Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post launch 2021] [XBSX, PS5]

[mavox01]

Thinking about it, I don't really see as much of an opportunity for a mid gen refresh this time around. "4k" hit pretty big around the middle of last time and was as good a business reason as you'd find for such a thing. Now the two "big" consoles are "4k" ready anyway, and it'll take a while for the vast majority of consumers to get a 4k hdr tv. Thus the existence of the Series S to begin with.

What I don't see is any immediate display tech on the horizon to justify another such optional upgrade. HDR will advance slowly, but that's somewhat coverable. 8k is cool looking, but I feel like the diminishing returns aren't going to make it as exciting as 4k was, movies and shows are still catching up with "4k" as it is. I can see controllers advancing, at least optionally. Microsoft would be smart to put out a feature parity controller to the PS5's, but the survey they put out shows they're possibly too stupid to do so (you don't ask the average consumer if they want to pay money for something they've never tried personally.) I can also see minor updates. Wireless charging for controllers if that ever gets long range and convenient, bigger SSDs as costs come down, newer Wifi and mediate outputs, slimmer cases and new colors, a lot of the classic stuff, but maybe not rendering upgrades.

The issue is if one them jumps into the mid gen mix, it will leave the competition in the dust. I'm not sure either is willing to risk 4+ years of an absolute power gulf considering we haven't seen too much of demanding stuff like full on RT 4k 60fps. 120hz is a thing though too, and more TVs are offering it. Imagine offering 4k 120hz across the board?

Anyway, VR could always use more power and Sony is all in with psvr2. Psvr1 and ps4 pro and connected nicknames, suggesting they worked in tandem. If sony has anything above a 1440p display, its gpu will need help, and 1440p headsets are getting old.

 

[invictis]

Looking at the specs deeper, what is the biggest upgrade over last gen? CPU, SSD, or the ecosystem? At first glance the CPU seems to standout well above the Jaguar.

I actually think its all of the above. The CPU is miles better. The SSDs totally change the I/O landscape, and on top of that we have Ray Tracing, more efficient GPUs and with Direct X we have some excellent features such as VRS, Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback Streaming. The gains from using an engine that supports Mesh Shaders and SFS alone will be big.

I think this new gen has much longer legs for gains throughout the cycle than any other one before it.
The previous gen was pretty much mixed out at launch. Ryse still holds up against any other Xbox One game graphically, and Killzone Shadowfall isn't far off it on PS4.

 

[invictis]

So there isn't any real learning period with Cache Scrubbers on behalf of the devs. It's just an automatic thing that works with or without dev input?

So we don't really know what type of efficiency gains there is, and basically it's already giving all it can on the PS5?

 

[Arwin]

Two things: there are transcripts of Cerny’s talk. You should read those. Iirc from that, the cache scrubbers have a context for which they were created which has to do with how data object are sent to the GPU from the SSD, and how quickly the GPU can work with the new data. While transparent to the developer, that does not mean that games that currently load things into RAM and feed the GPU from there automatically benefit from cache scrubbers.

As for DF and the CPU upgrade, what they see for many existing games is that the CPU was the biggest bottleneck that prevented 60fps (or higher) framerates on consoles. That does not mean that it is the biggest upgrade, just the most important one that existing games can benefit from that require no change to the code other than removing or changing a vsync.

But yeah as pointed out, the SSD is the biggest upgrade by far. And this will end up showing the biggest improvements eventually. Just not so soon for cross gen games other than in load times and a bit less pop-in.

 

[PSman1700]

Maybe. But il side with DF on that one, i'd rather have the hefty CPU improvement over the storage one. Maybe in pure numbers, the SSD improvement is the greatest, but the CPU/GPU still are going to acount for the most awe we see on screen. I believe the SSD also is a kind of a welcoming thing since we got a mere 2x ram increase as opposed to last generation (16gb).

Anyway, a chain is as strong as its weakest link, they probably went for the best balance of price to cost ratio for those boxes.

 

[see colon]

Maybe. But il side with DF on that one, i'd rather have the hefty CPU improvement over the storage one. Maybe in pure numbers, the SSD improvement is the greatest, but the CPU/GPU still are going to acount for the most awe we see on screen. I believe the SSD also is a kind of a welcoming thing since we got a mere 2x ram increase as opposed to last generation (16gb).

Anyway, a chain is as strong as its weakest link, they probably went for the best balance of price to cost ratio for those boxes.

This would be exactly my assessment. In raw numbers, the SSD is the biggest improvement. In most cases, the CPU is going to have the most effect. If we still had longer loading screens, which would be shorter because of the faster CPU anyway, you would still see nearly every game running at 60fps or above. And that's important to gameplay.

 

[PSman1700]

This would be exactly my assessment. In raw numbers, the SSD is the biggest improvement. In most cases, the CPU is going to have the most effect. If we still had longer loading screens, which would be shorter because of the faster CPU anyway, you would still see nearly every game running at 60fps or above. And that's important to gameplay.

That, and graphical features like ray tracing (spiderman, rift apart, cp2077 and many more to come), higher resolutions/framerates and settings is what ultimately is going to wow people the most.
Faster loading times is a nice added feature improving quality of life alot (less waiting, instant play etc).

 

[Arwin]

That's just because you haven't seen anything remotely like what is possible thanks to the new SSD, other than basically load-time improvements. But the SSD basically means we can handle much, much more data at much, much higher speeds. This will allow for immensely more detailed environments, varied textures and so on, in much more density. You could run through a city with some buildings having insane interiors without any load-times whatsoever. And probably without making game sizes much larger, and the bandwidth use becomes vastly more efficient too.

But like Metro Exodus going for RT only, you won't see much of that before games target the new consoles and high-end PCs exclusively, and as asset creation is already a bit of a bottleneck, it will take time to create games that really make this shine. Ratchet & Clank will be one of the first games to show some of this, thanks to being able to cleverly reuse parts of the previous games. And if you remember, UE5 also showed a little bit what kind of thing it can do.

 

[PSman1700]

The SSD is going to provide improvements graphically, ofcourse. But it still doesnt actually stand for rendering, ray tracing and other effects. Neither is it enabling higher resolutions and framerates like the CPU and GPU do.

Not saying its a minimal improvement, its a large one, but im seeing where posters here and DF are coming from when they say the SSD aint the biggest improvement. First and foremost, the GPU remains the most important part of what were going to experience on-screen, probably followed by the CPU feeding everything. The doubling of GDDR ram most likely has a nice effect on everything aswell (you can never have too much ram.....)

Also, Demon Souls, Rift Apart, Returnal are native exclusives to the PS5. And believing it was so easy to develop for, we would have seen something, right?

On UE5 tech demo, according to the tech specs of it, it actually wasnt using much at all from the SSD, considering. Someone might jump in with the actual numbers as i dont have them at hand.

If one had to sacrifice/dumb down a component in a next generation system, it most likely would be the SSD. No way would i choose the rdna2 gpu, zen2 cpu or have half the amount of ram, BW etc.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

While transparent to the developer, that does not mean that games that currently load things into RAM and feed the GPU from there automatically benefit from cache scrubbers.

Same as everything else related to I/O complex I guess. It's sitting there doing nothing in BC mode and even in most games with an actual "PS5 mode", save for a couple of titles like Demon's Souls, it seems it's only been used to take out loading times.

 

[Karamazov]

More is always better. But you misunderstood. The biggest improvement over last gen are the SSD and IO speeds

 

[Arwin]

The SSD is going to provide improvements graphically, ofcourse. But it still doesnt actually stand for rendering, ray tracing and other effects. Neither is it enabling higher resolutions and framerates like the CPU and GPU do.

Not saying its a minimal improvement, its a large one, but im seeing where posters here and DF are coming from when they say the SSD aint the biggest improvement. First and foremost, the GPU remains the most important part of what were going to experience on-screen, probably followed by the CPU feeding everything. The doubling of GDDR ram most likely has a nice effect on everything aswell (you can never have too much ram.....)

Also, Demon Souls, Rift Apart, Returnal are native exclusives to the PS5. And believing it was so easy to develop for, we would have seen something, right?

On UE5 tech demo, according to the tech specs of it, it actually wasnt using much at all from the SSD, considering. Someone might jump in with the actual numbers as i dont have them at hand.

If one had to sacrifice/dumb down a component in a next generation system, it most likely would be the SSD. No way would i choose the rdna2 gpu, zen2 cpu or have half the amount of ram, BW etc.

You're saying this: "The doubling of GDDR ram most likely has a nice effect on everything aswell (you can never have too much ram.....)" but the SSD is part of the reason why we can even get away with such a relatively small RAM improvement. The SSD has the same effect as having much more RAM, by being able to refresh the RAM contents completely every 2 seconds, and the way it has been setup by being able to directly go from SSD into the GPU bypassing RAM altoegether, it also saves a tonne of bandwidth.

 

[PSman1700]

You're saying this: "The doubling of GDDR ram most likely has a nice effect on everything aswell (you can never have too much ram.....)" but the SSD is part of the reason why we can even get away with such a relatively small RAM improvement.

Yes exactly, its what i mean, without the SSD they would have had to go with more gddr ram i think. The SSD is partly balancing things out there.

The SSD has the same effect as having much more RAM, by being able to refresh the RAM contents completely every 2 seconds, and the way it has been setup by being able to directly go from SSD into the GPU bypassing RAM altoegether, it also saves a tonne of bandwidth.

It sure does. Still, ram is always going to be heaps faster, and offer latencies any SSD (except for Optane perhaps) can dream off. Imagine 825gb of GGDR6
The whole idea is the best balance between all components (for both XSX and PS5), and seeing the price tag, they couldnt have done a better job.

 

[Shortbread]

The vast majority of developers from tweets and articles have already stated the biggest improvements for them are the SSD. That HDD was the biggest bottleneck for many of their more ambitious projects.

 

[PSman1700]

Well if we put it like that, HDD's as in PS4/OneS have been in consoles since 2001, so yeah.

 

[goonergaz]

The vast majority of developers from tweets and articles have already stated the biggest improvements for them are the SSD. That HDD was the biggest bottleneck for many of their more ambitious projects.

Yeah, they had to design games around the slow loading - so areas were 'hidden' from view while loading in and 'story footage' would have to play to load in the game data. Now they don't even have to think about that aspect, they can design a game exactly how they want with story segments and maps however they want rather than to fit with technical limitations.

SSD is a game changer as well as helping ease the RAM requirement.

 

[invictis]

The vast majority of developers from tweets and articles have already stated the biggest improvements for them are the SSD. That HDD was the biggest bottleneck for many of their more ambitious projects.

And also a total pain in the arse for us players having to sit through those load times.

 

[megre]

If one had to sacrifice/dumb down a component in a next generation system, it most likely would be the SSD. No way would i choose the rdna2 gpu, zen2 cpu or have half the amount of ram, BW etc.

You didn't think this through. Imagine Xses having an hdd or even a slow ssd. MS didn't agree with there.

 

[PSman1700]

You didn't think this through. Imagine Xses having an hdd or even a slow ssd. MS didn't agree with there.

Id rather be stuck with a slower SSD (2013 standards) over a slower GPU (2013 standards). Il still side with DF's conclusion its the CPU thats the biggest change.
Though, the GPU is probably going to be the biggest enhancement over what we see on screen.

 

[rabbit]

It is probably correct to say that the most important thing is not the ssd, but the new input/output system as a whole, which is made possible by the ssd
It takes the load off the cpu
It increases the effective amount of texture memory by a factor of 10-16 (compared to xone and ps4) for the xsx and at least 4-7 times for ps5 already at system level
sfs also significantly reduces the gpu load and bandwidth
+ ability to load data from ssd directly into gpu