They don't know how to optimise the game. How hard can it be to measure different areas and make little tweaks(using a simple example of dynamic model quality depending on distance to player)...
@@harryosbourne451 I wouldn't know - sounds like you have some experience though. This 'next-gen' update screams incompetency. The only reason(s) it seems to exist is to A) sell 'next-gen' console copies and/or B) to sell NVIDIA 40xx series cards. By now, after well over a decade, CDPR should know how to handle their own tech.
@@Szanth they can't stop abusing and sexually harrashing their workers, but now they atleast seem to take their time instead of working 150 hours a week like was normal before
*Here's a challenge for CDPR:* make the performance so bad that even a PS6 won't be able to run it at 60fps. Knocking the frame rate down 10fps with no improvement is a great first step, and a remarkable achievement. Great job.
Thank them for breaking the contract with Saber Interactive who are BaD rUsSiaNs, but who made an impossibly optimized Switch port, and then making everything themselves instead but with the “quality” we can see here.
@@Clay3613 no it doesn’t.. it runs better on ray tracing on xbox. And it drops lower than PS in only cities. In normal travel/cut scenes or a big majority xbox runs higher. How does playstation just being better in cities make it run better?
It's disappointing that they made the 60 fps mode worse. It wasn't very good to begin with, and now it's even lower. I hope they manage to fix it. Performance is more important than visual settings.
depends on the performance and on the player😂 if it's sp only and not a shooter, i prefer (rock solid) 30fps and nicer visuals over 60fps with lower settings. in this game both modes are suboptimal though (to put it nicely) and one of them is even worse now, which really sucks. get it together cdpr!
@@Garcia1995 Then you would play it on PC(with mouse) at a very stable FPS. Higher FPS = more responsive but not necessarily required. 30 FPS *can* be smooth. From my experience generally anything between 30 and 90(+) FPS can be very playable provided it is stable/fixed.
@@UA-cam-Censorship-Police I can't play any open world game at 30 fps anymore due to the constant juttery panning of the camera. OLED tech isn't very kind to 30fps sadly
People are way too dramatic about this. It literally drops to 50 in big cities and maybe a couple of frames here and there otherwise it’s a stable 60. People let these videos dictate their enjoyment, if you didn’t watch this you wouldn’t even know and it would play fine.
This game has an issue with using cross save where you can bring over settings from other platforms. Like playing a PC save on Series X can bring over some of the PC ultra settings. That is why DF thought the Series X had lower foliage and draw distance. They were saving on the Series S and then opening that save on the Series X and it would bring the draw distance setting from Series S with it.
@@holyshmuck7626 That's been a problem for ages. it's awful playing game on steam deck then going back to PC and having graphics settings utterly hosed. or going on PC then back on steam deck and having it run at 4fps cause it's still at 4k max settings. saving graphics settings in save/cloud at all is deeply flawed and games that do this are just awful.
Think it's possible that swapping between the modes on the same console is affecting the settings? So maybe playing in RT mode then going to Performance mode could bring some of the RT mode settings?
so they improved the game for 10% of gamers who game at 30 fps with RT, while making it worse for 90% of the remaining gamers who game at 60 fps... Splendid.
I doubt the technical situation for this game will get much better with patches, such a pity. The CPU bottleneck is inherent to the version of the RedEngine that was used to build Witcher 3. This is compounded by the poor conversion to DX12 (which is really D3D11on12) that decreases performance massively with no visual difference from DX11 (unless RT is enabled). Neither of these issues are likely to be patched out as it would require the devs to redevelop the game from the ground up.
@@mindrover777 When you re-release an "old" game, you do a new marketing cycle that heavily boosts the sales and revenue of that old game with a small monetary investment. This is huge for old games that are super popular like GTA V, Skyrim, & Witcher 3.
The CPU bottleneck only became an issue with the remaster's heavier draw calls and BVH. When it first released, I could play 60fps/High on an old Xeon 3.3ghz quad with a Rx 480. Far from a great CPU, and it was quite adequate.
I mean the could just make a better conversion to dx12 from the dx11 next gen they already have and remove dx11 completely. Keeping both is what made them use that shitty d311on12 conversion and fuck up cpu performance. The game could run waaay better without the need for "rt performance mode" which is a lazy ini edit if the gpu wasn't utilized at 50% most of the time goddamn
There are more issues with the RT mode at least on PS5. There are a lot of light artifacts when entering caves, or looking at distant objects that are shaded. And yeah, also the purple spiderwebs lol
Smooth as butter now on my 3070. Lowest Ive seen ever now is 45 in Novigrad on ultra+, 1440p, DLSSp with the new 3.1 dll (looks as good as DLSSb from 2.5 imo). Performance mode rt with everything on. If you have a 3060ti you should be able to as well. I think that would be the lowest playable card. *I honestly feel bad for the 7900 owners. AMD has screwed you on RT like nvidia apparently screwed us on VRAM for said rt.
@@timmyp6297 To be honest with you, ray tracing is the first thing I make sure is switched off with most of my games, it just isn't worth it yet and in most cases, the visual upgrade isn't big enough, but my main reason why I make sure it's switched off is because almost every game is designed with baked lighting, not ray tracing, and even though sometimes the results can look good with ray tracing, at times, it looks worse and the truth is, because the game is designed at the core with baked lighting, that is more likely going to look like how the artist wanted it to look. Ray tracing will get interesting once you don't even have the option to switch it off because there is no fallback option with baked lighting and that is likely only going to happen once the PS6 and Xbox 2 or whatever they call it is out and once ray tracing on the PC is a lot cheaper to buy, for now, it's just not worth it for most users and developers will target what most can afford, so as good as ray tracing is, it's only really going to matter once developers target it from the ground up, until then, most gamers on PC and consoles don't seem to care about it. Unreal Engine Lumen could change that, but only because it's designed to perform well on all hardware as well as consoles, especially in software mode, it also means developers don't have to do baked lighting and that is the key for ray tracing to take off. As for Witcher 3, I sometimes wonder if it was worth CDP Red time doing all this work, it's like one step forward and one step back, I think CDP Red would have been better on working on improving the existing DX11 build in visuals and forgetting about ray tracing, but money talks and when you look at games that do support ray tracing, most are sponsored games by AMD or Nvidia to sell higher end hardware, so the question we should ask, how many developers are actually going out of their way to implement ray tracing in their games without money being thrown at them? I get the impression it's not many and it's easy to understand why, just look at the cost of the hardware needed to do ray tracing justice, publishers are all about the money, they will target what gamers can afford to buy, hence why consoles are the baseline even for PC ports, hence why I think the next gen of consoles is when ray tracing will really shine.
@@paul1979uk2000 Imo it was definitely worth the work. I haven't seen a single scene that looks worse, especially interiors at night time or in lower light. Disregarding the fps counter, they run the same for me now. This and Metro are the two games where RT works all the time imo. My gripe is why such aggressive RT at the start? Why was it only targeting essentially 3090 and above? As far as full, true rt goes... we are still in the single digit percentages with regard to being on the way to "how it will look." Every scene in every game with RT, even Metro or this, shows imperfections in multiple places regardless of settings (like posts or barrels or other missing shadows, lighting effects, etc)... so why so aggressive? Why initially exclude "mid range" 3070s and 3060tis?
@@paul1979uk2000 I wish ray traced shadows would become the norm for the time being, I've always hated shadow transitions and low res shadow maps that look so garbage in many games, while the ray traced ones look way better and most importantly consistent. They are also pretty lightweight to the point that even the consoles can get them running in GTA V at 60 fps. It actually boggles my mind that Witcher 3 doesn't let you disable RTGI but give you the option to activate the other effects. RTGI is just not feasible for most people's hardware even in the coming years so they should concentrate on the other effects for now.
Playing The Witcher 3 @ 30 fps seems crazy to me in 2023, even if it's got some new ray tracing And I don't see a reason to celebrate or praise going from 26 to 28 fps BTW. The whole point with a locked 30 is that you get perfect frame pacing. 26 or 28 makes little difference when it's all about getting to that locked 30.
Yea at this point since getting an Xbox one x in 2018 and then a series x in 2021 if a game has a 60fps option im always going for it even when there’s ray traced everything (like gta 5) Maybe if it rains and I’m just cruising around I’ll go to that mode but not usually
I agree with u, Metro Exodus EE runs perfectly good even on series s at a perfectly locked 60fps with an RTGI 100x better than the Witcher 3 rtgi, and also the geometric density and textures are much higher on Metro, this update doesn't make sense
You all know there's no rational reason not to cover Hogwarts Legacy, right? It has extensive graphical options on PS5 to go through, lots of impressive things...What's up? And if you're currently working on it still, why not just say so?
Wake up every morning hoping to see that Hogwarts Legacy analysis. So much great animation work with the plants and combat, it really livens up the world. The Physics is also awesome. Such a great sandbox to play in. Frame generation is also a game changer in Hogwarts Legacy on PC. If you have a NVIDIA 40 series GPU. DLSS and FSR support seem to all be present, can’t wait for Alex to dig in. Overall Hogwarts is a magical game (pun intended). Playing on PC while my daughter plays it on PS5. This is potentially game of the year for me.
@@ronmexico7256 true, they covered Elden Ring quite extensively. That's also an extremely popular game with performance issues especially on PC. Hogwarts Legacy also fascinating on consoles since it have 5 graphic modes, and each of them can be frame rate unlocked. Other thing that important that it will be launched on last-gen and Nintendo Switch. A lot of interesting things to cover in terms of analysis and comparisons.
They didn't get an advance copy of the game, and there's a lot of toxicity with the activist boycott of the title, so they may not bother covering it at all.
I will reiterate for all the non-patreon folks. Hogwarts analysis is under progress. They received review codes after day 1 patch. Do not kill your braincells over internet Gamer commentary and enjoy life and video games in the meantime. All the best!
Thank god. I’m waiting to decide how it runs on PC/steam deck before I get it on PS5. If it’s fairly optimized on PC I’ll get it there. But if it’s a shit show I’ll buy it on PS5
Before this update, I wasn't able to play on RT mode cause it made my eyes hurt. Since they tweaked it, I've been able to play it, though! I just wish they would do something about the PURPLE spider webs in almost every cave. It looks so damn goofy!
Glad to see that reflections were touched up on consoles. Original RT update have turned all bodies of water in the game into muddy shiny puddles of oil, it was really sticking out and hard on the eye. Though new cut-backs on the RTGI quality are still somewhat dissapointing
Hogwarts Legacy! Edit: Saw John Linnerman response for a Hogwarts Legacy Review…..here’s his response on Twitter that is now deleted. John: Harry Potter ******* sucks. It's children bull****. Why the **** would I cover an open world game, a type of game I notoriously despise, based on an IP I hate? It's gonna get covered but I wouldn't do it regardless of the situation around it because I do not like the franchise.
As someone who tends to not notice raytracing and other fancy bells and whistles during the normal gameplay, just bringing over the last gen version and enabling VRR + unlocked framerate would have been a massive improvement over what we got instead.
I think hi Fi rush and god of war ragnarok are the only 2 recent AAA games that have launched perfectly optimized. I had zero problems with either game at launch
Yup. I also find it slightly annoying that DF showed almost no love to GOW Ragnarok at their end of the year awards, despite it looking absolutely gorgeous both technically and artistically. And running beautifully while maintaining damn near perfect 4k like image quality even it's performance mode AT LAUNCH. Even Horizon FW, which they praised heavily had a basically busted performance mode at launch that looked terrible. Hi Fi Rush is way less demanding so a little less of a surprise that it's well optimized, but still a great looking game!!
We need to praise these things and show devs and publishers we care about the release state of games, or they will keep releasing broken bullshit. A lot of mainstream reviewers gloss over this stuff. For example, Elden Ring is the most praised game in years and nowhere near enough people called out that it's basically a complete technical disaster on every single platform it's on (besides the steam deck apparently which is hilarious). max 60 fps on PC with tons of stuttering, PS5 & Series X versions that target too high of settings and don't even come remotely close to locking 60 FPS despite looking like a PS4 launch game with some of the worst draw distance I've seen since the early 2010's
From Software gets away with this bs. Their engine is a total disaster and they have not been able to fix uneven frame pacing since X360/PS3 generation. I think people are willing to overlook this because they are smaller studio and from Japan. Yeah, Japanese devs aren't known for their technical prowess and quite often their engines are barely acceptable junk, but that's no excuse. And with From Soft games achieving commercial success, they should expand studio and hire some good coding talent to fix their tech. Or switch to 3rd party engine, because why not? They have close ties to Sony and I think licensing a Guerilla's engine wouldn't be off the table, even if they would want to bring their games to Xbox still. I would be afraid of them working in Unreal Engine, though, as it needs a decent studio to properly use it, otherwise you get a mess like Gotham Knights.
@@kamilciura7953 I think the Demon's Souls remake on PS5 is still the best entry point for someone to experience a From Soft/Souls game. It's probably the worst of their games from a design/difficulty/pacing, etc.. stand point, but just having the core gameplay and risk reward mechanics lifted and put into an actually gorgeous engine that runs smooth as hell massively elevates the game. it came out significantly before Elden Ring and looks like a full generational leap over it lol. But yeah I agree I'd love to see what that studio could do with a better engine, they need to abandon what they're using now as soon as fucking possible, and with all the money they made on Elden Ring they never have an excuse again to release a busted technical mess that looks and runs like ass.
@@kamilciura7953 I like the Guerilla idea, use the Decima engine like Kojima did with Death Standing. That game is mundane and terribly written but wow does it ever look fucking gorgeous lol
It's already running dynamic res with FSR upscaling to the target resolution, it's running at 1440p or lower usually on PS5, this version of Witcher 3 is just really hard to run above 1080/1440p, even on a high end PC with RT turned off.
It's perfectly capable of running 4k 60 on console. It's just poorly optimized because CDPR is terrible at optimizing their games. Frame rate seems to be the least of their concerns every time they release a game or update. If they do try to improve frame rate, it's either only a minor improvement or a downgrade.
I very much appreciate all the updates that you have given on the Witcher 3 over the years. They've been invaluable and figuring out my performance on PC. I'm hoping that one day you guys will be able to tackle Hogwarts legacy. I thoroughly enjoy your videos, keep up the good work!
I’m noticing a lot of new games, next gen updates and remasters have a tough time performing well on PC. Maybe one day you guys can discuss why next Gen games seem to run terribly on PC on the 9th Gen but had no problems on 8th Gen.
@@ammanus356 they gave to those favorable to the game. Would you give your game to a tech channel, that would say the game was lacking for all platforms? Would not be the first time companies did this, like Bethesda did with Doom 2016
Thanks for the analysis, guys! To be honest, I’m quite happy with the patch as it fixed one huge thing: the loading freezes I kept getting if I moved too fast into a new area. This seemed to get worse the further I got into the game, but it’s completely gone since the patch : ) I hope the framerate stabilises more in future, but it runs quite smooth and looks a treat-I’m greatly relishing my current playthrough.
It's crazy to me how they cannot offer steady 60 fps on a nearly 10 year old game, while last year I enjoyed playing Forbidden West with much better graphics on my PS5. I dont believe that the console cannot handle it. Kind of disappointed with cdpr, honestly.
was really happy with the next gen patch when it first released (playing on PS5) I had waited for over a year because it was a long time after first announcing the patch. So now with auto updates and taking a break for a few weeks I come back to a much worse performance mode.... Do I have to yet again wait for a fix.... this is beyond ridiculous.
One step forward, two steps back...cyberpunk is much more polished and performant on all machines somehow. I wonder if they will find a way to break it with the dlc 😂
Great job as always, Tom (and Alex)! Your aside about the input latency in the PS5 Quality mode early on in the video made me really curious; is there a reason why DF doesn't talk about that side of performance more often? Given how it affects player experience, it's definitely something I'd love to see you cover more.
It’s worth mentioning that the 4.0 update broke cross-progression between the Nintendo Switch and Steam releases. Since the Nintendo Switch hasn’t received the latest software update, you can no longer upload saves to the cloud.
Im gonna say something that i have already said: For next-gen update, they should have taken the Xbox One X version, boost it to solid 60fps at native 4K, improve draw distance, 4K texture pack and BOOM. Perfect X/S upgrade. With XSS same but at native 1440P60fps. Easy, simple and for everyone.
@@Crimsongz Boy, if X1X with an 8times weaker CPU could run the game at solid 30fps in Novigrad. Everybody was able to run this game at 60fps on an I3... Now you need an I9 because they literally killed the technical part of the game...
You guys should've checked out Toussaint (Blood & Wine DLC). I played through all of it on PS5 and that whole map seems to be a lot more intensive, it barely holds 60 FPS even when just walking around areas that don't seem to warrant such a hit to the performance.
8 Years of making witcher 3 videos for digital foundry and the game STILL cannot run at a locked 60fps despite having a console that can! The devs should just go for 1080p/60fps and adjust some settings 😡
How in the fuck did they downgrade the performance with the patch? It's impressive how some developers continue to screw up in terms of delivering games with good performance.
It was almost 4K and had barely no frame drops when it got the unlock frame rate years ago on x box one. Playing it backwards on series x it was the best way to play. Now it’s nothing but trouble
@@frankiebeans8055 "Playing it backwards on series x it was the best way to play" - I think the best way to play it is on PC with forced DirectX 11 ;-)
disappointing how this is being handled, such a downgrade of a patch than it “fixing” performance. also a lot of people prefer higher framerate in performance mode, so the sacrifices made for 4.01 is really just bad decision making just for the RT mode to be slightly better.
It happened on the original release as well. It's unbelievable. Took them like 10 updates to finally get the game at a stable frame rate on PS4 and Xbox one. I expect it will take them 10 updates to fix the performance again if they even decide to put any effort into it which is not likely.
This patch is depressing. You have to worry now if the devs are going to randomly send out a patch that ruins everything. They somehow managed to knock the frame rate down 10fps at points in the Performance Mode ... with no change to settings. 😑😠😡😤
I already did, i was waiting for a patch since the next gen update ruined performamce mode in Novigrad, and now its even worse, looks like ill never touch the game again on Xbox
I have been playing the game for the first time, on the PS5, with Performance Mode, and I did not find any issues. I was really happy with the end results. Sad to see it's not that perfect in some aspect/areas. While the Ray Tracing looks insane, I'd rather play it at 60fps
As a PS5 performance mode player. Thx digital Foundry for putting numbers and mesurable evidences on a feeling that I have since the patch 4.0.1 have been deployed. It's really a shame that the framerate have been degraded... 🙄 Of course no way to go back on the 4.0 build... Shame on you CDPR I hope that they will fix it ASAP !
@@BerticusBersht I'm calm... It's just that it has to be said and don't care if you have a problem with that...🙄 It's frustrating to experience something that was working fine in the first place that have been degraded...
I noticed that turning RT on while having RT GI, Shadows, and Reflections off still tanked performance on a 3080Ti and 10700k. I use a 4k monitor, and I'm willing to use DLSS to turn 40 into 60, but the only way to get RT at "4k60" is with DLSS ultra performance mode, which is unplayable. It seems like the only way to really play this update at 4k60, or pretty much any new RT game is with the 40-series frame generation. It's disappointing because people that payed >$1,200 a year ago now have an unreasonably obsolete card because developers now can use DLSS 3.0 as an excuse to abandon GPU optimization.
Yep, same with regular DLSS. You can't outpace incompetence and laziness with tech, they will always be ahead and cutting corners instead of letting games go even further. It's disgusting
Yeah but the author whose work it was based on doesn't believe that people with penises are actual women so obviously covering the game would be literal violence to people of the T persuasion.
My game on the PS5 still crashes every 15 to 20 minutes. Switching to Performance helped, but it still crashes in that mode too. There’s also still the purple cobwebs and flashing clouds as well in RT mode.
Are DF going to do a video on Hogwarts Legacy performance across the various platforms? There's so much to talk about there. Still not even a hint of the game's existence on the regular Eurogamer site as well as DF channel? Please tell me this isn't because of the "controversy". I really hope at least the DF team can rise above all that. Sales numbers for the game are through the roof so it's content a lot of us are waiting for.
@@recklesflam1ngo968 Richard just adressed the game in the new DF weekly. They're going to cover it thankfully. It would have been sad to see good reporters being silenced.
If DF doesn't test the game I'll no longer respect them as a company. A majority of the population isn't woke so it's honestly ridiculous for them to be afraid.
What's up with people insulting DF crew for not releasing Hogwarts Legacy video yet? Patreon supporters already told they didn't get a review copy in time. People feeling entitled for content they're getting for free, Jesus Christ 🤦♀️.
"Ray Tracing" Run last gen games at sub 30 fps@1080p on "next gen hardware" for marginally better reflections and lighting, which most people will not notice 99% of the time during gameplay. RT is the dumbest thing the game industry adopted because Nvidia convinced them it is the future so that they can sell you ever more expensive hardware.
I'd like an unlocked Framerate on console and the ability to tweak the setting and I'd also like Raytraced Reflections. To be honest I'd be quite happy with "just Ray traced reflections" at a modest resolution and maybe 40 fps or even better 60fps at 1080p as an option too. Console players should have the options to tweak too. It seems like their setting choices don't really make sense for the end result they'd like. Also the performance on PC is a bit shocking too.
instead of marketing a console as "best looking visuals by using 1080p and 1440p as standard" vs 4k, they simply go for high numbers. I would rather have properly uscaled 1080p to 4k with some tricks than anything else -- AT 60 FPS.
The performance improvement of RT mode is welcome, but in some scenes I can’t help but notice the reduced GI quality. Some quite glaring light leaks in corners of a few interiors can create a glowing outline which actually makes the RT mode feel less realistic than the performance mode. Sometimes this issue does not occur, or is only visible at the bottom of walls. Also noticeable at points is this large dappled light effect from the global illumination, where it looks like small patches are missing the shading or lighting, as if multiple point lights have been placed with a low radius of illumination.
Overall the game is much more playable in RT mode, and combat isn’t as painful. Seems like it won’t ever be perfect unless CDPR wanna devote more months to this, which I doubt they do.
A lot of those light leaks were there before patch 4.01 too. Some areas (caves in particular) have entire brightly lit areas where it won't load in at all. I love the GI when it works but yeah... There are a lot of distracting issues with it, as you say. The performance is much better now but I'm having a hard time deciding which mode. Especially with the additional drops in performance mode. Considering everything I think I'll stick with the RT. It does look a lot better in city areas. I just wish they could tidy it up some more.
@@FungeHucker I’m sticking to RT mode for now. Even ignoring the GI, the ambient occlusion improves the quality quite a bit especially on the foliage and outfits. The RT mode really does look great in cities, and also in heavily shaded woodland areas where it adds a lot of atmosphere
I've already gone through it, but I still hope to see you guys cover Metroid Prime remaster. It's a remaster worth checking out. I assume you're working on it, but you never know.
Is it based on the original gc version or the trilogy pack? Iirc the trilogy pack took out the ice beam frost build up on the arm Cannon that was an awsome detail on the original.
@@MarkusFFFF yeah I just don’t know if I should get it on the Steam Deck or PS5. If it’s an optimization shit show on PC I’ll be getting it on the PS5. That’s why I’m waiting honestly. I’ve been excited for it since the PS5 reveal. It’s actually one of the reasons I got a PS5
@@WeencieRants Since i believe they won't do a review and i own all the systems you mentioned i would recommend playing it on PS5 in performance mode. PC version seems to still have problems and on the Steam Deck i guess you could only play it on very low settings.
All these great additional features (visually) to the next-gen upgrade and yet still unoptimized. Even an i9-12900K and RTX 4090 can't push it to a consistent 60+ fps without dipping below it and stuttering. This is a clear sign that the next-gen upgrade needs a TON of work.
@@igorthelight yes but it has been two years that Saber Interactive is not in charge of developping the next gen version, CDprojekt is developping it since 2021
Would have hoped you'd mention whether the grass distance has been fixed on Xbox and grass apparently having less position glitching now (at least on PS5). Also the new graphics options for chromatic abberation and vignetting are great. :) I'm still having crashes though, especially when switching from RT to performance and also still have pink cobwebs and distant light breaches in caves on RT.
I've been playing this game no problem with my 2700X 4090 PC 4K 60 maxed out solid. There's several scenes with shader hitches that plagues most recent titles, but overall it's butter smooth.
Glad I finished this game on the Series S soon after the patch came out - I was already done with the main story and soon finished both DLCs. Seems to have been the most stable 60 FPS experience, all things considered.
Amazing. 8 years ahead, new generation of hardware which is much more powerful especially CPU wise and we still struggle to get AT LEAST stable 30 fps.
I'm not even going to play it now. I feel really bad for the people that payed 50 dollars for this next gen version! The company should honestly be ashamed of themselves. I honestly couldn't even finish the video because I was getting so angry 😤..
For consoles I would suggest turning off motion blur on both perf and RT, on both the motion blur gives less performance, even new titles now come with a warning for performance drops when motion blur is active
This is a feature that I have been disabling for years now. I don't know why more people do not disable it. Film Grain and Chromatic Aberation as well.
Maybe DF needs to go read the Steam forums for the game, so many people have frame rates cut by up to 60% in dx12 with no raytracing. I went from 65-90 fps depending on the area at 1440p ultra, no RT, to 30-35 and turning everything down to low didn't improve frame rates by more than a few frames. Something is very very wrong with this PC patch.
On PC they have removed HBAO+ from the game which IMO almost looks as good as RTAO for much less of a performance hit, you can mod it to get it back in DX11 next-gen but the image quality and performance is still disappointing even without RT, on a 5800X and 3070 the Classic game has a mix of high and ultra settings at 4k and almost locked to 60fps and looks very fluid and sharp, the next-gen version even with DLSS looks and runs much worse IMO, but maybe that's because even in the classic version it pretty much maxes out VRAM at 4k, man I really wish the 3070 would have shipped with 10-12GB of VRAM.
Well, that patch finally added support for my trusty old i5 2500k. I can finally turn on DX 12 and FSR 2.0. It used to crash as soon as I start the game, not anymore. So that's a big plus already.
@@igorthelight DX 12 gives you FSR, FSR gives you free fps. FPS that I just need to be able to get solid 60 fps. My friend needs it for 30 fps. Good thing is, its fixed now and it all works.
It's 2023 and we're still talking about Frame Rates at the Crookback Bog. Life truly is a circle.
They don't know how to optimise the game. How hard can it be to measure different areas and make little tweaks(using a simple example of dynamic model quality depending on distance to player)...
@@Koozwad It's easy to armchair develop and gameplay test from the comfort of your basement.
never had issues before the patch... run 60fps everywhere on series x before this "botched" next gen update
@@harryosbourne451 I wouldn't know - sounds like you have some experience though. This 'next-gen' update screams incompetency. The only reason(s) it seems to exist is to A) sell 'next-gen' console copies and/or B) to sell NVIDIA 40xx series cards. By now, after well over a decade, CDPR should know how to handle their own tech.
na just tells you this game was heavily overrated Cause at the time everyone was on cod
2:40 PS5/XBSX SSR upgrade in RT mode
4:09 PS5/XBSX Downgraded GI in RT mode
5:20 PS5 RT performance, improved
7:06 XBSX RT performance, improved
8:57 Series S quality mode, no changes
9:27 XBSX perf mode performance, downgraded
10:55 PS5 perf mode, downgraded
12:09 perf mode console comparison
12:31 Series S perf mode no changes
13:08 PC
16:44 conclusion
It's disappointing how this next gen update has been all over the place. Nearly two months in and it keeps being two steps forward one step back.
It's CDPR.
Ya this is why I was never excited about the update. It ran perfectly fine 60fps on Xbox series x running the Xbox one x code and looked great
Don't forget it was delayed for over 1.5 years to begin with
@@Szanth they can't stop abusing and sexually harrashing their workers, but now they atleast seem to take their time instead of working 150 hours a week like was normal before
@@Ben-kh7wh its unfortunate we cant have that version back. It was perfectly fine
*Here's a challenge for CDPR:* make the performance so bad that even a PS6 won't be able to run it at 60fps. Knocking the frame rate down 10fps with no improvement is a great first step, and a remarkable achievement. Great job.
Future proof the game duh theyre waiting for next gen.
But it runs worse on Xbox...
Thank them for breaking the contract with Saber Interactive who are BaD rUsSiaNs, but who made an impossibly optimized Switch port, and then making everything themselves instead but with the “quality” we can see here.
@@Clay3613 no it doesn’t.. it runs better on ray tracing on xbox. And it drops lower than PS in only cities. In normal travel/cut scenes or a big majority xbox runs higher. How does playstation just being better in cities make it run better?
@@metaxaos People's lives are more important than frame rate in videos games.
It's crazy that we are going to need who knows how many patches to fix the problems that the next-gen PATCH introduced.
As usual, patch to patch is needed
@@Virtual.Masterpiece well most companies would abandon this game completely years ago
@@misiek_pmt they cant abandon it because Netflix's name is on the line... Netflix put their logo in Witcher Next Gen Edition.
It's disappointing that they made the 60 fps mode worse. It wasn't very good to begin with, and now it's even lower. I hope they manage to fix it. Performance is more important than visual settings.
depends on the performance and on the player😂
if it's sp only and not a shooter, i prefer (rock solid) 30fps and nicer visuals over 60fps with lower settings.
in this game both modes are suboptimal though (to put it nicely) and one of them is even worse now, which really sucks.
get it together cdpr!
@@UA-cam-Censorship-Police but what if it's sp and a shooter?
@@Garcia1995 Then you would play it on PC(with mouse) at a very stable FPS. Higher FPS = more responsive but not necessarily required. 30 FPS *can* be smooth. From my experience generally anything between 30 and 90(+) FPS can be very playable provided it is stable/fixed.
@@UA-cam-Censorship-Police I can't play any open world game at 30 fps anymore due to the constant juttery panning of the camera. OLED tech isn't very kind to 30fps sadly
People are way too dramatic about this. It literally drops to 50 in big cities and maybe a couple of frames here and there otherwise it’s a stable 60. People let these videos dictate their enjoyment, if you didn’t watch this you wouldn’t even know and it would play fine.
I'm so glad you guys upload on a Sunday afternoon (UK)... a cup of tea and DF while the kids are out is bliss.
The stereotype is real.
As a father I couldn't disagree more.
Children are everything.
DF is strangers talking games.
@@USA92 disgusting.
@@USA92ol😂 so your kids don’t leave the house? And you don’t treasure any alone time? You got a problem!
@@USA92 you're obsessed
This game has an issue with using cross save where you can bring over settings from other platforms. Like playing a PC save on Series X can bring over some of the PC ultra settings. That is why DF thought the Series X had lower foliage and draw distance. They were saving on the Series S and then opening that save on the Series X and it would bring the draw distance setting from Series S with it.
That's.... Wtf
Likely the graphical settings are being saved in the file and transferred over with it. Fascinating.
@@holyshmuck7626 That's been a problem for ages. it's awful playing game on steam deck then going back to PC and having graphics settings utterly hosed. or going on PC then back on steam deck and having it run at 4fps cause it's still at 4k max settings. saving graphics settings in save/cloud at all is deeply flawed and games that do this are just awful.
So how does the Xbox perform with PC ultra settings? I’d like to know.
Think it's possible that swapping between the modes on the same console is affecting the settings? So maybe playing in RT mode then going to Performance mode could bring some of the RT mode settings?
so they improved the game for 10% of gamers who game at 30 fps with RT, while making it worse for 90% of the remaining gamers who game at 60 fps... Splendid.
Yea devs should focus on solid 60 at least. Other features come later with bigger GPUs 💟
Fr fr! Who gives a F about gaming in 30 fps nowadays? 60 fps should be the bare minimum now!
They really fùcked it up 🤣🤣
Terrible, and the huge downgrades on the RTGI for extra 1fps makes the RT mode even harder to swallow at 30.
Ha! I just said almost the exact same thing, lol.
I doubt the technical situation for this game will get much better with patches, such a pity. The CPU bottleneck is inherent to the version of the RedEngine that was used to build Witcher 3. This is compounded by the poor conversion to DX12 (which is really D3D11on12) that decreases performance massively with no visual difference from DX11 (unless RT is enabled). Neither of these issues are likely to be patched out as it would require the devs to redevelop the game from the ground up.
Then why bother with the release of this huge upgrade 🤔
Because they got money from Nvidia to implement all Ray Tracing effects. It's always because of money.
@@mindrover777 When you re-release an "old" game, you do a new marketing cycle that heavily boosts the sales and revenue of that old game with a small monetary investment. This is huge for old games that are super popular like GTA V, Skyrim, & Witcher 3.
The CPU bottleneck only became an issue with the remaster's heavier draw calls and BVH.
When it first released, I could play 60fps/High on an old Xeon 3.3ghz quad with a Rx 480. Far from a great CPU, and it was quite adequate.
I mean the could just make a better conversion to dx12 from the dx11 next gen they already have and remove dx11 completely. Keeping both is what made them use that shitty d311on12 conversion and fuck up cpu performance. The game could run waaay better without the need for "rt performance mode" which is a lazy ini edit if the gpu wasn't utilized at 50% most of the time goddamn
There are more issues with the RT mode at least on PS5. There are a lot of light artifacts when entering caves, or looking at distant objects that are shaded. And yeah, also the purple spiderwebs lol
Un Xbox too
Exactly! I’m surprised that digital foundry isn’t highlighting the horrendous lighting issues inside caves on RT mode.
@@hamzashah26 Caves are creepy, not surprised they didn't cover them.
2015 on DF- PS4 suffers on crook back bog
2023 on DF- PS5 suffers on crook back bog
2030 on DF- PS6 suffers on crook back bog
Really hope they get this figured out. One of my favorite games of all-time and I'd love to replay it on PC some time soon.
Dx 11 is still well optimized so you can play with no worries
Smooth as butter now on my 3070. Lowest Ive seen ever now is 45 in Novigrad on ultra+, 1440p, DLSSp with the new 3.1 dll (looks as good as DLSSb from 2.5 imo). Performance mode rt with everything on. If you have a 3060ti you should be able to as well. I think that would be the lowest playable card.
*I honestly feel bad for the 7900 owners. AMD has screwed you on RT like nvidia apparently screwed us on VRAM for said rt.
@@timmyp6297 To be honest with you, ray tracing is the first thing I make sure is switched off with most of my games, it just isn't worth it yet and in most cases, the visual upgrade isn't big enough, but my main reason why I make sure it's switched off is because almost every game is designed with baked lighting, not ray tracing, and even though sometimes the results can look good with ray tracing, at times, it looks worse and the truth is, because the game is designed at the core with baked lighting, that is more likely going to look like how the artist wanted it to look.
Ray tracing will get interesting once you don't even have the option to switch it off because there is no fallback option with baked lighting and that is likely only going to happen once the PS6 and Xbox 2 or whatever they call it is out and once ray tracing on the PC is a lot cheaper to buy, for now, it's just not worth it for most users and developers will target what most can afford, so as good as ray tracing is, it's only really going to matter once developers target it from the ground up, until then, most gamers on PC and consoles don't seem to care about it.
Unreal Engine Lumen could change that, but only because it's designed to perform well on all hardware as well as consoles, especially in software mode, it also means developers don't have to do baked lighting and that is the key for ray tracing to take off.
As for Witcher 3, I sometimes wonder if it was worth CDP Red time doing all this work, it's like one step forward and one step back, I think CDP Red would have been better on working on improving the existing DX11 build in visuals and forgetting about ray tracing, but money talks and when you look at games that do support ray tracing, most are sponsored games by AMD or Nvidia to sell higher end hardware, so the question we should ask, how many developers are actually going out of their way to implement ray tracing in their games without money being thrown at them? I get the impression it's not many and it's easy to understand why, just look at the cost of the hardware needed to do ray tracing justice, publishers are all about the money, they will target what gamers can afford to buy, hence why consoles are the baseline even for PC ports, hence why I think the next gen of consoles is when ray tracing will really shine.
@@paul1979uk2000 Imo it was definitely worth the work. I haven't seen a single scene that looks worse, especially interiors at night time or in lower light. Disregarding the fps counter, they run the same for me now. This and Metro are the two games where RT works all the time imo. My gripe is why such aggressive RT at the start? Why was it only targeting essentially 3090 and above? As far as full, true rt goes... we are still in the single digit percentages with regard to being on the way to "how it will look." Every scene in every game with RT, even Metro or this, shows imperfections in multiple places regardless of settings (like posts or barrels or other missing shadows, lighting effects, etc)... so why so aggressive? Why initially exclude "mid range" 3070s and 3060tis?
@@paul1979uk2000 I wish ray traced shadows would become the norm for the time being, I've always hated shadow transitions and low res shadow maps that look so garbage in many games, while the ray traced ones look way better and most importantly consistent. They are also pretty lightweight to the point that even the consoles can get them running in GTA V at 60 fps. It actually boggles my mind that Witcher 3 doesn't let you disable RTGI but give you the option to activate the other effects. RTGI is just not feasible for most people's hardware even in the coming years so they should concentrate on the other effects for now.
Playing The Witcher 3 @ 30 fps seems crazy to me in 2023, even if it's got some new ray tracing
And I don't see a reason to celebrate or praise going from 26 to 28 fps BTW. The whole point with a locked 30 is that you get perfect frame pacing. 26 or 28 makes little difference when it's all about getting to that locked 30.
Yea at this point since getting an Xbox one x in 2018 and then a series x in 2021 if a game has a 60fps option im always going for it even when there’s ray traced everything (like gta 5)
Maybe if it rains and I’m just cruising around I’ll go to that mode but not usually
Depends what you like. On Series X it is pretty much locked 30
I agree with u, Metro Exodus EE runs perfectly good even on series s at a perfectly locked 60fps with an RTGI 100x better than the Witcher 3 rtgi, and also the geometric density and textures are much higher on Metro, this update doesn't make sense
@@jackhanma376 Witcher 3 is open world tho
I love rt mode.
You all know there's no rational reason not to cover Hogwarts Legacy, right?
It has extensive graphical options on PS5 to go through, lots of impressive things...What's up? And if you're currently working on it still, why not just say so?
They don't want to upset certain people who cannot be criticised.
Wake up every morning hoping to see that Hogwarts Legacy analysis. So much great animation work with the plants and combat, it really livens up the world. The Physics is also awesome. Such a great sandbox to play in.
Frame generation is also a game changer in Hogwarts Legacy on PC. If you have a NVIDIA 40 series GPU. DLSS and FSR support seem to all be present, can’t wait for Alex to dig in.
Overall Hogwarts is a magical game (pun intended). Playing on PC while my daughter plays it on PS5. This is potentially game of the year for me.
I think they’re afraid of the controversy which is unfortunate since so many are having issues with the pc version they should really be covering it
I doubt they're worried about the "controversy". Not sure if anyone at DF cares for the IP, in fact, John kinda hates Harry Potter lol
@@JeffZ1028 I guess that’s possible, it just seems weird that a very popular game with pc issues isn’t getting covered
I think it's going to suck. They should do a dark version of the movies into a game
@@ronmexico7256 true, they covered Elden Ring quite extensively. That's also an extremely popular game with performance issues especially on PC. Hogwarts Legacy also fascinating on consoles since it have 5 graphic modes, and each of them can be frame rate unlocked. Other thing that important that it will be launched on last-gen and Nintendo Switch. A lot of interesting things to cover in terms of analysis and comparisons.
I hope you guys aren't going to ignore Hogwarts Legacy. It's almost been a week since it's released and there's still no coverage, didn't expect that.
Patience brother
Well, they are tied to woke bros. Eurogamer..
They didn't get an advance copy of the game, and there's a lot of toxicity with the activist boycott of the title, so they may not bother covering it at all.
I will reiterate for all the non-patreon folks. Hogwarts analysis is under progress. They received review codes after day 1 patch. Do not kill your braincells over internet Gamer commentary and enjoy life and video games in the meantime. All the best!
Would help if they would have said that somewhere else other than patreon, which not everyone has access to.
It's in the DF Direct which is on Patreon now and will go public tomorrow.
@@Owl90 so stfu and wait, or pay
Anything on the Metroid Prime remaster? I'm hoping they will make a video about it.
Thank god. I’m waiting to decide how it runs on PC/steam deck before I get it on PS5. If it’s fairly optimized on PC I’ll get it there. But if it’s a shit show I’ll buy it on PS5
Before this update, I wasn't able to play on RT mode cause it made my eyes hurt. Since they tweaked it, I've been able to play it, though!
I just wish they would do something about the PURPLE spider webs in almost every cave. It looks so damn goofy!
Still no hogwarts because one of the editors doesn't like IP...
disappointing
*PC starts* 13:08
Glad to see that reflections were touched up on consoles.
Original RT update have turned all bodies of water in the game into muddy shiny puddles of oil, it was really sticking out and hard on the eye.
Though new cut-backs on the RTGI quality are still somewhat dissapointing
The only best thing for me about the 4.01 update on Series X is that the frame no longer freezes for 2 to 4 seconds every time the game autosaves.
Yeah but overall fps is worse, CD project red sucks
@@adk4986 Well, they can fix one thing but do worse for another. It sucks that they can't perfectly optimize an old game.
Had the same, it was very annoying.
@@XGlite015 They cant optimise any game if it meant saving their lives
Where is the Hogwarts video guys? I’m waiting on buying it for Series X or for PS5. In the meantime I’m doing a NG+ of The Witcher for the fifth time…
Playstation has exclusive side quest and it's apparently pretty good one. It runs fine just check EnAnalista video
@@Radek494 thank you so much!
Series X is the way the game runs way better.
@@Radek494 That's quest is pretty much skippable, sure doesn't worth to play the whole game at worst performance.
Go with Series X.
Huuuuuuuuuuhhhhh
Hogwarts Legacy!
Edit: Saw John Linnerman response for a Hogwarts Legacy Review…..here’s his response on Twitter that is now deleted.
John: Harry Potter ******* sucks. It's children bull****. Why the **** would I cover an open world game, a type of game I notoriously despise, based on an IP I hate? It's gonna get covered but I wouldn't do it regardless of the situation around it because I do not
like the franchise.
As someone who tends to not notice raytracing and other fancy bells and whistles during the normal gameplay, just bringing over the last gen version and enabling VRR + unlocked framerate would have been a massive improvement over what we got instead.
I think hi Fi rush and god of war ragnarok are the only 2 recent AAA games that have launched perfectly optimized. I had zero problems with either game at launch
Yup. I also find it slightly annoying that DF showed almost no love to GOW Ragnarok at their end of the year awards, despite it looking absolutely gorgeous both technically and artistically. And running beautifully while maintaining damn near perfect 4k like image quality even it's performance mode AT LAUNCH. Even Horizon FW, which they praised heavily had a basically busted performance mode at launch that looked terrible. Hi Fi Rush is way less demanding so a little less of a surprise that it's well optimized, but still a great looking game!!
We need to praise these things and show devs and publishers we care about the release state of games, or they will keep releasing broken bullshit. A lot of mainstream reviewers gloss over this stuff. For example, Elden Ring is the most praised game in years and nowhere near enough people called out that it's basically a complete technical disaster on every single platform it's on (besides the steam deck apparently which is hilarious). max 60 fps on PC with tons of stuttering, PS5 & Series X versions that target too high of settings and don't even come remotely close to locking 60 FPS despite looking like a PS4 launch game with some of the worst draw distance I've seen since the early 2010's
From Software gets away with this bs. Their engine is a total disaster and they have not been able to fix uneven frame pacing since X360/PS3 generation. I think people are willing to overlook this because they are smaller studio and from Japan. Yeah, Japanese devs aren't known for their technical prowess and quite often their engines are barely acceptable junk, but that's no excuse. And with From Soft games achieving commercial success, they should expand studio and hire some good coding talent to fix their tech. Or switch to 3rd party engine, because why not? They have close ties to Sony and I think licensing a Guerilla's engine wouldn't be off the table, even if they would want to bring their games to Xbox still. I would be afraid of them working in Unreal Engine, though, as it needs a decent studio to properly use it, otherwise you get a mess like Gotham Knights.
@@kamilciura7953 I think the Demon's Souls remake on PS5 is still the best entry point for someone to experience a From Soft/Souls game. It's probably the worst of their games from a design/difficulty/pacing, etc.. stand point, but just having the core gameplay and risk reward mechanics lifted and put into an actually gorgeous engine that runs smooth as hell massively elevates the game. it came out significantly before Elden Ring and looks like a full generational leap over it lol. But yeah I agree I'd love to see what that studio could do with a better engine, they need to abandon what they're using now as soon as fucking possible, and with all the money they made on Elden Ring they never have an excuse again to release a busted technical mess that looks and runs like ass.
@@kamilciura7953 I like the Guerilla idea, use the Decima engine like Kojima did with Death Standing. That game is mundane and terribly written but wow does it ever look fucking gorgeous lol
I wish they had a 1440p performance mode, as some areas really struggle.
4k is too ambitious on console.
It's already running dynamic res with FSR upscaling to the target resolution, it's running at 1440p or lower usually on PS5, this version of Witcher 3 is just really hard to run above 1080/1440p, even on a high end PC with RT turned off.
It's perfectly capable of running 4k 60 on console. It's just poorly optimized because CDPR is terrible at optimizing their games. Frame rate seems to be the least of their concerns every time they release a game or update. If they do try to improve frame rate, it's either only a minor improvement or a downgrade.
No it isn't lol
@@wazzupimchris because framerate is overrated lol
I don't get how it is too ambitious with this game. The graphics are dated as hell.
I was really pissed when I played on console and suddenly 60 FPS was ruined.
They really should not have taken away that option
Where is the game-that-shall-not-be-named?
THAT wizard game!?
@@ArmoniteQL 🤫
I very much appreciate all the updates that you have given on the Witcher 3 over the years. They've been invaluable and figuring out my performance on PC. I'm hoping that one day you guys will be able to tackle Hogwarts legacy. I thoroughly enjoy your videos, keep up the good work!
I’m noticing a lot of new games, next gen updates and remasters have a tough time performing well on PC. Maybe one day you guys can discuss why next Gen games seem to run terribly on PC on the 9th Gen but had no problems on 8th Gen.
I can't help but noticed DF hasn't done a Hogwarts review yet. Would definitely like to know the performance specs.
Relax on Hogwarts Legacy. According to the DF Direct coverage is coming, they just didn't get review code until Friday bcs of the day 1 patch.
@@ammanus356 not to them and not to SkillUp, for instance. You really shouldn’t accuse ppl of lying like that.
@@ammanus356 Not every reviewer got a code. Many had to wait until Early Access on Feb 7th
@@ammanus356 they gave to those favorable to the game. Would you give your game to a tech channel, that would say the game was lacking for all platforms? Would not be the first time companies did this, like Bethesda did with Doom 2016
@@ammanus356 you know more than Warner and DF apparently from your basement. WB wanted to give those codes after the day 1 patch.
I don't think they lied, but even if they did... so? Ppl are asking Hogwarts Legacy when? The answer is soon.
**hogwarts legacy exist**
Digital Foundry: "OH, yall want another Witcher 3 video? Don't mind if we do...."
Thanks for the analysis, guys! To be honest, I’m quite happy with the patch as it fixed one huge thing: the loading freezes I kept getting if I moved too fast into a new area. This seemed to get worse the further I got into the game, but it’s completely gone since the patch : ) I hope the framerate stabilises more in future, but it runs quite smooth and looks a treat-I’m greatly relishing my current playthrough.
It's crazy to me how they cannot offer steady 60 fps on a nearly 10 year old game, while last year I enjoyed playing Forbidden West with much better graphics on my PS5. I dont believe that the console cannot handle it. Kind of disappointed with cdpr, honestly.
True - consoles are not a problem. This game don't utilize all the cores of the CPU (on consoles and on PCs).
was really happy with the next gen patch when it first released (playing on PS5) I had waited for over a year because it was a long time after first announcing the patch. So now with auto updates and taking a break for a few weeks I come back to a much worse performance mode.... Do I have to yet again wait for a fix.... this is beyond ridiculous.
Hogwarts review ?? one of the most hyped game of 2023 not covered by DF ? what is happening ?
They dont want to cover it because jk rowling being a transphobe.
CDPR games though... no problem lol
You know what's happening, lol. Everyone knows.
Sooo no Hogwarts legacy analysis? Lol
How on earth do you make performance mode worse after a patch? Absolutely baffling
Only CDPR manages to release an update that makes the game run worse. Can't think of any other developer that does that. It's sad really.
Because rt is the proper mode for this game lol not their fault you haven't figured that out
One step forward, two steps back...cyberpunk is much more polished and performant on all machines somehow. I wonder if they will find a way to break it with the dlc 😂
The RT Overdrive patch will break it. 😂
SSSHHHH
Metroid Prime Remaster comes out...
Digital Foundry: "Let's make a The Witcher 3 video for the 20th time"
Great job as always, Tom (and Alex)! Your aside about the input latency in the PS5 Quality mode early on in the video made me really curious; is there a reason why DF doesn't talk about that side of performance more often? Given how it affects player experience, it's definitely something I'd love to see you cover more.
how is there still no Hogwarts Legacy review? that game is a stuttery mess, please showcase the issues
It’s worth mentioning that the 4.0 update broke cross-progression between the Nintendo Switch and Steam releases. Since the Nintendo Switch hasn’t received the latest software update, you can no longer upload saves to the cloud.
Im gonna say something that i have already said: For next-gen update, they should have taken the Xbox One X version, boost it to solid 60fps at native 4K, improve draw distance, 4K texture pack and BOOM. Perfect X/S upgrade.
With XSS same but at native 1440P60fps.
Easy, simple and for everyone.
Blame the weak CPU
@@Crimsongz Boy, if X1X with an 8times weaker CPU could run the game at solid 30fps in Novigrad. Everybody was able to run this game at 60fps on an I3... Now you need an I9 because they literally killed the technical part of the game...
You guys should've checked out Toussaint (Blood & Wine DLC). I played through all of it on PS5 and that whole map seems to be a lot more intensive, it barely holds 60 FPS even when just walking around areas that don't seem to warrant such a hit to the performance.
That whole area definitely has more trees and plant life everywhere. It’s really beautiful.
8 Years of making witcher 3 videos for digital foundry and the game STILL cannot run at a locked 60fps despite having a console that can! The devs should just go for 1080p/60fps and adjust some settings 😡
For steamdeck users: with a mixture of medium and high settings seems to perform at a lower wattage now, but with more frametime spikes
How in the fuck did they downgrade the performance with the patch? It's impressive how some developers continue to screw up in terms of delivering games with good performance.
It was almost 4K and had barely no frame drops when it got the unlock frame rate years ago on x box one. Playing it backwards on series x it was the best way to play. Now it’s nothing but trouble
@@frankiebeans8055 "Playing it backwards on series x it was the best way to play" - I think the best way to play it is on PC with forced DirectX 11 ;-)
Thought yall hate open world rpg🤔
No hoghwarts legacy? Troony foundry
disappointing how this is being handled, such a downgrade of a patch than it “fixing” performance. also a lot of people prefer higher framerate in performance mode, so the sacrifices made for 4.01 is really just bad decision making just for the RT mode to be slightly better.
It happened on the original release as well. It's unbelievable. Took them like 10 updates to finally get the game at a stable frame rate on PS4 and Xbox one. I expect it will take them 10 updates to fix the performance again if they even decide to put any effort into it which is not likely.
This patch is depressing. You have to worry now if the devs are going to randomly send out a patch that ruins everything. They somehow managed to knock the frame rate down 10fps at points in the Performance Mode ... with no change to settings. 😑😠😡😤
@@wazzupimchris I'll keep playing without the nextgen patch that ruined verything.
17:41 hey a Hogwarts Legacy NPC apparated, I wondered where they all went
This doesn't look like Hogwarts Legacy.
I hope that a new Hogwarts Legacy test will be the next video.
It won’t because the trans community has dF by the balls and there submitting to there BS
What about the difference in draw distance and pop in between ps5 and series x? Did series x improve here at all?
Been playing this on Series X performance mode. Looks like I'm shelving it for the time being.
I already did, i was waiting for a patch since the next gen update ruined performamce mode in Novigrad, and now its even worse, looks like ill never touch the game again on Xbox
@@adk4986 I'm going to free up my disk space and install something else until they fix this mess
I have been playing the game for the first time, on the PS5, with Performance Mode, and I did not find any issues. I was really happy with the end results. Sad to see it's not that perfect in some aspect/areas.
While the Ray Tracing looks insane, I'd rather play it at 60fps
As a PS5 performance mode player. Thx digital Foundry for putting numbers and mesurable evidences on a feeling that I have since the patch 4.0.1 have been deployed. It's really a shame that the framerate have been degraded... 🙄 Of course no way to go back on the 4.0 build... Shame on you CDPR I hope that they will fix it ASAP !
Its a video game calm down.
@@BerticusBersht 🤓
@@BerticusBersht I'm calm... It's just that it has to be said and don't care if you have a problem with that...🙄 It's frustrating to experience something that was working fine in the first place that have been degraded...
I noticed that turning RT on while having RT GI, Shadows, and Reflections off still tanked performance on a 3080Ti and 10700k. I use a 4k monitor, and I'm willing to use DLSS to turn 40 into 60, but the only way to get RT at "4k60" is with DLSS ultra performance mode, which is unplayable. It seems like the only way to really play this update at 4k60, or pretty much any new RT game is with the 40-series frame generation. It's disappointing because people that payed >$1,200 a year ago now have an unreasonably obsolete card because developers now can use DLSS 3.0 as an excuse to abandon GPU optimization.
Yep, same with regular DLSS. You can't outpace incompetence and laziness with tech, they will always be ahead and cutting corners instead of letting games go even further. It's disgusting
Fortunately, AMD releases the Fluid Motion Frame technology for the 6000 Radeons as well.
@@gaspargeri81 it's gonna get even worse then because both manufacturers will give them an excuse to make unoptimized garbage
Get a hogwarts legacy review out. Need the weight to get the performance fixed.
The performance mode on PS5 is just outright bad with this patch. Hope they gonna work on that, because it ran fine with the launch build.
So are y’all not going to cover Hogwarts Legacy? Game has 5 different impressive graphics mode and a toggle to turn frame cap on and off.
Yeah but the author whose work it was based on doesn't believe that people with penises are actual women so obviously covering the game would be literal violence to people of the T persuasion.
When is the Hogwarts performance review?
Do Hogwarts Legacy please
My game on the PS5 still crashes every 15 to 20 minutes. Switching to Performance helped, but it still crashes in that mode too. There’s also still the purple cobwebs and flashing clouds as well in RT mode.
Are DF going to do a video on Hogwarts Legacy performance across the various platforms? There's so much to talk about there. Still not even a hint of the game's existence on the regular Eurogamer site as well as DF channel? Please tell me this isn't because of the "controversy". I really hope at least the DF team can rise above all that. Sales numbers for the game are through the roof so it's content a lot of us are waiting for.
@@recklesflam1ngo968 Richard just adressed the game in the new DF weekly. They're going to cover it thankfully. It would have been sad to see good reporters being silenced.
If DF doesn't test the game I'll no longer respect them as a company. A majority of the population isn't woke so it's honestly ridiculous for them to be afraid.
What's up with people insulting DF crew for not releasing Hogwarts Legacy video yet? Patreon supporters already told they didn't get a review copy in time. People feeling entitled for content they're getting for free, Jesus Christ 🤦♀️.
"Ray Tracing"
Run last gen games at sub 30 fps@1080p on "next gen hardware" for marginally better reflections and lighting, which most people will not notice 99% of the time during gameplay.
RT is the dumbest thing the game industry adopted because Nvidia convinced them it is the future so that they can sell you ever more expensive hardware.
CPDR is terrible at optimization like Bethesda
A 2015 game in PS5 clearly should have much better perfomance
🎯
When are y’all going to do a technical review of Hogwarts Legacy?
PS5 does not have enough compute units for the raytracing. they need to lower resolution from 1440p to 1360p or something
Yeah, and series x performance mode is abysmal compared to PS5.
@@jack_knife-1478 only on novigrad but not outdoors and cutscenes
@@djdjddhdhd5231 Novigrad is more demanding so your compute units claim is false. More demanding scenes run better on ps5
@@ardasevmis7583 wait why isn't it heavier on ray tracing mode then ?
Series x runs better in novigrad on the RT mode explain ?
Caves still look atrocious with artifacting when in RT mode on series x
Still have the purple spider webs as well.
@@Epiousios18 Ooh yeah good shout.
Forgot all about them.
I'd like an unlocked Framerate on console and the ability to tweak the setting and I'd also like Raytraced Reflections.
To be honest I'd be quite happy with "just Ray traced reflections" at a modest resolution and maybe 40 fps or even better 60fps at 1080p as an option too. Console players should have the options to tweak too. It seems like their setting choices don't really make sense for the end result they'd like.
Also the performance on PC is a bit shocking too.
instead of marketing a console as "best looking visuals by using 1080p and 1440p as standard" vs 4k, they simply go for high numbers. I would rather have properly uscaled 1080p to 4k with some tricks than anything else -- AT 60 FPS.
The perfromance for my PC has worsen since they rolled out this "patch" adn the recent "hotfix" it's total crap now
The performance improvement of RT mode is welcome, but in some scenes I can’t help but notice the reduced GI quality. Some quite glaring light leaks in corners of a few interiors can create a glowing outline which actually makes the RT mode feel less realistic than the performance mode. Sometimes this issue does not occur, or is only visible at the bottom of walls. Also noticeable at points is this large dappled light effect from the global illumination, where it looks like small patches are missing the shading or lighting, as if multiple point lights have been placed with a low radius of illumination.
Overall the game is much more playable in RT mode, and combat isn’t as painful. Seems like it won’t ever be perfect unless CDPR wanna devote more months to this, which I doubt they do.
A lot of those light leaks were there before patch 4.01 too. Some areas (caves in particular) have entire brightly lit areas where it won't load in at all. I love the GI when it works but yeah... There are a lot of distracting issues with it, as you say.
The performance is much better now but I'm having a hard time deciding which mode. Especially with the additional drops in performance mode. Considering everything I think I'll stick with the RT. It does look a lot better in city areas. I just wish they could tidy it up some more.
@@FungeHucker I’m sticking to RT mode for now. Even ignoring the GI, the ambient occlusion improves the quality quite a bit especially on the foliage and outfits. The RT mode really does look great in cities, and also in heavily shaded woodland areas where it adds a lot of atmosphere
"New update"
*"looks and runs worse than before"*
All we want is a Hogwarts Legacy analysis! Where is it??
I've already gone through it, but I still hope to see you guys cover Metroid Prime remaster. It's a remaster worth checking out. I assume you're working on it, but you never know.
Playing it right now
Oliver is tackling it.
Is it based on the original gc version or the trilogy pack? Iirc the trilogy pack took out the ice beam frost build up on the arm Cannon that was an awsome detail on the original.
@@WhooFlungPoo yea it's based on the Wii version with source code transferred over for use in retro studios proprietary engine
Im pretty sure the new harry potter will be next. Then metroid.
Hogwarts Legacy when? I’m waiting on your review before I purchase. Thank you.
It's an amazing game, the most fun i had playing a game since Elden Ring.
@@MarkusFFFF yeah I just don’t know if I should get it on the Steam Deck or PS5. If it’s an optimization shit show on PC I’ll be getting it on the PS5. That’s why I’m waiting honestly. I’ve been excited for it since the PS5 reveal. It’s actually one of the reasons I got a PS5
@@WeencieRants Since i believe they won't do a review and i own all the systems you mentioned i would recommend playing it on PS5 in performance mode. PC version seems to still have problems and on the Steam Deck i guess you could only play it on very low settings.
@@WeencieRants
Get the PS5 version and play in performance mode.
DF won’t cover it cause they’re afraid of the woke mob.
Wait a month and buy ;-)
The “next gen” upgrades on ps5 are a joke, the ray tracing mode lacks of ray tracing, no vrr no 40fps mode 😂
All these great additional features (visually) to the next-gen upgrade and yet still unoptimized. Even an i9-12900K and RTX 4090 can't push it to a consistent 60+ fps without dipping below it and stuttering. This is a clear sign that the next-gen upgrade needs a TON of work.
Where is Hogwarts review?
Digital Foundry: 🦗🦗🦗🦗
I really feel like CDPR fired all of their devs, and then hired a bunch of interns and were like "Okay guys go nuts"
The performance issues in perf mode have to be bugged. They better fix this shit soon.
Two years of delay and an bad optimisation, can someone explaine why is this so hard to developpe this update ?
They outsourced this Remaster to another company - Saber Interactive. For them it's an unknown game engine ;-)
@@igorthelight yes but it has been two years that Saber Interactive is not in charge of developping the next gen version, CDprojekt is developping it since 2021
@@lio220 Looks like they are too busy. Or just incompetent xD
Can someone enlighten me why John lineman is having a mental breakdown on twitter for all to see? Some distaste for an IP or something?
Just finished this and DLC again yesterday. Played performance mode only. Used to take a look at the RT mode but the 30fps wasn't worth it
Would have hoped you'd mention whether the grass distance has been fixed on Xbox and grass apparently having less position glitching now (at least on PS5). Also the new graphics options for chromatic abberation and vignetting are great. :) I'm still having crashes though, especially when switching from RT to performance and also still have pink cobwebs and distant light breaches in caves on RT.
@Poor Dude only at a distance? When I played it was shifting around every few seconds, right next to me! Grass generation is very unstable.
I've been playing this game no problem with my 2700X 4090 PC 4K 60 maxed out solid. There's several scenes with shader hitches that plagues most recent titles, but overall it's butter smooth.
Glad I finished this game on the Series S soon after the patch came out - I was already done with the main story and soon finished both DLCs. Seems to have been the most stable 60 FPS experience, all things considered.
That PlayStation 5 liquid metal heatsink paste is melting.
XboxSXisbetter
Amazing. 8 years ahead, new generation of hardware which is much more powerful especially CPU wise and we still struggle to get AT LEAST stable 30 fps.
Was playing performance mode on the series X and it felt good. It's a real shame to see that it has gotten worse with this patch.
These Devs are a joke
And they even removed ambient occlusion 😫 Shit update, won't touch this garbage again.
I'm not even going to play it now. I feel really bad for the people that payed 50 dollars for this next gen version! The company should honestly be ashamed of themselves. I honestly couldn't even finish the video because I was getting so angry 😤..
For consoles I would suggest turning off motion blur on both perf and RT, on both the motion blur gives less performance, even new titles now come with a warning for performance drops when motion blur is active
This is a feature that I have been disabling for years now. I don't know why more people do not disable it. Film Grain and Chromatic Aberation as well.
Why there is no coverage for Hogwarts Legacy on this channel? Are you afraid of the mob DF?
I thought he is the mob
Political Foundry
@@respox2191 I always liked this channel, but now I'm going to cancel my subscription.
Maybe DF needs to go read the Steam forums for the game, so many people have frame rates cut by up to 60% in dx12 with no raytracing. I went from 65-90 fps depending on the area at 1440p ultra, no RT, to 30-35 and turning everything down to low didn't improve frame rates by more than a few frames. Something is very very wrong with this PC patch.
On PC they have removed HBAO+ from the game which IMO almost looks as good as RTAO for much less of a performance hit, you can mod it to get it back in DX11 next-gen but the image quality and performance is still disappointing even without RT, on a 5800X and 3070 the Classic game has a mix of high and ultra settings at 4k and almost locked to 60fps and looks very fluid and sharp, the next-gen version even with DLSS looks and runs much worse IMO, but maybe that's because even in the classic version it pretty much maxes out VRAM at 4k, man I really wish the 3070 would have shipped with 10-12GB of VRAM.
That's why we have 6700xt
Use Reshade for more AO options
@@rob4222 It's not the same.
@@turrican4d599 Better than nothing
Well, that patch finally added support for my trusty old i5 2500k. I can finally turn on DX 12 and FSR 2.0. It used to crash as soon as I start the game, not anymore. So that's a big plus already.
Why would you need DX12 for tho?
@@igorthelight DX 12 gives you FSR, FSR gives you free fps. FPS that I just need to be able to get solid 60 fps. My friend needs it for 30 fps. Good thing is, its fixed now and it all works.
@@Starfals Test DX12 + FSR 2.0 vs DX11
It's always a pleasure to hear Tom's great voice and amazing in-depth reviews! Tom has a great style in his reviews!