Ghost of Tsushima PC - DF Tech Review - PS5 vs PC, Optimised Settings + More 

The load time when fast traveling and booting the game is insane

buying the best pc port studio is the greatest thing that sony has ever done

The PCIe bottleneck probably is a leftover effect from PS game development in general. PS4/5 are both APUs with wide interconnects. PS3 FlexIO and PS2 DMA/GIF, both higher bandwidth than equivalent PCIe/AGP at the time. GPU bus would be something no PS developer has to worry about.

Can you believe I can play this on a handheld? What a time to be alive!😂

15:25 Alex's optimised settings

Everyone and their mom: OH MY GOD WHAT A PERFECT PC PORT Alex: hold my beer

Playing this game is so satisfying. The image is so cleeeean!

Been playing at 1440p on a 3080 at high settings, and haven't seen any performance issues so far. I'm not using framegen or any upscalers. I'm quite impressed.

Great to see Alex talking about the PCI-E Bus issue :D Kudos!

Thanks for the rundown, Alex. I hadn't noticed most of the flaws you found, but you've helped me understand the few that I did. The only ones that bother me during gameplay are the inconsistent camera and I think the geometry disocclusion you noted - during an early cutscene at night every camera cut back to Jin would flash super bright for maybe only one frame, but when it's supposed to be the middle of the night it looked awful

This is the exact video I have been waiting for. Give Alex a raise.

My spare laptop with a 1650 can play this at 1080p everything high except textures and shadows at med with FSR3 frame-gen and getting 40fps while still looking amazing. Incredible port. Especially the literal instant load times and fast travel.

Yesss Alex my man I love ur work!

I was waiting for the deep dive of the PC port, had a feeling you guys would put one out eventually.

As soon as I got the notification this video dropped, I thanked god and knew Alex was back from holiday

We've been waiting for this review

We always await Alex Battaglia analysis video with excitement!

its so cool you have so many settings available ☺️

Thank you Alex & team!

Absolutely incredible game and stunning graphics. Happy the port is well optimized. 👍

These tech reviews are always so incredibly thorough. Thanks for the consistently excellent research and presentation.

These comparison videos between pc and consoles are amazing, huge thanks!

great video, alex!

Alex, what a seriously great and thorough review! Hats off to you. Lets hope the guys at Nixxes see this!

I never had the audio glitch until I got into the dlc area.Had the standoff bug only happened twice almost nearing the end.I do have a stutter that happens after an hour of playing have to restart to fix it .Those have been the only bugs I have encountered.Jumping and getting stuck respawns you after 2 seconds so that was definitely caught by the playtesters.Just needs a few patches and this port is golden.

The video I've been waiting for.

Hooray waiting patiently for this

Alex, thanks for being my sanity check, as you pointed out basically all the issues I also commented under the latest DF Direct 😅 Edit: ha, even the AF is broken as I thought.

It's been mostly great at 1440p with my 3060Ti and old Ryzen 1700. Although problems with sound start to emerge by the second part of the map, and on Ikki Island. Audio cuts off very frequently.

I love getting on-board every chance I get to contribute to DF! Rich, Alex, thank you for getting me on-board! I couldn't more grateful. ❤ @Digital Foundry

Knew there was something not quite right with this port, hopefully these issues can be fixed!! Cheers Alex and welcome back.

Having the same shadow smearing and thought I was over heating my card but alas just a game glitch thank you Digital Foundry for putting me at rest finally, knew you guys would find the glitch even though couldn't verify it online anywhere else

it is worth noting if you have a semi-decent rig, you can push settings beyond these optimized ones with good fps with FSR + DLSS combo

Yes I have been waiting for this!

Thank you for the awesome work once again!

Thank you DF!

This game deserves to be played with a PS5 controller. The haptic feedback add a lot to the game.

Running an RX 7900 XT, donuts max settings at native 1440p with HBAO+ and FSR AA. HBAO+ looks a lot better out in the world.

great video! I thought it was just my PC that had jitter issues because I also see it in this game and Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2.

Thank you Alex ❤

You guys forgot to mention some serious bug with particles when using DLSS, FSR, XESS. Mostly sparks from fire in the distance even when using DLAA they are flickering and looks much worse than the TAA or Smaa T2x.

I'm kinda disappointed that this video didn't compare the two frame generation techniques, considering this is the first PC game to officially let you decouple FSR 3 frame generation from upscaling and thus you can compare the quality between the two. FSR 3 has slightly worse frame time VS DLSS 3, but it has zero artifacting or smearing whatsoever, while DLSS 3 has UI artifacting. On top of that, this video never brought up the audio volume bug, or other bugs this port has. It's not an ironclad port like people are making it out to be.

in my experience using in-game vsync to 60 made 1% lows drop to around 40. using RTSS instead and limiting the framerate to 60 there helped out greatly so 1% lows became 58-59 fps and made the game so much smoother

Been loving this on my Steam Deck. When at work. Play a bit during break then enjoy it I'm it's full beauty on my PC.

I wouldn't usually go for this, but I think this game ends up looking better if you use basic dynamic resolution scaling + DLAA rather than DLSS. DLSS struggles with all of the particles and high-detail foliage everywhere so the temporal clarity isn't great in my experience. Basic DRS + DLAA is a softer image, but seems a lot more stable (especially with tiny glowing particles), so I ended up preferring it. On a similar note, when trying it out on my Steam Deck I found that I XeSS looks much better at low resolutions than FSR 3 here since it plays it safer stability-wise and FSR turns into a visual mess any time you move the camera at low resolution.

I'm a sucker for some great graphics! I won't say this is the most realistic or life like visuals of all time but I'm certainly not far off from considering it the most beautiful... The first time you mount your horse and come upon the hill with the white flowers was unbelievable.. And even more so on PC damn it.

FINALLY, I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR DAYs

I love the way Nixxes do settings menus. Between the old school launcher and the expansive, dynamic settings their ports are just wonderfully tweakable. I really wish more studios would give us as many levers to toggle.

The camera jitter is in nearly everry single PC game when compared to the console version of the same game! Even id software games.

Hmm, that's odd. I'm having none of those jittering camera issues. In fact, it is among the smoothest, most consistently performing PlayStation ports I've played yet!

It's good to see Alex Battaglia back. As for the game, given the good optimisation, i will surely buy it.

Alex has finally emerged from his dojo to give us the review we've been waiting for.

Fingers crossed for a Ghost Steam Deck video. 🤞

I love Alex's videos

More optimized settings yayy

The PS5 version should have an update, at 10:15 this could be corrected with last version of FSR for example. At 10:55 this also could be corrected, it is not normal that there is a foliage problem when Avatar Frontiers doesn't have problem on PS5 for an image quality far better.

Played on PS5 and was amazing. Won’t look much better than what I will get on My 3070 so will get the PC version when it goes on sale on Steam in the fall once it hits that 29 dollar price

Still one of the best intros in any game ever! And nixxies have hit it out the park as usual 🤯

good port that with some love will become a fantastic one

Yay! Alex is back from vacation. Hope you had a great one sir! :-)

Yes, I also don't like the fact that games don't bring a VRAM bar for people to understand how much VRAM are we using, or at least have reference points like (Use high textures if you have 8GB of VRAM at 1080P or something like that. I can easily understand how much VRAM is being used through MSI AB or Windows GAME BAR, but majority of PC Gamers have no clue when they hitting a VRAM Overflow. In this days where GPU Vendors are constantly cutting in VRAM of the released GPUs, this could be very useful.

Waiting on the steam deck review for this one!

using a old gpu like rtx 2070 super and with dlss im getting between 70 and 90 fps in 1440p so i have to say really good job making this port

I thought the camera jitter issue was bc I was on linux, but I see it’s just a game issue now

Steam Deck Optimized Settings (using Steam Preview 3.6 on an Oct 2022 512GB Steam Deck model with the game installed on internal memory): -15w Max TDP -VRam set to 4GB -FPS Cap set to 40 -1280x800 -FSR3 at Quality -Motion Blur: 20 -Field of View: 0 -Textures: High -Texture Filtering: 8x - Shadow Quality: Medium -Level of Detail: Medium -Terrain Detail: Medium -Volumetric Fog: Medium -Depth of Field: Medium -SSR: Low - SSS: Low - AO: SSAO Quality -Bloom: Preference -Vignette: Preference -Water Caustics: Preference Shadow Quality and Level of Detail have the biggest visual to performance hit on Deck, the rest of the settings are largely inconsequential outside of high stress areas. For Gameplay Comparison: Location: Forest Edge Camp in second region with Foggy Weather (lots of mongols, foliage, complex objects) My Settings: Variable 38-48 fps (averages 44) Very High Preset: Variable 17-23 fps High Preset: Variable 26-35 fps Medium Preset: Variable 37-41 fps Low Preset: Variable 45-53 fps Generally speaking: You're going to average 40fps over the majority of the game, save for cut scenes (typically always above 30fps), highly dense and complex towns, big Mongol Encampments in highly detailed areas and the giant pampas grass fields. Even then, your fps should largely remain at or above 40. Don't try for locked 60, you'll have to compromise too much, and the game is too beautiful to do it dirty like that. However, if you don't care much, keep Textures at high, Anisotropic filtering at 8x, everything else on low, lock it to 48fps and call it a day. Examples of High Stress Areas Umugi Cove: 32-41 fps Golden Temple: 36-41 fps Hiroshi Springs: 32-37 fps Komatsu Forge: 34-40 fps Omi Village: 37-42 fps

I think Nixxes should give you the game for beta testing before launch! Great Analysis !

Df should do a spot the difference competition among the crew. Would love to see in df clips

Is this auto vram stuff in avatar something you take into acount when doing benchmarks? Also wonder if SAM/ReBAR has any impact on the bandwidth issue, nvidia typically enables this on a per game whitelist afaik while it's always active for AMD so couild be different on amd cards or if it's forced on on an nvidia card.

The first game to decouple frame gen from fsr and he didnt even touch it

I been using SSAO Quality, it's much more consistent than the other options. By consistent I mean shadows are there when they should be.

For a more stable frametimes with fsr frame gen, Use special K. DLSSG frame limiter ,disable game's reflex, use special K reflex (end of frame). I'm getting perfect frametimes with very little input lag..

I love you nerds 😁🙏🏼

so no upscalers and frame generation review?

Something I noticed in playing around with the settings is that Shadow Quality seems to effect the look of volumetric fog much more than the Volumetrics settings itself. And despite Ultra Shadow Quality being by far the heaviest setting there was quite a noticeable visual downgrade that was readily apparent when lowering it, especially in a foggy forest scene.

I agree with the texture option wish. Ran into issues trying to find a nice balance for Horizon FW on a 6GB GPU @ 1080p. Low textures kept cut scenes solid but looked to scuffed for me and medium was fine during gameplay with broken cutscenes. Ended up doing a low spec gamer type tweak to force a LOD change with nvidiaProfileInspector; let me keep medium textures. Downside in some areas the foliage was weird.

I noticed the camera smoothness Alex mentioned early in the video. On release day, I saw others playing the game on YT, but fail to mention it all. Like it was ok for that to happen. I won't play the game till the patch that out. I never knew PCI-E lanes would affect camera smoothness on PS ports. I really hope they update/upgrade the texture quality in this game. Real shame that they didn't.

Love your creativity, it's inspiring!

Thank you for finding PS5 equivalent settings!!

The pandora way of doing textures is how it should be, max textures based on Vram and lower them if it reaches its limit.

Barely a few words about FSR3‚ no mention of how poorly GTX 10 series runs on this game. No mention of texture flickering/artifacting on AMD GPUs. No PS5 Performance Preset equivalent. Not as good DF Tech Review as I was used to watch.

Definitely one of the better ports at launch in recent memory. It seems like the first patch has mostly fixed DLSS and I haven't noticed the flashing when entering rooms happening nearly as much. Supposedly frame-gen was fixed as well if you're into that sort of thing. For me the very high setting seems to be worth the performance hit.

This game runs great on everything I have to try it on. From a 13700k/4070Ti Rig - A 10750h/2070Super Laptop - Steam Deck. I have noticed the little issues in this video from time to time. But big picture, it's a great port, and a great experience. IMO, EVERY game should have a graphics menu like this, so you can see the changes being made, and choose what looks/performs best to your eye/for your equipment.

Game has crazy memory leakage, my game goes from 90fps to 20fps after about an hour of playing, asked steam for a refund

I thought I was going crazy, nobody mentioning the constant camera/panning judder, I actually can't play until its fixed

Thanks for the heads up about PCIE 3.0 x8 , my 3070 laptop is limited to this 😢

even though i can play this game on max with my 4070, I'd still watch DF tech reviews for how each setting works. Thank you for your efforts!

Its a great game played it throughly on my ps5 so wont play it again on my pc cause i already own it

This looks basically the same on ps5.

Another masterclass video. I’m very glad he brought up all the camera stutter present. This is an issue in Nixxes ports of Spiderman (Remastered and MM) and Ratchet and Clank that I’ve played (4090/7800x3d) that has gotten little to no attention until now.

This is easily in my top 5 of all-time greatest games, glad I waited so long for the pc release.

Nixxes has been pretty consistent about releasing kind of busted ports, then they are great a few months later. Not ideal, but better than most

you missed that frame generation is not excluding the hud and there is artifacts with it....

The camera jitter doesn't happen for M&K btw. Using Frame Gen also but on 1080p and getting over 250fps. No Gsync too. OVerall No issues at my end.

I had a feeling it was DLSS messing with the depth of field, hopefully they fix this. Thankfully it's only noticeable during cutscenes.

How did you even find the PCIe3 vs 4 differences? Is that usual testing done for every game?

Yeah it has the same VRAM leak/ bandwidth issue causing major frame drops during cutscenes after playing for an hour or so. Simply restarting the game restores the performance. This is a PS4 game through and through but 8GB VRAM still causes performance issue even at 1080p. I guess this time people can't argue that it's a GPU VRAM issue, not the game.

This game makes me in awe. So beautiful.

Not sure if this is pre-patch but they did improve performance. I tested the game on my 1660ti rig and I was able to get a pretty much locked 60fps at 1080p, all high settings, SSAO performance and FSR3. That’s not bad at all for an older GPU.

And not a single mention of HDR.

you guys didnt mention the memory leak, the audio bug you unlock along with the dlc and the many other issues like the game refusing to close unless you yeet it from task manager, this port isnt as ironclad as people make it out to be