I've consolidated the last four pages of R&C into this R&C specific thread. Please direct all R&C discussion there, leaving this for more generic SSD insights and discussion. We can always reference findings in R&C for ideas talked about here.
Next-Generation NVMe SSD and I/O Technology [PC, PS5, XBSX|S]
- Thread starter Shortbread
- Start date
PS5 is getting an update to extend internal SSD capacity from 4TB to 8 TB. Good for those with a grand to drop on expanded capacity! 
8TB seems obscene for most any regular consumer today, but then again, back in 2013 a 1TB SSD was similarly considered quite extreme(and cost about a grand), but by the end of the console generation, was nothing special at all. So even if somebody cant afford an 8GB drive today, putting in support so that people can eventually upgrade to such a capacity down the line is useful, especially if we're dealing with an extended generation here.PS5 is getting an update to extend internal SSD capacity from 4TB to 8 TB. Good for those with a grand to drop on expanded capacity!
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Exactly this. I have a 4Tb SSD in my PS5 (in addition to the base 850mb SSD) and a 2Tb SSD attached via USB for all my old PS4 games.
Games are not getting smaller; Starfield needs 125Gb install space on all platforms, Baldur's Gate III needs 122gb on PS5, Call of Duty MW needs 178Gb on PS5, Destiny 2 needs 139Gb p PS5, NBA 2K23 needs 153Gb on PS5, Jedi Survivor needs 148Gb on PS5, Horizon Forbidden West needs 101gb on PS5. The smallest game I've seen recently is Final Fantasy 16, which needs a mere 90Gb!
That's what, 1 TB for 8 titles? How many games does a person swap between to warrant their immediate storage? 8 TB will be 50 games or something!
Fine for today. Terrible for preservation. Both Sony (with PT) and Microsoft (with emulators) have proven that they have no problem removing things that are on their storefronts and blocking them from running on their hardware. There's no guarantee that that anything that is on the store today will be available tomorrow for you to download it, even if you purchased it.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Assuming games don't get larger. And the last three years have shown us games are only getting larger . I don't have most of those games on my PS5, but I have about 500mb left of my 4Tb NVMe drive because I have games I do intend to go back to. Destiny 2 is something I blow hot and cold on, I still want to go back to finish off the side quests in Hogwarts Legacy. I'm half-way through a run on Witcher 3 etc. And we're just three years into a 6-7 year console cycle!
If you play games, never revisit and move on, I dare say you could probably get by with the internal storage. But I'm not that type of gamer. Similarly, whilst my internet is better (5G, ranging between 50 and 200mb/sec), if I want to play a game on a whim, it's not fast enough for me not to be able to plan ahead, which negates the 'whim' part.
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8TB might be overkill. But that depends on many things and your internet connection might play a huge factor. I live in a very mountainous, rural area, a place with 20-30 regular inhabitants and I had a 20MB Internet radio connection a year ago that barely managed 6MB/s of download speed, so a 8TB drive would be PERFECT for me, 'cos downloading NBA 2k23 for instance, took me 5 days and I hated having to redownload a game.PS5 is getting an update to extend internal SSD capacity from 4TB to 8 TB. Good for those with a grand to drop on expanded capacity!
However, my internet provider installed optic fiber in my region and it works flawlessly.
My connection speed is now 600MB/s -actual speed- and it's more than enough to download games fast. Thus I got a 2TB NVMe and I am very happy with it. If I ever needed space I'd delete a game and install it again when necessary. When my connection was bad, I'd never do that, if I could help it.
For that use honking great external storage, surely?
Again, why spend £1000 to have that internal when for £1000 you can get twice that with change SSD. You can get a 16 TB HDD for a quarter the price.However, my internet provider installed optic fiber in my region and it works flawlessly.
8 TB internal is for people who have a sizeable library on tap who can't wait the time needed to transfer from external to internal to play.
Well, quickly reading up on that the main issue is how bloody slow it is to copy games.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
I don't know if it's the same on Xbox, but PS5 games stored on an extnernal drive do not update. Well, not unless Sony have changed that.
So there may still be a need to do a copy, then a download and update. I consider myself fortunate that 8Tb NVMe drives are not out of my reach. I'm not buying them weekly with my cornflakes, but spending money I have to remove another niggle in life. Well, what else is money for?
There's also the consideration of multiple family members each having possibly 2-3 games each they play?
It can also take a very long time to download a modern game on a slower connection, so deleting games you will play again can be painful. I used to take my PC to my office (an ISP) to download games because it was way faster to carry the bits in my truck than get them from the apartment Internet. So I understand why people might want a ton of space.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Another thing to keep in mind with the size of games and drives is that some people play a lot of multiplayer or GAAS games (MMORPGs for instance) and some of those can be quite large. Isn't COD: Warzone something like 150+ GB? Then throw in the latest COD if they are a shooter fan which is probably another 150+ GB. I saw mention somewhere that Gran Turismo is 200 GB (someone can correct me if that is way larger than it actually is). Destiny 2, Warframe, FFXIV, etc. which people would potentially play for years could also take up space.
Regards,
SB
Regards,
SB
I'mDudditz!
Newcomer
Interesting to see DF crew (minus Alex of course) touch on this topic and voice their opinions on Mark Cerny's claims of the PS5 SSD and i/o potential and influence on what can be rendered onto the screen.
Richard says "Mark Cerny is an engineer, he doesn't do hype". Very well said. I know many here took Cerny's words as hyperbole and maybe they will rethink now that DF has voiced their opinion. We have seen PS5 games use the tech just as Cerny described (Ratchet, Demon Souls, Lumen in the Land of Nanite PS5 demo). It's a shame that Alex wasn't there it would be nice for him offer support to his stance of Cerny being hyperbolic when there's little (nothing) to date resembling proof in contrast to Cerny's claims.
I'mDudditz!
Newcomer
Can't tell you how much I love these "insights" from Beyond3D game developers lol.
It's your turn to write a letter to Bluepoint and let them know they're wrong. We must put an end to the lying developers and lying hardware engineers like Bluepoint Games and Mark Cerny.
We don't take anyone's words at face value and everything is up for discussion. Cerny had a vision of what the future would be, and he planned and designed for it and built PS5's IO stack. That doesn't mean he was right about where software is headed. He's an engineer, not a fortune-teller. The XB360 had MSAA built into its smart eDRAM to provide 'free' IQ for all games. It ended up being underutilised as games switched to deferred rendering, something the architects couldn't have predicted. Likewise Carmack had a vision for streaming tech and the whole industry changing, and it stoically hasn't. Inventor's inventions don't always pan out as they expect.
We understand your point about Cerny's perspective. It's been made. Please now move on to discussing the counter-arguments instead of arguing repeatedly we take him at face value on a matte of faith, unquestioningly extolling the benefits of PS5's superior IO without being about to discern its actual benefits. Particularly, what will it cost to create these games, and as streaming tech evolves will the super-fast IO stack be mitigated by leaner engines and better cacheing? That sort of thing. We cannot accept PS5's IO is doing something different until we see it, either in the real world, or a clear advantage spelled out on paper (which still might be shown wrong by the end of the generation).
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pjbliverpool said:
You all should write a letter to Cerny to inform him just how wrong he is
Responding to your post here as the more appropriate thread.
So, I haven't watched your video, but I can say with certainty that the SSD (and it's associated connectivity bus) absolutely is the most important part of the PS5's IO system. That should be fairly self evident. Without the SSD (i.e. a HDD in it's place), the rest of he IO system would be wasted and the IO throughput would be barely any different to the PS4.
If the decompression unit were removed for example, decompression would simply happen on the CPU and in fact R&C - currently the PS5's greatest showcase for the IO system - has shown that to be no issue whatsoever on the PC side with Direct Storage disabled with no impact to gameplay or loading times on even modest CPU's.
Epic have for example gone on record to say the key enabler for Nanite is the low latency of the SSD. Even a SATA SSD will suffice here, put the latency is key.
There is nothing in the PS5 IO system outside of the SSD itself that is revolutionary in console terms. The decompression unit, the custom firmware, the helper processors (which are just standard DMA engines and SSD controller chips), even the cache scrubbers are all there simply to support the SSD to achieve it's full throughput potential.
EDIT: so now I've watched that video and I'm afraid it's clear that you really just don't understand what he's trying to say there. His focus is purely around bringing the game sizes down through standardised decompression (Kraken). He gives several examples of that. Here's the kicker - the same kraken decompression is possible on PS4 too. And is used regularly as far as I'm aware. You simply have to do the decompression itself on the CPU which because the PS4's CPU was so horribly slow, could be impractical for some games. With the PS5's CPU, that decompression could be done on the CPU - perhaps with some limitations at extremely high throughputs, but nothing to pressure the 'modest' streaming requirements of say R&C.
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I'mDudditz!
Newcomer
I laid it out for you but you still don't get it. The SSD isn't special. It's the decompression block that is the most important, complimented by the other i/o hardware.
Just because you describe as simple doesn't make it true. Listen to an actual directly explain why your premise is wrong.
If that's true, why are games on PC without the block performing the same as PS5? As R&C currently shows, the most important enabler is the SSD. AFAIK there's nothing yet enabled on PS5 that hasn't been shown to work the same on platforms without the bespoke IO system.
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