Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2020-2021] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[chris1515]

I've posted a video above where the sata ssd (500 Mb/s) with i7-4790k loads from the menu in 4 seconds (at 1080p with ultra settings).
I think at worst case for 1440p-4k it could be 2 gigabytes.

I watch your video. This is not the 4k settings an not the same save at all. Loading time are variable. What would be more interesting is to load the game at the console settings and at the same place and with the same specs CPU and GPU with a 970 Pro and a 860 SATA SSD for see what is going on and compare with PS5 and XSX.

 

[chris1515]

What’s 512mb of cache going to offer when the hardware is streaming GBs of textures off the SSD during use?

This is memory, it goes much faster than the Flash NAND with less latency. SSD DRAM less SSD goes slower than those with DRAM cache on PC and less endurance too.

A little bit slower on read and much slower on write not so important out of installation.

 

[dobwal]

This is memory, it goes much faster than the SSD with less latency. SSD DRAM less SSD goes much slower than those with DRAM cache on PC.

Writes in general and random writes more specifically benefit the most from a dram cache on an SSD.

DRAM vs DRAMless SSDs is described as mostly inconsequential for gaming applications as most gaming apps’ bandwidth use is dominated by reads not writes.

 

[Kugai Calo]

Oof. Yea that requires a bit more investigation.
It could be as simple as Xbox save cloud sync which is slow. Or it could be I/O. But seeing how some load times are coming in just after PS5 within reason of their hardware spec difference, I may just look at other things Xbox is doing possibly during that load sequence.

When cloud save syncing kicks in, a system popup would pop up, something like this:

 

[iroboto]

When cloud save syncing kicks in, a system popup would pop up, something like this:

Yea, that’s the sync; that type of sync only happens when you launch the title however, I don’t think I’ve seen it in between load screens.

That being said, all saves and loads are sent to cloud. So I’m not sure how big or long that process takes.

Some games don’t take this into account and “auto-save” upon loading an areaor leaving an area etc; not really optimizing when the saves should be occurring. and I wonder if this is an issue because Xbox will always sync saves to online when you request a save via the api

 

[chris1515]

Writes in general and random writes more specifically benefit the most from a dram cache on an SSD.

DRAM vs DRAMless SSDs is described as mostly inconsequential for gaming applications as most gaming apps’ bandwidth use is dominated by reads not writes.

At the end it is better to have them and it help endurance and installation to goes faster. This is better to have DRAM Cache than don't have it even if most performance improvement comes from write.

 

[BRiT]

When cloud save syncing kicks in, a system popup would pop up, something like this:

That is usually cloud loading and not saving.

I havent seen such a Sync screen in over a year. That even includes situations of syncs being required, where I was playing the game on xCloud and then switched to the local console. I guess my network is fast enough to not have to put this up, where it can download the cloud data before whatever threshold they have set for the popup.

Saves to the cloud happens upon normal game saves.

 

[PSman1700]

I've posted a video above where the sata ssd (500 Mb/s) with i7-4790k loads from the menu in 4 seconds (at 1080p with ultra settings).
I think at worst case for 1440p-4k it could be 2 gigabytes.

Yes very impressive, goes to show that a normal pc with nvme, no direct storage is quite close to what a game optimized for the PS5 does in loading. Sums up the hype weve got before about SSD and all.

Writes in general and random writes more specifically benefit the most from a dram cache on an SSD.

DRAM vs DRAMless SSDs is described as mostly inconsequential for gaming applications as most gaming apps’ bandwidth use is dominated by reads not writes.

He's just looking at the mainboard and assuming, not to forget were back to 'insiders on gaf' again.

 

[iroboto]

Games can be designed to load very quickly. Just to note for those looking at the whole picture. Just most will not bother to make things load quickly; it can very low on the priority list. Some very basic games can have extremely long loading times and others like this AAA tour de force can be very quick.

The speed of the hard drive resolves streaming issues largely; but if we are talking about strict level loading, developers who care can design level loading to be very quick as you see here. Most are just not willing to invest the time to optimize the game to do it.

select PS4 titles saw massive improvements to load times for instance. The previous excuses for long loading were that assets were so massive (4x) larger than loading hadn’t caught up. There is truth to that for sure, but at the same time we can see there is also another element, in that developers just didn’t want to invest time to make it go faster.

Loading woes
How to reduce extremely slow level loading - Development Discussion / Blueprint Visual Scripting - Unreal Engine Forums

Optimizing loading performance: Understanding the Async Upload Pipeline로딩 성능 최적화: Async Upload Pipeline 알아보기Async Upload Pipeline（AUP）でローディングのパフォーマンスを最適化する - Unity Technologies Blog (unity3d.com)

They are indeed out there. Most developers will only bring loading times down to what they think is 'good enough' so that the gamer doesn't check out entirely and refund the game. I believe this number is about 1 minute maximum. But honestly, they likely could go a lot faster if they spent more time on it. Wolfenstein still gives me pain thinking about how long their loading screens were.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Loading a game on a non-nvme ssd:

Loading from my spinning HDD also takes a little under 6 seconds at max settings. Cleary drive speed is not the limiting factor here at all.

 

[Kugai Calo]

I wonder if it's because both the Xbox and PC versions are shipped with Oodle Kraken so they have to resort to CPU decompression, which becomes the limiting factor here?

Just a recording of loading can't explain much here, it would be nice if someone who has the game on PC can log the disk activities and CPU usage during loading.

 

[Shortbread]

Loading from my spinning HDD also takes a little under 6 seconds at max settings. Cleary drive speed is not the limiting factor here at all.

If this is the case, then PS4/XBO editions really have an issue with loading speeds. And those editions run mostly medium settings, nor have RT. It takes Pro roughly 34-42 seconds to load from a standard HDD.

 

[Kugai Calo]

If this is the case, then PS4/XBO editions really have an issue with loading speeds. And those editions run mostly medium settings, nor have RT. It takes Pro roughly 34-42 seconds to load from a standard HDD.

Well the spinning hard drives in PS4/X1 are still much slower so are their CPUs.

 

[see colon]

Loading from my spinning HDD also takes a little under 6 seconds at max settings. Cleary drive speed is not the limiting factor here at all.

Do you have an SSD in your system? I noticed that games load faster off my spinning disk after I upgraded my system drive to an SSD. But maybe it's placebo or I'm remembering it wrong. It was years ago.

Also, I have a 4tb 5400rpm mechanical drive that I shucked out of an enclosure that I store games on in my system, and a couple of SSDs. Games I'm, playing a lot I keep on the faster drives, but smaller games, or games I'm not actively playing, I move them to the big drive. There are games I play off it, and many of them load quickly. Not instantly, but fairly fast. I have Streets of Rage 4, for example, installed on that drive, and there aren't really load times. But, there are on my Xbox One. This drive isn't really any faster that a stock Hitachi or Seagate drive from a PS4 or Xbox One. Drive speed isn't always the limiting factor in loading. In fact, we can se that it often isn't using external drives to load last gen games on current gen hardware.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What are the numbers?
MS always talks about guaranteed figures for developers (2.4 and 4.8 Gb/s)
The maximum the system can deliver in individual tests or scenarios will be higher.

And that higher number somewhere between 6 and 7 GB/sec. The following quote from from Andrew Goossen, Xbox Series System Architect:

"Our second component is a high-speed hardware decompression block that can deliver over 6GB/s. This is a dedicated silicon block that offloads decompression work from the CPU and is matched to the SSD so that decompression is never a bottleneck. The decompression hardware supports Zlib for general data and a new compression [system] called BCPack that is tailored to the GPU textures that typically comprise the vast majority of a game's package size."​

I thought load time said by DigitalFoundry was 1.5s vs 8.5s, for a 5.666x relative difference. That relative difference is far more than the spec differences between the two SSDs we have been given.

This is definitely an outlier but it's not all about hardware, it's also abut the filesystem, API and I/O software stack.

 

[chris1515]

And that higher number somewhere between 6 and 7 GB/sec. The following quote from from Andrew Goossen, Xbox Series System Architect:

"Our second component is a high-speed hardware decompression block that can deliver over 6GB/s. This is a dedicated silicon block that offloads decompression work from the CPU and is matched to the SSD so that decompression is never a bottleneck. The decompression hardware supports Zlib for general data and a new compression [system] called BCPack that is tailored to the GPU textures that typically comprise the vast majority of a game's package size."​

This is definitely an outlier but it's not all about hardware, it's also abut the filesystem, API and I/O software stack.

Exactly, the average comparison is 1.5/to 2 seconds against 5/5.5 s most of the time. Genshin Impact s 1.5 to 2 seconds too same for Spiderman MM, Demon's soul's. It seems around 1.5 s is the loading time when devs optimized loading on PS5 and 6 to 7 seconds from OS to game if it is an activity card loading and initializing the game engine.

The number are clear Raw Speed 5.5 GB/s against 2.4 GB/s, compressed 4.8 GB/s against 11 GB/s and maximum theoretical number for decompression hardware 22 GB/s against over 6GB/s. For streaming there is an added hardware advantage with a coherency engine on PS5 side and other little stuff with the 1 MB SRAM on I/O Complex and two ARM Cpus against only one on Xbox side for Series X and Series S or for improve SSD endurance, write and OS the DRAM Cache.

Another mystery is the speed of the Flash Nand module in the PS5

https://www.chinaflashmarket.com/Product/Detail/NANDFlash/10841

If it is 1066 MB/s module it means SSD Speed is 6,396 GB/S maybe Sony is reserving some bandwitdh for OS. Do you have an idea of the speed of each NAND Flash module?

 

[Shortbread]

If it is 1066 MB/s module it means SSD Speed is 6,396 GB/S maybe Sony is reserving some bandwitdh for OS. Do you have an idea of the speed of each NAND Flash module?

I'm no SSD specifications engineer, but shouldn't it be 460MB/s (for that particular module) x 12 channels = 5,520GB/s for the total bandwidth.

 

[chris1515]

I'm no SSD specifications engineer, but shouldn't it be 460MB/s (for that particular module) x 12 channels = 5,520GB/s for the total bandwidth.

460 MB/s flash NAND module aren't existing. And currently the minimum capacity they sold is 533 MB/s.

EDIT:
http://www.onfi.org/specifications

Flash NAND specification it is 400 MB/s or 533 MB/s. 400 is not enough.

 

[Shortbread]

460 MB/s flash NAND module aren't existing. And currently the minimum capacity they sold is 533 MB/s.

EDIT:
http://www.onfi.org/specifications

Flash NAND specification it is 400 MB/s or 533 MB/s. 400 is not enough.

So, more than likely Sony is down-clocking frequencies or has a custom spec'd module for 460MB/s. Your original figure of 1066MB/s is far too much within a 12 channel configuration, way beyond PS5 listed SSD/IO bandwidth specifications.

 

[pjbliverpool]

If this is the case, then PS4/XBO editions really have an issue with loading speeds. And those editions run mostly medium settings, nor have RT. It takes Pro roughly 34-42 seconds to load from a standard HDD.

Do you have an SSD in your system? I noticed that games load faster off my spinning disk after I upgraded my system drive to an SSD. But maybe it's placebo or I'm remembering it wrong. It was years ago.

Yes I do have an OS SSD but the games installed on the mechanical HDD. I guess offloading all the OS read/writes to the SSD probably gives the HDD more breathing room for the game than it would otherwise have. I know you can run software that will specifically use your SDD as a cache for your HDD but I'm not running anything like that as far as I'm aware.

However... I used task manager and resource manager to measure what was happening during loading and I think I might have worked it out.

It seems that on the very first load of the game after a system reboot, a fresh load of the village demo actually takes about 13 seconds. And I can see during this time that the HDD is being hit hard.

However, on subsequent loads of the demo, even after quitting fully out of the game, or even launching another big memory hog of a game and then re-launching REV, the subsequent loads are in the 5.8s region, and there is basically no HDD activity at all. But there is a spike in CPU activity.

So my theory is that the actual load from disk (spinning HDD) takes about 13 seconds. And after the first load, the data is stored in system RAM even after I quit the game. Subsequent loads bring the data in from system RAM rather than the HDD and the 5.8s wait is actually CPU setup time - which makes sense in relation to the Series X load time which is basically the same and uses a very similar CPU to me. It would also be loading in data from the SDD at that point but that's likely only taking a fraction of a second if the load from an HDD takes 13s.

So the the biggest question this raises is how is the PS5 setting up the level so quickly compared to PC and XSX with faster CPU's? Could this be an API thing? More efficient OS?

EDIT: another theory - both the PC and Xbos are decompressing the game data on the CPU (whether it's coming in from SDD, HDD or system RAM) whereas the PS5 is using the hardware decompressor. In this case the PS5 CPU has much less to do and thus sets up the level much faster.