davis.anthony
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I think it'll only really be used for extra compression, thus smaller game sizes.
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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I think it'll only really be used for extra compression, thus smaller game sizes.
I haven't seen anyone benchmark it yet, but they have commented that load times are basically the same. Though, we know that doesn't really tell us anything because NVME drives that are much slower also load in about the same amount of time. Copying files to/from it would be the only real way to know if it's different. But I suspect that even if it is, it won't have a tangible effect on game loading speeds.
I don't think a test with one game is enough to conclude anything. The only thing we can conclude is that SM2 doesn't need more than 1.7GB/s SSD. Also how thoroughly is just in time streaming tested here?
We can conclude that 3 years into the PS5's lifecycle and there's still no games requiring the magical SSD, nor even anything close to it.
Microsoft landed about where they should have. ~2.5GB/s sweet spot for this generation.
Still too early to say and this is going to be a long generation. In fact as far as I'm concerned the generation just began.
I feel ya, but I'm simply not expecting any of Sony's upcoming games to massively stress I/O, over what Ratchet and Clank and Spider-Man 2 are. Considering games can take 5+ years to make.. you're getting one or two more games out of these studios this generation (barring some exceptions)...
And let's also consider that 1.7GB is only the lowest they could get the drive to read at... that's not even saying Spider-Man 2 requires a 1.7GB/s drive.. it could be much less. 1GB/s would probably fine I bet.
The PS5 is just not capable enough hardware-wise to push the type of visuals that would require a higher end drive. As DF said, it's more about engine limitations than anything else. The SSD and I/O is nice for developers to have some room to play with... but in the end they butt up against other limitations, and I simply don't see that changing this gen.
Pfft dream killer.
Other games might well have more impact because they aren't as well engineered as SM2. However, SM2 shows that fast travel through detailed environments doesn't need multiple GB/s. Back when Sony were drawing up the hardware specs for PS5, perhaps if they had created their own streaming engine games would use they could have got away with far simpler hardware and moved the improvements from hardware to software?
Even if the thing about the SSD speed is true. The SSD is the least interesting part of PS5 I/O. It's the custom I/O hardware that does all the magic and allow those ultra low latency I/Os, notably allowing just-in time streaming of animations, textures and assets just before (<1sec down to < 1 frame) they are needed. Remember also the compression (enabled by the whole I/O complex) that is usually at 2x but can reach 4x efficiency in some cases like notably with geometry assets.
maybe they designed to with uncompressed data in mind in case of...
Supposing all the data is compressed in Spiderman 2, could we extrapolate and guess how much would be needed for the same uncompressed data ?
Another insteresting thing mentionned in the ps5 "slim" teardown is the ssd controller which apparently switched to a more conventionnal controller instead of the custom one found in the original PS5, how could that impact reading speeds ?
Supposing all the data is compressed in Spiderman 2, could we extrapolate and guess how much would be needed for the same uncompressed data ?
Another insteresting thing mentionned in the ps5 "slim" teardown is the ssd controller which apparently switched to a more conventionnal controller instead of the custom one found in the original PS5, how could that impact reading speeds ?
I think Sony didn't foresee that PS5 I/O would still be bottlenecked by the game engines after 3 years. It's one of the first thing Insomniac told us about it. The PS5 I/O was actually too fast for their engines!
For instance in some cases in order to actually properly use the I/O they chose to pre-render some stuff (instead of rendering real-time after streaming in the data) and stream the pre-rendered assets. More data to stream, less data to prepare in real-time, but the I/O is so fast they could afford it. In the latest interview with DF they give the impression that they always search new ways to actually use the I/O hardware (like streaming just-in time animations), indicating they are far from having reached the limit of PS5 I/O.
PS5 I/O is made to transfer data with ~10GB/s speed (can reach 20GB/s in some cases, ~10GB/s being an average here). Obviously game engines from HDD era (effectively 20MB/s LOL) are not ready for this.
Yeah, but does that actually bring anything much to the game? Seeing the same games run on PC, it suggests again that these were techs to deal with problems that haven't developed.
That's precisely the point. Sony had to plan the hardware for expected workloads. This might be one of those occasions where the hardware got the prediction wrong. cf. XB360's built in MSAA that ended up not terribly useful as engines evolved. The supposition is that Sony made a create design for their predicted workloads, but got the prediction wrong. Final judgement will be reserved for end of the generation, but at this point it's looking probable that the SSD was too much and unnecessary. Notably, ports to PC of Sony's first party titles, maybe not on the table when the PS5 was being spec'd, requires games from everyone to work on a lower baseline.
Would the cost savings have been significant if they launched with a 2 GB/s drive?
PC have more powerful CPU and GPU. The goal of the custom I/O in PS5 and Xbox Series is to have the best performance per watt and Performance/cost. They could have more CPU core on consoles but it would have been less efficient. Same with the Tempest Engine or the Xbox Series system for sound.
And we aren't in the middle of the generation. You just need to wait what Naughty Dog or Guerrilla Games will do with a PS5 system. We only begin to see title using current gen consoles as the minimum spec like Alan Wake 2 with subpar performance on Pascal and GCN/RDNA 1 GPUs.
EDIT: https://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-oodle-kraken-and-oodle-texture.html
A comment from Charles Bloom of RAD tools Game:
I'm aware of that. I'm only looking at the bleeding-edge 5.5 GB/s SSD and suggesting 2 GB/s would have sufficed.
And we aren't even approaching half the BW requirements that'll tax the SSD. What do you think is going to change in the next few years such that 3x the BW is going to be required?
Better multithreaded engine and other studios beginning to optimize games around SSD in PS5. Insomniac Games told during the post mortem they need to improve CPU code but they have less time to do it than other studios releasing one or two games per generation.
EDIT: I can't imagine a PS5 without Insomniac Games as a Playstation studios.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Putting it another way, outside of loading times, no game has been released on PS5 that would even tax the Xbox Series console's SSD.
If anything, Insomniac's work is actually reducing the SSD bandwidth requirements as they improve on their engine.
Regards,
SB
Yep. That's why I think MS hit the right number for the Series X at ~2GB/s.. although I'm not sure how much that really means when Sony was clearly able to put together a more cost effective console overall regardless lol.
If it is, could it have been written differently to stream more effectively and not need higher BW? As a dev with hardware capable of fast loads of conventional assets, you might just go with the 'old fashioned' methods rather than create a next-gen streaming engine.
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