New firmware can improve performance, says Digital Foundry – Nerd4.life

A new video from Digital Foundry highlights a very interesting aspect that hasn’t been very comprehensive yet, namely the differences and improvements Occur in game performance on the console with Firmware updates, as measured recently PS5 and Xbox Series X | S..

Digital Foundry’s video, in its 12-minute opening, focuses specifically on the new Firmware in beta version 3.1 for PS5, which has been casually proven to make the console more performant in some games. The discovery happened by chance, and Richard Ledbetter of the British newspaper was surprised: in fact-testing, with the new firmware, some games such as Control, Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition and Godfall showed little improvement with the new version. Firmware.

This is an upgrade that is practically imperceptible to the naked eye, given that we are talking about the differences in 1 or 2 frames per second, but it looks constant and is measured regularly by the tools the magazine uses. This is interesting, above all, because it shows how a central update of the console management software, i.e. the firmware, can be reflected in actual improvements to games regardless of the specific updates for these improvements, i.e. the standard way in which these improvements are usually made.

“The console is expected to always work the same way in games,” Leadbetter said, always of course regardless of specific updates to the games themselves, “but in this case we encounter system updates that have differences.” As Alex Battaglia pointed out, it’s a case similar to what was also recently recorded on Xbox Series X | S regarding control in particular: Although the game did not receive a specific patch, it recently solving problems Stuttering that was initially discovered in the first comparison of the next generation versions of Remedy.

This indicates a change in the “virtual machine” in which the game is running, or an improvement in the software aspect of the system that has increased performance. This also opens up complex prospects for a column like Digital Foundry, they say in the video, because it introduces the problem of potential differences in game performance regardless of specific patches, making it difficult to track improvements.