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

[Globalisateur]

Yea there is a consistency issue I’m seeing. Going to need to wait on DF for thorough and proper testing. I don’t know what’s going on. Though that W3 benchmark where XSX was double the load time was interesting as well. Didn’t expect that. It was really peculiar. It's almost like the way it started was nearly almost finished.

Some BC games (others than TW3) do load better on PS5:

The Witcher 3:
XSX: 26 sec
PS5: 10 sec

Yakuza Kigami:
XSX: 6 sec
PS5: 4 sec.

I am guessing those 2 games are optimized for next gen I/O. I think this is the kind of gaps we'll see on next gen games.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1324737251146780673

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I don't because XVA requires coding from the ground up to take advantage of it. That would narrow the gap again IMO.

On that note, why does it take PS5 10 seconds to fill it's memory. Shouldn't it be under 3?

 

[see colon]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but this went against what I thought the results would be.
In nearly all examples shown, XSX was faster. In some benchmarks, notably faster (like 2x)

I can't come up with any reasons. Going to need to wait to hear some thoughts from others.
edit: going to chalk this one up to BC restrictions on CPU or something for PS5. And XSX and XSS running unlocked all the way for their BC. Its the only thing I can think of for now. The alternative would be much worse.

So I always assumed that the hardware compression in both PS5 and Series would make installs smaller even for backwards compatible games. But this doesn't seam to be the case. For BC games, assuming the hardware compression is not being used at all, I think you become limited by the single threaded performance of the CPU more than anything else, assuming most games decompress/load in a single thread. Series X's faster CPU clocks may be helping pull ahead here. It's the results that are very far apart that are the most surprising.

I don't because XVA requires coding from the ground up to take advantage of it. That would narrow the gap again IMO.

On that note, why does it take PS5 10 seconds to fill it's memory. Shouldn't it be under 3?

I/O speed isn't always the limiting factor. On PS2, for example, it has an optical drive that can read just over 5MB/s and 32MB or RAM, so it can fill it's memory in about 6 seconds, but I can't think of a single game that loads that fast. Sometimes loading is decompressing data. Sometimes it's compiling shaders. Sometimes it's baking level lighting.

 

[chris1515]

Some BC games (others than TW3) do load better on PS5:

The Witcher 3:
XSX: 26 sec
PS5: 10 sec

Yakuza Kigami:
XSX: 6 sec
PS5: 4 sec.

I am guessing those 2 games are optimized for next gen I/O. I think this is the kind of gaps we'll see on next gen games.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1324737251146780673

BC loading speed has nothing to do with the SSD speed, because the games were designed around HDD, Jaguar and 2013 consoles.

An The Witcher 3 and Yakuza are not optimised for next generation consoles I/O stack or CPU.

An optimised title is Spiderman Miles Morales or Astro bot:

Spiderman MM digitalfoundry loading speed measuarement:
4.39 seconds for cold boot to the menu
1.32 from save to game

Astrobot:
2.85 second from menu to game
From an activity card in the OS screen to a level 6/7 second

Digitalfoundry will not compare SSD speec with BC title it made no sense. Games engine and I/O stack need to be optimised around the new SSD:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1324797054409998336

EDIT: From Fabian Giesen employee of RAD tool game, the company which create oddle kraken and oodle texture:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1308235052753416192

https://twitter.com/x/status/1308236272511533056

 

[BRiT]

It may not make sense from a technical perspective, yet a lot of the gaming sites have already gone ahead with showing what the end users will experience when they play their existing library of games.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What next gen games? We only have crossgen multiplats and even then no comparisons

The best that can be hoped for comparisons between what should be semi-decent support for the nextgen console hardware in third party Ubisoft games like AC Valhalla and WD Legion. I doubt these are anything like heavily-optimised for next consoles but they'll give a fair indication on what to expect in terms of performance while most devs/publishers are in that cross-gen game support zone.

We'll probably have to wait a good year to see third-party games that only run on nextgen consoles. Nextgen or next-week-gen consoles. Whatever!

 

[PSman1700]

That games are not optimized yet, that applies to both machines. PS5 should load faster no matter what, atleast following discussions since march 2019.

 

[Karamazov]

even with next gen games it will not be that easy to compare, because we won't know what these games will be loading on each console, since there will be differences in setting from both consoles.
Imagine, just a supposition of course, XsX has to load higher settings for RT, lighting or whatever, when ps5 would maybe load higher LODS.
The only way we could really compare all of this would be with a real benchmark tool running on both at the same settings.

 

[Rurouni]

That games are not optimized yet, that applies to both machines. PS5 should load faster no matter what, atleast following discussions since march 2019.

It probably will... for PS5 games. I believe nobody is saying current gen games will load faster on PS5 vs XsX. You can check yourself for post since March 2019. Heck, almost nobody is thinking that PS5 can run PS4 games this good considering Sony's track record with BC.

 

[chris1515]

That games are not optimized yet, that applies to both machines. PS5 should load faster no matter what, atleast following discussions since march 2019.

It depends of how were coded the PS4 and XB1 games and the backward compatiblity too. This has nothing to do with PS5 SSD. This the same than PC and I am sure this is not going much faster than a PS4 or PS4 Pro with a SSD.

 

[PSman1700]

This the same than PC

Depends, DMC5 loads very fast, not that far from what PS5 does. I would imagine that PS5 would always be faster, be it old games or new games, or anything storage related.
But we will see soon with the new CoD, CP2077 etc.

 

[Karamazov]

nothing is automatic. If devs feel that a 10s loading is good enough for their game, and want to work on other tweaks than optimizing the load times to gain 5s, they do whatever they feel is right for them.
We have games like MM or NBA2K21 loading in less than 5s, does not mean every game will.
Will i cry if GTA6 loads in 20s and not 5, instead of 1min30 on current gen ? Hell no...

 

[chris1515]

Depends, DMC5 loads very fast, not that far from what PS5 does. I would imagine that PS5 would always be faster, be it old games or new games, or anything storage related.
But we will see soon with the new CoD, CP2077 etc.

And Yakuza load fast but they aren't games optimized for PS5. Again all depends of how are made the games. Same Watchdog legions load in 22 seconds on a fast PCIE 3 SSD from a save inside the menu to the game. And Watchdog Legions would load as fast with a PCIE 5 SSD at 14 GB/s or a PCIE SSD at 28 GB/s without some work of the devs.

All depends of how your data are packed on storage, some games have data which need to be transformed at runtime into the RAM, the I/O call are made like Fabian Giesen said if you load the file one fgetc at the time it will be long.

There are some devs who think SSD speed is not important because engine is architected in some way detrimental to fast loading. And they don't want to rearchitect all the game engine. After for the moment he doesn't work on a next gen title unlike Axel Gneiting.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1324869074002829318

Currently the best example of optimized games are the first party games particulary Spiderman* an open world game inside a city. It will be even more interesting to see for Horizon 2 Forbidden West.

Some of the Astro Playroom loading are slow down by the dev to let the player breath for example resapwing from death.

* probably a game like AC Valhalla. But I would not be surprise if first party are the best game from a loading point of view.

EDIT: Imo, loading will improve because no one will want to be the game with shitty loading time.

 

[PSman1700]

Ok yes well makes sense. For BC its more like upgrading your HDD in the PS4 to a SSD i imagine.

Currently the best example of optimized games are the first party games particulary Spiderman* an open world game inside a city. It will be even more interesting to see for Horizon 2 Forbidden West.

Very intrested in FW. And how the PS4 versions will hold up.

 

[Prophecy2k]

even with next gen games it will not be that easy to compare, because we won't know what these games will be loading on each console, since there will be differences in setting from both consoles.
Imagine, just a supposition of course, XsX has to load higher settings for RT, lighting or whatever, when ps5 would maybe load higher LODS.
The only way we could really compare all of this would be with a real benchmark tool running on both at the same settings.

To your example, considering the mere 18% difference in compute performance between the two platforms (i.e. smallest we've ever seen before), I'm not sure expecting much meaningful difference in authored game assets, settings or data to be loaded between the two platforms is realistic.

 

[Allandor]

Some BC games (others than TW3) do load better on PS5:

The Witcher 3:
XSX: 26 sec
PS5: 10 sec

Yakuza Kigami:
XSX: 6 sec
PS5: 4 sec.

I am guessing those 2 games are optimized for next gen I/O. I think this is the kind of gaps we'll see on next gen games.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1324737251146780673

Witcher 3 cannot be used for comparisons, because the games on PS4 Pro and Xbox one x don't use the same asset quality. PS5 loads just less here, and everything must go through the cpu.
I really hope for a 60 fps patch for that game. They promised a next gen patch, but we just don't know what's inside.
Maybe we get the full pc experience on both consoles.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Witcher 3 cannot be used for comparisons, because the games on PS4 Pro and Xbox one x don't use the same asset quality. PS5 loads just less here, and everything must go through the cpu.

True, if the Pro assets are literally half the size. CPU-bound operations will always favour the Series X, generally confirmed by a host of load comparisons demonstrating just slightly slower loads on PS5 vs Series X spookily relative to the difference in clock speeds of nextgen consoles. Witcher 3 is doing something weird indeed and it's worth noting the earlier fast travel demo was nonsense. Alanah Pearce did a decently long fast travel on Series X and it was around 7-8 seconds - still great compared to base consoles, but not instant.

I really hope for a 60 fps patch for that game. They promised a next gen patch, but we just don't know what's inside. Maybe we get the full pc experience on both consoles.

There has a 60fps mode in Witcher 3 on One X for three years!

 

[AlNom]

Witcher 3 cannot be used for comparisons, because the games on PS4 Pro and Xbox one x don't use the same asset quality. PS5 loads just less here, and everything must go through the cpu.
I really hope for a 60 fps patch for that game. They promised a next gen patch, but we just don't know what's inside.
Maybe we get the full pc experience on both consoles.

Really? First time I heard about that.

The DF comparison made it seem like they were identical apart from resolution (no Midgen-patch, so the base games seem vanilla).

 

[chris1515]

Really? First time I heard about that.

The DF comparison made it seem like they were identical apart from resolution (no Midgen-patch, so the base games seem vanilla).

Again it has probably more to do with how the PS4 and XB1 version were coded than the speed of the PS5 SSD.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The DF comparison made it seem like they were identical apart from resolution (no Midgen-patch, so the base games seem vanilla).

That was the original game release for 2013 consoles. CDPR released mid-gen One X and Pro patches but I've not seen a comparison of them. One X got a 60fps performance mode!