Planetside 2 Dev says that the PS4's CPU Is A Bottleneck

Planetside 2 Dev says that the PS4's CPU Is A Bottleneck

| Source: Eurogamer Author: Mark Campbell

Planetside 2 Dev says that the PS4's CPU Is A Bottleneck

It has been known for a long time now that the massively online multiplayer game Planetside 2 will be coming to the PS4. Last weekend a developer working on the game, in an interview with Eurogamer, confirmed that they have been limited much more by the consoles CPU than it's GPU. This is the same claim that was made by Ubisoft when talking about Assassin's Creed Unity.

When the developer, Matt Higby, was interviewed he said that Planetside 2 is currently able to run at the equivalent of Ultra Settings on the PC, including Ultra textures, full particle affects, shadows and lighting but said that are not bottlenecked by the consoles GPU. Below is a quote from the interview.

"One of the things that's interesting about the way PlanetSide works from an engineering point of view is our bottlenecks aren't really on the graphics. On the PS4 that means we're able to have extremely high fidelity graphics. We're able to use the ultra textures. We're able to use the full particles, the shadow, the lighting, all that stuff, as if it were running on ultra on a PC.

Our real bottlenecks are on the CPU side. From a graphical fidelity perspective, people will be impressed with what they see on the PS4. That's always one of those things people are sceptical about. I see every time we post an article like this I always get called out: 'haha, it's bullshit he's saying it's going to look as good.' It really does.

Again, the graphical fidelity is every bit as high. The slowdowns we have are on the CPU side more than the GPU side. It's because we're tracking and updating so many different players moving on your screen and moving around at once. All that animation and all the audio that's associated with all those characters running around, all of their projectiles being simulated in their client, all those things end up hitting the CPU, not the GPU.

So, generally when our frame-rates are low, it's a CPU problem, not a GPU problem. And that's where we're optimising right now, to get our CPU running faster so the game is running at a more consistent frame-rate on the PS4."

When questioned on the console versions resolution on framerate the developer said that their current client can run at "well over 60fps. In a really big fight it gets bogged down. That's the bottleneck we're chasing down." They say they are aiming for 1080p 60FPS, but they might have to make compromises depending on how the optimisation process goes.

"We're trying to get a solid frame-rate. So if we go to 30 it'll be because we want to maintain a completely solid 30fps. But that's the optimisation we're working on right now. And we're still grinding on it."

Hopefully for the sake of future PS4 players a consistent 60FPS framerate can be achieved, especially given that this is an online game. Looking at both current generation consoles, both have very similar CPUs. When moving forward perhaps more games will be limited by the CPU grunt supplied by the Xbox One and the PS4 and not the graphics horsepower. This console generation will be with us for a while, so hopefully developers can learn how to make the most of their console CPUs.

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