The case for Pro consoles continues to grow stronger with current gen only games.
XSX has a very slight advantage in resolution at times during the DRS but very hard to tell. Also XSX has stuttering and artifacts not present on the PS5.
What's the deal with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - does this PC showcase scale to PS5 and Series X? Let's find out with Tom Morgan's tech analysis.
www.eurogamer.net
Based on the first three to four hours of play, neither PS5 or Series X get away unscathed from frame-rate issues - and gaining access to flying mounts later may even add additional stress to the engine. At times there's a constant GPU load, too, with the dynamic resolution scaling bottoming out at 864p and 50fps on both consoles. In these completely time and weather-matched scenarios, it's curious that neither console holds an advantage in terms of outright performance: both hover at the 50fps mark.
There is one further issue on Xbox Series X: traversal hitching. It's rare, but there are sudden frame-time spikes that pause the game entirely for around a second. I spotted it on a route to the Resistance HQ and around the Hometree base as well. Switching to PS5, neither of these areas have any hitching issues whatsoever. It's not a common problem, but it is one less grievance owners of Sony's machine have to contend with.
Summary
General:
- Plants react to player movement and break apart when you shoot them
- Rolling time of day and weather changes
- Ray-traced reflections and ray-traced global illumination on PS5 and both Series S & X
- Ray-traced reflections used on large water bodies like lakes with screen space reflections running over the top
- RTGI enables plants to bounce their specific hue onto the scenery
Resolutions and graphical settings:
- Series X Performance Mode: 1536x864 - 2240x1260 using FSR to reconstruct up to 4k. Movement on screen sometimes causes break up which reveals jagged edges
- Series X Quality Mode: 2304x1296 - 3200 x 1800. Quality is much cleaner.
- PS5 resolutions operate according to the same range as those on Series X but sometimes in the same sections PS5 will run at a lower resolution than Series X which reduces image clarity a little bit. Often hard to pick the two apart.
- Quality mode opens up a motion blur setting on consoles which helps smoothen 30fps in a small way
- Foliage LODs are improved on Quality Mode and shadows and ambient occlusion improve as well. SSR, volumetrics and alpha transparency effects run at higher settings on Quality mode as well.
- Series S resolution: 720p - 1080p which is reconstructed up to a higher resolution (Tom doesn't specify the reconstructed resolution but I'm guessing it's 1080p).
- Series S has lower texture resolution, lower plant density, lower volumetric effects, lower SSR quality. It still receives RT reflections and GI but ray tracing is also running at lower quality settings.
- FSR2 implementation has an issue with image break-up on Series consoles which doesn't affect PS5 to the same degree (or at all).
Performance:
- Both PS5 & Series X generally run at 60fps during on-foot traversal in performance mode.
- Both consoles can't lock to 60fps. They can range between 45 - 60fps. Battles often cause drops into 40s and 50s.
- Series X has traversal hitching while the PS5 doesn't have this hitching issue.
- Neither console has performance advantage over the other
- Both consoles run at a mostly constant 30fps with even frame pacing in quality mode but Series X still has traversal stutter in this mode
- Series S runs at a mostly stable 30fps but does tear some frames and have occasional frame drops into high 20s.