cybereality
[H]F Junkie
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When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.There is no practical benefit apart from having slightly smaller load times.
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When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.There is no practical benefit apart from having slightly smaller load times.
If only your knowledge was at the same level as your confidence.
- I said games are limited by VRAM, that's why you can't have more complex scenes on the screen with more assets
- 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.
- 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.
- So moving from HDD to any SSD is about 100-200x faster.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.If only your knowledge was at the same level as your confidence.
- I said games are limited by VRAM, that's why you can't have more complex scenes on the screen with more assets
- 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.
- 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.
- So moving from HDD to any SSD is about 100-200x faster.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.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.
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 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.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.
Yes. Definitely going to be leaving it this way.Looks a lot cooler horizontal as well.
When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.
Yes, there is hype involved, same with ray tracing, but it is pushing the limit further.PR is not progress...nice fallacy.
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.
I think the launch price was 250A 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.A 8800GT for $220? Must have been a great deal but they were nowhere near that price normally.
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 got a 8800 GTS 512MB for $239. It was G92, I think the same chip as the GT.
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?
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.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.
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.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.
LOL, educate me....If only your knowledge wasn't just wrong.
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.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.
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.2. No one said SSDs are faster than RAM/VRAM. They don't need to be.
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.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.
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.4. So I guess sequential read speed does matter.
For which any old SSD would do. Even a HDD if the reads are well optimized,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.
You (deliberately?) misunderstand yet again. The difference between an SSD, and the fastest possible SSD is small, not between a HDD and an SSD6. 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 )
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.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.
No you just don't understand.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.
Are you using the age old "I don't understand therefore it must be nonsense" argument?No you just don't understand.
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.
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.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.
You know, looking back, you are right about the 8800 GTX being faster than the 8800 GTS 512.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
I've been wondering the same thing.When did this place become anti-progress? This isn't [H]ard anymore.
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.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
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.I'm just going to chalk this up as either you don't want to understand or you can't. Take your pick.
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.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 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.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?
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.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?
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.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.
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.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.
As I've said there are benefits to having an SSD, but the ROI diminishes for having a very fast SSD.
Name the game that requires a SSD?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.
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.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.
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.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.