Mass Effect: Andromeda Benchmarks [PCGH]

[Jeshu4ever]

Broooo.... they actually intentionally made female faces ugly just like in dragon age inquisition.... BioWare why?

I understand inclusivity and social justice and whatever, but did you actually have to make women UGLY? This is one step too far in my opinion. They blew up all female faces like balloons and gave them huge jaws and lifeless eyes.

 

[Sweepr]

Spoiler

http://www.techspot.com/review/1358-mass-effect-andromeda-benchmarks

 

[IEC]

... and turning tessellation down to 8x on AMD cards will give double digit percentage performance gains.

This was discussed on page 1.

 

[tviceman]

... and turning tessellation down to 8x on AMD cards will give double digit percentage performance gains.

This was discussed on page 1.

Did you read the commentary? It sounds like techspot tested with AMD's tessellation profile enabled, but they're still slower across the board.

 

[Yakk]

... and turning tessellation down to 8x on AMD cards will give double digit percentage performance gains.

This was discussed on page 1.

Yeah AMD's optimized setting is still waaay too generous, 8x is usually about right.

 

[antihelten]

Broooo.... they actually intentionally made female faces ugly just like in dragon age inquisition.... BioWare why?

I understand inclusivity and social justice and whatever, but did you actually have to make women UGLY? This is one step too far in my opinion. They blew up all female faces like balloons and gave them huge jaws and lifeless eyes.

Whilst we can certainly agree that the woman on the right is prettier, I would say that if you genuinely believe that the woman on the left is ugly, then you must live a blessed life.

I would say that the woman on the left simply look like a normal average woman, and unlike the woman on the right she isn't wearing makeup which makes zero sense on a soldier anyway.

I haven't seen any examples where the information he posts is dead wrong, seems to have been made up, or appears to be filtered through either red or green goggles.

Zlatan was dead wrong about the Switch featuring Pascal (and not Maxwell as was reality), he also made a number of other claims regarding the switch that turned out to be incorrect, including the fact that it clocks up significantly when docked. Although in fairness, with those thing he may have been simply reporting outdated information, and not outright false information.

 

[pj-]

Broooo.... they actually intentionally made female faces ugly just like in dragon age inquisition.... BioWare why?

I understand inclusivity and social justice and whatever, but did you actually have to make women UGLY? This is one step too far in my opinion. They blew up all female faces like balloons and gave them huge jaws and lifeless eyes.

I think the characters look bad, but this image is ridiculous.

Yeah you can dick around in photoshop and make something that looks better in a still image, but how is it going to look in game? How does it animate?

Lighting and animations are the biggest reason why the characters look so stupid. That photoshop's biggest change is basically fixing the eye lighting.

 

[antihelten]

That photoshop's biggest change is basically fixing the eye lighting.

Honestly, the change to the eyes has relatively little to do with lighting and more to do with makeup (and the lack thereof in the original image). The woman on the right has clearly had mascara and eye shadowing applied.

With that being said though I think the change to the nose is also quite significant, but all of this basically comes down to the fact that the woman on the right looks like a photo model and the woman on the left looks like a normal average woman (and in some peoples opinion having average looking people in a video game is apparently blasphemy).

 

[kondziowy]

Did you read the commentary? It sounds like techspot tested with AMD's tessellation profile enabled, but they're still slower across the board.

The results look good actually and are realistic. I checked and PCGH were right, Fury gets about 16% boost with tess off. So in spot with 55fps it goes to 64 fps. I wonder if the same boost is possible to get on RX480 and Nvidia cards. Anyone?
But guys, this is not over yet, wait for pCLAB results. Only then you will know, how deep you can make Radeons fall. This ultimate test is still ahead of us. Brace yourselves.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Honestly, the change to the eyes has relatively little to do with lighting and more to do with makeup (and the lack thereof in the original image). The woman on the right has clearly had mascara and eye shadowing applied.

With that being said though I think the change to the nose is also quite significant, but all of this basically comes down to the fact that the woman on the right looks like a photo model and the woman on the left looks like a normal average woman (and in some peoples opinion having average looking people in a video game is apparently blasphemy).

No, the woman on the left looks like a potato, due to poor modeling/texturing/lighting/shadowing. I ranted about this in the Gaming forum thread as well, but it looks amateur. We've seen better on nexusmods for Oblivion. In fact, here's an example:

Note the relatively poor eye -> face conversion (hard lines, too specific of a transition to be 'natural'), as well as the lack of shadowing for the hair, relatively poor shadowing overall, and texture resolution mismatch between skinand hair, probably eyes as well. Feel free to disregard the clipping from a poor snapshot angle. Aside from lighting effects seemingly added to create a plasticity effect on the skin of the character in the Andromeda photo, there's a lot of similarities going on which shouldn't be there.

All of the above is to be expected from a character overhaul mod released in 2013, for a game released in 2006. A game released in 2017 can do better, as seen by, well, like a dozen AAA games released in the last year.

 

[pj-]

Honestly, the change to the eyes has relatively little to do with lighting and more to do with makeup (and the lack thereof in the original image). The woman on the right has clearly had mascara and eye shadowing applied.

With that being said though I think the change to the nose is also quite significant, but all of this basically comes down to the fact that the woman on the right looks like a photo model and the woman on the left looks like a normal average woman (and in some peoples opinion having average looking people in a video game is apparently blasphemy).

No, the one on the left looks like a bad videogame model. Watch any footage of the game, the eyes are lit badly for almost every human character. In addition to that, this specific character's facial proportions aren't realistic (not the same as attractive), and her default expression is a goofy grin.

Look closely at the eyeballs in both pictures. The photoshopped one has natural shadowing on the eye itself, it's not just makeup. You could make the in game model a lot more pleasant looking with no structural changes, only lighting.

All of the above is to be expected from a character overhaul mod released in 2013, for a game released in 2006. A game released in 2017 can do better, as seen by, well, like a dozen AAA games released in the last year.

Not to mention the previous Mass Effect games...

 

[Magee_MC]

Whilst we can certainly agree that the woman on the right is prettier, I would say that if you genuinely believe that the woman on the left is ugly, then you must live a blessed life.

I would say that the woman on the left simply look like a normal average woman, and unlike the woman on the right she isn't wearing makeup which makes zero sense on a soldier anyway.



Zlatan was dead wrong about the Switch featuring Pascal (and not Maxwell as was reality), he also made a number of other claims regarding the switch that turned out to be incorrect, including the fact that it clocks up significantly when docked. Although in fairness, with those thing he may have been simply reporting outdated information, and not outright false information.

Fair enough. I didn't follow that thread, and missed those. Thanks!

 

[Carfax83]

Well I bought the game and have been playing in the beginning area, and man I have to say that this game has some impressive graphics! It's such a massive leap compared to previous Frostbite 3 games that I've played, it makes me wonder whether this isn't a fully upgraded engine, ie Frostbite 4.0.

The amount of dynamic lighting and shadows in particular is greatly increased. More importantly though it runs very smoothly, at 1440p maxed settings on my system. 60 FPS with triple buffered Vsync on the vast majority of the time, with some dips here and there. But even if it dips below 60 FPS, the game still remains smooth due to how great the triple buffering implementation is.

So far I've been enjoying the game, and I hear it only gets better the further you progress.

I give further impressions in the Mass Effect Andromeda thread in the PC gaming forum.

 

[Dribble]

Whilst we can certainly agree that the woman on the right is prettier, I would say that if you genuinely believe that the woman on the left is ugly, then you must live a blessed life.

I would say that the woman on the left simply look like a normal average woman, and unlike the woman on the right she isn't wearing makeup which makes zero sense on a soldier anyway.

I am playing a movie, not living real life. This game is about flying through space, fighting aliens, and causing big explosions not going to the store to pick up some milk. This is 2017, I want at least 2014's Lara Croft level of character design. Not some bad imitation of HL2 from 2004.

 

[antihelten]

No, the woman on the left looks like a potato, due to poor modeling/texturing/lighting/shadowing. I ranted about this in the Gaming forum thread as well, but it looks amateur. We've seen better on nexusmods for Oblivion. In fact, here's an example:

Note the relatively poor eye -> face conversion (hard lines, too specific of a transition to be 'natural'), as well as the lack of shadowing for the hair, relatively poor shadowing overall, and texture resolution mismatch between skinand hair, probably eyes as well. Feel free to disregard the clipping from a poor snapshot angle. Aside from lighting effects seemingly added to create a plasticity effect on the skin of the character in the Andromeda photo, there's a lot of similarities going on which shouldn't be there.

All of the above is to be expected from a character overhaul mod released in 2013, for a game released in 2006. A game released in 2017 can do better, as seen by, well, like a dozen AAA games released in the last year.

The woman does not look like a potato, that's obviously just hyperbole, and the modelling and texturing is perfectly fine, the lighting/shadowing might need some work, but that's really hard to tell, when you can't see where the light sources are in the picture, nor their number/nature. She also looks significantly better on a technical level than the character you posted.

No the woman doesn't look like a photo model, and no she's not wearing makeup, and yes she's doing a slightly goofy looking expression. None of that makes her ugly or a poor model from a technical aspect (the animations are of course a different aspect, but those can't be judged from a still shot).

No, the one on the left looks like a bad videogame model. Watch any footage of the game, the eyes are lit badly for almost every human character. In addition to that, this specific character's facial proportions aren't realistic (not the same as attractive), and her default expression is a goofy grin.

Look closely at the eyeballs in both pictures. The photoshopped one has natural shadowing on the eye itself, it's not just makeup. You could make the in game model a lot more pleasant looking with no structural changes, only lighting.

Not to mention the previous Mass Effect games...

I'm not saying that the eyes are not necessarily poorly lit in this game, but rather that the main difference with the eyes between the original model and the photoshopped version has little to do with better lighting and far more with the (virtual) application of makeup.

And to claim that the characters facial proportions aren't realistic is just plain silly, humans display such a wide range of facial proportions and bone structures, that there is nothing even remotely unrealistic about the ME character. At worst you might say that her proportions are mildly unusual, but even that would be an exaggeration imo.

And yes the photoshopped image also features self-shadowing on the eyeballs, and yes doing just this would go a long way, but the point is that the photoshopped model goes a lot further than this by also adding make up.

Besides you do know that the model doesn't actually look like this in game right? the above model is actually an older model, the new model that is actually in the game looks like this:

I am playing a movie, not living real life. This game is about flying through space, fighting aliens, and causing big explosions not going to the store to pick up some milk. This is 2017, I want at least 2014's Lara Croft level of character design. Not some bad imitation of HL2 from 2004.

And that's perfectly fine. Preferring that the characters in your games look more like movie stars, and less like pedestrian everyday people is perfectly normal, but to go from there and to claim that the ingame model looks outright ugly or unrealistic is just silly.

 

[sontin]

Computerbase has released their article with a detail look at Tessellation in the game: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03...-tessellation-auf-der-radeon-rx-480-1920-1080

Game uses a max factor of 16. AMD is limiting the factor to 8x with the "optimized" profile. There is a difference between 8x and 16x. I guess case closed and we can call it "cheat".

 

[nvgpu]

Any company that intentionally reduces tessellation factors is cheating, period. If your hardware can't handle high tessellation well, stop calling it a DX11 or DX12 card.

 

[kondziowy]

Yeah I agree there is a difference. Tess x2, x4, x16 and app controled has pretty bad reflections on the water. Tess off is very nonticable on mountains. I guess I'm setting AMD optimised, x8 or x6 for my playthrough. Best water reflections. Other settings look broken.

 

[PhonakV30]

Any company that intentionally reduces tessellation factors is cheating, period. If your hardware can't handle high tessellation well, stop calling it a DX11 or DX12 card.

any cards that can't handle Async compute then You should not call it DX12 card , right? oh Man........

Computerbase has released their article with a detail look at Tessellation in the game: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03...-tessellation-auf-der-radeon-rx-480-1920-1080

Game uses a max factor of 16. AMD is limiting the factor to 8x with the "optimized" profile. There is a difference between 8x and 16x. I guess case closed and we can call it "cheat".

Fanboy Alert.same as maxwell that is doing Async compute via serial workload in 3Dmark Time Spy.

 

[caswow]

>6 tess there is litteraly no difference.

 

[Spjut]

AMD users can still use the default tessellation settings, can't they? The "cheat" isn't forced.

Anyway, I'd prefer for Nvidia too to have the option to "cheat" for better performance.

 

[Headfoot]

Well this thread quickly turned to garbage yet again.

On an actual related to the thread note -> AMD posted in 17.3.3 that there is a Crossfire profile for the game. They said to set your advanced launch parameters to have "-RenderDevice.AmdCrossFireEnable 1" but it doesn't work. They just clarified today there is an application update for ME:A that has to get released to the public yet. They were close to day 1 CF but missed it. Within the first week is still pretty good comparatively.

 

[Piroko]

Computerbase has released their article with a detail look at Tessellation in the game: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03...-tessellation-auf-der-radeon-rx-480-1920-1080

Game uses a max factor of 16. AMD is limiting the factor to 8x with the "optimized" profile. There is a difference between 8x and 16x. I guess case closed and we can call it "cheat".

Any company that intentionally reduces tessellation factors is cheating, period. If your hardware can't handle high tessellation well, stop calling it a DX11 or DX12 card.

Haha, if only you two could read german. The article paraphrased says "difference between x8 and x16 can only be found by nitpicking".

The article also mentions that "having Tesselation activated costs performance even when there's nothing obviously tesselated in the scene". And the benchmarks on page two are with deactivated optimization. Hawaii in particular can gain a solid 14% (computerbase.de) up to 21% (golem.de, table at the bottom of the article) by activating the optimized Tesselation.

This setting alone is pretty much the difference between where the cards are positioned and where one would expect them to be imho.

 

[Carfax83]

Personally, I don't see an issue with AMD optimizing their tessellation game profiles, providing that the user is aware of this. It's only cheating if nobody knows about it, including the reviewers.

 

[Carfax83]

Haha, if only you two could read german.

Piroko, could you translate this paragraph for me? The online translators aren't really specific enough and I'd like to know what it says concerning the temporal anti aliasing.

Zwei verschiedene Kantenglättungseinstellungen gibt es im neuen Mass Effect: FXAA sowie Temporal. Bei beiden handelt es sich um Post-Processing-AA, wobei die temporale Einstellung FXAA klar vorzuziehen ist. FXAA behandelt die Vegetation nicht. Und die flimmert dann in Bewegung extrem. Temporal fügt der Kantenglättung die namensgebende temporale Komponente hinzu und bearbeitet die Vegetation. Flimmern wird effektiv behandelt, wobei in Full HD eine leichte Unschärfe aufkommt. In 2.560 × 1.440 ist von dieser dann nicht mehr viel zu sehen und in 3.840 × 2.160 ist der unschöne Effekt völlig verschwunden.]/quote]