I couldn't agree more... and don't forget the severe dips in the marshes with their fog, too. In any case, your framerate estimation is spot-on, I would say, with additional split-second drops into the teens when activating certain volumetric/particle effects instantly and the like.

Yes, it helps to have played many PC and Console titles, an to of course played my fair share of games, expected to run at "30" fps. lol

To be fair, I think when Todd Howard claimed 30 fps was fine for Skyrim (true interview), he was referring to the 360 version only (actual words on standards of quality for PS3 versions from Bethesda... never) ... minus the 360's version's dips into the ~25 zone...

Oh, but this console generation's has plenty of other disappointments like that... it's sickening, really. Bethesda are simply among the worst at it, at least when it comes to their PS3 versions which I think they really don't give a crap about and as such, sub-standard framerate time...

I remember when the first gameplay videos of Fallout 3 were being released, Todd Howard stated in interviews that both 'the PS3 and 360 chewed through the game/engine', obviously implying that they both ran great. As we all know however, this was not the case.

Listen I love my PS3 but the whole "it's just different" thing has been debunked by everyone who has coded for the PS3. It's not just different, it's proprietary, unique, and obsolete.

In the early days people tried to play nice with Sony, but the facts are, they created an unnecessarily complex and convoluted system that is already obsolete, not future proof, not easy to code for, and WILL NOT EVEN BE USED in future design for sony products.

Again I love my PS3, but to say 'It's just as easy to code for" has been debunked by the world's best developers time and time again. It's hard to develop for, and in the end you put in more work to get similar results.

23-26 on new save games, probably 5-0 on "oh *&#% your save game file size is on double digits so you're screwed"

I've heard developers say otherwise... I can't remember where, but I heard something about DirectX and OpenGL being easily bridged by code... something which Valve does, so it's simply a matter of copying and pasting the DirectX into a system whereby the engine can call upon the OpenGL libraries instead. I understand that Sony use a custom, heavily modified version of OpenCL, but that doesn't mean these apparently "skilled" university grads, who should have studied enough to be in the gaming industry in the first place, shouldn't be able to do it.

Damn foos! I tells ya... 1.4 better work. I don't want long term play to mean, 1 extra week on top of the 1-2 hours we got from the last patch. I want a FIX! That isn't too much to ask, is it?

Well the PS4 will most likely used an upgraded version of the PS3 CPU. Sony built a new factory to produce the CPU SSPE so they aren't going to abandon it.

This and the post you made after this are the truth and nothing but the truth!

"Extended play" as they call it can make the game run worse but fresh out of the box it was obvious they didnt make special optimizations for ps3. Ps3 has more processing power and less ram? They should have altered the ps3 version to add cpu intensive features and tone down the ram usage. Wait whats that? They wanted to keep both versions the same? Well compare the framerates and youll realize theyve already failed. Wow I really hate the term extended or long term play. Ive never even heard that brought up before skyrim. Most games come up with clever ways to hide everything youre not looking at and preload anything you could be about to look at. Skryim is like someone that thinks everyhting they know all at once. You know your name, where your work, what the word telephone means, barney is purple, justin beiber is a wiener, how tall you are, whether your a boy or a girl.......but you dont think those things all at once do you? I know it might be hard to make a game where a book you threw the ground is there months later but you know if you cant do it at +14fps you didnt do it.

Its funny as I was typing that that show where chef ramsey helps people make there restaurant better is on. He was yelling at a lady who owned the restaurant who couldnt cut meat properluy and saying "Every single time give them if your best. If you cant give them your best dont do it at all"....is it wierd that I think thats appropriate to what I was typing?

I think you've misinterpreted what he/she said. He she/mentioned that the PS3 is more difficult to optimize for. That was not in question. When he/she said it's different, he/she was referring to technical capabilities... of which it is true that the PS3 is as capable as the 360 at rendering 3D gaming software. In terms of capabilities, yes, it's just different with different strengths and weaknesses (for example, strength = PS3's advantage at floating-point based applications, weakness = more difficult to optimize for partitioned hardware) and that's what dar'istrali was saying. In addition, obsolete doesn't exactly apply to the design, at least not in comparison to the 360 which is just as outdated, obsolete, and not future proof (they're 6/7 year old consoles... outdated and obsolete is a given), but dar'istrali did not in any shape claim the PS3 was just as easy to develop for as the 360... not that the 360 port we have now implicates much in the way of actual PS3 development in Bethesda's studio, but that's another matter.

edit: That's not to say I support Sony's decision. I think they made a huge mistake with the gamble they took and their over-confidence and corporate goal of continued market share domination as with the PS2 era. With the price Sony charged for the PS3 to make up for all they invested into the Cell processor (maybe we'll finally reap the rewards with the PS4 generation now that the experimental stage of the Cell Architecture has passed), they could have gone with an architecture more like the 360's... only better in every way (better GPU than that refitted GTX 7800 in the PS3 and even the slightly stronger 1950x in the 360, more RAM, same processor type as 360's, but beefier) and they wouldn't have had the same amount of technical issues with third-party games, but all I'm saying is the PS3's hardware, regardless, isn't incapable of doing what the 360 does (a few give and takes here and there) and the fault still rests squarely on Bethesda's shoulders for their cheapness. I just hope Sony learned a lesson from this all. Blu-Ray was a good call, though, in my opinion.

I hit quote to respond before I scrolled down, but now I gotta just say thanks to Seti18 for doing it for me.

I would say about 24-29. Barely manages to stay at 30 only when you are looking at a wall with 240p textures LOL. PS3 Skyrim is a joke. I am glad I got the PC version and now with Creation Kit its even better

Valve? Valve was so disgusted with the PS3 arch they wouldn't even code for it, they put Half Life 2 out to a contractor who made a terrible port.
The proof is in the games. The best looking PS3 games 99% of the time are exclusive or 1st party titles. And of those games, even things like GT5 have been surpassed with Forza in terms of textures and lighting.

Uncharted is amazing looking, but it's also very linear, and the graphics are heavily scaled down when you go to Multiplayer modes. MGS4?

90% of 3rd party games look worse on the PS3 vs. XBOX. You can't say 90% of devs are lazy and mean it.

When GTA4 came out rendering in a lower resolution than XBOX, that was a tell tale sign as to what is going on. There are a lot of "you could do this easily" ideas thrown around on the internet.

But the games speak for themselves. They look worse, and have worse framerates *most* of the time.

I can think of exceptions

Dragon Age Origins. Not a great looking game anywhere, but the XBOX version looked worse, PS3 had worse framerates
Batman Arkham A - XBOX version had a zoomed in FoV, PS3 had a much wider FOV which makes a game like that way more playable.
Sadly Batman Ark City uses the zoomed in FoV on both versions they ruined the one thing the PS3 had better in the first game

Correction: Valve INITIALLY disliked the PS3, but Portal 2 was undoubtedly better on the PS3 (performance-wise, graphically, and with that free PC copy of Portal 2 and Steam-based cross-platform play). Gabe Newell is now a large advocate of the PS3. I mean no offense and we're still discussing things on a tangent of a misinterpretation of what was actually stated, but GTA IV... Half-Life 2... 90% being worse? I think you haven't updated your stance on the issue since 2007 because it's certainly changed since. Most games are pretty equal on the two now with a few exceptions here and there. No the PS3 isn't as easy to develop for, but yes, it's capable of just as much, yes, developers have given it more respect and attention than they used to, and yes, Sony have extensively updated the SDK tools to make the platform easier to work with. What happened with Skyrim is only rivaled by the other worst PS3 games out there... Oblivion, ported by 4J Studios, was superior on the PS3, even.

This past year or two, Battlefield 3, Dragon Age II, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Dark Souls, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Just Cause 2, Dead Island, L. A. Noire, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Need for Speed whatever, Driver: San Francisco, Soul Caliber V, Rage, Brink, Saints Row 3 Mass Effect 2, etc. were at least roughly as good on the PS3 if not better in certain respects with perhaps the occasional disadvantage (Saint's Row 3 just has better performance on the PS3 overall, L. A. Noire was slightly better on the PS3 overall with better SSAO, KoA, though new, has been noted for extra sharpness + a complete lack of V-sync while maintain the same general framerate, AC: Revelations has slightly better textures, but slightly more screen-tearing stuttering). Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Portal 2 were, in addition, better on the PS3 without a doubt. The games better on the 360 to tangible degrees in the same timeframe which come to mind are Call of Duty whatever (note: made by a now-lazy company that lazily copy-pastes what they do, including relatively archaic rendering tech, and still make quite a buck hence have no incentive to improve), Two Worlds II (made by a company that just don't seem to understand much of anything console-related, regardless... TW II was still poor on the 360, TW I on 360 was just as poor as TW II on PS3), and Skyrim (made by a company that clearly doesn't wish to devote resources to the PS3 and are clearly practically a second-party developer for Microsoft).

In 2007, the 360 undoubtedly had an overwhelming advantage with a few exceptions (like Oblivion). In 2011/2012, and even back in 2010, however, the story is more one of general parity with some give and takes... yes, even including advantages on the PS3 side. The PS3 is more difficult to optimize for, but it's certainly not less capable and certainly not impossible to optimize for. The companies that can't get it right at this stage of the game are simply too cheap to actually want to work to get their PS3-based revenue. Those companies are, for reference, Bethesda, Rockstar (internally-developed games, I mean; L. A. Noire was great on PS3 because it was Team Bondi handling it and they obviously knew what they were doing), and whoever's doing Call of Duty as they have little incentive to... considering they're all still top-sellers even on the PS3 regardless of what they do or don't do. In addition, I just don't trust some of these mediocre European PC-based companies with console games, in general (Risen 1 and TW I were awful on the 360, TW II was awful on the PS3, Venetica was awful on both). The guys doing The Witcher in Poland (CD Project Red), however... I have a lot of respect for those guys. They're PC-based, but refuse to port their games to consoles unless they can get it right. As such, they've put a PS3 port on hold until they can find a right team to handle the task.

"Roughly as good" = not as good

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-xbox360-vs-ps3-round-25-face-off

It is true that after 5 years of hard labor, they finally have PS3 ports ALMOST as good as XBOX360 versions that came out 4 years ago. Hooray?

Saints Row 3 is a great example of what is typically done now. ZOOM IN THE FOV, restrict the camera, lots of cheap tricks to help the performance out.

Look at the GTA4 expansion, which greatly improved on GTA4, PS3 24fps... XBOX 30+ PS3 more blurry. I picked these DIgial Foundry clips based on most recent articles they had, and just scanned to the wrap up comments.

COD I know you posted reasons why you think it's not as good on the PS3 (free money) that doesn't change the facts

For Black Ops, there have been changes. To the PS3 version at least. The Xbox 360 version remains the same (our measurement comes in at 1040x608 with 2x MSAA) but it appears to be the case that the PS3 game has been reduced to 960x544,

While neither version is locked at 60FPS, there is what we've called in the past a "perceptual 60FPS", where despite the frame-drops you still feel as though you're getting the advantages of the fastest possible frame-rate. There's a fine line in this perceptual divide, but when there can be as much as a 20FPS difference between the two versions, it's safe to say that it's the Xbox 360 version that more consistently delivers the feel of 60FPS gameplay.

In other areas we do see a 360 advantage with the computationally expensive business of shadowing. Shadows, at least for characters, appear to be more poorly filtered and of a lower resolution on the PS3.

Even when games are scored "about the same" usually there is still something like this

In conclusion, LEGO Star Wars III: Clone Wars marks a coming of age for the series graphically while still managing to entertain with fresh, new ideas and its trademark humour. Visually it's a close match across both formats, too, though the PS3 version's blur filter does feel somewhat rough and imprecise, killing off a significant amount of fine detail.

Moto GP


Listen I love my PS3, I play it way more than my XBOX360. But I have a nice HDTV and 20/20 vision. I see what I see, and when I see blurry, or low res or bad framerates, my first thought is "is this just me? let me check online to see what the deal is". And I always end up with the same answer. It's not just me seeing things.

Another just about identical game...
and you might notice a near-constant tearing on the PS3 too - thankfully, the tear is right at the very bottom of the screen (literally line 708 out of 720), so tucked into the overscan area of many screens and pretty much invisible even if it isn't.

The Xbox 360 game has a minor visual advantage,

Moto GP
As the comparison video demonstrates, there are quite a few differences in the visual presentation of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. The 360 code operates at native 720p with 2x MSAA while the PS3 game sees a slight resolution drop to something close to 1280x704. There's also no anti-aliasing at all on this version of the game.
The small upscale needed to deliver a 720p image on screen usually has marginal repercussions for image quality but in concert with a couple of other factors, the difference can look quite pronounced. The obviously borked gamma calibration leaves the PS3 game looking rather washed out, while the lack of anti-aliasing means that the image is filled with plenty of shimmering edges as trackside scenery passes by: an effect amplified by the upscaling.

Here is one where PS3 is chosen as the 'winner'
There is a general sensation that the PS3 game offers the smoother experience during gameplay and it is borne out by the anolysis: frame-rates appear to be somewhat higher and despite the still-high levels of screen-tear, the overall affect on the image quality isn't quite as bad as it is on the Xbox 360.
However, all things being equal, it's the Sony platform the edges it. Despite the blurring of the quincunx anti-aliasing, there are a number of factors that make the PS3 SKU the preferable choice, aside from the smoother performance. For starters, if you're a 3DTV owner, the PS3 game is the one to have as it features stereoscopic support absent from the Xbox 360 version (something we'll be taking a look at in our forthcoming 3D article). It's also currently free if you subscribe to PSN, and it has to be said that the current 15 months for 12 offer is rather tempting.

Saints Row 3 you mentioned

• http://www.eurogamer.net/?type=face-off http://www.eurogamer.net/?platform=PC http://www.eurogamer.net/?platform=XBOX360 http://www.eurogamer.net/?platform=PS3 http://www.eurogamer.net/?topic=digital_foundry

Face-Off: Saints Row: The Third

By http://www.eurogamer.net/author/772 Published 28 November, 2011
Which format is the saint, and which is the sinner?


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- Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Disc Size 7.0GB 6.95GB Install 7.0GB (optional) 4035MB (mandatory) Surround Support Dolby Digital Dolby Digital, DTS, 5.1LPCM
Grand Theft Auto may be taking a more serious tone as the series matures but the Saints Row games are moving in the opposite direction. In-depth characterisation and an intriguing story are left behind in favour of what made the earlier GTA games so much fun to play in the first place - that is, being able to mess around in an open-world playground where realism is given the elbow in favour of all-out insanity.
Saints Row: The Third also represents a large graphical improvement over the second game in the series. The change in art direction in this latest instalment in combination with more restrained use of normal mapping and specular highlighting on some surfaces creates a more realistic look to the environments. A closer look at the texturing also reveals quite a bit of subtle detailing in many places: the small cracks that appear on the road and pavements, and the degradations manifesting on the walls of old buildings found throughout Steelport.
Other areas have also seen similar upgrades: animation is smoother and flows together better than in the previous game, and there's a noticeable increase in the amount of post-processing effects in play, particularly in the more heated cut-scenes, where screen distortion effects and motion blur can be quite prevalent.
That's not to say things are perfect. As with past Volition titles, the open-world engine used in Saints Row: The Third really seems to struggle dealing with long draw distances and subtle detail: there's noticeable object pop-in and a string of performance issues on both platforms which deliver an experience that isn't quite as refined as we'd hoped for.
More on that later, but first we kick off with a look at our head-to-head video and http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-28-saints-row-the-third-720p-comparison-gallery-comparison-gallery, which reveals a welcome boost in resolution on both formats over the series' last outing.






Play in standard definition

Play in high definition
Saints Row: The Third on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Use the full-screen button to ensure you see full 720p resolution in this comparison video.
Saints Row: The Third renders in native 720p on both platforms and the difference is night and day compared to its 640p predecessor: as you would expect from such a leap, presentation is much, much sharper. The anti-aliasing set-up remains as it did in Saints Row 2: multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) is present on the 360 with quincunx (QAA) being used on the PS3.
The downside with using QAA comes in the form of trading clarity for more edge-smoothing, as the technique blurs both edges and texture details - jaggies are less visible on most surfaces (with 4x MSAA type coverage), but the trade-off is that sub-pixel details in the distance aren't fully resolved and fine detail in the artwork is impacted by the additional blur. Also, as a consequence of this, some of the specular highlights don't appear quite as pronounced.
In fairness, the use of quincunx isn't exactly a deal-breaker. The art style in Saints Row: The Third actually works quite well with this form of anti-aliasing - it's only when things start moving away into the distance you get the feeling that the smoothing solution employed is scrubbing away a little too much in the way of fine detail. Despite this the actual artwork itself appears to be identical between consoles.

http://images.eurogamer.net/2011/articles//a/1/4/2/4/6/4/1/360_026.bmp.jpg
http://images.eurogamer.net/2011/articles//a/1/4/2/4/6/4/1/PS3_026.bmp.jpg
http://images.eurogamer.net/2011/articles//a/1/4/2/4/6/4/1/360_032.bmp.jpg
http://images.eurogamer.net/2011/articles//a/1/4/2/4/6/4/1/PS3_032.bmp.jpg
The use of quincunx results in a softer look on the PS3, though compared to some releases this isn't such a big deal here. However, the use of low resolution alpha buffers leaves some effects looking flat, whilst the foliage looks particularly blurry as a result.
Image Quality

There are other factors which also affect the quality of the visuals in the PlayStation 3 game, though not to the same extent as the QAA blur: the level of anisotropic filtering seems to take a hit, resulting in additional texture blur in the distance, and the alpha buffers are rendered in a lower resolution causing smoke and fire effects to look considerably flatter (some lack bilinear filtering as well, resulting in visible pixelation). This also impacts upon the clarity of the foliage dotted around the city - not only are the trees less detailed, there's a real sense that the additional blur from the upscaling process in these elements adds to the game's already softer look.

it looks as though the PS3 version has lower resolution shadows rendering closer to the player compared to the 360 version.

The win here for PS3 with Vsync working properly albeit still a sub 30fps game however this is the context of that 'win'

bottom line is that performance is preferable on the PlayStation 3 but at the expense of some image quality.

This one ACR is near identical, this is the kind of thing people expect now, but the reality is SONY PROMISED PS3 would be better, and everything would be native 1080p So all these years later, and the best we can hope for is "nearly identical save a few pixels shaved at the top/bottom of the image" compared to the 360.

The best we get is "nearly as good"
Assassin's Creed: Revelations - near i

However, in previous titles, we've always recommended the Xbox 360 version of the game with very little hesitation. Testing of pure gameplay generally seems to return a clear performance advantage for the Microsoft console, and it's safe to say that the situation hasn't changed that much at all with Revelations.
.
We found that the deeper we moved into the various districts of Constantinople, the more areas we discovered that really didn't perform that well on the PlayStation 3, with lots of dropped frames and far more visible screen-tear.

Here, across the run of play, it's clear that the Xbox 360 version has a consistency in terms of frame-rate and controller response that seems to be lacking within certain map areas on the PlayStation 3.

Batman AC? Greatly improved on the PS3 ... but still..

In stressful like-for-like situations, the PS3 version does tend to come off worse, with more pronounced frame-rate drops and more tearing, but any detrimental impact on gameplay is negligible. Batman: Arkham City doesn't demand low latency precision in its controls when performing combat moves and context sensitive actions, and in combination with the brevity of the dips in performance, it's mostly a non-issue.

Oh and check this out, a Sony internally made engine in their R&D now being used for XBOX360 games, easily.

Not only is this an unexpected moment of calm from a series that predicates itself on holding one's nerve, but it's also an immediate example of the advances made in the latest iteration of Sony's PhyreEngine since its use in Demon's Souls. Developed internally at its own R&D department and offered for free to studios licensed with Sony, the engine has been advertised as a multi-platform middleware solution that puts especial emphasis on deferred rendering through multi-core CPUs. Additionally, it has been promoted with bullet-points such as PhysX/Havok support, level streaming, and post-processing techniques such as glow and motion blur, almost all of which have been used in practical ways throughout Dark Souls.
Of course, despite its origin, it's surprising to find that these very same tools are apparently being used to run the 360 version of the game as well, and with no apparent technical (or legal) penalty. A trend could well be forming here: other developers, such as Codemasters, have previously opted to use the engine to drive their multi-platform projects effectively.

Again, I don't support Sony's decision with the system's hardware (they took a risk and limped away in miserable failure), but there are certainly areas where the PS3 does outperform the 360, though not by much. You're right, Sony lied and the PS3 we got was not better than Microsoft's counterpart as Sony claimed. We still do experience far too many problems with blurring due to excessive FXAA, QAA, and/or just plain blur filters (I blame Sony's concentration of budget on the CPU leaving the PS3 with a refitted GTX 7800 lacking the bandwidth to handle standard MSAA and lacking the unified shader architecture of the 360's refitted 1950x).

It's also genuinely harder to program for, given the CPU is partitioned into, as far as developers can use, 1 PPE and 6 smaller, but fast, SPEs versus the 360's simple 3 large PPEs and the PS3's split memory pools (which isn't a bad design choice, given that PCs do something similar... but with the same amount of RAM as the 360 in total being split into two separate pools, then it was a bad choice; if it was two split pools of 512mbs each, that's a different story) versus the 360's unified one. I think this is where the other large problem, more unstable framerates, the PS3 suffers from comes from. The SPEs do communicate with each other well, Sony didn't lie about that... but it's still a highly partitioned and difficult-to-get-flowing design and the RAM split isn't helping. They've partitioned the hardware too much for its own good. The PS3's CPU is factually superior in capabilities, but with all those small SPEs and split code, it's much easier to screw things up and end up with an unstable result plus it's more difficult to actually put all that rendering power to full use. Meanwhile, the PS3's disproportionately and relatively abysmal GPU is bottlenecking the CPU's performance... not good. In reality, the PS3's GPU is slightly weaker than the 360's and the RAM, though faster, potentially direly less flexible. The CPU is superior, but partitioned arguably a bit too much and is being held back by the GPU.

I think Sony may have made the mistake they did because, coming off of the PS2, they assumed the gaming industry was still practically theirs and developers would just sigh and do the work anyway while the partitioned architecture of the PS3 would make it more difficult for games developed on it to properly direct resources towards other platforms (then again, PS3 to 360 conversions don't seem too difficult). Or perhaps they just overestimated what they were doing and only realized they were being too ambitious after costs started rolling in. I don't know for sure. They assumed Blu-Ray and the Cell architecture would just take off, I guess and it nearly cost them their positions as unbridled monopolists of the world's gaming market share. I hope they learned a very valuable lesson from all this and I think they just may have.

The Vita didn't do anything ridiculous and overly pricy plus it's apparently a hit with third-party developers that's easy to program for, so there's some hope, and although Sony are in a bad financial spot now, their decision to likely wait until after Microsoft announce their next-gen stuff before announcing theirs is good because it gives them time to assess what both Microsoft and Nintendo are doing before making a potentially costly move. Unfortunately, it seems as this entire next console gen is going to be a bit underpowered.

The sad fact is, one of the best thing to ever happen to home consoles, RAM EXPANSION PACK! Was dead on arrival. N64 ram pack made the few games that used it, much better.

Imagine how much of Sony's PS3 woes would be fixed with a simple 2GB Ram pack for $70. The console would have new life.

Me, I just want a relatively working Skyrim

I have to say I think Xbox 360 gamers are a bunch of whiners, but I think you PS3 owners have a real reason to be upset. It is one thing when you can't complete one of the 3,000 quests in this game due to a glitch. It is another matter entirely when your game is unplayable. I doubt this game should have ever been released for PS3. It was definitely released too soon, and I think the conversion was done without optimizing it for PS3.

PS3 owners tell consistent stories and it seems to affect everyone. Xbox owners experiences are varied and the stories of "major" bugs even more so. All in all I think PC and Xbox owners got a buggy game. You guys got a BROKEN game.

I think they owe you guys something. At the very least an official appology, and they SHOULD give you free DLC.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-skyrim-lag-fixed, seem to be around 30 FPS quite often even if it goes down now and then.

Don't blame Sony. Blame developers who choose the easy way and port it to PS3. I can't really think of any companies who's actually qualified to develop for PS3... Only one I can think of is Guerrilla Games.

Good read, recommended for PS3 users.

They did not try the forest around Riften, FPS whit 1.4 is way better but remain slow and it is not 30!!!

Every now and then? Look at that video... it's almost always fluctuating below 30 in even the relatively non-demanding areas they measured it in. It's already scraping the bottom of the barrel and stuttering all over in those areas and becomes worse in a lot of dungeons, the fall forest, and marshes, etc. DigitalFoundry even said it stays more about 25 in relatively non-demanding areas such as near Whiterun castle and the video isn't doing any favors... again, in relatively non-demanding areas, even. The fps is still sub-standard garbage, it just doesn't have the potential to worsen quite as much. Sure, it's better than intolerable crap dipping into the single digits in even non-demanding areas all the way down to even 0 in non-demanding areas, but it's still not good and it shouldn't be accepted. Lowering of consumer standards is lowering of industry standards. That is not 30 fps in non-demanding areas, it still fluctuates in the teens and lower 20s for more demanding areas, and the overall inconsistency makes it even worse and renders any split-seconds of 30 fps performance in a sea of sub-standard 30 performance still ranging from 15-upper 20s depending on range and fluctuating within the bracket absolutely useless because it's still all so choppy and sluggish. In short, it's not good enough. 30 is a base minimum for standard averages, but consumer complacency is quickly dropping that standard... not good.