D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Don't start me about the bloody Eagles. The whole story could have been sorted in fifteen minutes.
General external expansion discussion? *spawn*
- Thread starter goonergaz
- Start date
well they would have been shot down clearly. One can't simply fly into Mordor
the eagles were already there fighting the drakes, that's why they were able to get there.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's not an outlier. Right now I'm shopping around for mainstream (100-150) USD NVME drives. Drives in the 3.0 GB/s range are overheating and throttling when reading (not writing) data over a period of time. It's a combination of the NAND and controller chip (the controller chip can get VERY hot and throttle itself to prevent damage). So, it's certainly a concern for chips rated at 7.0 GB/s or higher.
The problem isn't even with long sustained reads. Without active cooling it can take minutes (even 10's of minutes) for a drive to cool down. So even hitting it with intermittent reads over a period of time can build up heat to the point that throttling occurs and read speeds are reduced.
We've seen what MS has done and will do WRT sustained performance of user add-in drives. We've seen absolutely nothing from Sony about what they will do for user add-in drives to ensure that the drives will perform to spec in all acceptable environments regardless of how long a user is playing a game.
All we have are vague assurances that there will be "something." I'm hoping they'll have some type of cooling enclosure for the NVME that is more than what we sometimes find on higher end PC MBs (just a heat plate) as those aren't enough on their own to prevent thermally throttle read speeds for high speed NVMEs on their own.
Of course, PC can get away with that because the file system isn't currently designed around maximizing the throughput of SSDs in the most common PC user use case...gaming. But that will change in the future once Direct Storage is ubiquitous and a lot of PC gamers are suddenly going to find their NVME SSDs throttling heavily.
Regards,
SB
For me past is prologue on this stuff, Sony had a proprietary PS2 hdd solution, PS3 was a generic 2.5" SATA slot, ditto PS4, I'm sure there will be limitations vs PC NVMe (eg PS4 does not like thick 2.5" drives) but these should be straightforward.
MS had no expansion options for Xbox (but honestly ahead of the curve here so free pass), Xbox 360 had absurdly expensive hdds reminiscent of Vita/PSP cards, XB1 used generic external drives (beat Sony to that too) and have debuted another proprietary solution.
So between the two in home consoles Sony has a strong track record of supporting generic drives and MS has none with a side of proprietary margin harvesting in the past. In handhelds Sony can eat one.
So long term I suspect Dictator and co at DF will get very used to cursing out those irritating M2 screws NVMe are secured with (do we get another cute scream in PS5?)
MS had no expansion options for Xbox (but honestly ahead of the curve here so free pass), Xbox 360 had absurdly expensive hdds reminiscent of Vita/PSP cards, XB1 used generic external drives (beat Sony to that too) and have debuted another proprietary solution.
So between the two in home consoles Sony has a strong track record of supporting generic drives and MS has none with a side of proprietary margin harvesting in the past. In handhelds Sony can eat one.
So long term I suspect Dictator and co at DF will get very used to cursing out those irritating M2 screws NVMe are secured with (do we get another cute scream in PS5?)
Silent_Buddha
Legend
If Sony do the right thing and design a built to purpose NVME active cooling enclosure to put NVME drives in, it's possible to design it in such a way that you don't need to use a screw to secure the drive. Of course, cost always being a thing, they may cheap out on it. But hopefully they don't.
I really wish Sony would do their teardown of the PS5 like they said they would. I'm very interested to see how the PS5 is assembled, and even more so to see their cooling solution.
Regards,
SB
Of course, I forgot Sony and Cerny don’t know what they’re doing. Conversely MS know exactly what they are doing.
Time will tell.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's not about whether they do or don't know what they are doing.
I always assume that the engineers at both companies know what they are doing. But if you know ANYTHING about the business world (even at tech companies like AMD, Intel and NVidia), what the engineers want isn't always what the engineers get.
If the engineers got everything they wanted and thought the consoles needed, the consoles would likely cost over 1k to build and be fantastic machines. But that's where management, accountants, parts procurers (the sales people), etc. all step in to tell the engineers...no, you can't do that it costs to much. But we can get you "this." And the engineers go back with no, that's not suitable, lets see if we can design it another way...or cut closer to tolerances...or accept some corner cases won't be covered, etc. It's part and parcel of getting a product to market.
Being able to sustain the speeds that the PS5 is spec'd for isn't something that is just easily thrown together. It's going to cost money. Was expandable storage a cornerstone of the design as it was with the MS console? Or is it a bit of an afterthought (hey, this is cool let's throw it in) as it was with the PS2, PS3, and PS4? An afterthought that led to Insomniac having to design around a rather anemic HDD transfer speed for their game because they had no idea what a PS4 user would have in their machine.
Now the PS5 addresses that somewhat. The base drive probably can't be replaced with any old drive. So as long as the user installs their game to the base drive the developer can rely on the specs Sony has provided. We also know what Sony likely doesn't want a repeat of what happened with Insomniac's Spiderman, so they'll do "something."
And that's what I'm saying. We know they'll do "something" because they said they'll do "something" but there are no details on what that "something" is. And without knowing that we have absolutely Zero idea at how effective it will be with dealing with prolonged usage of drives.
If the solution is a costly active cooling solution, it's possible that users can throw in any old 7+ GB/s NVME they find.
If it's not a costly active cooling solution, users may be limited to only expensive, well designed NVME drives. Cheaper drives usually cut costs in various areas that will affect sustained performance. Things such as how well the solution operates under high thermal load or if they have special custom controller chips (likely expensive due to limited buyers) that don't generate enough head to throttle itself (when not actively cooled) under sustained high speed transfers. Are they using the best NAND dies with good thermal properties? Are they using cheaper NAND dies that don't handle high thermal loads as well?
Usually you can use the PC space to get an idea for some of this, but in this case, the PS5 and XBSX are expecting the NVME SSDs to perform significantly better than they do in pretty any enthusiast gamer machine. Hence, why I mentioned that there's going to be a lot of thermally throttled NVME SSDs in PC gamer's machines once direct storage is ubiquitous and games are written to take advantage of them.
Regards,
SB
Last edited:
All he's saying is wait for the approved whitelist before making judgements on how cheap the open market will be. 16GB of DDR4 on the upper end can be 6x more expensive than the lowest end. Drives can equally be just as far in terms of performance differentials even when concerning size and space. We just have so few details around both SSDs to really know what they need to run the system on those expandable drives as if it's native.
To his point, you gotta be congitive of burning the candle at both ends. Either the PS5 has an exotic SSD solution that isn't even found in today's consumer hardware or it's incredibly basic. If it's exotic and way infront of what's being offered out there, how could a competing device come in so much cheaper shortly after PS5 releases?
And if PS5 is not actually exotic, then is it really running the marketed 5.5gb/s sustained at all times? Or is this just a marketing number.
If you believe it's exotic, then a replacement on a stick can't be cheap.
If you think it can be replaced by a heatsink less stick that is cheap, then clearly the solution isn't as good as they market it to be.
The likelihood that it's both super exotic, high performant, and super cheap doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
This was starting to become a factor for me even if I went 3080, I'd still need to resolve the SSD issue somewhere down the line. The consoles feel like a better bet this coming gen while PC matures through this process.
Last edited:
When have I ever said it would be cheap?
All I ever said was that it would be cheaper sooner and end up with a lot more options for the buyer vs the MS solution.
Personally I’m surprised by this 980pro price, it bodes well for PS5 SSD prices and options.
As I said, time will tell.
I think the MS drives are expensive. However I kinda like that they are hot swappable and easy to use and store.
I can have my FPS ssd where i put my fps games in. I could have my RPG ssd where I put my ssd games on and I could move between them. It sucks in a way since you have to get up and move them but since they are 1TB each and maybe larger in the future I shouldn't have to do it all the time and much less often then changing a disc to change a game.
Of course at some point sony's solution should be more cost effective but if i have to open the ps5 up to install the sdd I doubt i will do it more than once.
I can have my FPS ssd where i put my fps games in. I could have my RPG ssd where I put my ssd games on and I could move between them. It sucks in a way since you have to get up and move them but since they are 1TB each and maybe larger in the future I shouldn't have to do it all the time and much less often then changing a disc to change a game.
Of course at some point sony's solution should be more cost effective but if i have to open the ps5 up to install the sdd I doubt i will do it more than once.
Without knowing the spec, how would you know that?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but this isn't 100% lock.
Below is the 980 performance over time with temperature.
It didn't even last 110 seconds before it started throttling. And it hit a massive drop further down to below 2000 GB/s.
This is what I don't know. This is why I have reservations. 70-90 degrees C, is pretty crazy high to be in a PS5. I don't know what the write requirements are either, because this is really low once its starts throttling.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-980-pro-m-2-nvme-ssd-review
Last edited:
Unknown Soldier
Veteran
Road to PS5.
"we will also be doing compatibility testing to make sure that architecture of particular M2 drives isn't too foreign for the games to handle. Once we have done that compatibility testing, we should be able to let you know, which drives will physically fit and which drives samples have benchmarked particularly high in our testing. It will be great if that happened by lauch but it's likely to be a bit past it"
If that's not the definition of a whitelist(QVL) then you can hold me accountable for being wrong.
As far as I know, many motherboard manufacturers do similar whitelisting which they usually display in their motherboard manuals or on their websites which can be updated later with newer parts. They don't recommend people use memory other than those recommended as performance etc. could be impacted.
Just before that, he also talks about certain SSD's having heatsinks and that the height will likely not fit into the M2 drive slot/space that they will have available.
It's a bit different. A recommendation is a suggestion (even if a strong one), where as a whitelist is absolute and adherence to it is enforced.
So far, Sony have not stated that there is a list of specified device IDs that will be allowed or blocked. Though this may end up being the route they take, of course.
Wasn't the knock against the PS5 that the I/O was overkill? Maybe heat issues won't be a problem if that is the actually the case.
I’m just waiting for more info before we can call it what it is; it’s honestly lacking. It doesn’t matter for me because I’ve preordered one; but I suppose if you have it, you’re going to use it
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I didn't take this comments as a sign that some form of enforced whitelist was the implementation method - this is why I think there is speculation.
It could be Sony update PS5 firmware with a vendor/model whitelist and if your NVMe is on it, it works and if it's not it doesn't but I can't imagine Sony want to be testing NVMe drives for the next seven years - there will be a lot of them. It think it more likely Sony will test a few each year and add them to the list that definitely work, but for anything not on the list, the PS5 will test it upon you trying to use it.
And the same is true for HDD/SDD in Synology NAS units. They flag the ones they do work, don't work or work with known issues but ultimately you can try whatever you like.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Folks are assuming there will be heat issues based on some current drives, which are made up of larger node semiconductor cells, getting hot at the maximum speeds supported by PCIe 3.x but the higher bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 and beyond will trigger a massive shift to smaller-node semiconductor cells which are both more effecting and run cooler. This is why the costs are much higher, they are more costly to produce. There simply hasn't been a need for them so far because of the PCIe 3.x limits.
I personally think he biggest issue with using COTS NVMe drives in PS5 is whether the onboard controller plays nice with PS5 custom I/O controller.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Unfortunately, unless things have changed smaller node NAND cells have significantly lower lifespan. Not a little significant but a lot significant. Hence, why we aren't seeing consumer small node NAND chips which require significant over-provisioning to have a decent lifespan.
It's why almost all NAND producers have retreated from using smaller nodes and instead focus on larger nodes with multiple layers.
Granted I haven't paid much attention in the past couple of years, so perhaps there's been a breakthrough WRT to this?
Regards,
SB
