PS5 - The Future of Gaming | The Power of V

[cybereality]

There is no practical benefit apart from having slightly smaller load times.

When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.

 

[nguyen704]

I thought this was a very interesting video regarding ray-tracing used in the PS5 games shown.

 

[kac77]

If only your knowledge was at the same level as your confidence.

1. I said games are limited by VRAM, that's why you can't have more complex scenes on the screen with more assets
2. I also said that no matter how fast your storage is, loading from it will never be the same as having assets in the video memory. So you can't have more complex scenes no matter how fast your drive is.
3. Throughput does matter, but not sustained sequential read speed, but random access speed. In which a HDD is at least two orders of magnitudes slower than even the most basic SSD.
4. So moving from HDD to any SSD is about 100-200x faster.
5. Pushing it to the fastest possible SSD is pointless, you still can't use it as ram replacement, you will still have to wait for the data to arrive in VRAM, so you still can't have bigger scenes than what fits in VRAM.
6. The only thing you can decrease is the loading times by a small margin, which is fine, but not nearly as important feature as this was made out to be.
7. Peak sequential transfer rate is meaningless for loading games. You never load big continous sets of data, you load random bits.

Because make no mistake Sony opting to get the fastest possible SSD instead of a reasonably priced one, means nothing more than a tiny decrease in loading times compared to a regular run of the mill SSD. They try to sell the idea with ratchet and clank but you can see the pauses between transitions as the assets are loaded into VRAM. Not to mention with pre-loading the same effect might even be possible using a HDD. As the game is linear, the transitions between worlds are not happening at a moment's notice, there is plenty of time to pre-load the assets between the time a rift first appears, and you actually going through it.

If only your knowledge was at the same level as your confidence.

1. I said games are limited by VRAM, that's why you can't have more complex scenes on the screen with more assets
2. I also said that no matter how fast your storage is, loading from it will never be the same as having assets in the video memory. So you can't have more complex scenes no matter how fast your drive is.
3. Throughput does matter, but not sustained sequential read speed, but random access speed. In which a HDD is at least two orders of magnitudes slower than even the most basic SSD.
4. So moving from HDD to any SSD is about 100-200x faster.
5. Pushing it to the fastest possible SSD is pointless, you still can't use it as ram replacement, you will still have to wait for the data to arrive in VRAM, so you still can't have bigger scenes than what fits in VRAM.
6. The only thing you can decrease is the loading times by a small margin, which is fine, but not nearly as important feature as this was made out to be.
7. Peak sequential transfer rate is meaningless for loading games. You never load big continous sets of data, you load random bits.

Because make no mistake Sony opting to get the fastest possible SSD instead of a reasonably priced one, means nothing more than a tiny decrease in loading times compared to a regular run of the mill SSD. They try to sell the idea with ratchet and clank but you can see the pauses between transitions as the assets are loaded into VRAM. Not to mention with pre-loading the same effect might even be possible using a HDD. As the game is linear, the transitions between worlds are not happening at a moment's notice, there is plenty of time to pre-load the assets between the time a rift first appears, and you actually going through it.

If only your knowledge wasn't just wrong.

1. Games are limited by much more than VRAM. Throughput of the CPU, GPU, memory and memory subsystem, and disk I/O all play apart. Bolting 32GB on a Riva TNT isn't going to do crap if the GPU can't process the data out of VRAM fast enough.

2. No one said SSDs are faster than RAM/VRAM. They don't need to be.

3. Nope you can have really low random access but low sequential read speed would kill performance. You need both (see point #1) both determine performance.

4. So I guess sequential read speed does matter.

5. It doesn't need to be a ram replacement. It just needs to be fast enough to load a map into memory around the time the end user/ GPU expects it to be there.

6. Um the transition from HDD to SSD is quite vast. Proclaiming otherwise will make people think you buy the slowest SSDs on earth. No one thinks the performance delta between a SSD vs a HDD is miniscule. Even you realize it yourself (see your own point #4 )

7. You're repeating yourself. Random access and sequential read performance literally determine overall performance of every SSD, actually every data transfer ever from NICS to memory. You can't decouple that.

Chutzpah doesn't dictate knowledge. I kind of wish it did for you that way the discussion would be better.

 

[kac77]

To break it down further and I would know since I used to establish minimum specs around games, the minimum specification dictates how the game will perform. Forever the minimum spec dictated how the games would load when and where. This minimum specification is dictated around the HDD and all of the components really. This is why when you play older games on a SSD you hardly see the loading screen. The loading screen had to be there for people who have slower machines.

Sony and Microsoft are changing this. Now the minimum spec is that of SSDs. This has never happened before. So it's not really a gimmick at all.

 

[Armenius]

To break it down further and I would know since I used to establish minimum specs around games, the minimum specification dictates how the game will perform. Forever the minimum spec dictated how the games would load when and where. This minimum specification is dictated around the HDD and all of the components really. This is why when you play older games on a SSD you hardly see the loading screen. The loading screen had to be there for people who have slower machines.

Sony and Microsoft are changing this. Now the minimum spec is that of SSDs. This has never happened before. So it's not really a gimmick at all.

I don't think anyone was saying that having a fast SSD was a gimmick, but that the games we've seen for the PS5 so far have been using the SSD to create gimmicks instead of practical fun games. Once we get past the first 2 years of stupidity on the developments side we should start seeing games that are using the SSD in a useful way. The SSD is a boon in games, but it is not something revolutionary despite what Sony's marketing team is trying to portray.

 

[kac77]

I don't think anyone was saying that having a fast SSD was a gimmick, but that the games we've seen for the PS5 so far have been using the SSD to create gimmicks instead of practical fun games. Once we get past the first 2 years of stupidity on the developments side we should start seeing games that are using the SSD in a useful way. The SSD is a boon in games, but it is not something revolutionary despite what Sony's marketing team is trying to portray.

The revolutionary part is that of the minimum spec. You can disagree if you like but playing a game with no loading screen at all is a game changer in allot of respects.

I can see though if someone thinks that a SSD by itself is no big deal but PCs are lead by the minimums and that isn't something you can get around. People can build their own PCs but a console is what it is. It doesn't change.

 

[Nolan7689]

I don't think anyone was saying that having a fast SSD was a gimmick, but that the games we've seen for the PS5 so far have been using the SSD to create gimmicks instead of practical fun games. Once we get past the first 2 years of stupidity on the developments side we should start seeing games that are using the SSD in a useful way. The SSD is a boon in games, but it is not something revolutionary despite what Sony's marketing team is trying to portray.

It may be a gimmick in Rachet and Clank but I have absolutely no doubts that Rachet and Clank will also be a very fun and well made game. Insomniac seems to know what they’re doing and typically the R&C games are pretty good platformers. Maybe they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I maintain not all games have to be for everyone.

 

[next-Jin]

Having the launch games be gimmicky shouldn’t be a surprise. The touchpad on the DualShock 4 was only really used the first 2 years and everyone abandoned it other than being another button to use.

It’ll take a few years to see what’s possible in game environments and general design.

 

[nguyen704]

Here is an image of the console lying horizontal. The PS5 with the disc drive doesn't look so bad this way.

 

[cybereality]

Looks a lot cooler horizontal as well.

 

[Decko87]

This whole conversation is dumb for anyone old enough to remember the Xbox 360 launch. Price/performance it blew basically anything away. It was essentially a radeon x1800xt and a three core processor for 400 bucks, an absurd value. Plus it had console optimization. Around that time, yeah it wasn't great for PC hardware. But guess what? The 8800 GT came out like a year later and blew the damn thing out of the water for a reasonable price( I think I bought one for like 220 bucks). The Xbox One and PS 4 launches were unusual due to them being developed during the 08 recession, they didn't want to take as much risk with cutting edge, expensive hardware. But for any of us who remember former console launches well, this is the same conversation that's been had in the past.

 

[Shoganai]

Looks a lot cooler horizontal as well.

Yes. Definitely going to be leaving it this way.

 

[Factum]

When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.

PR is not progress...nice fallacy.

 

[cybereality]

PR is not progress...nice fallacy.

Yes, there is hype involved, same with ray tracing, but it is pushing the limit further.

People always like to say the PC gets bad console ports, and that consoles are holding back PC gaming.

Well now that SSDs are standard issue on console, we should see that benefit in future PC games (theoretically).

 

[Flogger23m]

This whole conversation is dumb for anyone old enough to remember the Xbox 360 launch. Price/performance it blew basically anything away. It was essentially a radeon x1800xt and a three core processor for 400 bucks, an absurd value. Plus it had console optimization. Around that time, yeah it wasn't great for PC hardware. But guess what? The 8800 GT came out like a year later and blew the damn thing out of the water for a reasonable price( I think I bought one for like 220 bucks). The Xbox One and PS 4 launches were unusual due to them being developed during the 08 recession, they didn't want to take as much risk with cutting edge, expensive hardware. But for any of us who remember former console launches well, this is the same conversation that's been had in the past.

A 8800GT for $220? Must have been a great deal but they were nowhere near that price normally.

 

[staknhalo]

A 8800GT for $220? Must have been a great deal but they were nowhere near that price normally.

I paid I think just over $300 for my 8800 GTS 320MB

 

[Decko87]

A 8800GT for $220? Must have been a great deal but they were nowhere near that price normally.

I think the launch price was 250

 

[Nolan7689]

8800GT was 2007 so actually almost 2 years after the 360 released. All the same though 2006 saw the release of the 8800GTX/GTS, which where easily better than the 360.

 

[cybereality]

A 8800GT for $220? Must have been a great deal but they were nowhere near that price normally.

I got a 8800 GTS 512MB for $239. It was G92, I think the same chip as the GT.

 

[Red Falcon]

I got a 8800 GTS 512MB for $239. It was G92, I think the same chip as the GT.

Exactly, and it was more powerful than both the original 8800 GTS 320MB/640MB and the 8800 GTX - what a time to be alive!
I do remember in 2009 that the 9800GT (8800GT refresh) 1GB GPU went down to $120, which was quite the deal for a single-slot GPU at the time.

 

[Factum]

Yes, there is hype involved, same with ray tracing, but it is pushing the limit further.

People always like to say the PC gets bad console ports, and that consoles are holding back PC gaming.

Well now that SSDs are standard issue on console, we should see that benefit in future PC games (theoretically).

SSD/NVME has been in PC's for year, you mean consoles are following the PC?

 

[T4rd]

SSD/NVME has been in PC's for year, you mean consoles are following the PC?

No PC games have fully utilized or required an SSD though, that's his point. This will encourage developers to take better advantage of SSDs like the new consoles supposedly will.

 

[Armenius]

This whole conversation is dumb for anyone old enough to remember the Xbox 360 launch. Price/performance it blew basically anything away. It was essentially a radeon x1800xt and a three core processor for 400 bucks, an absurd value. Plus it had console optimization. Around that time, yeah it wasn't great for PC hardware. But guess what? The 8800 GT came out like a year later and blew the damn thing out of the water for a reasonable price( I think I bought one for like 220 bucks). The Xbox One and PS 4 launches were unusual due to them being developed during the 08 recession, they didn't want to take as much risk with cutting edge, expensive hardware. But for any of us who remember former console launches well, this is the same conversation that's been had in the past.

Keep in mind the Xbox 360 was an outlier. There was never a console prior from a hardware perspective that surpassed what was capable in a PC. As mentioned, it was a year before the 8800 GTX came out and 6 or so months before Core 2. 2006 was when we finally saw dual core processors break into the mainstream market, with quad cores following a year later.

Exactly, and it was more powerful than both the original 8800 GTS 320MB/640MB and the 8800 GTX - what a time to be alive!
I do remember in 2009 that the 9800GT (8800GT refresh) 1GB GPU went down to $120, which was quite the deal for a single-slot GPU at the time.

The 8800 GTS 512MB was not more powerful than the 8800 GTX. Not even the 9800 GTX using the G92 was more powerful than the 8800 GTX.

 

[M76]

If only your knowledge wasn't just wrong.

LOL, educate me....

1. Games are limited by much more than VRAM. Throughput of the CPU, GPU, memory and memory subsystem, and disk I/O all play apart. Bolting 32GB on a Riva TNT isn't going to do crap if the GPU can't process the data out of VRAM fast enough.

Way to go off on a tangent. What is your point? You seem to have none, just throwing out random crap hoping something will stick. For the n+1th time. The original presupposition was that you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games if you have faster storage. Of course the overall system performance is limited by other things, but this false supposition can be debunked without even mentioning any other metric but the amount of VRAM.

2. No one said SSDs are faster than RAM/VRAM. They don't need to be.

No, they just said you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games due to the SSD, for that to be possible it has to be as fast as VRAM, and the GPU must have direct access to it. Of course both ideas are ludicrious.

3. Nope you can have really low random access but low sequential read speed would kill performance. You need both (see point #1) both determine performance.

For crying out loud. Are you deliberately this obtuse? The sequential speed is enough of even HDDs to support anything games would want. If you had the access time of an SSD with the throughput of a HDD it would feel almost as fast as an SSD, you'd need a stopwatch to notice differences. Yes, you are similarly wrong on point 1 and this one, you can't seem to grasp how each metric limits what a machine can achieve. HDDs are not a limiting factor becuase of their sequential read speed, they are a limiting factor in access time.

4. So I guess sequential read speed does matter.

Thanks for proving my point. You still don't understand the relation between peak sequential and random read speeds. SSD are 100x faster in RANDOM read, not sequential read. In RANDOM read an SSD is still slower than the sequential read speed of a modern HDD. Do you get it now? That's why sequential read speed is irrelevant. It is not a limiting factor, and only comes into play when you copy / read big chunks of sequential data which never happens during gaming.

5. It doesn't need to be a ram replacement. It just needs to be fast enough to load a map into memory around the time the end user/ GPU expects it to be there.

For which any old SSD would do. Even a HDD if the reads are well optimized,
Nobody denies that adding an SSD to the system is beneficial, but adding the fastest possible SSD is a waste of money for miniscule returns on the investment.

6. Um the transition from HDD to SSD is quite vast. Proclaiming otherwise will make people think you buy the slowest SSDs on earth. No one thinks the performance delta between a SSD vs a HDD is miniscule. Even you realize it yourself (see your own point #4 )

You (deliberately?) misunderstand yet again. The difference between an SSD, and the fastest possible SSD is small, not between a HDD and an SSD

7. You're repeating yourself. Random access and sequential read performance literally determine overall performance of every SSD, actually every data transfer ever from NICS to memory. You can't decouple that.

They are completely unrelated metrics. And in gaming random read performance matters much more, than sequential read performance, because game assets are needed randomly not in the order they are written on the disk.
And even a typical NVME SSD will have slower random read rates than the sequential read rate of a HDD, so I'd say that's quite decoupled.

Look, here is the random read performance of a typical NVME SSD: it's 63Mb/s! A HDD can pull around 200MB/s in sequential read speed.
A typical HDD will have a random read speed of 0.5-1Mb/S so about 100x slower.

That is why playing games on a HDD vs an SSD: A world of difference.
Playing games on a typical SSD, vs the fastest possible SSD with 5.5Gb/s peak speed: barely any noticeable difference.

Please tell me you are starting to understand now.

 

[vegeta535]

LOL, educate me....


Way to go off on a tangent. What is your point? You seem to have none, just throwing out random crap hoping something will stick. For the n+1th time. The original presupposition was that you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games if you have faster storage. Of course the overall system performance is limited by other things, but this false supposition can be debunked without even mentioning any other metric but the amount of VRAM.


No, they just said you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games due to the SSD, for that to be possible it has to be as fast as VRAM, and the GPU must have direct access to it. Of course both ideas are ludicrious.

For crying out loud. Are you deliberately this obtuse? The sequential speed is enough of even HDDs to support anything games would want. If you had the access time of an SSD with the throughput of a HDD it would feel almost as fast as an SSD, you'd need a stopwatch to notice differences. Yes, you are similarly wrong on point 1 and this one, you can't seem to grasp how each metric limits what a machine can achieve. HDDs are not a limiting factor becuase of their sequential read speed, they are a limiting factor in access time.


Thanks for proving my point. You still don't understand the relation between peak sequential and random read speeds. SSD are 100x faster in RANDOM read, not sequential read. In RANDOM read an SSD is still slower than the sequential read speed of a modern HDD. Do you get it now? That's why sequential read speed is irrelevant. It is not a limiting factor, and only comes into play when you copy / read big chunks of sequential data which never happens during gaming.

For which any old SSD would do. Even a HDD if the reads are well optimized,
Nobody denies that adding an SSD to the system is beneficial, but adding the fastest possible SSD is a waste of money for miniscule returns on the investment.

You (deliberately?) misunderstand yet again. The difference between an SSD, and the fastest possible SSD is small, not between a HDD and an SSD


They are completely unrelated metrics. And in gaming random read performance matters much more, than sequential read performance, because game assets are needed randomly not in the order they are written on the disk.
And even a typical NVME SSD will have slower random read rates than the sequential read rate of a HDD, so I'd say that's quite decoupled.

Look, here is the random read performance of a typical NVME SSD: it's 63Mb/s! A HDD can pull around 200MB/s in sequential read speed.
A typical HDD will have a random read speed of 0.5-1Mb/S so about 100x slower.
View attachment 254629
That is why playing games on a HDD vs an SSD: A world of difference.
Playing games on a typical SSD, vs the fastest possible SSD with 5.5Gb/s peak speed: barely any noticeable difference.

Please tell me you are starting to understand now.

No you just don't understand.

 

[Factum]

No you just don't understand.

Pot, kettle, black...

 

[M76]

No you just don't understand.

Are you using the age old "I don't understand therefore it must be nonsense" argument?
If you think I don't understand then point out what I don't understand. I explained pretty clearly why the peak read rate of 5.5Gb/s is mostly snakeoil. I'm not saying it is not true, it's just not a metric that matters to games much.

 

[next-Jin]

That's why sequential read speed is irrelevant. It is not a limiting factor, and only comes into play when you copy / read big chunks of sequential data which never happens during gaming.

Y’all are having an interesting conversation but with the latter part of that quote could be a what comes first the chicken or the egg statement could it not?

For the past 40 years they have used spindle drives as a baseline (or carts but that’s another thing entirely). Could it be that it never happens because they are specifically designed not too due that limitation?

I don’t understand why Cerny would be discussing the ms delay with simply turning your POV and the importance of the SSD in that regard if it’s irrelevant.

If what I understood correctly that 16GB (or whatever is accessible) is filled with what’s on the screen and not what’s behind you and in your immediate area. Or rather that possibility is there with SSD. Initial games probably aren’t doing that. So effectively while you only have access to 16GB, using the SSD the way they can, it’s like having 24GB or some other arbitrary number using modern standards.

I dunno, fascinating discussion none the less. I like talking about the tech more than the games .

 

[kac77]

LOL, educate me....


Way to go off on a tangent. What is your point? You seem to have none, just throwing out random crap hoping something will stick. For the n+1th time. The original presupposition was that you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games if you have faster storage. Of course the overall system performance is limited by other things, but this false supposition can be debunked without even mentioning any other metric but the amount of VRAM.


No, they just said you can have bigger and more complex scenes in games due to the SSD, for that to be possible it has to be as fast as VRAM, and the GPU must have direct access to it. Of course both ideas are ludicrious.

For crying out loud. Are you deliberately this obtuse? The sequential speed is enough of even HDDs to support anything games would want. If you had the access time of an SSD with the throughput of a HDD it would feel almost as fast as an SSD, you'd need a stopwatch to notice differences. Yes, you are similarly wrong on point 1 and this one, you can't seem to grasp how each metric limits what a machine can achieve. HDDs are not a limiting factor becuase of their sequential read speed, they are a limiting factor in access time.


Thanks for proving my point. You still don't understand the relation between peak sequential and random read speeds. SSD are 100x faster in RANDOM read, not sequential read. In RANDOM read an SSD is still slower than the sequential read speed of a modern HDD. Do you get it now? That's why sequential read speed is irrelevant. It is not a limiting factor, and only comes into play when you copy / read big chunks of sequential data which never happens during gaming.

For which any old SSD would do. Even a HDD if the reads are well optimized,
Nobody denies that adding an SSD to the system is beneficial, but adding the fastest possible SSD is a waste of money for miniscule returns on the investment.

You (deliberately?) misunderstand yet again. The difference between an SSD, and the fastest possible SSD is small, not between a HDD and an SSD


They are completely unrelated metrics. And in gaming random read performance matters much more, than sequential read performance, because game assets are needed randomly not in the order they are written on the disk.
And even a typical NVME SSD will have slower random read rates than the sequential read rate of a HDD, so I'd say that's quite decoupled.

Look, here is the random read performance of a typical NVME SSD: it's 63Mb/s! A HDD can pull around 200MB/s in sequential read speed.
A typical HDD will have a random read speed of 0.5-1Mb/S so about 100x slower.
View attachment 254629
That is why playing games on a HDD vs an SSD: A world of difference.
Playing games on a typical SSD, vs the fastest possible SSD with 5.5Gb/s peak speed: barely any noticeable difference.

Please tell me you are starting to understand now.

We are talking about minimum specs that's HDD. No game today is built around a SSD. NONE. You can put a SSD in your computer today but unless the game is built around it then it's irrelevant.

This isn't a hard concept to understand yet you're writing nonsense as though I'm speaking Greek. I'm just going to chalk this up as either you don't want to understand or you can't. Take your pick.

That graph proves the point but I'm going to let you think what you think it means. Wow. Can't save the unwilling.

 

[Revdarian]

Sony bought a general license for the new oodle texture for both ps4 and ps5 platforms, what this means is that games being developed for them have now a standard free to use RDO texture program that helps achieve maximum compression of textures with BC1-7 compression with minimal to no perceived quality loss.

The effect shown is that depending on the type used you can get up to 40-50% higher compression than with Kraken alone. Since this is on the compression side it won't ask for any resources from the cpu/gpu, and the total compression achieved in an example set of textures was of 3:1, thankfully the decompression block was designed with up to 4:1 ratio huh?
https://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/06/oodle-texture-slashes-game-sizes.html?m=1

Oodle Texture also includes an optional tool for BC7 that will require a bit of processing power (gpu or cpu) if the developer chooses to use it, this will compress the hard to compress BC7 format further (it usually compresses less than 10%, with Oodle Texture it compresses another 10-15% or so, and this would eek out a bit more).

This license is open to Microsoft too if they want to (although they have bcpack so maybe they won't), and it is also open for pc with the following software comparison of 3-5 GBps output when using 1core of an i9 7920x at 3GHz.


RDO is something already used on top development teams, this is a really highly efficient tool.


Edit: What this means for the end user is more compact games on the ssd, future potential of higher quality assets can be used, and in general should smooth out a couple hiccups, even for indie developers as long as they use the SDK.

For an example of what Oodle Texture can do, on a real game data test set :

127 MB block compressed GPU textures, mix of BC1-7

78 MB with zip/zlib/deflate

70 MB with Oodle Kraken

40 MB with Oodle Texture + Kraken

This will smooth out game development further, and that's great for everyone.

 

[Red Falcon]

The 8800 GTS 512MB was not more powerful than the 8800 GTX. Not even the 9800 GTX using the G92 was more powerful than the 8800 GTX.
View attachment 254590

You know, looking back, you are right about the 8800 GTX being faster than the 8800 GTS 512.
I wasn't aware than the 8800 GTX was faster than the 9800 GTX, though, good call!

 

[cybereality]

Yeah the 8800 GTX was a bit faster, but the the GT/GTS 512MB were almost there for less than half the price.

 

[Staples]

When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.

I've been wondering the same thing.
This place has gone totally soft compared to what it used to be 10 or even 20 years ago.

This place used to be
Pure Apple hate
Pure PC master race
Loved change
For sale forum was full of sale ads, not people asking for stuff at 50% of ebay value
Full of crazy right wing nut jobs

Well, that last one hasn't changed

 

[Red Falcon]

Good times!

 

[M76]

We are talking about minimum specs that's HDD. No game today is built around a SSD. NONE. You can put a SSD in your computer today but unless the game is built around it then it's irrelevant.

Oh so now it's irrelevant? What are you a swing state? There are games that are unplayable without an SSD, because they can't stream data fast enough so they pause from time to time to catch up.
So reducing load times tenfold is irrelevant to you? Good to know.

For the zillionth time: The question is not whether having an SSD in the ps5 is worth it. I question the worth of having the fastest possible SSD. Please blink twice if you get it finally.

This isn't a hard concept to understand yet you're writing nonsense as though I'm speaking Greek

.
Greek or not greek. You don't understand something != nonsense.

I'm just going to chalk this up as either you don't want to understand or you can't. Take your pick.

Understand what? You haven't provided anything just keep repeating that I don't understand something. I'm not infallible, but saying you don't understand without providing specifics or a correction is meaningless.

That graph proves the point but I'm going to let you think what you think it means. Wow. Can't save the unwilling.

You didn't provide anything, just blowing hot air, calling everything you don't get nonsense, without actually pointing out what is the part you have a problem with. It's as if I'm talking to a wall, everything just bounces off like an echo.

 

[M76]

Y’all are having an interesting conversation but with the latter part of that quote could be a what comes first the chicken or the egg statement could it not?

You mean games don't read big chunks of data because HDDs are too slow? No, games don't read big chunks of data, because the data is relatively small. But you are on the right track with the chicken and egg analogy.
If we had 32 or 64GB of video memory then suddenly having a 5.5GB/s SSD would make more sense. So there is your chicken and your egg.
Currently assets are small because video memory is relatively limited, you can't have a multi-GB textures for objects. And that's when a 5.5GB/s ssd would shine loading huge textures. Currently we are working with smaller assets where random read speed is more pronounced than sustained throughput.

For the past 40 years they have used spindle drives as a baseline (or carts but that’s another thing entirely). Could it be that it never happens because they are specifically designed not too due that limitation?

Thinks like streaming were invented to do away with spindle drive limitations, and those methods work very well. As I've said there are benefits to having an SSD, but the ROI diminishes for having a very fast SSD. It's like switching from a 80s sedan to a modern hypercar, it doesn't really matter which hypercar you switch to, they will be pretty much indistuingishable as they are all lighting fast compared to your old sedan.

I don’t understand why Cerny would be discussing the ms delay with simply turning your POV and the importance of the SSD in that regard if it’s irrelevant.

It's irrelevant because if turning your POV 180 degrees means you need to swap assets in video memory, there will inevitably be a pause / stutter. Which you can already notice in the ratchet and clank video, as the game pauses just before each world transition.
To me that would be unacceptable when turning my POV in an FPS for example.

If what I understood correctly that 16GB (or whatever is accessible) is filled with what’s on the screen and not what’s behind you and in your immediate area. Or rather that possibility is there with SSD. Initial games probably aren’t doing that. So effectively while you only have access to 16GB, using the SSD the way they can, it’s like having 24GB or some other arbitrary number using modern standards.

Every game does that. If something doesn't fit in Video memory, it's in RAM, and when you turn around it is swapped in, which results in a noticable stutter, even if it is already in RAM which is much faster than any SSD.

So that's what I mean when I say the limiting factor is Video memory size and not disk speed. I would not want my games stuttering, I don't know who would. And there is no way to avoid the stuttering through "magic" if you need to swap to show the area behind you there will be noticeable stuttering.

If they accepted that as a compromise that's a sad sad thing, and even more reason for me to avoid the PS5.

 

[MangoSeed]

As I've said there are benefits to having an SSD, but the ROI diminishes for having a very fast SSD.

You make a very good point. It’s just strange that Sony invested so much in sequential read performance. Seems like a real waste of engineering effort and increased cost without a clear use case.

Not sure if already posted but Anandtech has a relevant write up on the topic. They also don’t know where the sequential speed will be useful.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps5-new-era-of-gaming

 

[kac77]

Oh so now it's irrelevant? What are you a swing state? There are games that are unplayable without an SSD, because they can't stream data fast enough so they pause from time to time to catch up.
So reducing load times tenfold is irrelevant to you? Good to know.

For the zillionth time: The question is not whether having an SSD in the ps5 is worth it. I question the worth of having the fastest possible SSD. Please blink twice if you get it finally.

Name the game that requires a SSD?

Based on what? So SSD's are good but not high performing ones? OK pal. Don't anyone buy that 2080 Ti. You might just have too much performance. Who questions something like that? More is generally better and yes you can program for it so your problem is? Who knows at this point.

Understand what? You haven't provided anything just keep repeating that I don't understand something. I'm not infallible, but saying you don't understand without providing specifics or a correction is meaningless.


You didn't provide anything, just blowing hot air, calling everything you don't get nonsense, without actually pointing out what is the part you have a problem with. It's as if I'm talking to a wall, everything just bounces off like an echo.

I've provided plenty. I don't have a problem I understand that you can program around a SSD and that it could be required. You however can't seem to wrap your mind around it. Why? Who knows.

 

[kac77]

You make a very good point. It’s just strange that Sony invested so much in sequential read performance. Seems like a real waste of engineering effort and increased cost without a clear use case.

Not sure if already posted but Anandtech has a relevant write up on the topic. They also don’t know where the sequential speed will be useful.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps5-new-era-of-gaming

Games do utilize sequential reads. If you do the math it's pretty obvious that they do. The developers themselves have said it's required, Sony seems to think so, as does AMD. But only here do we have a discussion that literally goes against the very people who make the games. It's quite strange.

Games have required contiguous (aka sequential) allocation of memory and storage for eons. No they aren't tons of small images precisely because it's so slow. For a map typically there's one maybe two files that contain all of the textures for any given map. Inside of this file yes there's individual files but that's not how they are stored on disk. This entire file is loaded into memory at the begining of the level. It's typically quite large. At the time of your game installing any process will be instructed to write files contiguously or as much as possible precisely because of better performance when things are read sequentially.

Furthermore all file systems try to write as contigously as possible. The more sequential the blocks are when allocated to disk the higher the performance is because it allows for more sequential reading of data. This is why I said previously that you can't decouple sequential reads from the process because it's literally apart of the process itself.

 

[MangoSeed]

Games do utilize sequential reads. If you do the math it's pretty obvious that they do. The developers themselves have said it's required, Sony seems to think so, as does AMD. But only here do we have a discussion that literally goes against the very people who make the games. It's quite strange.

Games have required contiguous (aka sequential) allocation of memory and storage for eons. No they aren't tons of small images precisely because it's so slow. For a map typically there's one maybe two files that contain all of the textures for any given map. Inside of this file yes there's individual files but that's not how they are stored on disk. This entire file is loaded into memory at the begining of the level. It's typically quite large. At the time of your game installing any process will be instructed to write files contiguously or as much as possible precisely because of better performance when things are read sequentially.

Furthermore all file systems try to write as contigously as possible. The more sequential the blocks are when allocated to disk the higher the performance is because it allows for more sequential reading of data. This is why I said previously that you can't decouple sequential reads from the process because it's literally apart of the process itself.

Where's the math that makes it obvious? Yes texture files may potentially be stored in large contiguous archives but games will randomly access small bits of data all across the file at runtime. You don't sequentially read the entire file into memory in order to access specific bytes.

Nobody is arguing that sequential reads aren't used or aren't important. The question is what specific use case benefits from 5.5GB/s off the SSD. As Anandtech points out even the PS5 SSD's speed is a joke compared to RAM so it's not a substitute for that. Sony obviously thinks it was worth the extra effort and cost vs an off the shelf SSD but they haven't really told us why.