GTA V - Most optimized AAA?

[Princess Luna]

I have to say it is impressive when such a good looking game managed to balance and optimize its using of your hardware so well, being one of the only recent AAA that does not automatically GPU bottlenecks at 4k, gotta admit this optimization is amazing.

 

Was it Rockstar's ask for forgiveness for the still laughable worse PC Port in gaming history with GTA IV? What other games are worth noting for their optimizing? We often talk about the ubishit non-optimized ones but not enough acknowledged when done right.

 

Crysis 2 is another good example of optimizing but differently, even playing at low preset that game looked gorgeous and increasing made little difference at the cost of heavy fps... So, what is best optimization? The one that manages to use your hardware to the maximum potential whatever it is and give you good gaming or the type that will be by default already great looking and polished so any one can play it good and who has the $ gets just small extra details with heavy taxing ultras?

[-TesseracT-]

Wait wat, how is the fps for all the cpus almost the same for all different resolutions?

[WereCat]

Just now, -TesseracT- said:

Wait wat, how is the fps for all the cpus almost the same for all different resolutions?

At 1080p the CPU may be the bottleneck and the GPU still has some headroom

At 1440p the GPU may be the bottleneck and CPU has barely any headroom (basicaly, really well balanced usage for the system)

At 2160p the GPU is the bottleneck.

[Subtle Corruption]

Umm no try enabling MSAA on AMD GPU's and enjoy weird artifacts.

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, -TesseracT- said:

Wait wat, how is the fps for all the cpus almost the same for all different resolutions?

Adjusted in-game graphical quality, it is high preset only this way it is less GPU bound even at 4k, you'd be amazed how much fps you gain walking away on Ultras, it all falls down to this gem I share daily:

 

[WereCat]

1 minute ago, Subtle Corruption said:

Umm no try enabling MSAA on AMD GPU's and enjoy weird artifacts.

Or override MSAA on NVIDIA cards with MFAA and enjoy even more performance

[Subtle Corruption]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Adjusted in-game graphical quality, it is high preset only this way it is less GPU bound even at 4k, you'd be amazed how much fps you gain walking away on Ultras, it all falls down to this gem I share daily:

 

One of my fave vids.

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, Subtle Corruption said:

Umm no try enabling MSAA on AMD GPU's and enjoy weird artifacts.

I don't see anything like that

[Subtle Corruption]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

I don't see anything like that

Well it happens on various AMD chips, i'm not alone, mind you talking of optimized, try ultra grass.. LOL.

 

GTA V is worlds ahead of GTA SA & IV though that's for sure.

[Guest]

I love GTA V. Infinite possibilities with mods. SLI scaling is excellent. Playing w/ Triple 1440p Ultrawide Surround is not a problem. I think a game that can play well on low and high end systems is best optimized. GTA V can take advantage of the speed given by newer hardware and can still be played on older systems. 

[MyName13]

20 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Crysis 2 is another good example of optimizing but differently, even playing at low preset that game looked gorgeous and increasing made little difference at the cost of heavy fps..

I don't know why but Crysis 2 looks pretty average even on maximum (to me)...

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, Legendarypoet said:

.

I might reinstall it now, getting quite excited about it actually, haven't played it since I got the 4k TV still wanna give a few car rides there... poor 1080 Ti... It's going to suffer cause I'm lazy haven't taken it off the FE yet to go AiO... hehe cheers!

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

I don't know why but Crysis 2 looks pretty average even on maximum (to me)...

Half-Life 2 is better than Crysis 2 It was just a good example of a type of optimization, this video actually goes on about it pretty well and I particularly like the host if you'd like to check out:

 

[WereCat]

5 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

I don't know why but Crysis 2 looks pretty average even on maximum (to me)...

I just installed Crysis 1 this week as I have not played it for years... I remember looking it godlike and I was not able to play it even on medium settings back then.

It looks really underwhelming even on Ultra now...

3 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Half-Life 2 is better than Crysis 2 It was just a good example of a type of optimization, this video actually goes on about it pretty well and I particularly like the host if you'd like to check out:

 

Hey! Fellow, kliksphillip fan

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

I might reinstall it now, getting quite excited about it actually, haven't played it since I got the 4k TV still wanna give a few car rides there... poor 1080 Ti... It's going to suffer cause I'm lazy haven't taken it off the FE yet to go AiO... hehe cheers!

Oh man, I remember the FE days. Imagine SLI FE... cards were screaming bloody murder lol!

I haven't played in a while either. Been using my Tis to surpass @iamdarkyoshi in F@H since I declared him my arch nemesis for no reason at all.

He's got 3 days... just three days....

[Mira Yurizaki]

I don't think these games are "optimized" because to me that implies they were horrible from the start and they had to be improved. Rather, I think these games are "well designed." This is something I like to call "bottom-up" development, versus "top-down" development.

 

What I mean by bottom-up versus top-down can be seen in Crysis and Crysis 2. If the video shared is true that CryTek wanted to make Crysis look like some CGI movie, then they developed with the mind set of aiming for that first, then removing details as necessary to get "better" performance on lower end hardware. However, if your art and design direction from the get-go was based off the top end, then it's going to suffer when you start removing things.

 

However when CryTek made CryEngine 3 for Crysis 2, they developed it from the bottom up. Meaning they wanted to get the engine to run on consoles, i.e., lower-end hardware. This means their art and design direction had to be tailored around what they could get from that kind of power. It didn't matter what settings you put the game on, it's going to look as the artists and designers wanted it to. The other benefit is you can add more to it without detracting too much from the intended art direction.

 

In the case of GTA IV and V's ports though, I'd argue it was more of a case of Rockstar wasn't proficient enough yet to make the jump from POWER to x86 and GTA IV is just a victim of being the first major RAGE game to make that jump. So it's unreasonable to expect a "near-perfect" port and since it was "good enough", it was likely also a victim of "Moore's Law will solve that"

 

Though the thing is certain design decisions can have sweeping effects that makes optimization impractical. i.e., that optimization touches a core component of the software and to change it means you can break a lot of things. For games where support life is pretty much non-existent on average after a year or so, you can't really afford to do those kinds of changes.

[PlayStation 2]

10 hours ago, Subtle Corruption said:

Umm no try enabling MSAA on AMD GPU's and enjoy weird artifacts.

Never experienced that with my 7850 with 4x MSAA.

[leelaa14]

10 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Adjusted in-game graphical quality, it is high preset only this way it is less GPU bound even at 4k, you'd be amazed how much fps you gain walking away on Ultras, it all falls down to this gem I share daily:

 

I watched that video a while ago and it helped me enjoy my games more. The only settings I make sure I have on ultra now is texture quality.
I then start with lowering shadows. In battlefield 1 I was running maxed out and getting about 70-80 fps at 1440p. Turned post processing down to medium and gained 30-40 fps with no visual downgrade from what I can see. I had to google what the change actually did and it seems it only really effects reflections in puddles.