Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[iroboto]

I think it would be very interesting if Sony could let you install any NVMe into the M.2 slot to play PS4 games, but only let you install PS5 games in it if it passed the speed or the list check.

This is preferable as an option to owners. Ps5 games stay on internal etc.

 

[3dilettante]

There's a general consensus on this forum that there will be some kind of check that the system will do to verify the SSD. Now if this is real or not, no one knows. I guess we will find out soon enough as the console is coming out next month.

I interpreted Cerny's statement to mean they'd benchmark a drive and certify if it performed acceptably. I'm not sure that means the PS5 itself will reject a non-certified drive if a user puts in an overly slow one. I did not see any accounts of drives being rejected by the PS4, although it seems like it would have been more of a challenge to find a drive slower than what it shipped with.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I interpreted Cerny's statement to mean they'd benchmark a drive and certify if it performed acceptably. I'm not sure that means the PS5 itself will reject a non-certified drive if a user puts in an overly slow one. I did not see any accounts of drives being rejected by the PS4, although it seems like it would have been more of a challenge to find a drive slower than what it shipped with.

But there were drives that didn't work with the PS4. I remember when I was looking for a new drive, I read some reviews and people saying certain drives didn't work. Now why they didn't work is anyone's guess but it's not like they didn't fit the profile(5400rpm, 2.5"), they just didn't work for some reason or another. As I remember it, the system didn't recognise the drives.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Cerny specifically said that slower drives can be used for ps4 bc games. The check would likely apply only to ps5 installations.

Yes, external HDD's that are slower can be used for PS4 BC games as it will save space for PS5 games that require the faster SSD I/O throughput. At no point does he say that you can install a slower SSD NVMe into the slot to play PS4 titles. It's most likely why they went with the USB-C, USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps SuperSpeed ports, so you can have better throughput of normal USB caddies. And yes that's a thing. My caddie on my PC has substantial better throughput when I use the USB 3.0(dark blue) port than when I use the USB2.0 port(black).

 

[3dilettante]

But there were drives that didn't work with the PS4. I remember when I was looking for a new drive, I read some reviews and people saying certain drives didn't work. Now why they didn't work is anyone's guess but it's not like they didn't fit the profile(5400rpm, 2.5"), they just didn't work for some reason or another. As I remember it, the system didn't recognise the drives.

If the drives didn't work because Sony was blocking them, it should have provided a list of such drives. The official position had a very broad range of acceptability.
Sporadic failures could be due to firmware issues or inconsistencies among the many drive designs out there, rather than purposeful blocking.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

If the drives didn't work because Sony was blocking them, it should have provided a list of such drives. The official position had a very broad range of acceptability.
Sporadic failures could be due to firmware issues or inconsistencies among the many drive designs out there, rather than purposeful blocking.

I didn't say Sony blocked the drives, just that they didn't work. As you said, there could be a variety of reasons why they didn't work(which I eluded to), but I doubt it was Sony's doing.

Sony said something interesting yesterday with regards to the games. If games don't work, you just need to update the firmware and try again. Or something similar I remembered hearing and thinking it was odd.

Who is to say they can't have something similar for the M2 SSD's? You try out a drive, it doesn't work, you update the firmware and it works. That would then likely suggest that there might be a check in place on the console.

However I have no clue if what I just typed is real. It's just something that I thought weird and interesting.

 

[3dilettante]

I didn't say Sony blocked the drives, just that they didn't work. As you said, there could be a variety of reasons why they didn't work(which I eluded to), but I doubt it was Sony's doing.

The purpose for Sony's benchmarking would be to find things like unacceptable latency or performance drop-offs in various games under development. Presumably, such drives would get past the initialization stage that the PS4 drive examples did not. Performance profiling of whole workloads would be beyond the scope of the PS5 at installation time, so unless Sony has a list in its firmware it may be that nothing stops a user from installing a drive that didn't benchmark well.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The purpose for Sony's benchmarking would be to find things like unacceptable latency or performance drop-offs in various games under development. Presumably, such drives would get past the initialization stage that the PS4 drive examples did not. Performance profiling of whole workloads would be beyond the scope of the PS5 at installation time, so unless Sony has a list in its firmware it may be that nothing stops a user from installing a drive that didn't benchmark well.

Yes, that's what I said.

 

[eastmen]

This is preferable as an option to owners. Ps5 games stay on internal etc.

why ? You only have one expansion bay. It would be best if Sony set the speed minimum for the expansion drive inside the system so it can allow you to install and play more ps5 games at the desired speed. We see from DF testing the series x that even an sata ssd is going to give big improvements over the internal drives of the old console and if you want to take it to the next level you can even do a usb nvme drive.

Now maybe You can use any nvme drive and sony would use the internal as a cache that data for the game gets loaded into ?


With xbox series s/x I am hoping a company puts out an expansion dock. Plug it into the slot there and then have a 4 card reader stand next to the console . Sure you wouldn't be able to get faster speeds because you'd quickly saturate the bus but you'd be able to expand storage and not have to swap drives

 

[iroboto]

why ? You only have one expansion bay. It would be best if Sony set the speed minimum for the expansion drive inside the system so it can allow you to install and play more ps5 games at the desired speed. We see from DF testing the series x that even an sata ssd is going to give big improvements over the internal drives of the old console and if you want to take it to the next level you can even do a usb nvme drive.

Now maybe You can use any nvme drive and sony would use the internal as a cache that data for the game gets loaded into ?


With xbox series s/x I am hoping a company puts out an expansion dock. Plug it into the slot there and then have a 4 card reader stand next to the console . Sure you wouldn't be able to get faster speeds because you'd quickly saturate the bus but you'd be able to expand storage and not have to swap drives

It’s just a choice to offer, each gamer has different needs and budget restrictions.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I interpreted Cerny's statement to mean they'd benchmark a drive and certify if it performed acceptably. I'm not sure that means the PS5 itself will reject a non-certified drive if a user puts in an overly slow one. I did not see any accounts of drives being rejected by the PS4, although it seems like it would have been more of a challenge to find a drive slower than what it shipped with.

For Sony's sake they'd better refuse to let PS5 games run on slow SSDs. They'll have a support nightmare on their hands if engines are made to retrieve new textures/mipmaps on the fly and people with slow storage start getting single digit FPS or severe texture pop-in everywhere.

 

[eastmen]

It’s just a choice to offer, each gamer has different needs and budget restrictions.

I mean i understand but looking at prices it seems that nvme drives are more expensive than sata . So if your just running ps4 games wouldn't the budget minded go for that option ?

 

[Kugai Calo]

Linus' new video:

We might have the closest to accurate height comparison vs. the PS5. The Corsair One is 380mm tall, the PS5 is, without the stand, excluding the largest protrusions, 390mm tall.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

For Sony's sake they'd better refuse to let PS5 games run on slow SSDs. They'll have a support nightmare on their hands if engines are made to retrieve new textures/mipmaps on the fly and people with slow storage start getting single digit FPS or severe texture pop-in everywhere.

I doubt they would get single digit fps but load times would definitely be affected.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

the PS5 is, without the stand, excluding the largest protrusions, 390mm tall.

Really? I was under the impression that it included the protrusions.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I doubt they would get single digit fps but load times would definitely be affected.

It would if the engine is made to request and receive new assets within the time of a single frame, but the SSD went from 5.5GB/s (or ideally 7GB/s) down to 1GB/s or less.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It would if the engine is made to request and receive new assets within the time of a single frame, but the SSD went from 5.5GB/s (or ideally 7GB/s) down to 1GB/s or less.

But a NVMe3.0 would be about 2.4GBps and a slow NVMe4.0 should be a about 3-4GBps from what I have seen. But I can see your point.

 

[orangpelupa]

My understanding is that Sony will do what MS done in Xbox 360 usb storage support. The console will benchmark it, if it below the required performances: it refuse to use the storage.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I did not see any accounts of drives being rejected by the PS4, although it seems like it would have been more of a challenge to find a drive slower than what it shipped with.

There were plenty slower drives than the stock. When discussing the PS5's SSD in 'The Road to PS5' Mark Cerny compared it to PS4, stating the stock HDD performance ranged between 50 and 100MB/s. In their GDC Spider-Man post-mortem, Insomniac said that had to go with 20MB/s because some much slower drives were used by gamers to "upgrade" their PS4/Pro.

The purpose for Sony's benchmarking would be to find things like unacceptable latency or performance drop-offs in various games under development. Presumably, such drives would get past the initialization stage that the PS4 drive examples did not. Performance profiling of whole workloads would be beyond the scope of the PS5 at installation time, so unless Sony has a list in its firmware it may be that nothing stops a user from installing a drive that didn't benchmark well.

I'm also not aware that PS4 checked/rejected drives. If it does, the reasons for doing so, for guaranteeing a minimum level of performance, would be incredibly difficult to do on PS4 given clean (new/empty) drives offer optimum performance but you really want to know what performance will be like with a heavily used drive where your data may be scattered from the outer to inner edges and not necessarily contiguously. It would take literally hours to create that worse-case data environment on a HDD for testing. On PS5 minimum performance testing is much simpler, you don't have drive geometry and seeks to fixate on so it's really only the sustained read and write performance which you can test in a few minutes.

It'll be interesting to see what Sony does but I absolutely not believe they will allow PS5 games to run from NVMe drives that have an overall slower performance profile than the internal solid state drive. I'm sure developers also do not want to be having to deal with that variable performance headache for another generation, it adds work to development and creates another support issue, i.e. users complaining about stutters and so on. Then you get the delightful job of diagnosing their crappy drive. No thanks.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

But a NVMe3.0 would be about 2.4GBps and a slow NVMe4.0 should be a about 3-4GBps from what I have seen. But I can see your point.

There are plenty of NVMe drives in the market that go well below 2GB/s read speeds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HVRBPKF/?tag=b3d-21