Transfer speed on the hardware won't be a problem. We'll probably have faster SD memory cards than console SSDs by the middle of next gen! It's a matter of latency and access that the PC needs to work around.
PC system impacts from tech like UE5? [Storage, RAM] *spawn*
- Thread starter MistaPi
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Good point. Although maybe 8x PCIe 4.0 would be sufficient enough for the GPU with early next gen games anyway.
But yea, M.2 drives will be good enough with time, but there's other issues as stated before that need to be addressed before those 7GB/s SSDs are used to their fullest potential. The GPU needs a direct line to storage.
I mean, surely to god MS has been anticipating this for a while now right? They've got to know that they can't just sit on this stuff for forever. From the very conception of the Series X, they've had to know that super fast storage would be a defining factor for next gen games, and that they were becoming I/O bound. Right then would have been the time to put the gears in motion to do whatever they could to improve I/O overhead and latency on PC.
I can only imagine companies like Nvidia, and AMD themselves who have a vested interest in PC gaming specifically (and the oft lauded superiority) would push as hard as they can to invoke the changes necessary to at the very least keep up with consoles. When you're selling single components for 2-3x the price of next gen consoles... you've got to at least provide the same visuals with better performance.
If they can't do that... then it's going to be hard for them to market their supremely powerful GPUs...
I believe that DirectStorage, and future Windows 10 optimizations will go a long way to improving the situation on PC, as well as Nvidia/AMD drivers/technology.
Ive read this somewhere awhile ago, no idea where, could be some swedish site. Wouldn't that be way too expensive?
Well, it's only storage that pc could potentionally be behind. And even if, it won't be much in that it's noticable. Doubt it's behind anyways, if Epic would show a optimized UE5 tech demo on a 3080ti/12core/NVme SSD i think it's going to be even more impressive then the next gen consoles, even more so then the 12+TF xsx.
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Deleted member 13524
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What? 24/32 core Zen 2Threadripper has 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes and the 64 core model has 88 lanes. All the Zen1 Threadrippers have 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes. Skylake X models have 44 lanes.
Even the consumer Zen2 models have a total 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes (only 4 dedicated to the chipset), which is the equivalent of 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes.
With a Zen2 + X570, one could have a 16x PCIe 4.0 GPU and a 4x NVMe PCIe 4.0, effectively getting a theoretical storage transfer speed that is higher than the PS5's, before data decompression.
Sorry yes I should have specified I was only talking about commercial/mainstream platforms. I know Threadrippers and X series CPU's aren't strictly server parts but they're not really ideal for gaming systems either given their cost and lower gaming performance.
Regarding the Zen 2, that aligns with what I've said above. i.e. you couldn't have a 16x GPU at the same time as an 8 or 16x SSD (a max of 20 usable lanes). But yes, 4x Gen4 should be sufficient anyway with next gen drives.
Nvidia already accelerates storage access in their DGX workstation and it's called GPUDirect Storage:
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/gpudirect-storage/
A "gaming" version will eventually come to mainstream PC if Nvidia thinks it will be necessary...
And that's the thing i think, is it necessary for the coming years? NV (and AMD) probably know more, but atm it doesn't seem a top priority. Prices will be higher too, but on the other hand seeing what people are happily paying for RTX products..... It has become the Apple of GPU's it seems. I remember buying a Ti500 for around 400/500 dollars (i think), which backthen was considered the most expensive GPU price. Now that gets you abit over mid-range with high end going over a 1000 dollars.
I think both AMD and Nvidia understand the necessity of directly accessing fast storage from the GPU, now more than ever. I would not be surprised to see both Ampere and RDNA2 offer the functionality. Surely MS is working with both of them. Sony and AMD are also working together and technologies designed for PS5 will be coming to PC with their RDNA2 gpus. Cerny made a point to explain that it wasn't just Sony picking AMD technologies, but technologies they've developed together would be making their way to PC as well.
Nvidia always seems ahead of the curve... so they'll have something ready when it's needed, I'm sure.
Orion
Regular
You have any idea why some outlets got the idea epic noted that not even sata ssds would be sufficient and you'd need an nvme ssd? Was that a misunderstanding, or was there reason to believe that?
The report didn't say SATA was necessary...
That said, "on a high-end PC with an SSD," and especially with an NVMe SSD, we should get "awesome performance" from Unreal Engine 5 games. (With a good GPU and CPU too, of course.)
However, I expect SATA to be too slow and wouldn't be surprised if NVMe was a requirement for some UE5 games.
I can easily see DirectStorage being a vendor agnostic version of this. GPUDirectStorage is accessed via CUDA extensions, it'd make perfect sense for MS to implement an API to allow this for any compliant platform. The beauty is it doesn't even appear to need any additional hardware on the GPU. Although MS may need to specify a minimum DMA standard on DirectStorage SSD's.
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I wonder if that will ever happen.
The same way UE4 games don't really stop you from using an iGPU (it just gets unplayable-y slow), It looks like UE5 won't be able to require NVMe at all:
The game will just get super slow or look super terrible.
I mean they can put a NVMe in the minimum requirements' list, but those are usually just very relaxed guidelines and many times they're just silly.
Most of the time there's a DirectX version compliance check and that's it.
As long as devs target it, it's okay. If people want to try and play games on hardware that's not suitable, that's on them. The important thing is devs don't hold themselves back target outdated machines. They wouldn't make a game nowadays limited to the streaming capacity of an optical disc. They shouldn't make future games based on the streaming capacity of a spinning magnetic disc.
Obviously UE has to scale because it'll power mobile games and indie titles as simple as card battlers, so they can't put a hard cap in the engine itself. I think once devs start choosing high-end storage as a minimum, in a Crysis moment, creating a game so much better than everything else that they push hardware, we'll get a watershed. Just needs R* to make the next GTA 3 GB/s minimum.
Obviously UE has to scale because it'll power mobile games and indie titles as simple as card battlers, so they can't put a hard cap in the engine itself. I think once devs start choosing high-end storage as a minimum, in a Crysis moment, creating a game so much better than everything else that they push hardware, we'll get a watershed. Just needs R* to make the next GTA 3 GB/s minimum.
you can load up anything you want , but the developer puts a minimum spec for a reason. Its been part of pc gaming as far back as I can remember as an old man of 38. I begged and pleaded with my parents and shoveled a lot of snow and cut a lot of grass to get me 2mb of ram for my 386 to play doom. I saved up birthday and Christmas money to get my sound blaster and cd rom for one of the wing commanders. In highschool I built a lot of computers for friends to afford a riva 128 and a voodoo card and then a tnt and then a tnt 2 and then a GeForce sdr and so on and so forth. its just the way of things.
There will be a crowd of gamers who see NVMe required and be like awesome I have that , some that say oh I guess its time to upgrade and hten some who take out a dusty laptop from when wow first came out and are dumb founded it doesn't play the new game. But enough people will buy it . Already on the laptop side you mostly see nvme drives because the cost is similar to m.2 sata and it provides better performance for little money. on the desktop side more and more computers have an nvme slot and the higher end prebuilt machines started coming with nvme already. Prices will continue to drop. You can get a 1TB nvme for around $140 right now so providing your mobo supports it , its not a huge cost to the consumer.
UE5 engine isn't expect for over a year according to epic. So the prices will drop more while capacity goes up and more computers will either have the option to get an nvme or will come with one by default
excerpt from the DF article here:
My questions are
a) This is written as though it's not been done before, and many members are suggesting that we are already doing this on existing consoles
b) Why isn't this possible on PC if we ignore the silicon requirements, how come we can't use the install folder as virtual memory? what advantage does it have as being coded virtual memory as opposed to loading what you need into memory normally?
c) Don't we all use SSD to actually hold our virtual memory?
My questions are
a) This is written as though it's not been done before, and many members are suggesting that we are already doing this on existing consoles
b) Why isn't this possible on PC if we ignore the silicon requirements, how come we can't use the install folder as virtual memory? what advantage does it have as being coded virtual memory as opposed to loading what you need into memory normally?
c) Don't we all use SSD to actually hold our virtual memory?
Right, forgot about that thread.
Are we even sure we need the bandwidth rate to be that high from IO on PC?
BCPack and DirectStorage as well as SFS will be coming to PC.
Do you need a ton of raw throughput if you can just send less data anyway? From a virtual texturing perspective, (which is real time) it seems like PC should be in an okay spot.
If you're trying to do massive level loads, that might be another story to discuss.
Are we even sure we need the bandwidth rate to be that high from IO on PC?
BCPack and DirectStorage as well as SFS will be coming to PC.
Do you need a ton of raw throughput if you can just send less data anyway? From a virtual texturing perspective, (which is real time) it seems like PC should be in an okay spot.
If you're trying to do massive level loads, that might be another story to discuss.
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