If by any chance Cerny's PS5 design turns out to be a bust as in fast and narrow proved to be too hot, inefficient, SSD did not pay off that well etc, what are the chances a PS5 Pro would go slow and wide or just heavily increase the CUs, bandwidth, etc just like how 1X is to 1S? Or will it still be constrained by the BC as in you can't go over 72 CUs? I'm sure Cerny is not dumb to make the same mistake twice right, if the performance difference really turned out to be massive?
General Next Generation Rumors and Discussions [Post GDC 2020]
- Thread starter BRiT
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There is nothing in these future consoles that will prevent their games from being scaled to run on older hardware. SSD Included.
I don't think a generational leap is determined by whether they decide to make that effort or not.
Edit: I'll add that I think next gen is determined by a leap in visuals and performance, because ultimately that is what we see.
I would have guessed the GDC talk would have been a great place to highlight anything that's really custom about their RT hardware. It didn't seem to be a focal point, so the assumption is that they're basically using roughly the standard RDNA2 RT hardware. That could be wrong. Maybe Sony has more stuff to show. It would have been the perfect place to highlight it though, and the focus seemed to be elsewhere.
Honestly I'm not sure what the Gears 5 really showed other than better graphics, higher res from XB1X, ray tracing features and a ssd leading to faster load times. Toss in the save state thing.
If that's what everybody is expecting and excited about from next gen then next gen is pretty dull in my opinion.
There's still plenty of time to show stuff. Show me tactile feedback, programmable triggers, PSVR2 (rumored to be really good, even more so probably with Tempest). There's much more to gaming than CPU/GPU frequencies, cores, and number of CUs.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
So, my PC MB finally gave up the ghost and I had to go shopping for a new one. Took a look online at PCIE 4.0 SSDs and I was shocked at just how expensive they are.
Compared to PCIE 3.0 drives, they are almost twice as expensive for not twice the performance.
Plenty of PCIE 3.0 drives could, in theory, work on XBSX as many of them have > 3.0 GB/s raw read speeds. This makes me wonder if XBSX is using PCIE 3.0 as they don't really need PCIE 4.0 in order to hit their target SSD speed.
Going by this even proprietary XBSX expansion drives could potentially end up significantly cheaper than consumer level PCIE 4.0 SSDs of > 5.5 GB/s.
That's also assuming that MS doesn't just have a spec. that 3rd party SSD makers could use to make drives for XBSX that would, of course, require certification. Sort of like 3rd party memory cards on past consoles.
Anyway, end result is that I didn't order a PCIE 4.0 SSD even though I was tempted. I'll hold off until DirectStorage comes to PC.
Regards,
SB
Compared to PCIE 3.0 drives, they are almost twice as expensive for not twice the performance.
Plenty of PCIE 3.0 drives could, in theory, work on XBSX as many of them have > 3.0 GB/s raw read speeds. This makes me wonder if XBSX is using PCIE 3.0 as they don't really need PCIE 4.0 in order to hit their target SSD speed.
Going by this even proprietary XBSX expansion drives could potentially end up significantly cheaper than consumer level PCIE 4.0 SSDs of > 5.5 GB/s.
That's also assuming that MS doesn't just have a spec. that 3rd party SSD makers could use to make drives for XBSX that would, of course, require certification. Sort of like 3rd party memory cards on past consoles.
Anyway, end result is that I didn't order a PCIE 4.0 SSD even though I was tempted. I'll hold off until DirectStorage comes to PC.
Regards,
SB
IIRC, Gears 5 showed what was possible with just 2 weeks of adjustments.
This is the same thing we get every gen. The titles that are quickly ported are shown and people say it's the same thing with higher resolution etc. Give it a year and once developers start coming to grips with all of the new gpu features, and the ssd streaming performance etc and games will look much much better.
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I think a possible reason why Cerny didn't mention variable rate shading or sampler feedbacks is because he doesn't expect these features to see much use if any at all during the upcoming cycle.
Variable rate shading has issues with reducing the quality of high frequency specular details which is ideally something the artists want to avoid at all costs and ray tracing can exasperate this issue since artists are more free than ever to use those types of materials which exhibit such properties. As for sampler feedbacks, I haven't checked the API at all yet to detail it's downsides.
The old systems had hardware support for tiled or sparse resources but this never really played out in practice for real game usage since UpdateTileMappings/vkQueueBindSparse or similar console APIs had high overhead. Then there was that time when Nvidia introduced conservative rasterization and was banking to find viable uses for it such as VXGI (voxel global illumination) or frustum traced raster shadows but I think we can safely say this didn't pan out in the end because hardware accelerated ray tracing was the better idea to do superior lighting techniques.
Sometimes these ideas die out and so do the usage of these hardware features because their were either hardware/performance issues or better alternatives were available in practice.
Variable rate shading has issues with reducing the quality of high frequency specular details which is ideally something the artists want to avoid at all costs and ray tracing can exasperate this issue since artists are more free than ever to use those types of materials which exhibit such properties. As for sampler feedbacks, I haven't checked the API at all yet to detail it's downsides.
The old systems had hardware support for tiled or sparse resources but this never really played out in practice for real game usage since UpdateTileMappings/vkQueueBindSparse or similar console APIs had high overhead. Then there was that time when Nvidia introduced conservative rasterization and was banking to find viable uses for it such as VXGI (voxel global illumination) or frustum traced raster shadows but I think we can safely say this didn't pan out in the end because hardware accelerated ray tracing was the better idea to do superior lighting techniques.
Sometimes these ideas die out and so do the usage of these hardware features because their were either hardware/performance issues or better alternatives were available in practice.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's also possible that with each console likely targeting 4k resolutions that VRS becomes more important. At higher resolutions the loss of quality in some shaders will be less visible than at lower resolutions. Similar to how 4x MSAA blurring of pixels along triangle edges is fairly easy to see at 640p but almost invisible at 1080p.
Overall contrast in any given area of a screen will also affect how perceptible this is. If contrast is low then it'll be less visible than if it was on something high contrast. As this is something that developers have control over, it's unlikely that they'd opt to use it in areas of high contrast.
As well, with the upcoming generation not representing that much of a leap from the prior generation WRT to compute resources (shading) it becomes that much more important to use those resources as efficiently as possible.
Regards,
SB
It's a bit presumptuous to assume that nearly most console games will be targeting 4K and especially AAA games later during the generation. Ray tracing will be a big part of this cycle and I could easily see developers still making 1080p as their resolution target and 30fps as the framerate target to do high quality full scene ray tracing with shadows, reflections, global illumination, multiple bounces (this is really a big performance killer) or even transparency/scattering effects if they dare do so ...
In the above case variable rate shading wouldn't be of much help or may in fact be harmful since some of those effects require high definition shading to be impactful for what the artist is conveying to the players.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Where did I mention most console games targeting 4k? You should read my post again if you believe that's what I said.
Regards,
SB
This was the implication that you raised:
I argued against your premise of each console 'likely' targeting 4K resolutions. I still maintain my stance that it's not likely that this will happen with AAA games and especially as the new cycle comes closer to an end. VRS maybe more important in higher resolutions but often do you expect this case to happen to be useful enough to apply in practice ?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
The console makers (Sony and MS) are targeting 4k. Whether developers do or don't is up to the developers. The only reason I put in "likely" is that while MS have stated multiple times that 4k is their target Sony have just briefly mentioned it so far.
Regards,
SB
I wondered the same a week ago here. My thoughts were 3.0 vs 4.0, heat or "fast enough" for their appliance. 3dillettante suggested MS's 2.4GB/s is the guaranteed minimum for all accesses.
I have no real experience with SSD performance profiles but if throttling is a real issue or maintenance can kick in I wouldn't be surprised at all if the MS and Sony SSD raw numbers are MS minimum vs. Sony peak.
Edit: As an afterthought it could also be the base minimum of XSX and Lockhart with a smaller SSD and for xCloud MS guarantees for games.
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I think what it showed in fact is just that it's running on similar architecture, and that's really just expected. This is almost like showing the same game with better graphics is possible on PS4 pro/XB1S, as these machines are DESIGNED with PS4/XB1 compatibility in mind.
If they couldn't just stick it into the new consoles and have most of the stuff running properly (note that they should have known the hardware spec ballpark, what to expect to work what to expect NOT to work) then someone is obviously getting overpaid.
There is no way that any company has there minimum speeds on a spec sheet without having at least there maximum there as well. I don't understand how people think there's always some hidden thing that won't make the spec sheet.
Well, the 2.4GB number by MS does not match the typical NVMe performance max of PCIe 3.0 drives and surely not 4.0. So there must be some reason why not.
Here's a post from a developer which more or less says what I feel about the PS5.
"No clue, but as I've been saying a number of times:
- The SSDs are the game changer this generation.
- A fast drive is the thing I'd want more than anything. I'd give up GPU power for a faster drive any day.
- The faster the better."
https://www.resetera.com/threads/devs-react-to-ps5-specs-twitter-edition.175980/post-30141608
"No clue, but as I've been saying a number of times:
- The SSDs are the game changer this generation.
- A fast drive is the thing I'd want more than anything. I'd give up GPU power for a faster drive any day.
- The faster the better."
https://www.resetera.com/threads/devs-react-to-ps5-specs-twitter-edition.175980/post-30141608
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
It's a head-scratcher how many folks don't get what a massive shift to SSD the new generation will bring, which I think in part is because I/O is just not a sexy thing to talk about but because most folks just don't realise how having slow HDDs has limited game design and game designer's options this past generation.
And it's really easy for Sony to sell. If it is indeed the case, "NO LOAD TIMES!!!" is an easier concept to sell to gamers than more shinier graphics. So shiny. shiny.
And it's really easy for Sony to sell. If it is indeed the case, "NO LOAD TIMES!!!" is an easier concept to sell to gamers than more shinier graphics. So shiny. shiny.
D
Deleted member 7537
Guest
Well, not saying he is lying but he is developing an exclusive console title for Sony. He may be a bit biased to make PS5 look better that it is, the same way some posters here want to make it look worse than it is. After reading some comments, I'm just hoping PS5 is able to render something at 720p smoothly, lol.
BTW, on TF as a measure for performance, an ex-crytek engineer has published an interesting article: https://medium.com/@mattphillips/te...-of-comparing-videogame-consoles-4207d3216523
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