Starfield CPU & GPU limited, once again DX12/Vulkan fails to deliver

[KompuKare]

Eventually there will another user benchmarking thread about Starfield (hopefully with a custom saves with outposts created and NPCs maxed out), because reviewers seldom go into that detail. I mean for Skyrim, a lot of they even though about it took a save in Whiterun ran up to Dragonsreach, turned around at the top and called it a day; even something possible with the base stock game like bringing every recruitable NPC over there first was beyond reviewers.

On the FO4 benchmarking threads, the two saves don't test the same thing but trying to find a pattern wherever one or the other is bandwidth or CPU clocks constrained is still elusive.

There may not be such a pattern due to what i think Bethesda's engine does: each frame the Papyrus scripts get X amount of time run. So the script time that NPCs, quest scripts, AI etc. is dependent on the frame rates. If the frame rate is "choppy" and everything else will suffer.

Might explain why fake frames seem to work well: on real frame = everything as normal; on fake frames = more CPU time for scripting as the rendering was (almost) free. Smoother NPCs and enemies may even make any additional latency appear to not matter.

I'm sure other theories will be along soon too.

Speculation that Starfield is extremely memory/cache constrained. Wasn't Fallout 4 also very memory dependent? Knowing Bethesda their "new" engine is just duck tape and bailing wire on their age old turd of an engine. No clue why they won't either develop something decent from scratch or pay for a decent engine. They have fantastic IP that's massively held back by their engine.

As long as moving to, say, UE5 allows them to somehow port their Creation Kit I'd be happy with that, but a Bethesda CRPG without modders would be terrible.

Gotta agree here, I have yet to play a game that works noticeably better on DX12 than DX11. Same with Vulkan and such, waaaay too much hype with extremely little gains and high probability of having a problem.

What about the games for which these low-level APIs where made for? Mainly multi-player BF. But yes, DX12 etc. is way more work as devs get the power but also the difficulty of being able to almost act as a thread scheduler. Intensive multiplayer games are about the one thing which can benefit.

 

[Heartbreaker]

HWUB CPU test:

Really looks like it's depending on lower thread, high performance (needs high clocks). IOW not multi-threaded enough for the performance it's chewing up.

 

[mikeymikec]

I wonder how low it's been the norm for that when a game is released, people with budgets like mine will be thinking, "maybe I'll try it... in ten years' time". 35fps on the graphics card *I'm thinking of upgrading to*.... wth.

Hopefully these games will undergo some serious optimisation work. I remember Witcher 3 performing far better on my 380X after some updates.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I wonder how low it's been the norm for that when a game is released, people with budgets like mine will be thinking, "maybe I'll try it... in ten years' time". 35fps on the graphics card *I'm thinking of upgrading to*.... wth.

People are playing on console at locked 30fps with no complaints. It's that kind of game.

You would probably be right at home here. https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/

 

[Mopetar]

Sitting there and conspiracy theorizing about a developer that's never cared about tech much is rather silly.

That was basically my point. We went through the same thing with Fallout 4 where the frame rates were even more lackluster for a game that wasn't a graphical heavyweight by any means.

I think trying to read anything into DX11 vs. DX12 in this title isn't going to reveal anything useful.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I want to point out that people with meh hardware keep saying every time a new game comes out, that they may as well buy a console instead. Just remember this: Whenever someone says that, AMD is going.

 

[DeathReborn]

People are playing on console at locked 30fps with no complaints. It's that kind of game.

You would probably be right at home here. https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/

They haven't played it at 60fps so have no frame of reference to make that decision.

 

[tajoh111]

I want to point out that people with meh hardware keep saying every time a new game comes out, that they may as well buy a console instead. Just remember this: Whenever someone says that, AMD is going.

AMD would rather you buy a graphics card and CPU than a console. With the rumored cost of the PS5 and Xbox APU and the margin, you are looking at $20 dollars in profit per console chip sold.

The fact that AMD can throw in a $60-100 dollar game with a CPU or GPU sale(they get a discount though), show you that the margins and money are so much better on desktop or laptop parts.

Starfield is actually good marketing in a sense. By having the game run like such crap without both a strong GPU and CPU, it forces buyers which got the game free with either a CPU or GPU purchase to complete the system with the complimentary purchase.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

AMD would rather you buy a graphics card and CPU than a console. With the rumored cost of the PS5 and Xbox APU and the margin, you are looking at $20 dollars in profit per console chip sold.

That's outdated thinking. Sony is their biggest customer. The semi custom division has been anchoring them for the last decade. It is integral to their success as a company. Unless A.I. and enterprise ventures go bonkers. Consoles will remain their best steady revenue stream.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

They haven't played it at 60fps so have no frame of reference to make that decision.

That's a blanket statement that paints with too broad a brush. John from DF has played on both, and while he prefers the PC experience, he had good things to say about console too.

I also consider not having a compare and contrast a positive for them. Instead of all of the rage fest from triggered PC gamers that have gone full snowflake this year. They happily play their game. It's similar to monitor quality, or graphics settings. Few can tell or give a crap when they don't have a side by side comparison. Almost every observation made on message boards like this is from PCMR demigod tier people that can indeed tell these things. That is not the case for the much larger gaming community.

 

[Mopetar]

That's outdated thinking. Sony is their biggest customer. The semi custom division has been anchoring them for the last decade. It is integral to their success as a company. Unless A.I. and enterprise ventures go bonkers. Consoles will remain their best steady revenue stream.

It's not so much about the revenue even, but that both Sony and Microsoft will help pay for R&D costs, which helps AMD fund development of new graphics IP even though they have a small share of the various markets in the PC and data center spaces.

Maybe they could get by without that now that their CPU side is doing so well, but I'd say it's still in their interest to eat low margins on the console SoCs as it ensures they're still an important part of the gaming market and helps them defray costs that would otherwise eat into their profits.

 

[Saylick]

People are playing on console at locked 30fps with no complaints. It's that kind of game.

You would probably be right at home here. https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/

Ooh, thanks for the tip. That subreddit seems right up my alley, especially since I don't game all that much these days and especially not on launch. All this drama about AAA titles not meeting PC enthusiasts' inflated expectations is getting annoying tbh. Gamers have no patience, high standards, and whine too dang much for my tastes. Maybe it's just me being older and more pragmatic about life, but stressing over stuff like this seems so frivolous in the big picture.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It's not so much about the revenue even, but that both Sony and Microsoft will help pay for R&D costs,

Hard to put a dollar number on that. But the value it provides has to be massive.

 

[Racan]

Starfield im Technik-Test: GPU-Benchmarks (FHD, WQHD & UHD), GPU-Benchmarks, Frametimes und VRAM

Starfield im Test: GPU-Benchmarks (FHD, WQHD & UHD), GPU-Benchmarks, Frametimes und VRAM / Das Testsystem und die Benchmark-Szene

www.computerbase.de

Funny, the 7800X3D works a bit better with the RTX 4090 according to computerbase.de

 

[kondziowy]

All CPUs perform better on 4090 in this test, which is surprising, because it may be one of a very few DX12 CPU tests that show nvidia perform better than amd. Intel cpus are almost at the same performance on nvidia and radeon, but all Ryzen chips are worse on Radeon. 7700X is also losing, not only X3D chips. Maybe a patch could fix it 😵 Game doesn't like Ryzen CPUs.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

All CPUs perform better on 4090 in this test, which is surprising, because it may be one of a very few DX12 CPU tests that show nvidia perform better than amd. Intel cpus are almost at the same performance on nvidia and radeon, but all Ryzen chips are worse on Radeon. 7700X is also losing, not only X3D chips. Maybe a patch could fix it 😵 Game doesn't like Ryzen CPUs.

Where and how they test is all the difference. HUB has the 7900XTX the fastest at 1080 ultra no upscaling. GN has the 7900XTX, 4090, and 4080 all CPU bound at 1080 high no upscaling. The game is a mess, and there is IMO no way to draw any definitive data from testing other than that LGA 1700 is the best platform for getting max FPS.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Where and how they test is all the difference. HUB has the 7900XTX the fastest at 1080 ultra no upscaling. GN has the 7900XTX, 4090, and 4080 all CPU bound at 1080 high no upscaling. The game is a mess, and there is IMO no way to draw any definitive data from testing other than that LGA 1700 is the best platform for getting max FPS.

-Bethsoft game a technical mess on launch?

 

[biostud]

So maybe a lightly threaded physics engine, that stalls the the rest of the engine?

 

[Mopetar]

Let's face it. They put a DX12 wrapper around a ~25 year old engine. Most of their dev time was probably spent working (most of) the bugs out so it would run. Any landing you can walk away from . . .

I really do hope Microsoft gives them or builds them a new engine.

 

[psolord]

I did a couple runs on my old systems, if anyone cares (non monetized channel-just for run)

2700k (that's a sandy bridge) and GTX 1070 medium preset 1080p

8600k + RTX 3060ti, High preset 1080p

I had done some testing on the 2500k, which had some problems, but the 2700k is helped by the extra threads and the extra cache and it is doing fine. Actually there are gpu limits at play here, the cpu could do better I am sure. 45fps in space with the 1070 maxed, 40fps outdoors fights with the 1070 maxed and mostly 60fps at indoor fights, with any framedrops being gpu limited really. System from PS3 era, are you kidding me? I bet if I threw the 3060ti in it, it would do much better. This will have to wait for next top to bottom upgrade though.

Ok the 8600k is too new. It does great and the 3060ti is fine also. 60fps mostly, in all active gameplay scenes.

 

[beginner99]

Hmm, some interesting questions here...but, if the API's are being used incorrectly, then that is not the fault of the API, but the fault of the programmers. So, BFG10K may be right in some ways, but if he is saying that the API's are at fault, well, I think we would both agree he is wrong there.

I agree with you and BFG10K. I was navie in think this would be good. The idea is good, more control and better performance. But the "human part" or say capitalism just doesn't work this way. It's not that the APIs are bad but that game studios are cheap and always have been. They also don't pay very well so no way some driver expert from NV would ever move to a game study for a 50% pay reduction.

My question is however why do studios even try? If vulkan/dx12 is such a burden, why even invest and not just do only dx11?

 

[mikeymikec]

Let's face it. They put a DX12 wrapper around a ~25 year old engine.

I'm confused.

Creation Engine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Initial release: Nov 2011, 11 years ago

A new iteration of the engine, Creation Engine 2, was used to create Starfield.

- edit - removed my last comment because I had the wrong game in my head.

 

[coercitiv]

I'm confused.

Creation Engine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Creation Engine is [...] based on the Gamebryo engine

Gamebryo was launched in 1997, 26 years ago.

 

[mikeymikec]

Gamebryo was launched in 1997, 26 years ago.

Ok, but unless it can be convincingly argued that say the devs simply slapped a new name on it or bolted a few bells and whistles on to it while the product still shows measurable issues from what we'll call the earlier revision, saying "based on" doesn't mean a great deal, does it? If Starfield was made for a 3D engine designed in 1997, it wouldn't look very good or perform well on today's hardware, right?

Generally speaking we expect designers of any sort to take what was good from an earlier design and improve on it, right? DirectX was released in 1995, no doubt DX12 is "based on" it yet no-one is complaining about that, are they?

 

[coercitiv]

Ok, but unless it can be convincingly argued that say the devs simply slapped a new name on it or bolted a few bells and whistles on to it while the product still shows measurable issues from what we'll call the earlier revision, saying "based on" doesn't mean a great deal, does it? If Starfield was made for a 3D engine designed in 1997, it wouldn't look very good or perform well on today's hardware, right?

Your argument is very sensible in isolation, but Starfield's performance results tell a different story: it's clearly paying a debt of sorts. It does not have to be about graphics, the engine's inherent mechanics may hinder performance.

That's what the 25 year old engine remark is about, a belief that Bethesda never really bothered to rebuild their engine from the ground up so that it can scale with modern hardware and modern programming. On the surface it's probably full of brand new features and enhancements, all the mandatory bells and whistles, but the deeper you go, the older the guts are.

That being said, I'm not necessarily convinced the above is true, I was merely explaining where the "25 years" came from and why that PoV is worth considering.