Digital Foundry: Anthem Console First Look: Xbox One X/ PS4 Pro Head-To-Head

[Andromeda]

4K (same perceived resolution between both machines)
XBX about 25fps (rarely reaches 30fps during normal gameplay, usually 25-28fps)
Pro about 30fps (uncapped fps)

Pro at 1080p
about 40fps-60fps, usually 40-45fps during normal gameplay.

Best versions: Pro at 1080p > Pro at 4K > XBX

 

[Lucifonz]

Worth noting this article from Eurogamer regarding demo performance - https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-02-01-biowares-endgame-for-anthem

On the one hand, the near-complete build I saw suffered none of the performance issues felt in Anthem's demo version last weekend.

Click to shrink...

 

[Vexii]

New video focusing on PC performance was posted a short while ago by Dictator giving some details on the Anthem Beta as well. The video is linked above, with the tl;dw listed below:

• Targetting 1080p60 across mid-tier configurations to compare against the performance profile of the PS4 Pro at 1080p mode
• Mid-range testing consisted of i5 8400, GTX 1060/RX 580, 16GB DDR4 2667MHZ, SSD
  • 60fps is off the cards at 1080p Ultra. Hub sees dips to high 40's/50's, drops to mid 40's in combat. Below 60fps in the overworld
  • Medium settings preset below 1080p60 too
  • Low settings preset acheives some headroom above 60fps except in hub and firefights
  • Didn't expect attaining 60fps to be this challenging
  • Typically expect these cards to perform really well in Frostbyte games
  • GTX 1060 performance profile even lower than expected based on other Frostbyte games (footage not shown as it was lost)
  • CPU didn't seem to be a bottleneck in this scenario for the most part
• Higher mid-range graphics cards were Vega 56 / GTX 1070
  • Vega 56 held above 60fps more consistently from the onset, but 1070 suffers heavily with drops below 60fps in firefights at Ultra settings, despite performing similarly to Vega while flying
  • Vega dips below 60 during some scenes, including a giant enemy crab boss. GTX 1070 suffers similarly, probably tying in to massage damage
  • Playing in the internal cave area yields much higher framerates due to lower scene complexity. Vega averages ~80fps allowing a lot of overhead for alpha effects in firefights, 1070 around ~60fps with some drops below
  • Probably not worth dropping graphics settings with these cards due to low performance gains for image quality trade-off
• High-end testing uses RTX 2080 TI at Ultra Settings 4K
  • Alex didn't expect locked 4K60
  • Overworld sees drops into the 50's
  • Firefights mainly in the 40's
  • Dark1x played at 3840x1600 ultrawide resolution at 60fps in the overworld and hub but dropped frames heavily under 60 during firefights
• Richard says his platform of preference is PC, given all the circumstances
• AMD had an Anthem driver ready for this demo, Nvidia did not
• Alex states that there is rendering tech and a world size being used in this game that isn't commonly used in other console Frostbyte games
• Graphics options seemingly lacking or not having as much of an effect on fps as they should
  • Ultra settings down to High doesn't seem to have much of an effect, only when dropping to Medium is there a tangible difference (HBAO>SSAO, shadow resolution etc.) with an 18% performance gain
  • Low settings looks rough compared to Ultra, turns off a lot of settings, such as AA, SSAO, DOF and heavily affects shadows for a 21% performance gain
  • Performance scaling is bad
  • No DX12 options
  • No HDR controls in game, disabling in Windows did not work - Had to disable HDR on the display
  • Some graphical bugs on AMD hardware
• Need a deeper dive into specific Graphics options and what they do
• Firefights are the biggest offender for performance loss, probably due to heavy use of alpha effects
• Comparing gameplay type and performance to Warframe and Destiny 2 states that with such an emphasis on combat, more should have been done to optimise this area of gameplay
• CPU utilisation hit 100% and hit performance heavily, seemingly stopping by itself in Richard's case, but Alex needed to close the game for it to stop
• Loading screens seem to be random and occur during missions and traversal
• Alex needed to load an area twice whereas Richard only needed to load the area once.

Okay so that was a long one but I wanted to do the information justice. Quite a lot to take in there, and this section will be threadmarked and updated in the OP as well. Let me know if there are any inaccuracies.

 

[Zappy]

Video and article updated....game runs at native 4K on Xbox One X.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-anthem-demo-performance-analysis

 

[Theorry]

DF just had a second look. And now can say the demo has the Xbox One X at native 4k and Pro is at 1800p.
Base consoles are are at the usual stuff. 900p and 1080p.