Hitman Absolution HD

Hitman Absolution HD is a good way to play the game that has many improvements over the 360 version, although there are a couple of problems with this new release. The basics start off well with the game targeting 60FPS and a minimum of 1080p on Xbox One, bumping up to 1296p on PS4, 1440p on PS4 Pro, and 1800p on Xbox One X, which is a doubly marked upgrade since the 360 version had improper framepacing at 30FPS that still persists in back compat (although 120hz output on capable Xboxes helps tighten the variance in frametimes). As IO Interactive mentions on its blog post about the new version, shadow and texture quality get bumped up to PCs high setting out of ultra. The quality of reflections is now also equivalent to PC’s high setting, however it has the same reflections missing as the 360 version and PC’s low setting. Lighting calculations are now no longer baked into textures, so there’s much less banding on specular lights than on 360 and PC.

There are also changes that go beyond that IO has mentioned. The level of detail has been improved to varying degrees. Generally, the level of detail is between PC’s low and medium setting with some objects taking from to high or ultra instead.

Other than that the basic settings are unchanged from the 360 release. It still uses trilinear texture filtering, so it’d be worthwhile playing it on Series S or X for a boost to x16 AF.

The Chinatown level shows the trash bags lined up alongside the wall are rendered further away on console than PC’s high setting (but lower than ultra), but the melons on the crates to the left aren’t rendered in yet.

Looking at the Terminus level, the crates and trash bags nearby are partially rendered in on console, between low and medium, but the trash bag behind the chainlink fence is fully rendered in, equivalent with PC’s high setting.

All of those settings are the same across the 8th gen consoles, but there are a few differences between Playstation 4 and Xbox One consoles. The first is that Xbox One consoles don’t have any anti-aliasing, while PS4 and PS4 Pro is using a post-process AA that blurs edges and slightly softens texture detail. The second is a a change to the UI on PS4 and PS4 Pro where it has lowered black levels, which is very obvious on the main menu. One more thing I spotted is that the windows in the Courthouse section have a more desaturated tint on PS4 and PS4 Pro than on the other versions. I don’t think it’s related to progression and even the PS3 version has the same tint as all the others, so I don’t know what it could be because. What’s also the same for all consoles however, is a bug from the original release where the screen can flash for a frame or two in some spots depending on how you have your camera positioned, but it’s easier to trigger because frames are commonly refreshing faster (I’ve only seen this twice in the first 14 of 20 chapters I played).

Subjectively, the darker HUD makes targets seem more mysterious since they’re more obscured. You’ll also see the text is vectorized, but everything else is rasterized and doesn’t upscale well to 4K. Just the same as PC.

Fortunately for performance, the consoles mostly lock to 60FPS. The main reason for framerate drops are reflections, crowded areas on PS4 and Xbox One, long draw distances on Xbox One, and hitching when hitting a checkpoint upon completing a level segment. In my testing the Xbox One X inched out slightly in performance with 99.94% of frametimes being 16.6ms, but they all churned out 16.6ms frametimes at least 97% of the time and comparing Xbox One S to Xbox One, I only saw one segment that had any serious improvement that couldn’t be explained by run-to-run variance.

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Over all, then, between Xbox One and PS4, it’s a preference of whether you want a sharper Over all, then, between Xbox One and PS4, it’s a preference of whether you want a sharper image with worse performance or a smoother image with better performance, a slightly more accurate depth of field, and UI black crush. Series X is the best way to play it on console, however the game still looks best maxed out on PC owing to missing features on console like the select reflections and tessellation, and general lower settings.

Catherine Full Body

Internal Resolution	720×408
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	111mhz

Note: The game exhibits slowdown when it fails to hit 30FPS.

Performance Summary

Note: 6 minutes of gameplay footage and 11 minutes of cutscene footage were sampled for the data. All of it was from the 2nd through 6th Nights, even though other parts of the game are factored in when discussing it.

On stock settings, there is slowdown in a couple of cutscenes and on the landing floors, but the GPU is only clocked to 111mhz, so bumping it to 222mhz still nets superior performance at 544p. Stages and the landing floor are now locked to 30FPS and cutscenes hold it 99% of the time with a low of 23FPS when opening a door after the last stage of the night- overall a good showing. 720p on the other hand is the worst of the lot, only holding 30FPS in cutscenes 41% of the time with a low of 13 FPS when opening doors as mentioned before. The landing floor still has slowdown, it’s just not included in the data I’ve provided. Stages now keep to 30FPS 89% of the time, with the boss stages and Axis Mundi having slowdown as low as 24FPS. The normal stages are locked, so I assume the first three Babel trials would be, too.

Detailed stats available

Resolution Hack

Internal buffer hack available through Vitagrafix and 720p framebuffer hack available through CBPS

Ace Combat Assault Horizon: PS3/360/PC Comparison/Framerate Test

The black sheep of the franchise, but as good a game in it’s own right and as patriotic to the American way as a Japanese developed game can get after Metal Wolf Chaos, Ace Combat Assault Horizon fittingly turns out better on an American console while the Japanese console is dealt sloppy seconds, with the PC port refining the groundwork made by the former.

Tackling resolutions, both consoles hand in 1152×648, 90% of 720p on each axis. 360 is equipped with x2 MSAA and PS3 is equipped with with FXAA. Now, the AA implementation on PS3 comes at odds with the depth-of-field as it makes the depth-of-field not take some parts of edges into consideration, which is on top of the aliasing on both consoles that’s amplified when it’s in use. Other differences can be seen in shadows, where PS3 uses percentage closer filtering while 360 uses a blur filter which, at the cost of information, better blends in with the scene.

The only outright downgrade on PS3 is the reduction in foliage, which the kind removed is entirely dependent on the supplementary detail in the environment. Miami, for example, has trees cut because there are buildings . Meanwhile, the outskirts of Eastern African settlements- because trees are the prominent detail- simply have less shrubbery, but, it’s never a significant amount to look out of place when judged by itself. One thing that sticks out like a sore thumb on both consoles, however, is the selective use of a half-resolution alpha better on the radar rays and flares. The right stick doesn’t get much use and the flares are relegated to the bottom part of the screen, so the flares aren’t a real issue, but the radar rays are used extensively in the Launch mission.

Looking over to at the PC version, it’s based on the 360 version and carries the improvement of having a full-resolution alpha buffer across the board, along with uncapped framerates and the other usual benefits of PC ports that you can read about on PCGamingWiki. The only downside graphically speaking is that FXAA is always enabled whether or not AA is toggled on.

There’s the ranking of the ports as far as visuals are concerned, but PS3 takes a further beating when it comes to performance. Both 360 and PS3 use double-buffered vsync and it works well enough for the cutscenes, where they are basically locked, and for normal gameplay when in a fighter jet. There’s the occasional framerate drop upon a destruction in dog-fighter mode and when in pursuit during scripted sequences, but these happen more often on PS3 than 360. It only gets worse, however, when ground strike, attack helicopter, and door gunner segments are thrown into the mix and explosions are kicked up a notch. Both consoles have times where they sit at 20FPS during the door gunner missions , but it happens more on PS3. The 18-minute data sample includes a 9-minute segment from the Lock and Load mission where it holds 30FPS 98.42% of the time on 360 and 74.72% of the time on PS3. The ground strike and attack helicopter segments have it off a little easier, sticking to 30FPS 98.40% of the time on 360 and 90.24% of the time PS3, but those have their own problems. The ground strike missions direct you to numerous points of interest that all feature plenty of explosions and the attack helicopter’s targeting works against performance because it zooms in to the target. Since these aspects of gameplay take up about half of the campaign, they can’t be ignored, and with the multiplayer not only also containing ground strike segments, but completely vacant , the campaign’s the only thing to look froward to and best not be bothered with if you’re looking to play it on PS3. 360 doesn’t get away scott-free, but the version doesn’t drop in framerate too often if you’re comfortable with 30FPS.

 

Framerate data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PuD0ftHP0DFp42Nx0To9ArpCvtTFY2ArbXgVXYQibG4/edit?usp=sharing

One Piece: Burning Blood

Internal Resolution	704×384
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

Note: The game exhibits slowdown when it falls short of 30FPS.

Performance Summary

Note: 20 minutes of footage was sampled using half of the available characters

Looking at Vita’s stock speeds and resolution, it held 30FPS 88.7% of the time, with a low of 26FPS. Release abilities and moves while awakening is active are the main points of contention with this version, however 99.72% of the framerates are above 24FPS, so increasing the GPU to 222Mhz with LOLIcon would bring the game closer to a 30FPS lock. And for the heck of it, I tested the first wanted mission at 544p [with the GPU clocked to 222mhz]. The average framerate here went from 29.81FPS with a low of 23FPS to 28.76FPS with a low of 20FPS.

Detailed stats available

 

Resolution Hack

Resolution hack available with Vitagrafix

World of Final Fantasy

Original Resolution	640×384 (native UI)
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

Note: The game exhibits slowdown when it hits about 15FPS.

Performance Summary

Note: The first ten of the main story’s twenty one chapters was sampled

Bottlenecks are seen across so much of the game, nothing is safe from framerate drops. The simplest of cutscenes sees the Vita barely struggle to pull numbers into the mid 20s, and even while walking around overworld while strolling on a mirage, the framerate still only reaches the high 20s. At it’s worst, albeit in a cutscene, the game falls down to just 8FPS on stock speeds. During battles, it’s only guaranteed in the opening seconds of battle, with battles hovering in the mid to high 20s. On top of the additional stutters in battle when compared to the Switch version and when dialogue boxes pop-up while in the overworld, it’s got too many problems to be enjoyable. Maxing the GPU and CPU speeds doesn’t remedy performance much, either. Outside of alpha effect heavy scenes, 384p and 544p actually stay pretty close to each other. There are a few cutscenes where they matched performance, but roughly half of them where 544p turn in even worse performance than 384p at stock speeds. Considering that the the game slows down when the framerate goes lower than 15FPS, when it gets bad on 384 at stock speeds, it’s even more aggregious at 544p. The lowest I’ve seen it go is 6FPS in a cutscene. Seeing it run poorly kinda makes you want to take the thing out back. Cornelia hovers in the low 20s at both reoslutions, but exploration outside of the town stays locked to 30FPS when not factoring stutters at 384p and stays at 28FPS or higher at 544p. In addition, combat is much more torlerable at max speeds. 384p can still drop into the high 20s and 544p can still drop to 20FPS during Reynn’s Channel element attack.

 

 

 

Resolution Hack

Resolution hack available with Vitagrafix

Overclocking the CPU to 500mhz – Performance Analysis

For the first time, the Vita has been overclocked, courtesy of dots_tb’s LOLICon. The CPU can now be bumped up to 500Mhz; a 12% increase in clock speed over what was previously possible. Here’s a look at what’s improved with it and what shouldn’t be expected out of it.

 

LOLICon’s Github – https://github.com/dots-tb/LOLIcon

MotoGP 14

Original Resolution	704×448 (native UI)
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

Note: A quick test on Catalunya failed to show improve performance when the resolution was lowered from 704×448 to 640×368 (75% of the pixel count), possibly pointing towards a CPU bottleneck.

Performance Summary

704×448/Default Clock Speeds – All of the tracks that were carried over to MotoGP 14 from MotoGP 13 that I tested except for Losail showed inferior performance in comparison to their MotoGP 13 counterpart. Austin loses it’s locked 30FPS and now has sustained drops as low as 24FPS with stretches of track dropping to 28FPS and Le Mans now has a twelve second period of framerates in the high twenties along with a couple of other dips, but the track to see the biggest hit is Jerez, probably the worstperforming of the tracks I’ve tested, which now drops in framerate to anywhere in the mid-to-high 20s for about 60% of the track.

704×448/444mhz/222mhz – Testing half of the game’s tracks (9 of 18), only five of the nine tracks are now locked to 30FPS. The rest of the tracks had two or three dips in framerate with a recorded low of 27FPS.

544p/444mhz/222mhz– Five tracks are still locked to 30FPS and three tracks lose only a frame per second where drops were previously seen. Mugello is the worst performing track, with two drops in framerate to 26 or 27FPS and approaching the lap marker causes a sustained drop into the high 20s for about eight seconds.

544p/500mhz/222mhz- Mugello now only has one dip to 29FPS and the second most demanding map is fully locked to 30FPS, making 544p an ideal way to play it if you don’t mind a roughly 2-hour battery life (the Vita will suspend itself at 24%)

 

 

Resolution Hack

Screenshot Album (448p vs 544p)

Screenshot Album (448p vs 544p)

Show Sample

Resolution hack available with VitaGrafix

MotoGP 13

Original Resolution	704×448 (native UI)
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

 

Performance Summary

NOTE: Two weather conditions, wet track and heavy rain, cause framerate drops into the mid-twenties as a result of water that’s kicked up by other racers, even on otherwise locked maps.

704×448/Default Clock Speeds – Assen, Austin, and Valencia were locked to 30FPS, Le Mans and Cayalunya had only one or two dips as low as 28fps, Mugello, and the rest of the sampled maps had a few framerate hiccups that stayed at 27FPS or above. The worst performing map in my test was Losail, where it had three drops to 27FPS and the strip of track as you approached the lap marker staying in the mid 20s, which lasts around 10 seconds.

804×456/444mhz/222mhz – The game is locked to 30FPS 99.9% of the time.

544p/444mhz/222mhz– Performance is only slightly worse than the stock configuration; one FPS worse wherever there are drops, in fact. Courses that were locked to 30FPS at the stock configuration are still locked, while the worst the game gets is a sustained 26FPS alongside the aforementioned strip of track on Losail.

 

 

 

Resolution Hack

Screenshot Album (448p vs 456p vs 544p)

Screenshot Album (448p vs 456p vs 544p)

Show Sample

Resolution hack available with VitaGrafix

MUD: FIM Motorcross World Championship

Original Resolution	702×448 (native UI)
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

 

Performance Summary

702×448/Default Clock Speeds – The starting grid operates in the mid to high 20s for a couple of seconds before performance levels out. Resuming after a respawn or having racers pass by can make the game dip to 28FPS. The framerate can This does not even happen everytime time, but (9:56/448p-Def) I have seen it go as low as 27FPS.

840×476/444mhz/222mhz – The game is locked to 30FPS.

544p/444mhz/222mhz– The causes for performance issues are still the same as on default clock speeds and occur with more frequency, if only so much, however a track like Brazil that uses a heavier amount of alpha effects for mud with all seven other racers in front of you causes an extended framerate drop into the high 20s. At the start of the race, France causes a drop to 25FPS.

 

 

 

 

Resolution Hack

Screenshot Album (448p vs 476p vs 544p)

Show Sample

 

Resolution hack available with VitaGrafix

MXGP The Official Motocross Videogame

Original Resolution	702×448 (native UI)
Default CPU Speed	333mhz
Default GPU Speed	166mhz

 

Performance Summary

702×448/Default Clock Speeds – The game does a good job of holding 30FPS for the majority of the time. Getting out of the starting grid framerates in the mid-to-high 20s before leveling out and taxing stages like Losail and Valkenswaard see the framerate drop as low as 26FPS, Agueda and Erne having one section that drops to 28FPS, and Beto Carrero is almost locked to 30FPS.

868×492/444mhz/222mhz – Offers solid performance outside of the starting grid and picking up speed once respawned, however Valkenswaard has two parts of the course that cause framerate dips to 28/29FPS. Lowering the resolution as low as 792×448 can’t lock the game to 30FPS, so this is the recommended resolution to not trade-off too much performance for image clarity.

544p/444mhz/222mhz– The starting grid sees framerates in the mid to high 30s before leveling out and an average of three choke points per map make the framerate drop anywhere from 27 to 29FPSFPS, with a case as low as 27FPS, but the game does a good job at sticking to 30FPS, especially if you’re separated from the pack, so the less obtrusive and less cluttered time trial mode would be great at this resolution.

 

 

 

Resolution Hack

Screenshot Album (408p vs 492p vs 544p)

Show Sample

 

Resolution hack available with Vitagrafix