Despite the fact it runs at a higher resolution than its Xbox One counterpart, there have been a fair few performance issues with the PlayStation 4 version of Call of Duty: Ghosts. At times the game appeared to drop frames, or suffered from drops in frame-rate. When Eurogamer’s fantastic Digital Foundry section decided to investigate, they discovered something fairly interesting…
The issues were caused by the PlayStation 4 running the game at a higher frame-rate than necessary.
So just what is going on? Well, a close look at our captures reveals that Call of Duty: Ghosts actually runs at higher frame-rates than 60fps on a fairly frequent basis, despite the video output being limited to 60Hz. In scenes where we experienced judder and perceived frame-rate loss, what we are actually seeing is the appearance of skipped and incomplete frames – an effect that is arguably far more noticeable than a few prolonged drops down to 50fps or so seen the 360 version of the game.
Amazing spot by the Digital Foundry team. Can’t believe that a game is having issues because the frame-rate is running too high. Hopefully it’s something that can be fixed in a future patch.
Does the Call of Duty: Ghosts PS4 patch fix everything? [Eurogamer]
Comments
25 responses to “Call Of Duty: Ghost’s Frame-Rate On PlayStation 4 Is *Too* High”
What a load of garbage
I have heard it has constant problems with multiplayer especially when there is heaps of stuff happening on screen at once and the game drops to about 1 frame per sec
I’m sorry but after Fallout and Skyrim being fantastic on PS3 *cough cough I would never even try put up with a Sony console again
I think that’s got waaaay more to do with the developer deciding to release a sub-par performing game than anything that sony’s done.
Exactly. Ghosts is one of the worst games released. The optimisation is terrible on any platform you play it on. Last cod I buy.
Are you implying that it’s the console’s fault and not the developers for not capping the framerate?
Nice.
Sony didn’t develop the games, numbnuts. Game optimisation is on the developer, not the console manufacturer.
One frame per second huh, sounds like legit and knowledgeable sources you have there.
And Skyrim and Fallout are the fault of Bethesda, not Sony. Even former employees said there was next to no optimisation for that platform.
(For example the split pool memory was always an advantage over Xbox, until Skyrim came out and suddenly it was a downside……even though no game had suffered from the issue before)
It’s cool to like your own choice of platform, but at least know what you are talking about when making points against others
I’m pretty sure the Split memory was a consistent complaint from devs the whole generation.
still no one cares just sayin’
Haha that’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard of that being a problem before.
Just to be clear, as an idiot, they’re saying the problem is that the game is running at over 60fps but because it doesn’t display more than 60fps it’s skipping frames and that makes it look like slowdown?
Wouldn’t that occur more when there is LESS action on screen and why haven’t the dozens of game writers who’ve complained about the framerate noticed that as slightly weird?
Edit: just to be clear I’m not saying that it’s not the case. Just that it’s odd.
Happens to me all the time. A lot of games I can’t play if they’re not v-sync’d because it runs at a way higher frame rate and looks terrible.
yeah agreed, happens to me all the time on pc games, sometimes have to force vsync in gpu drivers and in game…
The linked article says that there are also frame rate drops during busy scenes (often just to ~ 50 fps, but 40 fps on some occasions).
The juddering/skipped frames appears to be a separate problem for the simpler scenes.
I thought too much fps caused screen tearing not skipped frames.
Not really. Screen tearing is when the horizontal and vertical lines dont sync correctly.
My assumption is that Ghosts has vertical syncing so going over the FPS capability of the monitor means that it needs to drop frames to compensate.
Screen tearing happens when the screen hasn’t finished displaying the frame completely, and it sudddenly receives a new frame and must start drawing that one.
Also, if Ghosts had V-sync enabled, you wouldn’t be able to shoot anything because of the input lag.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing
Now, I could well be completely wrong here, but this is my vaguely educated guess:
Okay, so Call of Duty games have always sold themselves as being a 60fps game, regardless of the fact that on consoles their framerate has usually sat somewhere in the 50s when any real load is presented. As such, the timings of the game (how animations play, how it reads your inputs, yadda yadda yadda) are probably designed for that 60fps. But you have to accept that performance may not be ideal, so if you lock the timings to the framerate, rather than to 16.66ms, then you probably get a better perceived controller accuracy (also, you get slow-down, rather than frame skipping).
So, assuming this is at all even vaguely accurate, if you’re running higher than 60 (and particularly if it’s inconsistently so), you’d get judder and whathaveyou based on things happening faster than it can display (so an animation moving forward 33ms worth in the 16ms of allotment the frame has).
That said, this doesn’t appear to be a problem in the PC version, so unless they handle things differently there, I’m probably well off base.
Too much fps can be a bad thing. SLI or Crossfire in GPU’s that produce too many frames or latency in frame rates can produce something called “micro stuttering” which can sometimes be mistaken for a lower framerate. Its something that annoys pc gamers a lot!
It could be that the PS4 produces too many frames to be read and the output results in either a frame drop or stutter. Easily fixed with a driver update. Says nothing about the hardware itself. If anything, it says that its too powerful for its own good. But then again, the PS4 isn’t the most powerful machine out there.
No. Microstutter has nothing to do with having too many fps.
It’s a problem some dual cards have (as you mentioned) recombining the frames. Otherwise powerful single cards would have the same issue with old(er), easy to run games. Which they don’t.
From my experience with PCs on both 60hz monitors and true 120hz displays, super high fps are never a problem. Sounds like BS and poor coding.
I suffer this problem when I take to much speed.
I always found the universe microstutters when I’m candy flipping.
That’s a pretty nice catch. It’s good news for PS4 players since it can probably be fixed.
That said maybe it’s time we all just agreed Call of Duty: Ghosts is too dodgy to represent either consoles capabilities. In the next gen pissing contest Ghosts forgot to unzip.
This made me laugh more than it probably should have. Bravo.
Upvote for truth. They really have messed up this round.
at least the >60fps thing can be fixed relatively easily.
though its no excuse for not catching it before release.
the (allegedly) shit campaign & stale multiplayer, however, is gonna need more than a patch…
Nothing sole DLC can’t fix, amirite?
havent played ghosts (hence ‘allegedly’), & I’ve never gotten any DLC for a CoD game, so I really cant comment.
though from all the reviews i’ve read of Ghosts…. i think it’ll take some damn epic DLC to make it worth getting.
I agree Ghosts is a poor example it’s not just a cross platform game, it’s a cross generational game. Surely there were compromises made to this title in the name of releasing it across both generations.
AMD GPU Based System stuttering!? News at 11….
Thats a bit trollish, but you have to admit that AMD GPU’s always seem to have issues with stuttering
Umm, no. The stuttering comes from the GPU (and hence the game) refreshing at a different rate to the screen. It’s a lot like the 64hz bug in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games but much more noticeable. This could have happened with any hardware whether it was AMD, Nvidia or Intel.
This is a problem with the game engine, not the hardware.
The PC version suffers from the opposite, not enough frames. Badly optimised.