Digital Foundry: Microsoft's Xbox One X Benchmarks Revealed: 4K vs 900p/1080p plus back-compat metrics

Title C refers to Gears of War 4.

X1X's Gears of War 4 4K has about 36 fps.

https://gearsofwar.com/en-gb/community/gears-4-xbox-one-x

Mike Rayner: The first and probably most noticeable improvement is, of course, that we render the game at native 4K resolution. Not only does that mean a 4x increase in our native rendering resolution compared to 1080p on Xbox One, but it also means much higher resolution textures across the board – from characters to environments, visual effects, everything! Bringing that incredible level fidelity to the console for the first time, which so far has really been limited to top-spec PC rigs, has been incredibly exciting for us.

Mike Rayner: Our team have set out to really push what we can achieve at a native 4K resolution while maintaining a rock solid framerate – and all in time for our Day One Update so fans can experience Gears of War 4 running with the power of Xbox One X on release day.

With that being our focus, we’re running at 4K 30FPS for Campaign/Horde and 4K 60FPS for Versus with adaptive scaling to ensure a rock-solid frame rate that fans expect from our head to head multiplayer. Many of the improvements to Campaign also make it to Versus and Horde, including 4K, HDR, higher resolution textures, improved draw distances, and Dolby Atmos Support.

Again, lems hyped the X1X to impossible, unattainable levels. MS, as well, did the same with marketing that falls short of the reality, which, thus far has been shown, is that the X1X is not a "true 4k" console, as it cannot reliably produce 4k. "No compromises"; there are clearly compromises, evidenced by dev statements, DF analysis and other physical evidence (think E3). "True 4k"; except, of course, when the X1X cannot produce true 4k, which so far appears to be quite often.

So, bottom line, again, is that the X1X is going to use checkerboard, is going to produce fake 4k, and, in general, is going to fall short of the hype, again and again.

My arguments wasn't about pure 4K resolution i.e. it's about which GPU class for X1X.

@gamecubepad said:

@AdobeArtist:

Post of year

Yeah but does it have a flux capacitor? I'm not buying it unless I can go back in time to play good games.

Look at all the butthurt Cows. Hahahahaha The X1X is a powerful beast for $500!!!!!!!!

@reduc_ab_:

So the article actually demonstrated that all 1080p and 2 of 3 900p games could make the jump to 4k being straight ports, let alone optimized.

I'm still waiting for the source of your assertion in the article.

@ronvalencia:

Same here. It doesn't matter how it compares to some fanboy interpretation.

We will get to see apples to apples comparison of Forza, Gears, and TW3 versus GTX 1060 and RX 580.

Truth will be evident at that time.

Exactly. Nobody ever said this wasnt a mid-gen console. Its just a more powerful one with more bells and whistles.

ARC Survival result is not a fanboy interpretation.

The source of my assertion? Dude, the article makes it clear that the X1X will be using checkerboard at times, which is a technique utilized when true 4k, as such, cannot be attained. Furthermore, there are many other articles stating the same thing. Not sure what you're on about, but there you go.

The bench marks are not ultra preset though Ron are they? Barebone ports, for some of the games they show head room from xbox one to which developer could up the settings. Seems like if we str8 up read the bench marks Gears of War 4 would lose once devs start to crank things up to match your graphs. X1X for most of these games looks like it will be just under 1070 level. Which is mighty impressive actually.

Did You forget the part where the XB1X port of Gears 4 has major improvements like higher polygon models and HI Res textures or are you Blatantly trying to Spread Misinformation?

All this WITHOUT Optimizations (Brute Force) for XB1X HW.

Read my post to navyguy

I was going to mention this. The Gears 4 Benchmark is ~37fps at One S settings. Instead of trying to get the framerate higher, they'll optimize to accomidate better textures and effects. They should still be able to hit 30 FPS with those improvements but I don't expect ultra settings.

So in other words and the words of many game devs the PS4 Pro can not compete with the Monster Xbox One X. Good to know.

Xbox One X is a powerful compact piece of technology, I won't deny that and at $500 it's a solid price. Lately though, I've been contemplating and while I was originally going for the Xbox One X on release, I've decided to invest my money into further upgrading my PC. I know cost wise, it's more cheaper buying an Xbox One X, but I've been making some good money and my car was just paid off!

Got my 4K monitor, RAM, and a GTX 1080 ti coming in the mail in a few days. Shooting for that 4K 60 sooner rather than later...

Reminder that the Xbone X still has the same shit Jaguar CPU as the base model.

As mentioned by DF, the benchmark is old.

https://gearsofwar.com/en-gb/community/gears-4-xbox-one-x

Mike Rayner: The first and probably most noticeable improvement is, of course, that we render the game at native 4K resolution. Not only does that mean a 4x increase in our native rendering resolution compared to 1080p on Xbox One, but it also means much higher resolution textures across the board – from characters to environments, visual effects, everything! Bringing that incredible level fidelity to the console for the first time, which so far has really been limited to top-spec PC rigs, has been incredibly exciting for us.

Mike Rayner: Our team have set out to really push what we can achieve at a native 4K resolution while maintaining a rock solid framerate – and all in time for our Day One Update so fans can experience Gears of War 4 running with the power of Xbox One X on release day.

With that being our focus, we’re running at 4K 30FPS for Campaign/Horde and 4K 60FPS for Versus with adaptive scaling to ensure a rock-solid frame rate that fans expect from our head to head multiplayer. Many of the improvements to Campaign also make it to Versus and Horde, including 4K, HDR, higher resolution textures, improved draw distances, and Dolby Atmos Support.

....

Octus: Honestly, I may have died a few times defending the Outsider Village because I was too busy gawping at the visuals! What else is going on from a technical perspective that makes it look so good?

Mike Rayner: I guess that means we’re doing our job well!

We’ve worked on bringing a number of additional technical improvements that really bring our world to life more than ever before that are exclusive to Xbox One X. We have fully dynamic shadows now – so for example, if a tree is blowing in the wind, on the ground you’ll see that shadow of that tree dynamically move as you’d expect it to. We’ve also enhanced the detail in these shadows so they’ll look crisper and more detailed. The new Shadow improvements really add a lot to the feel of our environments.

One of the things you were probably gawping at (while you were busy dying, let’s not forget) in the Outsider Village are our real time light shafts – sometimes referred to as ‘God Rays’. You’ll now see shafts of sunlight or moonlight poking through statues, moving helicopter blades, the branches of trees and so on as they would in real life. It’s one of my personal favorite features because it’s just so visually eye catching and atmospheric.

We also have other features like improved reflections, longer draw distances and higher poly counts to further bump up the fidelity of our world.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-gears-of-war-4-face-off

All settings retain the same level of edge coverage which can be modified instead by the temporal AA sharpening option. These settings have a minimal impact on performance and, as such, we recommend using the highest possible anti-aliasing quality with your own desired level of temporal sharpening. The differences are extremely subtle to the point where it's not clear where Xbox One falls but it does appear to at least match the high setting.

...

Character level of detail determines the complexity of characters within the scene. Modifying this setting impacts how many on-screen characters will be displayed at full detail. At the lowest setting, for instance, only the player character is displayed at full detail. That said, in practice, the difference is incredibly subtle as is the performance cost. The final setting in this group is foliage draw distance which controls, of course, how much visible foliage is presented on screen. Interestingly, Xbox One seems to use a custom value here with results closer to the high setting but still falling short in a few areas.

....

Lighting and shadows

The first half of this cluster focuses on lighting the game world with options such as light shaft quality, light scattering quality and bloom quality. Gears 4 sports both screen-space style light shafts and true volume lights. The quality of the light shafts, often referred to as crepuscular rays, are used at various junctions throughout the game and can be completely disabled if desired. Increasing this setting simply improves the depth and quality of the individual rays and, on Xbox One, we're looking at the high setting once again.

Then we have light scattering quality, which controls the volumetric lighting used in various portions of the game. Increasing this option improves the precision of the effect resulting in cleaner results without additional artefacting along its edges. Xbox One actually appears to use the medium option here, which still looks quite nice, but lacks some of the precision of the higher quality settings. Bloom and lens flare quality are two rather subtle options, then, that influence the intensity of said effects and both of these appear to operate at the high setting on Xbox One.

When it comes to shadows, Gears 4 leverages the strengths of Unreal Engine 4 in order to present very high quality shadow representation, even on Xbox One. The first setting focuses on the resolution of the shadow maps and the number of dynamic shadows used throughout the game and is pretty typical for a modern release. Impressively, the Xbox One version is actually a match for the ultra settings on PC which was an unexpected surprise but there is a reason for it, as we'll touch on shortly.

Capsule shadows are another nice feature and something that was introduced in Unreal Engine 4.11. Essentially, these act as indirect shadows which help root characters more firmly in the scene. The high and ultra settings produce the same quality of capsule shadows but the former limits the number of characters per scene using the higher quality effect. Xbox One appears to be a match for the high setting.

...

We believe that this technique has allowed the team to make use of higher quality shadow maps on Xbox One.

Lastly, we have the all-important ambient occlusion which is designed to handle contact shadows throughout the scene... Xbox One is interesting in that it doesn't appear to completely match any of these results on the PC with very subtle differences in coverage. We'd peg it somewhere between high and medium but it's not entirely clear.

Advanced visuals

Screen space reflections have become a common method for displaying scene accurate reflections with a reasonable performance cost by utilising screen space information. The downside is that, when relevant data is occluded from view, the reflections lose the detail as well. We see this same behavior up through the ultra setting as higher settings simply display more refined, complex reflections. After examining a number of different areas, Xbox One appears to fall around the medium quality for this setting.

Real-time cinematics and advanced settings

There are just two options in this category - depth of field and sub-surface scattering. Depth of field controls the quality of the associated effect and is used exclusively in real-time cut-scenes. Xbox One appears to fall around the high setting

Sub-surface scattering, then, simply determines the quality of light playing off of skin and other fleshy materials. Xbox One appears to utilise the high setting here and the results do look excellent during the real-time cutscenes...

With that being said, I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know exactly how many frames X1X is going to get in game A or game Z, nor am I going to claim that this benchmark can come close to painting a full picture of how well or otherwise X1X, or any other PC graphics card for that matter, performs in the wide array of applications available out there. It does however, give us a fairly good idea of where X1X generally fits in the market, especially in the context of NVIDIA’s GPU offerings.

Xbox One version of Gears 4 is a mixed bag. Some settings run on medium while some match higher settings. This is what they ported and benched. Which means that a GTX 1070 with everything, not just one or two, settings cranked up to ultra with ambient occlusion and the like, at 4K out performs Gears 4's console settings running on X1X. They have a little room to work with to enable some features and maybe turn some up like AF but it's still not going to be Ultra settings.

XBO's version is mostly high settings with one setting being medium, another with medium-high and another with ultra settings.

With X1X's version as per Mike Rayner's statements, the graphics settings are higher than XBO's version.

Yet it's still locked at 30 fps and scales dynamically for MP. The GTX 1070 on high 4K averages 53 fps while X1X averaged mid 30's with medium-high settings.

A lot of benchmarks I've seen where GTX 1070 hits mid 30's AA is set to ultra as well at 4K. Turn that down and you're sure to get way better performance. I'm sure X1X wouldn't do Ultra AA at 4K.

DF's benchmark is the old build without any platform specific optimizations. PC version is NVIDIA Gameworks title, hence it has optimizations for NV hardware.

For example, Gameworks shadow sample code is faster than Microsoft's shadow sample code. 3rd party mods for Tales of Berseria has identified the original developers has used Microsoft's shadow sample code and 3rd party moder has replace it with Gameworks version, hence speeding up shadows on NV hardware.

Do you remember the straight Doom 2016 OpenGL Alpha build port to PC NV hardware?

Gameworks includes both efficient and bloated sample code.

To quote DF

Arguably more fascinating is Gears of War 4. There is overhead in the leap to 4K based on the benchmarks, but not a huge amount of it - not compared to Forza, at least. However, The Coalition announced upgrades for the game at E3 including higher resolution textures, higher polygon counts, longer draw distances, upgraded dynamic shadows and improved reflections. It's hard to believe that all of those could be accommodated in the relatively small render time improvement seen here, suggesting that more intensive optimisation for Xbox One X improves upon the raw benchmark result significantly.

XBO's memory handling has to be modified for X1X.

Mike Rayner: The first and probably most noticeable improvement is, of course, that we render the game at native 4K resolution. Not only does that mean a 4x increase in our native rendering resolution compared to 1080p on Xbox One, but it also means much higher resolution textures across the board – from characters to environments, visual effects, everything! Bringing that incredible level fidelity to the console for the first time, which so far has really been limited to top-spec PC rigs, has been incredibly exciting for us.

Mike Rayner: Our team have set out to really push what we can achieve at a native 4K resolution while maintaining a rock solid framerate – and all in time for our Day One Update so fans can experience Gears of War 4 running with the power of Xbox One X on release day.

With that being our focus, we’re running at 4K 30FPS for Campaign/Horde and 4K 60FPS for Versus with adaptive scaling to ensure a rock-solid frame rate that fans expect from our head to head multiplayer. Many of the improvements to Campaign also make it to Versus and Horde, including 4K, HDR, higher resolution textures, improved draw distances, and Dolby Atmos Support.

For MP, you omitted it's 4K 60 fps with adaptive scaling.

First of all, it's not DF's benchmark. It's from MS. Second, no one is denying that the X1X version of Gears will be improved. But you're kidding yourself if you think that four improvements is somehow comparable to PC's Ultra setting, which includes Ultra AA, Ambient Occlusion, and Screen Space Reflections. It's likely to just be moving from medium to high for those settings except texture quality. All of that while still only being 30 fps and needing to scale resolution down in MP, which I'm sure some of those upgrades won't carry over to.

I think the issue with Rons assessments is there is no conclusive evidence even on some of his graphs that prove x1x = 1070 level. There is no raw uncapped number at those presets on his graph to compare yet. I mean those cards below 1070 that average 30fps can also claim to equal 1070. Hey for this game they do hit the target 30fps cap. Who knows he may end up being right that x1x memory bandwidth prowess will overcome everything that is better on gtx 1070 to put it on the same level. There is just no convincing evidence yet.

Well there's this. Gears 4 4K Ultra (except for shadows and AO which are set to high) running on a 1070 at 60 FPS. If X1X was as powerful or if the memory bandwidth was so good that it put it over the edge, then Gears 4 on X1X could stay 4K native. Especially with high settings. But instead it will scale down to maintain the 60fps to who knows what resolution with some settings possibly turned down further as well.

Textures are not the only graphics setting upgrade.

Mike Rayner: I guess that means we’re doing our job well!

We’ve worked on bringing a number of additional technical improvements that really bring our world to life more than ever before that are exclusive to Xbox One X. We have fully dynamic shadows now – so for example, if a tree is blowing in the wind, on the ground you’ll see that shadow of that tree dynamically move as you’d expect it to. We’ve also enhanced the detail in these shadows so they’ll look crisper and more detailed. The new Shadow improvements really add a lot to the feel of our environments.

One of the things you were probably gawping at (while you were busy dying, let’s not forget) in the Outsider Village are our real time light shafts – sometimes referred to as ‘God Rays’. You’ll now see shafts of sunlight or moonlight poking through statues, moving helicopter blades, the branches of trees and so on as they would in real life. It’s one of my personal favorite features because it’s just so visually eye catching and atmospheric.

We also have other features like improved reflections, longer draw distances and higher poly counts to further bump up the fidelity of our world.

"Ultra AA".

DF: All settings retain the same level of edge coverage which can be modified instead by the temporal AA sharpening option. These settings have a minimal impact on performance and, as such, we recommend using the highest possible anti-aliasing quality with your own desired level of temporal sharpening. The differences are extremely subtle to the point where it's not clear where Xbox One falls but it does appear to at least match the high setting.

My comment: XBO's AA is already at high settings.

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"Ambient Occlusion"

Lastly, we have the all-important ambient occlusion which is designed to handle contact shadows throughout the scene... Xbox One is interesting in that it doesn't appear to completely match any of these results on the PC with very subtle differences in coverage. We'd peg it somewhere between high and medium

My comment: This is part of light and shadow pass.

-----------

"Screen Space Reflections"

Screen space reflections have become a common method for displaying scene accurate reflections with a reasonable performance cost by utilising screen space information. The downside is that, when relevant data is occluded from view, the reflections lose the detail as well. We see this same behavior up through the ultra setting as higher settings simply display more refined, complex reflections. After examining a number of different areas, Xbox One appears to fall around the medium quality for this setting.

Mike Rayner: "We also have other features like improved reflections"

For Campaign, EVGA GTX 1070 SC (Super Overclock) with 1784 Mhz (6.85 TFLOPS) has 53 average 4K high settings.

Not 60 fps with Gears of War 4's standard benchmark.

Gigiabyte Wind Force GTX 1070 is not a reference GTX 1070 with 1771 Mhz boost mode i.e. 6.8 TFLOPS.

Mike Rayner: With that being our focus, we’re running at 4K 30FPS for Campaign/Horde and 4K 60FPS for Versus with adaptive scaling to ensure a rock-solid frame rate

So, rather than distance yourself from the claim or articulate a position, you just want cheap (overused) ad hominem and crab-walk? You know that is the classic recipe for REKT.

Lol, how did you "rek" me exactly? All you did was babble on about some crap from last gen, which to be honest I couldn't be bothered reading all of. And if you look back at my post history (if you can go that far back), you'd find that I actually gamed mostly on PS3 last gen... so your argument there is moot. And I think you'd find that cows are the ones who kept/keep bringing up Scorpio/XB1 X last year and this year, more than lems.

But anyway, whatevs. I can't be bothered with this nonsense anymore.

It's cool. Tow the party line. The fact you try to make any Cow here out to talk about or obsess on the Scorpio only underlines how it ultimately made a believer of no-one. Not outside your circle. Please, point me to the "convert" who freaked out over something they would ultimately champion? I've been worndering since 2013 where this mass of XBox converts would come in and save the day. I'll take this positional argument any day over spit shining mediocrity and a lack of support another single day of my mortal life. Take your own advice. Get one. Who did Scorpio win over who wasn't already a disturbingly vocal plug for the previous XBox branded plastic box? I got news for you. . . The "silent majority" of gamers you have been praying would come to the rescue are unimpressed. Forget fanboys on a forum running damage control for this year's E3, the OP of this thread is proof that leadership can't justify their position with the damn plastic box or it's software.

I was vocal about being on-board if they would leverage their resources and show a game that showed, specifically, the power of this thing and it's not exactly wowing me or much of anyone. As it turns out, people would rather shit kittens over a game like Uncharted to give them that catharsis than a watered down PC that has jack zilch to call a library of its own.

Your video shows Gigabyte Windforce GTX 1070 overclock edition i.e. 6.8 TFLOPS version and not reference GTX 1070 FE. What's your GTX 1070 variant?

Reducing the shadows to high reduces memory bandwidth consumption.

DF: When it comes to shadows, Gears 4 leverages the strengths of Unreal Engine 4 in order to present very high quality shadow representation, even on Xbox One. The first setting focuses on the resolution of the shadow maps and the number of dynamic shadows used throughout the game and is pretty typical for a modern release. Impressively, the Xbox One version is actually a match for the ultra settings on PC which was an unexpected surprise but there is a reason for it, as we'll touch on shortly.

Both GTX 1070 and X1X has pros and cons and both GPUs doesn't have absolute superiority with each other i.e. X1X already has a weakness i.e. 6 TFLOPS cap limit, while certain GTX 1070 variants are approaching 7 TFLOPS.

@Shewgenja: Lol, whatever you say dude. I don't think anyone gives a flying fu*k if you're not interested in getting an X. I know I certainly don't.

There's about 30 million of you. May that fact comfort you.

Which is why pro will have the better looking games.

You sure are ignorant @scatteh316

Sure, and Microsoft will close the gap with Sony...

Is a 40% more powerful PS4 Pro without the exclusives..lol

And has plenty of games that aren't on PS4.

Also 40% but with 90% of the games running pretty much the same on both. Lousy deal.

has anyone counted these things up? I'm actually curious - there are a lot of games on both platforms that can be played on PC but not directly on the other console. What's the actual breakdown of "pure" console exclusives, and what's the actual breakdown of "can't be played on xbox consoles"/vs/"can't be played on ps consoles"

I can safely guess there are many many more console exclusives on PS4 than on the XboxOne. There are so many indie games these days coming to PS4/PC and not to Xbox. Hell this month alone I counted 5 or 6 console exclusive PS4 games and only 1 for for Xbox. Then there are the big games like Nier too. I guess having double the market install base really pays off.

@xantufrog: Very good question... I'm sure someone has a list.

Here is a question for some of you.

If the soonest Microsoft would launch another, more powerful Xbox console beyond XB1X is the Fall of 2021 (in four years, same amount of time between XBone and XB1X), what might be the absolute maximum spec they could get into a console the size of the original XBone (thus, not constrained by the smaller form factors of the XB 1S or the 1X) at $499? -- And taking into consideration the technology that will be available in the 2020-2021 time frame. i.e. 2nd generation 7nm+ FinFET process node w/ Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV), AMD's Zen 3 CPU and Next Gen GPU (beyond Navi), HBM3, more affordable SSD prices, etc. etc.

43% more graphical performance, 60% more memory, you seem to like leaving that part out.

And with PS4 games coming to PSN which was known by those non Sony fanboys was going to happen, anyone whose been saying X1 has no exclusives....according to their own logic PS4 now has no exclusives, which was the last shred of value PS4 fanboys were clinging to and expounding since they lost the power advantage.

Sumodigital dev whose developled for PS4 Pro speaking about Crackdown 3: We’ve got something like 15K simultaneous props moving around in our game [Crackdown 3]. Now the Xbox One X just eats them for breakfast.

You can just go and go and go with it. Once we start making games that are optimized for that platform, it’s going to be badass. I don’t mind saying that it’s significantly more powerful than the PlayStation 4 Pro, and we’ve worked with PS4 Pro. It’s way more powerful. It’s a night and day difference.

http://wccftech.com/sumo-digital-xb1x-15k-props/amp/

Night and day difference from a 3rd party dev. This is a performance gap within a gen the likes of which I don't think has ever been seen.

What Xbox haters are failing to realize is we haven't even seen the fully featured X1X devkits roll out yet, that doesn't happen till October, which will give devs the full 9GB of memory dedicated to games, among other features. The great performance we have seen so far already is on still in development, unoptomized games.

Oh, I didn't know all of the PS4 exclusives were going to be available on PS Now at the same time and forever.

Oh I didn't know all of the Xbox exclusives were going to be available on PC at the same time and forever. (halo)

Didn't know I made that comment :/

Who's down to start a petition to get Ron to quit quote training the way he does? I know this place is kinda the wild wild west of gaming forums, but we need to form a lynch mob for Ron.

I can play games for hours upon hours, and my thumbs are fine. Scrolling through any thread where Ron is posting on my phone, and my thumbs feel like they're about to fall off.