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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #200 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-06 11:31:04
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Hello there - and here we are at last with DF Direct Weekly #200. I wasn't kidding in the last couple of episodes in saying that we had no special plans whatsoever - truth is that with John out owing to losing his voice to a certain extent (he's otherwise fine!) along with Tom and Will on vacation, our latitude for doing anything out of the ordinary disappeared! It'll be Rich (ie me), Oliver and Alex at the mics tomorrow.

We'll be discussing the new Battlefield teaser, the latest Switch 2 emanations from Nintendo Central, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 on PC, the Monster Hunter Wilds PC benchmarking tool and the extent to which overclocking can quote-unquote save the RTX 5080. Should anything else emerge in the meantime, we'll add it to the docket, but please feel free to suggest topics as it is looking a little threadbare.

So, it's not exactly a vibrant episode in terms of juicy topics and if that it the case, we'll be expanding out the Q+A section. Feel free to pose any questions you want, but if you have any to do with DF Direct itself on this most auspicious of occasions, feel free to add them. As usual, cut-off for questions is 8am GMT tomorrow.

Files

Comments

GetFisher

if there aren't any silly hats like alex suggested I will riot

CABBAC

Please can you answer my question?

Dani Ádám

Star Wars Outlaws got a new patch where they updated the PiSSeR to the latest version. Quick look?

The Phantomnaut

Bjorn Lynne seems to be a mainstay in DF’s musical output for many years. Can you describe your relationship with them and how they became relatively synonymous with DF?

Lepef

Hi DF crew, with Microsoft potentially going the sega way, who would you like to see fill the third spot in the console space?

Mr_Weis

Oh most esteemed Foundrymen, I am but a humble soul who holds gaming as a pastime most dear and seeketh ever to deepen mine understanding of the craft and science that lieth beneath it. In discourse concerning the forthcoming Switch 2 and the Series S, it hath been put forth that the Switch 2 may bear an advantage in possessing greater memory capacity. Yet, verily, the speed of said memory is possibly lesser than that of the Series S. Might ye grant me wisdom as to why capacity is deemed of greater import than speed? I extend mine earnest gratitude for thy most excellent and enlightening discourse. With all due reverence, A Humble Gaming Enthusiast

Bassers

The very best of bicentennials to you gents! I see the rumours of a Steam console are popping up in various places again - personally, I would be very intrigued by a Steam hardware “stack”. Do you think an NVIDIA powered system / systems, given the current feature set advantages over AMD, could fundamentally change the console landscape as we know it?

lord.frosty

Greetings DF lads! With MFG being the focus of the RTX 50 series, how well do you see this technology scaling on monitors with lower than 240Hz refresh rate? Assuming that the 60fps render target should be the bare minimum for frame generation, I can't see how well MFG will work on 120, 144hz or 165hz configurations, which are vastly common in the PC monitor space. Any thoughts on this?

Max Fletcher

Hi Gents. Now that the 5090 is hitting store shelves at its ludicrous price of anywhere between £2000-£4000 I am increasingly starting to feel like I’m the only sane person left living in an insane society. Are people really buying these cards? I know there will always be people out there with more money than sense but it feels like this has been normalised and somewhat accepted by mainstream media and gamers alike. The whole dollars per frame argument and price to performance ratio goes out of the window when the card costs this much to begin with, it isn’t something I would even consider. I know you guys get these cards in for review and need them to do your job, but if you didn’t work for DF would you personally spend your hard earned money on one of these cards? Am I just poor? What’s your opinions on this?

Samson

Hello DF blokes! So I’m enjoying Kingdom Come Deliverance II. It’s always refreshing to play a relatively well optimized PC Port. In my opinion, while the experience isn’t soured by the fact that on a graphical/rendering level, the game isn’t doing anything groundbreaking, I was still hoping to see a new CryEngine game push the limits. At least some optional Ray Tracing. Especially given the buggy SSR with vegetation + water. Do you feel as though it was a missed opportunity or should us Ray Tracing Radicals allow there to be a space for such AAA games? Nonetheless, it’s a great game! Props to Warhorse!

Mevlud Sabashvili

Hello DF crew! I think at this point it's clear that next generation of consoles will be paired with a handheld variant. My question is, don't you think it greatly hinders graphical advancement for the future? If console cycle is 6-7 years, games coming out in 2034 will be expected to run on handhelds from 2027. In this case do you think we might get few generations of handheld devices within ecosystem of specific platform's one generation? Happy 200 episodes and here to 200 more!

shedi1982

Greetings and salutations gents!!! I'm a gamer who enjoys consoles over PC i was wondering if Sony and/or Microsoft could ever make a 2 tier console a base model for 600 and a hybrid console with a base built in GPU and CPU that they can fall back on and make like a cloud version like geforcenow where they can use an upgraded model that can push things on consoles closer to high end PCs (with a subscription service) or is that even possible? Thanks in advance from a advid watcher

TheJediExile

Hello gentlemen! I hope you’re having an amazing day. We’ve seen some amazing new projects driven by AI revealed this year; a new method of super resolution, graphical enhancements, and texture management to name a few. The possibilities really do seem endlessly especially now that Sony has partnered with AMD after finishing work on their own first approach with PS5 Pro. A lot of people still lament the lack of legacy support though. And Nvidia’s Omniverse seems to show promise in resurrecting old games even if the work required is immense. Do you think Machine Learning could develop sufficiently to auto emulate PS1, PS2, and PS3 games? Or better yet intuitively port them to work on x86 natively?

Lexxington87

I have a very specific usecase question- i own a Samsung Odyssey G9 57” monitor - it’s a ludicrous super ultra-wide with a more ludicrous “duel 4K” resolution at 7680x2160 240hz. Now, I’m a very lucky owner of the 5090FE and i’m building a new PC with a 9800X3D - even then - will I fail at a path traced Max RT at even 60FPS with this stupid monitor 😅

Perfect_Organism

Is path tracing a binary thing? I guess in my mind I always thought path tracing was an “ultimate form” of RT, with all aspects of the lighting being traced, and that defining a game as being path traced was quite a binary yes/no thing. But with the mega geometry video, Alex mentioned that the transparencies in Alan Wake 2 are now being path traced. Does that mean the game wasn’t a “path traced” game before? Not 100% sure I’m making any sense here.

Mafu

Hi DF crew! With the new DLSS 4 Transformer Model Super Resolution image improvements, going down from Quality or Balanced to Performance nets a big performance win while still looking appreciably better than the old CNN model. Going even further, I tried going down from the predefined 0.5x scale from performance mode down to 0.4166666x scale with DLSSEnhancer (https://github.com/xHybred/DLSSEnhancer) by the modder xHybred. On the framegen side, folks on Reddit are even reporting performance gains simply by upgrading NVIDIA Streamline dlls to the latest available version (https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1ig4f7f/the_new_dlss_4_fg_has_better_performance/) Will this be covered in the DLSS SR video? Thanks for all of the hard work!

Macky Dee

Hi DF crew. Once the RTX 50 series 'stack' is complete, would it be an idea to revisit the cards in general taking into account actual sales prices and availability in mind? I really appreciated your conversation about the reality of the launch last week. I know as someone in Ireland, without easy access to the FE cards, the actual price for these cards can easily be several hundred euro more expensive than the advertised RRP - making the price to performance argument a lot messier. Even as someone with no interest in anything beyond the '70' tier cards, the price of these supposedly 'mid-tier' cards is eye-watering - especially when Nvidia continues to cheap out on VRAM. I know card partners need to make money, but the prices seem to still be out of all control for many markets.

Peter Karadimas

Could kingdom come deliverence 2 open up the market for more Cryengine games?

Will

Rich, you’ve been running this for 200 episodes now. Can you spare us a moment to tell us how to run a team? How to keep them task-orientated as well as happy?

Peter

Hi gents, hope you are all well! The current trajectory of gaming hardware sees more more focus on ML and AI as trying to push gains purely from a raster point of view are seeing dimished returns. Do you think quantum computing could play a role in gaming in the near future? Maybe not a local solution, but leveraged via the cloud or maybe AI and ML models could be built using quantum computing to then be applied to games?

Perfect_Organism

More of a conversation point this one. What Nintendo does with their IP/lawsuits and what not absolutely sucks, no doubt about it. But compared to the rest of the technology/AI hellscape we currently exist in, where theres a rush to growth at all costs, I’m gonna play devils advocate and suggest Nintendo’s old form of somewhat crappy capitalistic values is tolerable. Not to let Nintendo off the hook here at all, their litigious streak sucks. But I think I feel less moral hang ups about buying a Nintendo product than say, an Nvidia one (I own products from both companies I add, not attempting to take any sort of high ground here). Any thoughts from DF on these somewhat weird thought processes I find creeping into my head in the shower?

Tamerator

Hi DF friends, congratulations on 200 amazing episodes! Do you think it’s worth buying a high end gaming PC in 2025 or is a combo of PS5 pro + steam deck a better overall deal? Thanks for the great content!

Perfect_Organism

I’ve been listening/watching older DF Directs over the past few weeks - Rich, your setup has not changed. What #SetupGoals do you have for 2025?

Nolasco

Evening my DF Crew. With the newly released Kingdom come deliverence 2 i was positively surprised after Toms coverage that the game would run at 60 fps on PS5/PS5 pro. My question is how come the game manage to run so smooth when as far as I know the game is CPU and not GPU heavy where Ps5 has the advantage. Muchas gracias for 200 episodes of greatness, let's go for another 100 😁👍🏼

Wez OOSH! (WOOSH)

Hi DF team, a fun non-topic question for you gents. I've been playing through Doom 3 for the first time and it got me thinking, what game series do you think should have the "half-life' inspired title? There's games such as DOOM3 and Turok 3 that adopted a Half-life style approach (doom 3 merged with the horror theme) for one game, Imagine the possibilities, a Duke-Nukem Life, a Quake-Life or even a Hexen-Life styled game for the series. Keep up the good work.

Brrrrgrrrr

Star Wars Outlaws got an update today February 6th with the newest version of PSSR. Maybe you guys can take a Quick Look and compare with the last video.

StrugglingShader

Hey guys , watching the best graphics of the year video made me think about CRT filters and 4K. Do developers take advantage of higher resolutions supported to make the filters look better on Xbox and PlayStation over Switch in games like Power Rangers or capcom fighting collections?

lbb12

Rich, first off congrats to you and the team on your 200th episode! That's quite and achievement and here's looking forward to another 200 more! :D Here's an interesting one: if Nintendo will be the only console sporting NVIDIA hardware going forward (speaking of Switch but moreso the significantly more powerful Switch 2), might I be remiss in stating that they would be the first and ONLY one to be able to exclusively NATIVELY have hardware acceleration in titles that have NVIDIA only features (i.e. PhysX in Batman Arkham trilogy, Metro 2033 trilogy to name a few)? Surely I'd think the Switch 2 more than capable of such a feat. All the best!

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

Even as a keen PC gamer it took until the 50 series came out before I tried DLDSR, RTX HDR and Ultra-Low Latency Mode. The results have been amazing, but the research needed to understand how and when to use these settings makes these features inaccessible. It doesn't help that they are buried in the driver, but even if they were in the game they would be an incomprehensible alphabet soup on top of the already perplexing and multiplying acronyms for upscaling and frame-gen. How can these features be made better available to the masses?

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

It's nice the Nintendo is hinting they will be reasonable in how they price the Switch 2 hardware, but I bet for the DF audience it will be the price of games that matters most. Do you expect a realignment of game prices in 2025 and specifically Nintendo Switch 2 games?

Selwyn Nypels

Each give a 20 second elevator pitch on why your silly hat is the silliest, go!

Never Ready Eddie

HI DF Frame Generators. Given how hard sourcing the Nvidia RTX 5000 series is for most consumers, how do you get these cards for your reviews? Do Nvidia give you them or do you have to do battle with the bots on store fronts? I assume you don't pay scalpers for them.

VeryProfessionalDodo

Hey there gents, with all the doom and gloom surrounding the Xbox, I just wanted to give a counter-argument. I think Xbox are in the best position they've ever been to provide the largest console market shake-up since the Switch joined. Phil's been saying something they're not going to out-console PlayStation and Nintendo for years now. However, they say they still want to remain in the console space. To some the two statements seems non-sensical, but let me paint you a picture of Microsoft's next console, and see if it's not exciting. Presenting: The Xbox PC. It’s still a fixed hardware target, but this time it has two store-fronts, Xbox Store and Steam. Xbox Store is meant for curated Xbox experiences, tailored for the hardware. It's also fully retro-compatible with Xbox's history. Love an Xbox 360 game, or want a truly next-gen experience? Yup, the Xbox PC can run it beautifully, without any fuss. Prefer to customize your experience, tinker with the settings or grab an indie-gem exclusive to PC? Buy it on Steam, and run it on your Xbox hardware, with all the advantages of consoles, like a frictionless OS, Quick Resume, and fantastic controller-support. There's a HUGE PC-shaped hole in the living room, waiting for someone to fill it. Valve has already said they're not working on anything on that front, but Microsoft is the perfect candidate. They have all the pieces. Excellent hardware and partnership with AMD, and games on PC already run DirectX. They're not going to win on exclusives, but they can still find a place in the market, it's just not "a PlayStation, but worse".

Ryan Walker

Hi gents! If the upcoming generation is looking to be more handheld, Valve & Xbox perhaps working hand in hand, licencing their OS to official & third party manufacturers, PS looking into a "portable PS5" equivalent, along with third parties creating handheld PCs for Windows & SteamOS, what will this mean for a potentially crowded market? Especially if Xbox & (eventually) PlayStation going third party to each others platforms, could this help the declining console market if integrated into the eco system of handhelds? Finally will the Switch 2 have potential heavy competition that could spoil their current advantage in the handheld market. Hope you have a splended week!

VeryProfessionalDodo

I think they're different experiences for different use cases. Is a no-fuss experience with good graphics more important than a great experience with worse living room support? If so, I think the PS5 Pro and Steam Deck are a great combo. It's that middle spot of the PS4 that's tricky. For example, Red Dead Redemption 2 runs at 30 on PS5 Pro, but any reasonable current PC can run it at 60, no issue. Just check what you prefer more, and go for that!

TheMightyEthan

Hey DF! The focus with RTX Mega Geometry seems to be, at least with Alan Wake, on increasing fidelity without decreasing performance, or even improving performance slightly. I wondered though, could developers take it the other way and use it to maintain fidelity while massively increasing performance? For instance, in Alan Wake 2, instead of increasing the update rate for all ray traced objects, could they have kept their layers of objects updating at reduced rates, and simply provided a performance boost over the original version? Or is there some reason it wouldn't work that way? Thanks as always for your thoughts. Cheers!

Perfect_Organism

Yeah I feel kinda dirty for putting it out into the ether tbh

VeryProfessionalDodo

Man, such a great question. The best TVs only support 120, which renders MFG to something worse than useless at decent base frame rates. At that point it might be best to cap the base frame rate, which defeats the purpose of MFG

VeryProfessionalDodo

Wondered the same thing. If it’s a smart optimisation before, isn’t it still a valid optimisation now?

marsmage

Hello Foundrymen! With XBox expecting 'the biggest generational leap', what are your takes on software innovations? The possibility of an out of the box windows dual-boot with a controller optimized interface (think steamOS), would give microsoft an interesting angle for backwards compatibility/catalog expansion, aswell as to force legislature on sony and nintendo to allow third party stores on their devices (like for mobile). Thoughts?

ConcreteLlama

If it were to exist, which one of you do you think would have the best chance of winning the Spot the Difference World Championships?

ConcreteLlama

I'm getting my decadely hankering to build a gaming PC. Only problem is I don't really like PC gaming that much - I want to kick back on the sofa and navigate the UI entirely with a controller, but I want the power of a gaming PC and the flexibility of an (optional) settings menu. How long do you think it will be before it's feasible to have such a system powered by, say, a 5080? I'd happily have SteamOS (when available) but that seems to be quite AMD-ey right now, and I also kinda like the idea that at some point I may be able to build an Xbox. Will either of these options come to pass in the near future, and if not, what could I do in the here and now?

Max Fletcher

Also everyone forgets they have to protect their IP as not to set any sort of legal precedent. They can’t play favourites with projects they like/don’t like, it has to be a blanket you can’t use our IP.

VeryProfessionalDodo

I think building a Bazzite based machine will be your best bet for the foreseeable future :( who knows, maybe those 9070s will be really good!

Eric Benoit

The 200th DF Direct would be a perfect opportunity to invite Audi,Wouldn't it?

Gordon Lin

Happy 200! I game learned so much about computer rendering from you all over the years. It's your consistent edutaining material that has helped me to understand and troubleshoot my computer... And my friends' and colleagues' computers. No question here, but immense appreciation.

Phazonmasher

Hey Gents, I was recently reminded of CES 2014 when Razer showed off a prototype for a fully modular PC called Project Christine. It had a standardized tower with all the components like CPU, GPU, hard drives contained in compartments that you just slot into the tower. The idea being that when you need to upgrade, you just buy another CPU compartment, slide out the old one and slide in the new one. Do you remember this? And was this just a completely insane idea that would never work? Razer seems to have abandoned it like all their weird CES prototypes. Cheers!

Sloth

To mark DF Direct's 200th episode, Rich decides to launch the third YouTube channel in his media empire: Digital Foundry +1. Fronted by Rich's protégé, Rusty Leadlater, the channel covers the same content as Digital Foundry - but with a one-year timelag. This means the DF+1 team gets to cover games with the benefit of a year's worth of patching and updates. For example, they are currently prepping their first-looks at Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PS5 and Helldivers 2, and this time next year will be covering Spiderman 2 on PC. If you take up Rusty's offer to join the DF+1 team, you might no longer be at the cutting edge of technology, but your soul will be soothed by no longer being exposed to early performance issues. Rich and Rusty are impatiently waiting your decision – do you stay with DF or move to the DF+1 team and why?

Buddha

Hi guys, hope you are all doing well. What can you tell me about flip metering? Hearing Bryan Catanzaro talk about offloading the frametime scheduling from the cpu to the gpu pricked my ears. I understand you have been able to do a version of flip metering in the Nvidia driver for years but Blackwell is able to do it in hardware. I could not find anything detailing how it works but my concern when prioritising frame time stability, is delayed frames and thus increased latency! Is this something you are planning to test? Can you assuage my fears and/or correct any misconceptions I may have. Thank you for all the great content!

Thomas Briggs

My hope is this letter finds you well. I am writing to you on this cold afternoon in the hopes it arrives in time for your anniversary. Forgive me, I regret that I still do not have a question. I want to express my profound gratitude for all the good work you and your friends/distinguished colleagues undertake. I will try to write again, maybe sooner than another 100 weeks.

Abadaba-Pling Boink Wee Juhu

Congratulations with 200 episodes, it's been a blast to follow you since the "New Tech Haven" days! Since I'm feeling nostalgic - how was that track chosen? Did you just google for "tech music" or were you already a Bjørn Lynne fan? How did you acquire the rights? What's the backstory of the "Digital Foundry music"? (if you still have the rights, please use that as background music for this question)

TMoney58

Hello, gentlemen. I know Alex has expressed admiration for ComputerBase’s written coverage in the past. In addition to their work, I find Nick Evanson at PC Gamer and Jarred Walton at Toms Hardware are also doing great written work on PC game performance that compliments the video coverage you all do at DF. Are there other folks in the industry whose work you respect and look to? Thanks.

Leftisthominid

Hello DF'ers. This question is for Oliver more, but I would appreciate all answers. I am currently running an RTX 3080 in my rig. For gaming purposes, it is cromulent, but I do sometimes wish it had more VRAM for AI image generation (i.e., Stable Diffusion, Flux, etc.). The RTX 5070 only has marginally more VRAM and the 5080 is far too expensive. Have any of you tried image generation on the Battle Mage GPUs?

Leftisthominid

What are you personally going to be doing after recording this episode to celebrate the fact that it was the 200th?

Chill_Mode_JD

No question just wanted to say I appreciate the work you guys put in every week and congratulations on 200 freakin episodes! 🤘💚

spaciepoo

Hello DF Crew! With NVIDIA heavily prioritizing chip supply for AI data centers nowadays, and the disastrous launch of the 50 series plagued by stock shortages, do you think the company still values the consumer GPU market?

Snorlax cat

as for the df episode 200 I think you should ask questions to a1an, trog, Jake and other important patreons! and read their answers!

Mr Bespoke

Hello DF!! Congrats on doing a whopping 200 chapters of Digital Foundry Direct. Would Alex be willing to re-ignite the Crysis shrine in celebration of your magnificent achievement? Thanks and here's to another 200 episodes!

Someguyperson

For the 200th DF Direct can we have some Supercuts? I'll throw out some ideas: 1. Rich disagreeing with people (i.e. "No.", "I don't quite see it that way.", "I'm not so sure about that.", "I don't know about that.", etc.) 2. Rich expressing his despise of the Master System 3. Every unique drink or drinking vessel from a DF Direct 4. All the editing chicanery Audi added in 5. Alex getting really animated about a topic 6. John doing his best Rich impression 7. All the times you talked about Switch 2 before it was officially announced (this might be a 12 hour special)

Someguyperson

What do you guys think about Kingdom Come: Deliverance selling over 1 million copies in the first week? It clearly seems like people are still buying games, it's just that developers need to set their expectations correctly instead of assuming 100 million people will buy their game.

Someguyperson

What do you think about how enormous GPUs have gotten? I think it's fun to look back at something like the GeForce 8800 Ultra from back in the day and compare the cooling to the 3 and 4 slot GPUs that partners want to make. I'm very glad to see Nvidia making smaller coolers that can still handle 600w of heat, but do you see the rest of the partner cards moving back in the direction of 2 slot cards?

Someguyperson

If you just want to tinker with some AI use cases, Battlemage is the best price/performance by far. Particularly if $1000+ is too much money for you.

Rich

Two problems with this : 1) you can't have a store "tailored for the hardware" if you don't control the hardware, which is the whole essense of the PC as a platform, and 2) AMD are far behind Nvidia in GPU tech, which is the whole root cause of the decline of consoles relative to PCs in the 1st place (even on laptops)

Someguyperson

I have a feeling that sometimes in the near future, Valve will make SteamOS just a regular distro you can download & install. The only issue there is how willing Valve is to get that out this year. I still think it'll probably happen, but it's more likely to be in the 2nd half of the year.

DyeHardX86

No doubt my last Nvidia card was one screw in an end cap style bracket and a completely naked printed board the fan was a module that clipped on the tiny heat sink it's wild to see how the engineering has advanced and as we get closer to the Amp limit of a standard electrical outlet the engineering will have to get even more creative

DyeHardX86

Congrats on the 200th episode and I appreciate wanting to be humble but it's no small feat reaching this milestone for any YouTube channel you should celebrate it even if it's in private

Rich

You should feel no moral hang ups about buying an Nvidia product. These are all luxury consumer goods. Deliberately going after other developers is extremely bad, especially with no real legal ground to go after them, and the idea of patenting gameplay patterns is particularly grotesque. If everyone followed Nintendo's lead the entire gaming industry would collapse. Take Nintendo off the pedestal in your mind and evaluate what they're doing based on first principles.

Someguyperson

Only 1 of those machines will play Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Donkey Kong, Metroid, and all the other games that Nintendo makes. People keep complaining about why Nintendo only releases on their platforms, but this is exactly why. They will always have a competitive advantage because it's the only way to play a bunch of great games.

Perfect_Organism

This was meant to be a talking point, rather than someone telling me how to feel, thanks.

Rich

AI is by no means seeing diminished returns, literally every week new advances and discoveries happen. Developers have barely begun to scratch the surface of ML acceleration whatsoever, let alone language models and the more advanced stuff. There are no consumer Quantum accelerators in any gamers hands, because they do not currently exist. I'd imagine there are none in developers hands either, considering how expensive they are.

Someguyperson

"There's a HUGE PC-shaped hole in the living room, waiting for someone to fill it." Allow me to introduce you to every Xbox ever created. This is the exact goal of the Xbox and has been since its inception, but it has only succeeded once with the 360. The console market is for people who don't want to mess around with PC settings and just plug & play. Sony will only hold their advantage in the console market if that's Microsoft's strategy.

Peter

I have said that pure raster is seeing dimished returns, hence the greater reliance on AI

VeryProfessionalDodo

@rich about point 1, I think I misrepresented the situation. I was still talking about a fixed hardware platform, so I’ll edit the original message. About point 2, I hard disagree with hardware power being the reason for the decline. If that was the case, there would have been no interest in the Switch 1 / 2 outside of exclusives, which clearly isn’t the whole picture. I think the closed off ecosystem of living room consoles might be a bigger culprit than hardware

The Shadow-Map

Hellooooo Digital Foundry While I'd love to ask a tech-related question, Rich mentioned owning a Star Trek: The Next Generation script some time ago, and I've been curious ever since. Which episode was it, and why did he buy it?

Peter

And yeh, I agree regards quantum computing but things move fast and whilst I don't necessarily think Devs will get any access anytime soon, maybe Nvidia would and thus be able to model say new features using quantum computing

VeryProfessionalDodo

@someguyperson while I generally agree, I still have the sense that Microsoft was trying to do what PlayStation and Nintendo were doing, only better. Namely better exclusives, better hardware, etc. I think the future success of Xbox will be in leveraging more of PC DNA with a more open platform. I speak only for myself, but if I could play Steam + Xbox games with a Series X, I would buy something like that in a heartbeat. And this is coming from someone who only has a PS5 Pro and a Steam Deck (for remote play hehe)

Someguyperson

I find the comparison a bit odd in that Nintendo makes hardware & software, while Nvidia is a hardware only company. I feel you're comparing Nintendo to OpenAI and the like more so than Nvidia in particular. I encourage you to watch GTC presentations from 2015 and before that. Nvidia themselves are a bunch of nerds that make fantastic hardware for games and is constantly in search of another use case. The whole crypto mining use case hasn't been great from a moral standpoint (like the AI use case you pointed out), but that's more on the people who make the software as opposed to the hardware. I would agree if you feel more sympathy for Nintendo's lawsuits than you do for OpenAI saying DeepSeek copied OpenAI's work, which seems to be what you're getting at.

Someguyperson

Quantum compute is still far away from being a consumer reality. I could potentially see quantum compute being used to simulate the most difficult aspects of tracing rays through a scene, but there's probably other hardware & software models we could use to advance that before needing quantum. Almost all the quantum use cases are cryptography passed, so it would take a good amount time to even come up with a use case, let alone use it in a game.

Jasper

Foundrymen of the digital kind, congratulations on the big 200! I wonder if you could perhaps do a quick round up of unpatched ps5 pro boosted games with the best passive improvements. For example: dead space remake’s improved resolution made performance mode so much better! Cheers, here’s to the next 200!

Ryan Walker

Although I would somewhat mostly agree, bare in mind I have barely played any of these games on a Nintendo console. The openness of Windows, SteamOS, exploited consoles will take some of the thunder away from Nintendo through emulation while offering many advantages, especially when they are handheld devices. Regardless of how many people will take this option,they option is there. (Although this would apply less to Switch 2 games).

Richard Tucker

Hail gaming tech Overlords. The other week i saw a video from 'Hardware unboxed' testing the MSI Vanguard RTX 5080, where they saw overclocking gains comfortably of 10-15% and it was sitting very near the RTX 4090 in most of the benchmarks they did. The power-draw didn't seem particularly egregious for the perf gain. I wonder what you think of this, does it make the GPU more interesting, and why do you think stock clocks are not higher in such a scenario as this? (they mentioned they felt the OC gains were attributable to the 5080 in general and not just the vanguard model) All hail Richard Leadbetter, Overseer of the Foundry.

Perfect_Organism

I think I’d possibly argue that the hardware platforms have some degree of the moral burden too, but I take your point. I guess I’m thinking about what my gaming routine looks like. I boot up my PC, which has a Microsoft product installed, which in itself feels like I’m just a data pawn with not much personal autonomy over. And then the games are being run on a GPU provided by the biggest AI enabler (that’s not to say all AI is inherently bad, but I’d say the checks and balances aren’t in place there). My PS5 and Switch are probably the only pieces of technology where I don’t have mild moral conundrums about booting the thing up. I’m not sure I’m explaining myself fully. A friend and I have come up with a saying where when we’re a few pints deep, putting the tech world to rights, we’ll just blurt out “god I miss my PSP”. And not necessarily because we loved the games on the PSP (sorry), but more so in that technology just felt morally “lighter” to use (appreciate there may be some rose tinted specs in play here given we were teens at the time).

Peter

Yeh I was thinking far more along the lines of say someone like Nvidia using to build models etc that could then be used in games

zephyr

Hi team! Congrats on the 200 amazing bespoke episodes! My question is how do you think Microsoft and Sony will implement their inevitable removal of physical media? I was thinking that the next gen consoles would have an optional disk drive that only played previous gen disks but would love to hear your thoughts as well

Peter

But also...I may be asking the question years too early. It's just that with tech, things can take a while to be fully realised but then quick to propogate

Someguyperson

It is actually not a binary thing. Path tracing uses rays for all the lights in a scene, but the number of bounces, how much you accumulate data from old bounces, how many rays you shoot per pixel, roughness cutoffs, the actual geometry you trace bounces against, and lots of other factors can all be tweaked to increase performance. In the Mega Geometry example, you trace against a general approximation of the geometry and not the real deal, which can cause artifacts. As for the transparency thing, it could be that they added an additional bounce, or they removed a limit on transparent objects specifically so they could blend earlier in the frame.

SplitScrea had to sell the M this onth

Howdy DF Crew, Congratulations of episode 200 and here's to many more! Do you believe Frame Gen, Raytracing, and upscaling are the future or are they just software solving a problem caused by stagnantion from lack of proper competition? Comment: Nvidia is releasing proprietary software that requires you to purchase their newest GPU to fix the blurry and low fps from their most recent generation, and charging you a "feature generation" price. Meanwhile AMD GPUs haven't done anything original, only copying Nvidia's software with a cheaper product and lower quality at a "competitive" price. Instead of giving more VRAM to solve the majority of current issues, we're told to buy into muddy and sloppy "Machine Learning" or AI buzzworded software at the time. Game devs are being requested by the audience use Nvidia proprietary software when their graphics cards can't reach the target FPS, all while AMD copies NVidia and reinforces the idea of needing "muddy" looking software, reinforcing the wrong Idea that gamers should accept sloppy visuals. Instead they could be providing a stronger performance or higher quality features; like open sourcing the GPU version of PhysX or making a driver version of virtual geometry like nanite. Intel is there but they're still trying to catch up by copying with XESS but they have delivered a higher visual quality than expected, even against against DLSS, but its still not a performance improvement for games that dont have it included

Perfect_Organism

Ooooohh interesting, thanks for this. That explains the extra transparency bounce that was mentioned in the video then.

Someguyperson

Demand is high and supply is about as non-existent as possible, so naturally the price will be as high as possible to begin with and decrease as stock increases.

Question Generated By JensenGPT

I just bought a laptop with an Intel Ultra 7 258v in it, and I'm genuinely stunned at the gaming performance. It's by no means a gaming laptop, but I can cap the TDP to 20 watts and still get, on average, 20-30% more graphics performance than my ROG Ally at 25 watts. This seems like the ideal SOC for handheld gaming PCs due to the very good power efficiency and competent IGPU. Arrow Lake was a bit of a dud, but do you think Intel has a shot here at taking marketshare from AMD in the handheld (and thin&light laptop) PC space with Lunar Lake?

Someguyperson

If you memory speed is a bit slower, it will take a little longer to get that data, but it can still happen. If you need to fit a whole game in 6 GB of RAM, but all the files take up 8 GB, you really can't do anything to fix that, apart from reducing textures to horrible quality levels and maybe reduce geometry? It's a series of really hard cuts you need to make that won't allow a game to look as it was intended to.

Mr_Weis

Thank you for expanding my knowledge.

what does dog need with a starship?

happy 200th gents! i would like to get your insight about 4k and image quality concerning our newest handheld thats on the way aka switch2! even with all the consternation about teraflops, gigahertz and node sizes (oh my!) its obvious that switch 2 can do 4k in some form or another, but all things considered, in tv mode wouldn't a very high quality 1080p (at 60fps) be much more preferable to some hypothetical 4k that sacrifices image quality and frame consistency? sitting in front of my 4k tv playing 1080p games from about 1m away i can barely make out a pixel as long as the image quality is high... are all the hopium with regard to 4k 60 w/dlss kind of missing the point? 3-4 teraflops w/dlss should be able to gives us some wicked ports at 1080p even from ps5 level games no? i look forward to your insights, cheers!

Leftisthominid

How is Audi's life in Rich's basement going?

Leftisthominid

Should we anticipate the return of DF After Dark?

Leftisthominid

If you lived in the Star Wars galaxy, and you learned that your preferred GPU used the Dark Side of the Force to improve performance, would you switch GPUs to one that did not do this?

AfreemTheDream

Happy 200, DF Foundrymen! Since Rich is opposed to doing anything special for the 200th, I figured I'd at least ask this: across the 200, can you gentlemen recall any bit of news or any week in particular that got you most excited to record that week's show? Alternatively, was there any bit of news you dreaded reporting on over the 200? Cheers, and here's to 200 more!

Neotokyouk

Hey guys! The PS5 Pro VRR micro stutter bug- considering all your coverage of the console, i'm surprised this hasn't come up in conversation. It's a huge flaw with this £700 system that is effecting many different users, most notably in Pro enhanced games with unlocked framerates on 120hz+ screens. Will you guys be looking in to it at all?

Diecou

Happy birthday (?) DF! Question for Oliver: Can we expect in the short term to see other applications for generative AI in games? Maybe in getting NPCs not to always use the same replies or even to go as far as to provide some back and forth with NPCs using natural language, where a player would need to ask the right question to find out answers or clues? Any other use case you can think of?

Kitty Raven

Maybe episode 200 can be Oliver AI special. I’d love to hear him talk more about the status quo in the field.

Lexxington87

Why do the 5000 FE series cards come in such a weird dog bone box

Auro

I feel conflicted about Nvidia. I'm not happy with how they have handled the launch of the 5000 series, but on the other hand I feel like DLSS 4 is one of the biggest free upgrades I've ever received throughout my years gaming. How do you guys feel about these two topics?

Auro

I'd love to hear about John's experience testing the 5090, what MFG multipliers are you using? I suspect 3x will be a sweet spot for some games on 240hz but 4x would be used much more often for 480hz. How do you feel going between 1440p and 4k, do you think the extra 240hz is worth the quality loss? Have you tested setting frame limits with MFG via NVCP? I understand that most users will want to use MFG at the top of their VRR cap but I think it would be interesting to see testing with limits in place!

Hobobench

Hello DF Crew! A bit of a throwback question, but a little while ago you all discussed Nintendo's upscaling patent which mentioned utilizing lower resolution textures and using the upscaling technology to enhance to higher res. Do you think it would be possible for this to be utilized with Switch 2 backwards compatibility? Instead of downloading an "upgraded" version with higher texture resolutions and such, they could just have a downloadable upscaling model for the Switch 1 game that will upscale not just output resolution but also the texture quality based on what was in that patent. Curious to hear your thoughts!

DaJaCo (Dan)

Happy Half Fortnight Lads! Is there any chance you could comment on the slew of Switch 2 patents that emerged recently. The timing of their publication and diagrams suggest they are very likely part of Switch 2 - The sensor bar MEMS mirror is of particular interest! As is the suggestion of touch sensors in the buttons! Thanks gents!

Clay R.

Happy bicentennial! As this momentous occasion has managed to arrive with minimal fanfare and planning - instead I ask what celebration will be in store for the bisesquicentennial. Thanks y'all, I'll hang up and listen.

Max Fletcher

I guess I’m just shocked demand is high. We’re talking about one pc component that costs over 4 times as much as an entire console.

SweetMini

Hello sweet Digital Founders. Eurogamer reported that a Sony© backed DMCA takedown emitter struck down the Bloodborne™ PSX© demake by Lilith Walther which had a very nice Noclip documentary , and the 60fps Bloodborne™ patch by Lance Mc Donald. Such a hit was observed with a Nintendo© backed one which struck down any mod having Zelda™ in its title before announcing the new Zelda™ game. Do you have hope for a PC port/remake announcement this year or is this just really IP protection to keep a trademark ? I have to say the wonderful progress of ShadPS4 has somewhat scratched that itch for me, i feel like Sony© missed the opportunity by waiting so long to sign a new partnership with From© to make something with this dormant game. Social distanced hugs and happy 200th !

Michael Giles

Howdy DF crew. A good way to relate latency performance to the audience might be establish a tiered "DF Latency Rating © ™ ®" based on ms thresholds. For example, sub 40ms could be "great", sub 50ms could be "acceptable" and above 50mg could be "potato". Thoughts? If the 5070ti and 4090 have the same path tracing FPS in Cyberpunk, but you're still able to tell me which card actually plays in an acceptable/non-potato manner, then I'll know which card actually fits my needs better.

Bryson

Hey guys! I’ve found that youtube comments are becoming increasingly negative and a terrible way to engage with the community of several channels. Some of my favorite channels have started posted their content on Floatplane which has greatly improved the comment experience as only paid members are commenting. Have y’all considered uploading to an alternative site for paid members outside of the direct downloads?

Horselle

Hello DF Team, I’m fortunate enough to own both an Xbox Series X and a PlayStation 5. I purchased my Xbox Series X after Xbox’s “Besthsa aquasication” announcement, believing it would lead to exclusive game titles on the platform. In hindsight, if I had waited another five years, I could have consolidated my entire digital collection on one system instead of having it split between two platforms, each locked behind its own operating system. This situation is a major reason why the Xbox brand has become a source of frustration for me—a concern that appears largely overlooked by the gaming media. Although I appreciate the benefits of playing all my games on one system, the poor communication regarding Xbox’s ecosystem and the lack of a robust “play anywhere” feature for all titles have significantly impacted my loyalty. With that in mind, I have a few questions: 1. For a future Xbox, do you think it might be possible to link gaming licenses to a virtual machine, allowing games to be played on Windows? I understand that the PC is the consolidated platform I’m referring to; however, I’d prefer the convenience of sitting in front of my couch after a day at the office without having to deal with constant driver updates or other PC-related issues—though I might have to eventually. 2. Do you anticipate that the Xbox portion of the game store could be negatively impacted by Game Pass? From my perspective, I seem to spend more via storefront purchases than through Game Pass. 3. With the Play Anywhere initiative, does Xbox need to commit fully to a “one game copy, two platforms” model in order to win over customers like me? Thank you for considering my feedback. I look forward to your insights. Best regards, Horselle

DudleyTheGentleman

Hi again DF team. In the year of our Lord 2025, we still have no new news on Crysis 4. It's been 3 years since the initial announcement. Do you believe we will see any updates on the game this year? If it releases with full raytracing support and zero shader compilation stutter, will the DF team do anything to celebrate the momentous occasion? Each team member builds a Crysis shrine? Alex will wear a replica Nanosuit? On a related CryEngine adjacent note, when will the DF Crew revisit Star Citizen for a play session?

Pesky

Happy 200th episode! I am pretty dissapointed in the performance of the Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark. It seems like Capcom didn't achieve meaningful improvements since the first open beta in november. Performance seems to take a big hit in areas with a lot of NPCs (monster or humanoid). Is this comparable to the issues in Dragon's Dogma 2 and is it a possibility that the NPC logic is CPU thread-limited?

Octolimar

If nintendo maintained a similar level of visual fidelity with better textures and dlss slapped on top, would that be enough? Their artistry really is so strong that I wonder if we may indeed see games dlss up to 4k despite the cost of doing so simply because the cost of everything else may still be quite cheap if they remain at similar levels of fidelity to the switch, as suggested by the mariokart footage.

Someguyperson

Oh, I absolutely agree that the future direction of Xbox is clearly to fully integrate with the PC ecosystem. I just feel that's not really going to change Microsoft's console position at the end of the day. It will work for a lot of people, but I don't think it would really bring more people into the fold like Microsoft aims for with a new console generation.

Someguyperson

Ah, well, I feel your moral quandary is more because all the "fun" companies have mostly gone out of business and now only the companies with a strong financial sense have remained in this space. The interest rates going up have killed most things that don't actually make money and a lot of games are much more concern with their monetization strategy as opposed to things like "fun". Part of that is also probably an effect of the monopolies that feel like they can abuse their users somewhere and still get away with it. Data privacy laws and antitrust enforcement are things that we've gone too long without and that's also probably wearing on you. If you really don't feel great about being able to control your data, go to your elected representative and try to get them to force the issues through.

Someguyperson

Well, the 5090 is basically a Titan card, so there are actually professionals who can make more money more quickly with a 5090 in their system. In that sense, the card will pay for itself, even at those inflated prices. For a strictly gaming use case, it doesn't make any sense at those prices, but the AI use case is another space where the card provides a huge amount of value, even at $5000-$6000.

Someguyperson

To provide some additional commentary around 50 series supply issues, the "Tech Poutine" podcast mentioned how something like 40,000-50,000 TSMC wafers were destroyed in earthquakes that hit Taiwan right around the time that the 50 series cards were in production. Not only that, but because of the enterprise Blackwell chip issues, Nvidia might have run several "hot shots" through the fab that prioritized their server chips at the cost of the consumer chips. I also heard somewhere (it might have been Steve from Gamer's Nexus?) that the 50 series cards only started assembly after the CES presentation, so all the cards on the market were effectively produced in 2 weeks or so. All in a push to get cards out before Chinese New Year, which shut down all the factories that actually make these cards. The restocking is also taking long time because of the factories being shut down and then the time it takes to ship these things across oceans to get them into the Western markets.

Alan

Hi Guys, Congratulations on two hundred episodes of DF Direct. Did you think when starting DF Direct it would be as successful as it is, with industry types like Mark Cerny tuning in? What are the viewer/listener demographics? How far has DF spread, anyone tuned in from Antarctica for example?

Someguyperson

I think the demographics of the YouTube viewership, the Patreon supporters, and the website articles are probably all different to some extent and it would be interesting to see how each is different.

Someguyperson

What do you guys make of the patents that clearly show the Switch 2 Joy-Con being used as a mouse? Is this the innovation that will finally bring Alex to play Switch games? You could always just dock the Switch 2 to your monitor so it just feels like you're playing on a really weird PC. You don't even need to make it portable, as I know Alex despises gaming on the go. Do you think this feature would help the Switch 2 with better FPS support? How much would you like pwn some n00bs in "Super Mario: He's Got a Gun Now"?

TheCollector

This might be a bonkers request but for science hear me out. Have you considered comparing what it would be like to run a game like cyberpunk at 200 fps on a 5090 without using any of the AI (adjusting the settings accordingly) and comparing with the 5080 with all the AI trickery also at 200 fps and seeing what the difference is in image quality and input lag? I want to sus out whether AI is as good as all that or if it is just smoke and mirrors?? Keep keeping it classy blokes!

Ali Antiasing

Why are you not wearing silly hats? (My aplogies if you do.) Still, if not, why Richard? WHY!? My heart goes to Alex.

MeinSofa

Happy 200!!! I know us Macaholics comprise a very small percentage of your viewers, but I just couldn't help myself to followup on the final question from last week. With a very small exception, you mostly only refer to Apple gaming in regards to IOS, and not their actual, very capable computers. Rich, you mentioned that Apple needs some kind of Proton like experience, when in fact Codeweavers, who helped develop Proton, also work on Crossover, which is essentially Proton for MacOS. I know the focus of that conversation was based on IOS, but thanks to Crossover, and the recent release of Apple's Game Porting Toolkit 2.0, I just played through all of God of War Ragnarok. Before that, I just played Control with full RT, despite the impending native release coming soon. I know MacBooks and such are not the first thing you think of when considering gaming, but they are no slouch either. The list of PC games that I can play on my M3 Max MacBook Pro is getting rather impressively large. It can play most modern releases, UE5 games, RT capable, etc, some with the help of custom, community developed patches. My question is, do you think that Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming release, with full path tracing and some form of frame gen, will help shine a light on how capable Apple's, non mobile, hardware actually is?

digitalfoundry

Yeah, it's Darmok. A colleague of mine from years ago pitched the TNG staff about writing for the show and that was the script they gave him as a guide. There was also the writers guide too but I've long since lost that.

digitalfoundry

Haha no great mystery here - I went to a royalty free music site, found Bjørn's work and licensed a bunch of it!

CABBAC

My question definitely deserved to be answered in the Direct. ☹️

DaJaCo (Dan)

Hoping Avatar gets the same update.. I actually thought even the last PSSR update for Outlaws was better than FSR when set to 40FPS on PRO (but not when set to 60).