Digital Foundry (Official Thread)

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Not sure if anyone else saw this or not but I didn't see a Thread. Recently Digital Foundry has begun inspecting retro games for performance information. So far they've done Saturn Quake, Duke Nukem 3D on Saturn, N64, PS1, Genesis, Game.com, as well as Unreal Tournament on the Dreamcast and PS2. They're pretty interesting to look at and it's nice to finally have solid frame rate information on some of these games:

[Thief]

Makes sense. Isn't one or more guys behind Digital Foundry "Official Sega Saturn Magazine" guys?

EDIT - Ah yes, Richard Leadbetter worked for both OSSM and DigitalFoundry/Eurogamers. And I think Mean Machines before that too. http://www.segasaturn.co.uk/dd/inter...eadbetter.html

[gamevet]

DF has so much content, that it's hard to keep up with it.

Thanks for the heads up!

[Gentlegamer]

Literally retro console wars!

[Black_Tiger]

If this is the Quake video I watched a while ago, it's cool, but they really lack perspective.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Symphony of the Night:



Half-Life:

[Da_Shocker]

That was an interesting video to say the least but isn't it widely known that most 3rd part developers barely even used the VDP2 chip. Though I was a bit curious about the Saturn's load time which is also worse and that's not explained. And lord those prices are ridiculous, I bought this game for 39.99 at Cart-Mart back in 99. And I probably played it since 99 neither.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Perfect Dark and Goldeneye:



Looks like a lot of us, myself included, were pretty off on Framerate guesses on these.

[Barone]

Lol.

Gotta love N64 fanboys such as ABF who bashes Saturn's Quake and PS1's Duke Nukem 3D due to low frame rate while sweeping the dirt under the carpet.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Lol.

Gotta love N64 fanboys such as ABF who bashes Saturn's Quake and PS1's Duke Nukem 3D due to low frame rate while sweeping the dirt under the carpet.

To be fair I was pretty far off too with the guess at the framerate when the AA was turned off.

It is nice to finally have some solid numbers on these games though.

[Barone]

I don't blame you. An increase of two or three frames per second at below-15 fps is quite noticeable.
IIRC the AA off tends to help the worst instances of slowdown more than the others, in other words, the frame rate gets more consistent so your perception may be really tricked by it. A 16-to-13 variation can be perceived as quite less dramatic than 15-to-10, for an example; especially if controller response comes into play.

Anyway, I agree with you, it's great to have an exact measurement of these games.

[gamevet]

Perfect Dark performs much worse than I gave it credit for. I was thinking that it was near 15 fps, with dips into the 10 range. No wonder why it played so choppy.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Perfect Dark performs much worse than I gave it credit for. I was thinking that it was near 15 fps, with dips into the 10 range. No wonder why it played so choppy.

It also explains why when I tried to play it with friends a year or so ago it felt unplayable with bots turned on.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Remember guys, the entire generation was hovering around only 1 Million Polygons Per Second!:

[Barone]

This show has been amazing in terms of blowing unfounded assumptions out of the water.