IMGN.PRO has managed to drive Kholat‘s performance on PlayStation 4 up to 1080P, 30 FPS. This is thanks in part to utilizing the 7th core.
Kholat is an indie survival horror game inspired by a real life incident called the Dyatlov Pass incident. On February 2, 1959, nine students from Ural Polytechnic University went hiking in the nearby Ural mountains. All nine students were missing, and later authorities found their bodies, with no clear explanation of what happened to them. Kholat , short for Kholat Syakhl, is a Russian transliteration of Holatchahl, the name of the mountain where this incident occurred. In the native Mansi language, Holatchahl means Dead Mountain.
In the game Kholat , you play an investigator who is trying to retrace the steps of these students, and hoping to figure out what really happened to them. Kholat features voice work from Hollywood actor Sean Bean, as the narrator.
Sony revealed that they unlocked the PlayStation 4’s 7th CPU core last November. This CPU core is usually reserved for operating system functions, but with this change, developers can make use of a little more of the PlayStation 4’s raw processing power.
Developer IMGN.PRO revealed that they did have memory leak problems when porting Kholat from PC to PlayStation 4. They confirmed that they utilized the 7th core, but to fix this issue, they also modified the memory management code to Unreal 4, the engine they used for this game. It was a difficult process, but IMGN.PRO is satisfied with the results, claiming the PC and PlayStation 4 versions are now identical, and that they hit 1080P, 30FPS benchmarks as well. IMGN.PRO also stated they were open to an Xbox One port, but they will wait and see the reception of the PlayStation 4 port first.
Sony’s third party developers have previously had high expectations for the PlayStation 4‘s processing power. In 2013, some even stated they wanted it to have a thousand times as much power as the PlayStation 3.