Discussing VRAM Optimization, Ray Tracing, Nanite, and Graphics Architectures with an Unreal Engine 5 Dev- Guest Telegrams
Added 2023-03-31 18:10:27 +0000 UTCBroken Silicon's next guest will be an Unreal Engine 5 Developer! Based on early talks we plan to discuss:
- VRAM Optimization - Performance Trade-Offs, Memory Usage
- PC vs Console Optimization, and the future of 8GB Cards
- What Next Gen Consoles & GPUs should focus on for Improvements
- Thoughts on Ampere, Lovelace, and RDNA 2/3
- Ray Tracing
- FSR and DLSS
- Virtual Reality
- Game Engines, Modding, Nanite
- Game Dev Crunch
I would say this guest is a little more on the software and future-design side than "current hardware" side, but he can definitely speak with some authority about any recent hardware releases. So while we do intend to focus heavily on optimization and the future of CPUs, VRAM, and Consoles - you can ask just about anything related to our "standard subjects".
You have ~48 hours (till Sunday Morning US Central Time) to submit your thoughts and questions below. Be concise, be thoughtful, and use good grammar to be considered!
Comments
Have you seen the recent "GPU Upload Heaps" feature implemented within DirectX 12? It uses Resizable BAR to allow CPU and GPU simultaneous access to VRAM without the need to copy data to system memory. Do you see technologies like this increasing or decreasing the need for VRAM over the long term?
Samantha Vimes
2023-04-03 12:47:57 +0000 UTCI know it's too early to tell, but do you think frame generation has had some difficulties being adopted by developers? There doesn't seem to be many games, both new and old, supporting DLSS 3. From the developer perspective, is it harder to support as opposed to the past upscaling technologies?
ManBearPig
2023-04-02 18:37:40 +0000 UTCHello! For those of us who are less technically gifted, do you think you could explain why devs find vram and cache very useful to have? Do the hardware companies collaborate with you guys when deciding what features to add onto their products?
ManBearPig
2023-04-02 18:25:48 +0000 UTCNvidia made a big deal about turning RTX on for older games such as Portal. Have you seen much more progress in this area or have the slow RTX 4000 sales prevented modders and artists continue enhancing more games?
Ryzza5
2023-04-02 11:58:45 +0000 UTCWhen can we expect to start seeing AA and AAA UE5 games hit the market. What system requirements is the industry targeting for a next-level experience? Are game-makers waiting for players to move away from old hardware, or are they confident enough that players will upgrade when their hardware is no longer performant enough? If someone upgrades their GPU but keeps an older system (i.e. Z390), will they be bottlenecked for UE5 titles by their CPU (i.e. 9900k, PCIe 3.0 GPU/SSD, DirectStorage support, <16GB VRAM, etc).
Ryzza5
2023-04-02 11:57:01 +0000 UTCHi gang! Excited to have somebody from UE5 on the show! I wanted to ask, if you had to guess, around how much more performant and efficient will UE 5 be able to become over its lifespan? I know optimizing and improving on engines is a huge deal, but post-release, to use a bad metaphor, how much gas is still in the tank? If we could get to 4k60 on a base ps5 without upscaling then that would mean I don’t have to move my couch back.
Tick Dickler
2023-04-02 03:49:22 +0000 UTCOne of the fundamentals of computing is automation. I’m not a games developer but where I work we use a lot of automated software testing and it’s a very useful tool when done right. However, I see very little discussion of this with regards to game development. I know UE5 has features to help automate testing but have you used them? How much of a game can realistically be tested using such tools? I’m not suggesting it would be a silver bullet but could it help mitigate the “dev crunch”?
Chris Rijk
2023-04-01 22:05:08 +0000 UTCWould you like to see AMD make a high-end workstation based on the MI300 processor for game developers? How much do you think companies are willing to spend to help improve developer productivity?
Chris Rijk
2023-04-01 22:04:14 +0000 UTCThere’s a lot of complaints about poor ports, whether from console to PC or vice versa. I would imagine that the more a particular game is optimised for one platform the harder it becomes to port well to another. Is this common across all game engines? Does UE5 have any features or tools that can help mitigate these problems and if so can you point to any examples of this being successful with real games? Would you expect this problem to become better or worse in the years ahead?
Chris Rijk
2023-04-01 22:03:59 +0000 UTCFor a games developer, or game engine developer, what are the benefits of having a unified memory system where the GPU and CPU have equal access to all memory? Does it help improve performance? Does it help reduce memory usage? How big of an impact does the split memory pool on the Xbox really have? Longer term, is it going to become inevitable for low-end gaming PCs to become dominated by APUs if they are the more efficient and cost effective solution?
Chris Rijk
2023-04-01 22:03:08 +0000 UTCFor anyone looking to buy a sub $500 GPU to play modern games on, what would you recommend given increased concerns about VRAM usage? What about sub $400? For lower-end cards launching this year, do you think it would be viable to use double sized GDDR chips so that an 8GB card becomes a 16GB card for example? Longer term, are there any alternatives that you’d like to see? (Something technically feasible, even if unlikely to happen in practice)
Chris Rijk
2023-04-01 22:02:23 +0000 UTCPSVR2 is reporting poor and lower sales than expected. Will this be a wake up call to Sony and the poor pricing of the device or will they wait it out till an appropriate competitive device launches?
XTX 999
2023-04-01 18:14:04 +0000 UTC
