Bioshock Infinite [HardOCP] Review

[BrentJ]

Yeah, thank you for stating this. Many people attribute the "hitching" that occurs now and then to VRAM and it isn't that - the UE3 engine just old and clunky. Same thing happens in Batman: AC on occassion.

Bioshock Infinite is also a fantastic game so any hiccups are completely forgive-able, IMO.

The hitching we've attributed to loading, it happens, but it isn't graphics related, it's as you say, natural to the game engine. Game related, not GPU related. There are other games that are skippy too, like Skyrim, Far Cry 3, etc... sometimes it's just the game's fault.

 

[blackened23]

In every review we are called bias towards NV, and bias towards AMD, I guess if you are biased toward both at the same time you are doing something right.

Hah, so true. I remember a year or two ago, people referring to HardOCP as "HardAMD" - in reference to AMD bias - was a thing.

To me it's whatever. It's not bias - Games go back and forth, AMD faster in some and nvidia faster in others. Nothing new. Nvidia's driver team did excellent work with a release day beta update (for bioshock infinite), though.

 

[Stoneburner]

Umm...

 

[escrow4]

Look at that guru3D latency benchmark a few posts back - I'd currently take Nvidia's drivers and hardware over AMD's any day - people have already forgotten the black screen artifacting issues? The horrible frame time latencies (still not fully fixed)?

 

[cmdrdredd]

I rather like the approach HardOCP takes with "what is actually playable with this card?"

Take a given game and two cards and *gasp* play the game. Fiddle with settings while observing the framerate over the course of gameplay (not canned benches) and then decide what settings offered the best gameplay experience while also keeping the settings high. Tell everyone what you found. Maybe someone thinks 30fps is ok and would take maxed out everything, that isn't the point. What is the point as I see it is to offer an objective view of "this game felt best when we turned AA down to FXAA because with MSAA it was slower than we prefer". Or "We felt that playing at 1080p offered the best experience with this card, any higher was just a bit too slow for a quality experience." That's not exactly bias there. Especially when no two games go the same way.

You aren't going to hit the 2GB VRAM wall in BioShock Infinite. Not that demanding of a game, and with only FXAA support, that lessens it even more.

Yes you do, at 1080p the game is using 2GB at times. Both process explorer and precisionx/afterburner report the same thing.

 

[cmdrdredd]

n/m

 

[Xarick]

I hit 1.5 max on my 670 for ram. Runs pretty good with only loading hitching and a few signs.

The real question is .. did you guy like the game? Honestly.. I liked BIoshock 1 a lot better.

As far as feeling slow.. that is deliberate pacing.

Tomb raider was the better game to play right now.

 

[BrentJ]

I rather like the approach HardOCP takes with "what is actually playable with this card?"

Take a given game and two cards and *gasp* play the game. Fiddle with settings while observing the framerate over the course of gameplay (not canned benches) and then decide what settings offered the best gameplay experience while also keeping the settings high. Tell everyone what you found. Maybe someone thinks 30fps is ok and would take maxed out everything, that isn't the point. What is the point as I see it is to offer an objective view of "this game felt best when we turned AA down to FXAA because with MSAA it was slower than we prefer". Or "We felt that playing at 1080p offered the best experience with this card, any higher was just a bit too slow for a quality experience." That's not exactly bias there. Especially when no two games go the same way.

It's exactly what gamers do when they get a new game. Gamers load up the game, configure their graphics settings to what they think is playable, and start playing, if the performance is not fast enough they turn things off till its fast enough and feels right, if there is performance left over, they turn up graphics settings as far as they can go, ultimately with the goal of having maxed out settings with playable performance. We replicate what gamers do with games and video cards and share our experience, trying to find what can best be sacrificed for performance without a massive loss of image quality. If we find a setting that can be turned down that provides a big perf improvement, but not much visual change, that's a good thing for people on midrange cards. This is the kind of stuff we do.

 

[blackened23]

Yes you do, at 1080p the game is using 2GB at times. Both process explorer and precisionx/afterburner report the same thing.

Again, when you exceed VRAM use the game will crash. It doesn't hitch, it just doesn't function. I've seen it happen in surround resolutions when using excessive levels of MSAA. VRAM isn't an issue in Bioshock infinite at 1080p and it hasn't been an issue for me at 2560x1600.

 

[f1sherman]

Yes you do, at 1080p the game is using 2GB at times. Both process explorer and precisionx/afterburner report the same thing.

That's not the VRAM WALL.

Whatever the WALL is supposed to mean in GPU/gaming context,
scenario with texture streaming most certainly should not be covered with that term,
and is instead usually associated with cases with abysmal performance and huge fps drop when WALL is hit.

AB reporting xyz amount of VRAM means squat in this case.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Again, when you exceed VRAM use the game will crash. It doesn't hitch, it just doesn't function. I've seen it happen in surround resolutions when using excessive levels of MSAA. VRAM isn't an issue in Bioshock infinite at 1080p and it hasn't been an issue for me at 2560x1600.

here is screenshots of both process explorer and in game with the OSD listing vram usage at 1920x1080. 1991MB is pretty damn close to 2GB and doesn't leave a ton of room. Vram is totally an issue for sure. This is why I was saying I wish I didn't buy 2GB cards in other threads, but since I bought at launch I didn't have much choice. When you get to that point the stuttering starts. Before that is it 100% smooth. 2560x1440 goes up over 2000MB and stutters very often when it gets up there. So I don't know how else to explain what I see with this game. When it's below 1900MB even at 1700-1800 the game never stutters. The second it hits 1900MB (roughly 1.9GB) it stutters and the fps drops. This isn't the engine stutter, it's something else. If I go down even further in resolution or drop texture settings I don't see the same stutter.

Maybe you can explain what I'm witnessing without blaming the engine when it's clearly not the UE3 engine itself doing the stuttering. Perhaps Bioshock Infinite is just coded poorly in some way? When the game first loads or you are inside someplace, and see 1300-1600MB vram usage the game never stutters even once that is noticeable to me. I always have vsync off so there might be some tearing, but no stutter. When the vram usage ramps up the game physically pauses on screen. Usually less than a second's worth but it does get annoying when it does it often enough.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Again, when you exceed VRAM use the game will crash. It doesn't hitch, it just doesn't function. I've seen it happen in surround resolutions when using excessive levels of MSAA. VRAM isn't an issue in Bioshock infinite at 1080p and it hasn't been an issue for me at 2560x1600.

No it doesn't, what are you talking about?

How much a game can load, and how much it needs are vastly different btw. It's not like you hit 2GB in bioshock and madness occurs. Bioshock is simply preloading textures it doesn't need.

 

[blackened23]

here is screenshots of both process explorer and in game with the OSD listing vram usage at 1920x1080. 1991MB is pretty damn close to 2GB and doesn't leave a ton of room. Vram is totally an issue for sure. This is why I was saying I wish I didn't buy 2GB cards in other threads, but since I bought at launch I didn't have much choice. When you get to that point the stuttering starts. Before that is it 100% smooth. 2560x1440 goes up over 2000MB and stutters very often when it gets up there. So I don't know how else to explain what I see with this game. When it's below 1900MB even at 1700-1800 the game never stutters. The second it hits 1900MB (roughly 1.9GB) it stutters and the fps drops. This isn't the engine stutter, it's something else. If I go down even further in resolution or drop texture settings I don't see the same stutter.

Maybe you can explain what I'm witnessing without blaming the engine when it's clearly not the UE3 engine itself doing the stuttering. Perhaps Bioshock Infinite is just coded poorly in some way? When the game first loads or you are inside someplace, and see 1300-1600MB vram usage the game never stutters even once that is noticeable to me. I always have vsync off so there might be some tearing, but no stutter. When the vram usage ramps up the game physically pauses on screen. Usually less than a second's worth but it does get annoying when it does it often enough.

The hitching which you attribute to VRAM occurs in Bioshock infinite independent of resolution in the SAME SPOTS consistently. You can play it at 720p and the very same spots will hitch. It isn't VRAM. UE3 sucks. Period.

Let me add another fact as well. You can view frametime comparisons between the GTX 680 2GB and the GTX Titan which trace performance over time and framerates over time. The game has low minimum framerates and will hitch regardless of hardware because UE3 sucks as mentioned. Anyway, my point here is that Titan also hitches in the same spots. Obviously the Titan is not struggling for VRAM.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The hitching which you attribute to VRAM occurs in Bioshock infinite independent of resolution in the SAME SPOTS consistently. You can play it at 720p and the very same spots will hitch.

It isn't VRAM. UE3 sucks. Period.

How come then, when I dropped from 2560x1440 to 1920x1080 the spots that had the stutter at 1440 did not at 1080 while some were the same? 1440 too demanding? bigger textures to flush?

You say UE3 sucks but this is the only game where the gameplay is inhibited by the stutter. Are you saying the game does it by design? As in, the devs wanted the game to feel somewhat seamless in each area and by doing so required the engine to pool up textures that were not in immediate use and then flush them at preset times to load up new ones? That I could understand, if that is indeed the case.

I finished the game and learned to live with this "issue" but as I said before, this is the only game I have played using this engine that had this problem in such a pronounced way. It literally affected my gameplay during fights sometimes.

 

[blackened23]

How come then, when I dropped from 2560x1440 to 1920x1080 the spots that had the stutter at 1440 did not at 1080 while some were the same? 1440 too demanding? bigger textures to flush?

Oh okay. You also stated that Batman: AC never hitched for you with DX11/physx which I find highly comical, since there are hundreds of users stating otherwise even on this very board and on google. Anyway, let's just agree to disagree.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Oh okay, if you say so. You're either being disingenuous or getting behaviour that I don't.

You also stated that Batman: AC never hitched for you with DX11/physx which I find highly comical, since there are hundreds of users stating otherwise even on this very board and on google. Whatever. Believe what you will.

It's not believing anything, it's witnessing it. What I am saying is this.

Bioshock Infinite pauses the gameplay. Literally stop and you can't move for a little less than a second. Sometimes it will do it back to back within a couple of steps. Batman does not do that. It may stutter but the game never stopped action. Batman was more like the stutter you see in Skyrim.

I guess I could illustrate it like this.

Batman felt like this ---------- _--------- where the underscore was a stutter but was quick and didn't affect the gameplay during a fight or when looking around the city.
Bioshock feels like this --------__________--------- where the underscore is a stutter that is longer than batman and was more visible.

 

[Xarick]

I don't see how you are getting 1900, I only see just over 1500.
I also read though I don't know if true that bioshock is not flushing textures correctly and holding ones it doesn't need. Apparently they are working on it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I don't see how you are getting 1900, I only see just over 1500.
I also read though I don't know if true that bioshock is not flushing textures correctly and holding ones it doesn't need. Apparently they are working on it.

If you move around a large outdoor area then move into a corridor attached to that outdoor area it will show high usage sometimes. I highlighted one area I know for sure, Soldier Field after walking around then approaching a hallway.

 

[Xarick]

I wonder if sli has anything to do with it, because I am using single card.. dun really know.. just not having the pauses you are describing.

 

[bluesquare07]

You seem to be misinformed, we've never had a problem with our 7950 Boost throttling its clocks. It runs in-game at the proper frequencies for a stock 7950 Boost. We make sure all our cards are running at the right speeds before starting any review. If we were to see throttling, we'd mention it.

In every review we are called bias towards NV, and bias towards AMD, I guess if you are biased toward both at the same time you are doing something right.

Sorry, no bias exists here, I have loyalty only to our readers to present the facts as they are and provide useful gaming performance information.

You aren't going to hit the 2GB VRAM wall in BioShock Infinite. Not that demanding of a game, and with only FXAA support, that lessens it even more.

Thank you for clarifying all of this. Pro AMD users make things up all the time.

 

[bluesquare07]

Umm...

exactly LOL

 

[Firestorm007]

exactly LOL

You sir, take the cake for Troll of 2013. Well done.

 

[blackened23]

exactly LOL

With all of your ranting and raving you're no different than the fanboys that you decry, to be honest. Just for a different team, I guess?

 

[Phynaz]

Thank you for clarifying all of this. Pro AMD users make things up all the time.

Unlike Pro Nvidia users, right?

 

[Montsegur97]

Whichever card you own is the right choice! I've alternated between both...and one's always ahead of the other. In the end, both get the job done.