Need for Speed Unbound smashes onto current generation consoles and PC this month, powered by DICE’s long-serving Frostbite engine, this game has shifted gears with its visual style. With the barriers off as PS4 and Xbox One are no longer on the grid, will this title have more power to work with? What can we expect from this latest entry in the long-running franchise? From PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, we see what the family of consoles has to offer and which takes the pole position. All that and more in our IGN Performance review of Need for Speed Unbound. Need for Speed Unbound PS5 vs Xbox Series X|S Performance is tested and we push this game to its limits!
Chapters
0:00 What to expect
0:31 Frostbite engine and the rendering techniques deployed here
2:48 Platform comparisons
4:45 Performance tests – PS5 vs Xbox Series X
7:06 Performance tests – Series S
8:29 Loading tests
8:46 Summary
Foreign The Need for Speed has been Top Gun in The racing genre for nion 30 years Spinning its first Wheels on the 30-bit Console's birth on the 3DO it's been one Of the most successful of EA's huge Catalog of releases this new entry is Brought To Us by burnout Heroes Criterion after many years supporting Multiplayer releases have they found Top Gear for the now generation exclusive How real is this Now being the 25th release of this Series it has a long Legacy to live up To being current gen and PC only it Should be able to push the frostbite Engine much harder and with Criterion Recently being merged with codemasters This is a joint team with a pedigree fit For such a series the biggest change is The new title offers is in that graffiti Style art design it now has mixed with Those photorealistic rendering we have Seen since 2015's Need for Speed reboot The game's strong use of projected Cube Maps within its excellent physically Based materials and often very wet Looking streets still looks impressive At times presenting a clean and Realistic looking City cars and Environments the strong use of tone Mapping and color corrected rendering Also aged the game's strong visual Aesthetic that is stylized even more now
With it being juxtaposed with that Jet Set Radio like overlay to emphasize Everything from Tire screeches grabbing Air or collisions this mixture of two Extreme Styles may not be to everyone's Taste but it certainly defines this new Game from its compatriots the effects Themselves are mostly 2D textured Sprites aligned to Flat vertices with Light animation but some of them are 3D Polygon objects such as the blooms of Smoke around tires this comes across as Almost a comic book style from the 80s Within the full-blown modern 3D Rendering techniques This shell Shady design and physically Based rendering is then topped off with SSR Reflections screen space Reflections Across the game in the city streets but The problem here is a lot of them are Just glass-like puddles that don't react To you as you drive through and Everything's got a mirror-like shine These fall back to projection Q maps on The ground and the cars themselves all Use projected Cube maps and then proxy Objects are rendered underneath the Ground for things like static cars and Buildings the game also has a heavy Reliance on screen space effects along With SSR it also uses screen space light Rays or crepuscular raids which can look A little dated now in the current Generation the texture details and
Assets and overall material quality is Good but it certainly feels more last Gen than current gen [Music] In terms of comparing the platforms Across each other the biggest difference Comes down to resolution the series s And surprisingly is the lowest of the Lot with the dynamic solution scanning From 1440p down to 1080p it's often Somewhere around 1188 and 1080p in heavy Action both the PS5 and the series X Bump this up to a full 3840 by 2160 but They also dynamically scale from that Target the PS5 goes the lowest with 1800p low counted and the series X 3264 By 1836 giving it around five to six Percent boost in terms of resolution Output but from a graphical perspective They're all pretty much identical across The ball with effects AO shadows and Reflections all of those are present With screen inspiration Reflections Running on all versions the biggest Difference is the foliage is cut back on The series S as Lord is ever so slightly Texture filtering is lower and because Of the lower resolution it's more Unstable and noisier when you look at Thin objects you can also see the Checkerboard artifacts quite clearly That the frostbite engine uses both in Action and cuts and also in SSR Reflections which stands out more the
Lower down the stack you go which you Can see clearly here against the series S the Xbox series X and the PS5 they're All pretty similar except resolution is The biggest Delta across the board [Music] [Music] Thank you Foreign [Music] So let's get into the performance part Of this test put in the series X head to Head with PlayStation 5 at the same Dynamic 4K resolution we can see the Game does a pretty decent job of Sticking to 60 FPS through most of these Action sections at the start of the Title but because this is an open world There's lots of places to discover it Can have performance hiccups and in Races we can see the series X can dip a Little more than the PlayStation 5. Through these opening sections we get a Low of 53 FPS on the PlayStation 5 which Really is unacceptable for a racing Title but that goes down to 47 a 12 Delta on the series X the series s also Has struggles but I'll get to that in a Moment and overall even though it's not A bad performing Title by any stretch of The imagination as a racing game my Expectations are pretty much a rock Solid 60fps or higher a fixed frame rate Is required because this is what racing
Titles are 60fps is definitely the Preferred option single frame dips to 50 29 FPS here or there would never be Noticed I'm not talking about those but The fact that we get clumps of frame Drops significantly in some of the Denser areas of the world can cause Significant impact to your enjoyment on The title and many people might say well Let's just drop the resolution even Lower to fix the issues but I'm pretty Sure that's not the issue here I'm Pretty confident the issues we're seeing Are CPU related and nothing to do with The GPU itself and therefore what we're Seeing is probably streaming and loading Issues kicking in because they can crop Up more at the beginning of a section Coming out of a cutscene they do not Always align with what you would assume Would be a GPU stressed area therefore I'm pretty sure this is a CPU bottleneck That we're seeing in this title and Therefore dropping the resolution even More or even increasing that DRS range Wouldn't help at all because it's not a GPU bound scenario again I must stress That in most of the racing sections it Is pretty solid and it averages into the High 50s so it's not as if it's dropping Frames all the time but it will Certainly drop frames throughout your Play in consistent areas both in the Open world or in the midst of battle and
For a racing game that simply isn't Acceptable for performance levels Certainly of brand spanking new consoles With an exclusive title like this Coming up to the bridge bringing the Series s into the equation we can see That that performs almost identically to The series X Cal suprees so we now see a Low of 48 fps in practically the exact Same scenarios we're seeing on the Series X and Playstation 5. again that Dynamic resolution is doing its best to Keep the game at that Target of 60 FPS When it does become GPU bound do not get Me wrong the game will be GPU bound very Often but when it's dropping below that 60 FPS Target here on the series s it's The same reasons we're seeing it on the Series X and the PlayStation 5. it is Becoming CPU bound at this point for a Racing title it's just a little bit too Inconsistent for me to give it a full Recommendation like I say it's not a bad Performing title and we have seen other Titles that perform worse but for racing Titles my expectations need to be a rock Solid 60 and anything below that for me Is a bit of a failure so hopefully the Team can work on that frostbite Optimization and get better usage out of These pretty powerful CPUs to try and Keep the stream and data throughput at a Level that keeps a flat 16 millisecond Frame time which is vital when you've
Got the pedal to the metal Loading does leverage some of the SSD And CPU power coming in just under 10 Seconds from the main menu into the Start of the game it's around half a Second slower on the series s and pretty Much a wash between the series X and PlayStation 5 and if you can notice the Difference without a stopwatch then you Are cyber Diamond systems one zero one To summarize it's largely a photo finish Across all three consoles yes resolution And image quality can be better on PS5 And series X over The Series S but Realistically there's not a huge amount Of difference between this and high-end PC the target audience is getting a Pretty similar level of experience the One caveat to that as a racing title it Needs to be a rock solid 30 or 60 FPS Which is my preference for a racing Title and this just falls short of that Target it's not a bad performing Title By any stretch of the imagination but it Certainly needs to be better and I hope Criterion can drop some patches to just Utilize those CPUs a little little Better in the future and with that we May not have reached the end of the race But certainly the end of this video and If you like to keep it family then keep It IGN performance reviews and we'll Catch you on the next one [Music]
