's running one card lower in the RDNA 2 range, slots in above the 2080 (well above the 2070 Super), with newer architecture is at the least a 2080 Super equivilent. Trade-off being more advanced SSD tech than Series X.

Sony and Microsoft have both gone for some really impressive hardware this time round, I wouldn't be surprised if the Series X gpu is AMD's flagship card when RDNA 2 launches late in 2020.

 

[tom111111]

"You need a nvme ssd, ps5 also has a ssd"
There currently isn't a ssd on the market as fast as the PS5 ssd, so a gaming pc would cut it. You would be able to run this demo, as you would be able to stream data fast enough. The PS5 would even beat a 2080ti in that remark. The future will be in super fast ssd's, gaming pcs will lag behind for a while.

no

 

[The Black Alpha Wolf]

I fear that you're getting your units mixed up (bits vs Bytes) - 3.5Gbps is about 440MB/s, which SATA-III drives were capable of (I'm assuming you mean 3.5GBps, which is about 22Gbps)

Fixed it Thanks!

 

[The Black Alpha Wolf]

To be clear, "the cell" was awesome and pushed the boundaries of could be done. Some first party titles were so optimised for it that porting them to the PS4 itself was hard (eg: the last of us).

I even remember that having access to a linux distro people were building server farms out of PS3s since it was extremely cost effective for the power it brought.

You can try and minimize the power of the new generation of consoles all you want, but what was achieved then and what is being achieved now (assuming a <500$ price) is remarkable. Sure, high end PCs can push more pixels after being loaded, but if this new strategy of a close synergy between the RAM and the SSD catches on, you'll probably see a bump in performance in PCs close to what happened when discrete graphic cards were introduced. We'll wait and see.

And Ii's not fanboyism, it's breaking the mold of the current pc architecture to have gains somewhere else. If it works, you can bet that the new PC architectures will follow suite.

No Lies told in this post!

 

[The Black Alpha Wolf]

PS5 10.3 Teraflops (unconfirmed but very believable)

Mark Cerny has Confirmed this during his Deep Dive video.

View: https://youtu.be/ph8LyNIT9sg?t=2194

 

[cryoburner]

Series X is an RTX killer, even the 2080 ti is only pulling 13.45 Teraflops and RDNA 2 is substantially more modern architecture. Outright beats the 11 Teraflop 2080 Super, 2070 Super with 9 Teraflops gets left in the dust, and in practical terms the Series X is about twice as powerful as the base 6.5 Teraflop 2060.

The thing about "Teraflops" is that it is referring to compute performance, not gaming graphics performance. The ratio of compute performance to performance in games is not consistent from one graphics architecture to the next. In general, AMD's recent cards have had stronger compute performance than Nvidia's cards providing a similar level of graphics performance, so you can't just compare the TFlop numbers between Nvidia's RTX cards and these console chips from AMD.

While RDNA2 cards aren't available quite yet, it's probably at least a bit more accurate to compare the hardware with AMD's RDNA cards that launched last year than it is to compare them with Nvidia's Turing. And for that, an RX 5700 XT offers up to nearly 10 TFlops of compute performance at its boost clocks, while typically offering a little less gaming performance than a 2070 SUPER. So, the developers suggesting that the 2070 SUPER will handle the PS5 demo makes sense, since the PS5's graphics hardware likely offers a relatively similar level of performance.

And just to push home that comparing TFlop numbers between significantly different architectures is a bit nonsensical, the Radeon VII which launched a little over a year ago theoretically can offer up to almost 14 Tflops of compute performance, but it's only about on par with a 2070 SUPER in terms of gaming performance. A 2080 Ti is somewhere around 40% faster than a Radeon VII in games, despite offering a similar amount of compute performance. I do suspect the RDNA2-based series X will perform better than a Radeon VII, but if it's only around 25% faster than a 5700 XT, then performance might be relatively similar to that of a 2080 SUPER.

And these levels of performance are just fine. After all, we're talking about consoles that probably won't cost much more than a graphics card of similar performance currently does on it own. Just don't expect them to be outperforming the top of the line cards from a couple years ago, let alone the ones launching later this year.

 

[Alex_Connor]

Fair enough, I'm not as familiar with AMD cards having been a Nvidia user for the last 10 years.

Having done some more comparing with current AMD cards the PS5 GPU looks an awful lot like an rdna2 successor to the RX 5700 XT, a raytracing equiped RX 6700 XT which as a generation leap should be able to pass the 2070 Super. Perhaps most comparable to a non-super 2080, I suspect devs went with the slightly less powerful 2070 Super comparison because it's the closest current Nvidia card.

The Series X has no current equivilent but might be considered a RX 6800 XT so won't argue the 2080 Super comparison.

Still, I do think with the SSD tech both consoles (and the PS5 in particular) definitely have a gameplay performance advantage over any current PC running those graphics cards.

 

[epobirs]

Except that won't happen, because developers are still designing their games first and foremost for the couple hundred million current-gen consoles and gaming PCs, not the next-gen consoles that may not number much more than 10 million within the first year. The vast majority of titles will be multi-generational for the first couple years, designed to run reasonably well on 7 year old console hardware and lower-end gaming PCs, because developers don't want to limit their sales to the relatively tiny market of those owning the new console hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a couple first-party exclusives within the first year or so that really push the new hardware, but those will be few and far between.

I disagree. Microsoft has already made much of their back end system having multiple images under a single SKU (although it isn't physical stock in the normal sense) and offering the correct one depending on model of Xbox at the requesting end. There should be plenty of cross generational games that perform substantially different on the One X and the Series X. It's more than having massive seamless environments that would be torturous on current machines. An existing environment can be substantially upgraded by use of better textures and rendering functionality, aided by 33% more RAM and extremely fast access to more material on the SSD. This is already normal for games with One X enhancements, the main difference being the avoidance of downloading and storing redundant assets. The original Xbox One and One S greatly outnumber the One X, yet many hundred games support One X enhancements.

 

[cryoburner]

Enhancements are one thing. I'm referring more to games exclusively designed around the new hardware, not just being the same titles that are on the other platforms, only with some better textures and effects, and higher frame rates and/or resolution. The new consoles will undoubtedly be getting lots of enhanced versions of the games coming to the older consoles, but they will probably look comparable to how they look on a higher-end PC at the time of the console's release. That's how most games tend to get developed. Design one version of the game, and scale graphical effects up and down to what the hardware can provide. On the PC, that typically comes in the form of configurable settings, while consoles generally get settings locked to whatever the developer feels is best for a given piece of hardware.

 

[errandum]

Enhancements are one thing. I'm referring more to games exclusively designed around the new hardware, not just being the same titles that are on the other platforms, only with some better textures and effects, and higher frame rates and/or resolution. The new consoles will undoubtedly be getting lots of enhanced versions of the games coming to the older consoles, but they will probably look comparable to how they look on a higher-end PC at the time of the console's release. That's how most games tend to get developed. Design one version of the game, and scale graphical effects up and down to what the hardware can provide. On the PC, that typically comes in the form of configurable settings, while consoles generally get settings locked to whatever the developer feels is best for a given piece of hardware.

First of all, you are assuming lots of things that I believe are plainly wrong.

The general development cycle of AAA titles targets consoles FIRST, and the PC is usually an afterthought (with some rare exceptions). The development usually goes, in this order: Do a high fidelity prototype with all features you want, see how it runs, cut some things, simplify others, see how it runs, cut some things release alphas/betas, check if it runs, keep iterating, see if it hits the FPS target, cut some more, etc.

Very rarely will the top version survive, since the consoles will be the target system and things are built from the bottom up to run on them. This doesn't mean some companies will add back some things for the PC release, but this is not that common and most of the time they will be graphical sugar and nothing will be completely different.

So if both consoles support super fast SSDs you can bet ssd speed will be a requirement for most PC games. So the question is not if they "will look comparable", but if they will be able to run them at all. I'll say that at the very least an SSD will be a requirement, if not a specific speed SSD (since both consoles have very fast drives, even if the PS5 went all out).

 

[cryoburner]

The general development cycle of AAA titles targets consoles FIRST, and the PC is usually an afterthought (with some rare exceptions).

Yes, they will primarily still be designing games to run on the 150 million+ current-gen consoles, with their slow 5400 RPM laptop drives and outdated processors, not the relatively small install-base of next-gen consoles and high-end PCs, until those new consoles and PCs amount to a large enough install-base where they can cut out the old consoles and still get the kind of sales numbers they are looking for. Just like high-end PCs, the new consoles will get that "graphical sugar" and not much more for the first couple years. And by the point when developers start dropping the current consoles en masse to properly focus on the new ones, even new mid-range PCs will likely be as fast, if not faster than those consoles. Sony and Microsoft will undoubtedly pay for the development of a handful of next-gen exclusive titles that really show off what the new hardware can do, but those will be the exception, not the norm, at least for the first couple years.