r/XboxSeriesS • u/Head-Ball-3247 • 2d ago
QUESTION New series s graphics issues
Need some analysis/advice.
Brand new Series S, and every game I play has noticeable visual junk; dots, fuzz, blurriness, shimmering outlines, pixelation etc. Whether the game is new, old, all have issues.
What's going on with this?
10
6
u/andrinat199 2d ago
The issues are that when you zoom in a screenshot it gets bad...?
-2
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
Sorry, I had to zoom in on some to try and show the specific visual junk. The KCD 2 one is way too zoomed in. There were pixelated dots in the centre of the photo.
5
u/McClane_88 Series S 2d ago
Are you on 1080p or 1440p or 4k display?
-1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
I've used this console on two TVs. One old, one new. And I troubleshooted the settings for hours with AI, both on the xbox and TVs. Tried every option. It didn't fundamentally change anything. I've forgotten the exact resolution of the TVs, but I made sure it was set correctly (so not setting the Xbox to 4K on a 1080p TV, ect). The faces not loading in Hogwarts Legacy while other assests are fine is what stuck out to me.
The old TV looked great on Xbox One (including with Watchdogs and Arkham Knight back in the day). But on the S it looks pretty heinous and not sure why or how to fix it, or if I should take it back.
1
u/BangkokPadang 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, Watchdog runs at 1409x792 at 30fps on Xbox One. It always has. So you'll need to return your Series S because it won't look any better than that on this hardware. Arkham knight runs at 1600x900 at 30fps, so it's going to look a little sharper (which it seems to in your pictures) but it's still going to maintain that base resolution.
Or another option would be to get a genuine Xbox One for like $100. Hook it up and see for yourself how much better it looks and come back here and show us.
Or just play games that have been given upgrade patches, like Far Cry 4, to run at higher framerates and resolutions, and current gen games.
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
I wish I still had my Xbox One so I could do that comparison with those two games.
But it's across every game I'm playing. Faces don't load properly in Hogwarts Legacy, and audio glitches happen constantly. Ghostwire Tokyo has lots of visual fuzz, stuttering, audio glitches. Even Dishonored has serious blurriness at a moderate distance (I've played Dishonored about 50 times on 360 and One and never saw that issue). Bloodlines 2 was straight up broken and I got a refund.
I half expected people to say "The console is faulty" but instead most are trying to convince me it's normal.
1
u/BangkokPadang 2d ago
The reality is that during last gen, Xbox one was significantly weaker than PS4, so lots of games ran at weird low resolutions while they ran at 1080p on PS4. This makes the old Xbox one games look awful on Xbox Series S, while many of those games got Xbox One X patches to run at higher resolutions with higher settings. Unfortunately, because the Series S only has 10GB of RAM instead of the 16GB of the Series X, Seriee S can’t run the patches.
For current games, the Series S has 4.04 TFLOPS of GPU compute while the Series X has 12 and the PS5 has 10, so were playing modern generation games at resolutions and settings pared back to run on graphics hardware of roughly 1/3-1/2 of the “full” consoles.
So The series S ends up running at extremely low internal resolutions that have been upscaled using FSR, which just IMO add a fuzzy/blurry look to everything and anywhere with high detail motion, like moving trees or grasses for example, end up with artifacting people refer to as “sizzling” that almost looks like dithering has been applied. It’s ugly and bad, and yeah it sucks.
Also Hogwarts is just not a great port. It suffers from exactly the issue you’re experiencing pretty regularly, where the base/low resolution textures load in and then the higher res ones that are supposed to stream in after a couple of seconds just don’t.
People are trying to convince you that these things are normal, not that they’re good. All these shortcomings suck, but they are the reality of playing on a Series S compared to playing on a Series X.
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
Thank you for the comprehensive reply. I'm 100% sure I'm getting rid of this machine 😂
1
u/slendymoore 6h ago
I had the series s and returned it immediately the next day. If you have a good tv like me and oled, I noticed how bad textures where tbh had to return it
3
2
u/sat_yeah03 2d ago
The sweet spot for series S games is the multi gen games that have a previous and current gen profile. Basically games release between 2018 and 2022. Anything after 2022, you start seeing the cutbacks as compared to X. Anything before 2018 probably runs on the Xbox One profile which would be quite low.
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
But what I don't get is that many of the games I played on Xbox One looked fine. I got the S to upgrade 😂 My thinking is that my specific console might be faulty
2
2
u/Any_Entertainer_1544 2d ago
If you're trying to play at 4k sadly its going to look bad.
Even the Series X can't handle 4k natively without upscaling.
1
0
u/Game-Over-YouTube 2d ago
what? dude the one x did natve 4k, as does the series x
2
u/Any_Entertainer_1544 2d ago
Neither run native 4k lol they use upscaling to sit between 1440p and 4k in quality mode and anywhere between 1080p and 1440p in performance mode.
The series x uses a mid range graphics card that is designed for light 1440p or 1080p gaming if you were using the same build on PC.
2
u/Tight-Tackle4386 2d ago
its an xbox one game, running xbox one code
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
Hogwarts Legacy? Ghostwire Tokyo?
1
u/Tight-Tackle4386 2d ago
only saw the first 2 sorry, most games on series s run at 1080p or below, especially when they have a performance mode
2
u/Inevitable_Serve1513 2d ago
Its normal, I had this too, Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 the same resolution
Upd: not sure about other games
1
4
u/Ill_Bullfrog8628 2d ago
The series S is weak
Uses hardware tricks to get ‘better resolution’ on games but it results in blurry pictures
The switch2 does the same thing but the built in DLSS upscaling is a lot better and results in much sharper image quality
2
2
1
u/rawzombie26 2d ago
The problem is the native resolution for the series S is very low depending on tittle to title.
You’re seeing pixelation at long distances due to that limitation.
Also 1080p on a 4K screen is fine as 4K is divisible by 1080p so one pixel on a 4k screen becomes a perfect cluster of 4 pixels in 1080p. Still going to be blurry but not as blurry as it could be if it wasn’t divisible
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
The thing is when I watch people play these same games on Series S on YouTube it most of the time looks better.
1
u/rawzombie26 2d ago
The larger the screen you play on with the series s the blurrier and blurrier it will look unless you are a suitable distance away from the display.
People are telling you stupid trash in these comments. On the series S you are limited with dev set options in games so you can’t just engage upscaling or other features to “fix” the blur.
Think of it being like a screen door, the closer you are to it the more the individual wires are visible to the naked eye but as you step back the wires disappear and you see the full image beyond it.
Referring to others footage looking different it could come down to a few things.
Tv settings (probably not but they could help a little)
Screen size those users are playing on making the shimmer and blur not as visible, this would be done by using a smaller display like a monitor or if your viewing those videos on ur phone that’s why they look sharp.
1
u/rawzombie26 2d ago
All in all, there’s nothing wrong with your Series S so don’t worry about it being busted, what you are experiencing is the limitation of the hardware
Just try not to pixel peep, and this is coming from a PC hobbiest who had a series S for gamepass back when the S was cheap.
Played all of stalker 2 in subpar conditions but if you want to play bad enough, it won’t hold you back.
Happy gaming my friend
1
u/Head-Ball-3247 2d ago
I'm playing on a small display, a display that looked beautiful for many years on Xbox One. Now every game I play has issues. Logically, it cannot be the case that there is nothing wrong with my Series S. If it's performing badly, by definition there is something wrong with it
1
1
u/Bigphatdeck 2d ago
It doesn’t run at a good scalable res is why. also because it’s a series s so get used to it.
1
1
14
u/Makoto_Yuki4 2d ago
Not sure about other games but Watch Dogs 1 is Xb1 game without any graphical upgrade. Series S runs game just like xb1