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[DF] Skyrim Anniversary Edition: PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S Upgrades Tested

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Obviously Sony and Bethesda are in bed together on this.

Rooster Teeth Hair GIF by Achievement Hunter
No, it must be the PS5 showing its higher clocks to be superior at resolution, or fps, or resolution.... The PS5s architecture is suprior at res or fps depending in which area it has an advantage in! Consistency does not matter in this theory!!!!
 

Kagey K

Banned
So is the win the resolution or the performance? When Xbox has higher resolutions but worse frames it seems to lose those too. It can't lose both ways can it?
It can and it does.

Framerate us king until it isn't, resolution same thing.

This is another where Xbox was running so far ahead on both that now it seems equal, if you forget that Xbox did both of these better for so long, that it's seems nor worth it to put effort into the Xbox port.

It was well past good enough already, that they could just slap a sticker on it and call the last gen version good enough.
 
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Mr Moose

Member
So is the win the resolution or the performance? When Xbox has higher resolutions but worse frames it seems to lose those too. It can't lose both ways can it?
It's 30 frames, do you think that's a lot? You know it's 60 frames per second, right?
And it's not even in a playable scene in any of them where the larger drops occur.
PS5 has the slight edge.
 
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S0ULZB0URNE

Member
Funny post since you'd write the same if results were the other way round, since "performance is king" and all 🤭

Also I thought BC doesn't count? Whoops.
Look me up in threads where Xbox was the clear winner and get back to me.

It being better on PS5 got the green rats SHOOK!
 
Would it have been too much for Bethesda to ..I dunno ...actually improve the graphics like they were advertising? The settings are literally the see outside of 60 fps. At least improve some textures and LODs.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Considering that "framerate is king" and "BC doesn't count" anyway (according to SonyGAF standards)... who wins is a good question.
No one wins because it's Skyrim again. You can blame the MicroSoft owned studio for the BC part.
They improved it over the 60fps unofficial version on all consoles, at least in the opening. The biggest difference between this and before the update to me is the loading, I think that's why they went with a native app on PS5.
They are essentially the same, in fps and res (at least most of the time, the drops are rare and the only big drop on all is in an unplayable scene).
 

Allandor

Member
So basically it is still the "good old" DX9 engine on xbox, blowing out up to 4k + 60fps. Than it is no wonder why the performance/resolution is so limited on even the new xbox consoles. E.g. the draw-call overhead of this old engine with the old API just kills any current hardware. Sonys API is much slimmer so this does not affect the console as much. After all this time I had hopes they would at least look at some of the mods out there to update the engine a bit, so it would scale much better.
This game ran on an xb360/ps3 and not even the new hardware is capable of hitting 4k60 all the time. It is really the engine here that struggles, not the hardware.
 
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tommib

Member
I’m one of very few who still hasn’t played Skyrim. Shall I play this one or wait for the next anniversary version? 🤣
Wait for PS6 version. As you can see from this thread, no one’s happy with the performance yet.

Or get it for the Switch, come and tell us, and watch all the tech-nerds foaming at the mouth with your 720p 30fps version.
 
Better framerate, VRR, better mod support and only a rare resolution drop on one axis. It's a wash really but I'd go with Xbox.
The mod support makes this a no-brainer tbh. Not worth to sacrifice for the slightly higher resolution, that's why I'm surprised that some people say they're gonna go with the PS5 version.
 
Too many running jokes and flip flopping here.
I'm going to clear up the optimization thing. If a game runs like shit it's not optimized. If it runs well it is optimized. Skyrim runs well on Xbox so it is optimized. Could it be more optimized? Of course. Games always can. Ghost runner RT mode on Xbox runs like shit, so it's not optimized. It runs well on ps5 so it is optimized. There is no argument beyond this unless your parents were too closely related.
 

assurdum

Banned
People it's not native neither on ps5...I can run the game at 60 FPS from my external HDD...sure performance can be worse there and sometime FPS drops miserly for the slow ass speed of the HDD I/O. In the intro especially FPS suffer a lot.
 
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Mr Moose

Member
People it's not native neither on ps5...I can run the game at 60 FPS from my external HDD...sure performance are worse and sometime FPS drops miserly for the I/O of the slowass HDD speed.
It is a native app, you're using the wrong version.
Highlight the PS4 version, go down and right to where it says PS5 upgrade.
 

RespawnX

Member
Only one winning are Bethesda reselling/launching a 10 year old game with low effort port on new consoles making even more money.
I'm mean, it's an upgrade but obviously they didn't touch anything under the hood.
On the other side it's free for owners of the previous iteration so ... ? It's okayish?
 
The last time I played the game (on Series X) I still had to rely on the uncap FPS mod for 60fps. It worked well enough but there were noticeable drops. Then they did the FPS boost BC patch, which I tried out, but it seemed to perform about the same.

Though not a native app update, I think this latest update did make the frame rate a lot smoother, especially considering I have 70-80 mods installed in all these cases. Most of the time to my untrained eye it stays solid enough. Also my TV is probably too small (43) to notice the resolution drops.

Also I think part of the reason they kept the dynamic res is because you can get graphics mods on Xbox, which you can’t on PS. It may be an old game but it’s still beholden to the old engine and getting a mod that adds grass and trees will still put more strain on it.

The PS5 version is probably perfect for people who haven’t played the game yet, but people who have would probably be better off playing on Xbox with all the mod options at their disposal. I mean unless you have a giant ass tv and the dynamic resolution bothers you that much.
 

Darsxx82

Member
The one kind of shit that happens is your trouble understanding and your lack of knowledge.

The improvement in load times in XSeries is not reduced to the gain that you can achieve only for the effects of playing on SSDs. The BC in XS includes specific software at system level to improve those load times beyond what SSD. It is, alongside automatic HDR and AFx16, BC enhancement software. That's why XBO games on XSeries see a dramatically greater improvement in load times than PS4 games on PS5 Even though the SSD on PS5 is faster.
 

BbMajor7th

Member
Wait for PS6 version.

September 23rd, 2031: "Hi, Tom here from Digital Foundry, taking another look Bethesda's Second Anniversary Special Edition of their beloved RPG Skyrim. While textures, assets and draw distance are a match for PS5, Sony's 34 Teraflop next-gen machine is now doubling pixel counts to a native 8K. Meanwhile, volumetrics and texture filtering also see a slight boost, matching PC's highest settings. There is a catch, however: while image quality is pin-sharp here, you'll still see drops into the low fifties during alpha-heavy sections like dragon battles. The exciting news is that Bethesda has stated on Twitter this week they'll be adding raytracing support to the Second Anniversary Special Edition in a later patch. We'll be back to test the results in the new year, though it remains unclear whether or not the recently announced Elder Scrolls VI will ship with raytracing when it launches in late 2032."
 
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