PC system impacts from tech like UE5? [Storage, RAM] *spawn*
- Thread starter MistaPi
- Start date
Eventually the windows file cache should have the files in RAM if you have enough free RAM. Though I'm not sure if some games might bypass that somehow and keep streaming from disk.
You could use a RAM disk as well but that's extra complication.
Something else that could be used is Intel's Smart Response SSD cache with a small SSD. It would eventually have the heavily used parts of files cached on the SSD. Sort of a make-your-own SSHD but it would probably be faster since you can have up to 60GB cache on a very fast SSD. SSHD's have slower flash access than a real SSD.
You could use a RAM disk as well but that's extra complication.
Something else that could be used is Intel's Smart Response SSD cache with a small SSD. It would eventually have the heavily used parts of files cached on the SSD. Sort of a make-your-own SSHD but it would probably be faster since you can have up to 60GB cache on a very fast SSD. SSHD's have slower flash access than a real SSD.
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I was in a argument with someone about SSD and games were I argued that in the future a SSD would be required to run many games, to which he replied "nah, you just need enough memory". My reply was I think a SSD would be cheaper. Anyway, made me wonder.
Future games will almost certainly require a fast SSD. Both next gen consoles have extremely fast NVME (PCIe4) SSDs with pretty effective i/o compression on top of that. With a bunch of memory you could create a RAM drive and install the game to it. Would be faster than an SSD but you would have to reinstall every time you reboot lol.
Even the best NVME drives on the market right now could struggle with next gen games. Even when fast PCIe4 drives become common, PCs won't have access to the i/o compression that the consoles will have. Fortunately PCIe5 is not that far away and should far surpass even PS5's theoretical max throughput.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
If you have 128 GB of RAM, you still need to fill that RAM somehow. If you are using a slow HDD, that could take a REALLY long time.
Once it's in RAM, however, it's fine. Until you need to access more data from the HDD.
It may seem unlikely that once game data in loaded into 128 GB that you might have to wait on loading more from HDD, but people also thought that when PCs started to have 1 GB RAM or 4 GB RAM or 16 GB RAM.
Regards,
SB
Games are already programmed to stream from disk regardless of how much RAM you have. No game that I know of will attempt to use all available system memory at runtime.
Yeah but it's possible the system file cache will eventually have the files in RAM without the game having a part in that. If you have free RAM. But it does seem like some games access files in a way that bypasses the cache and always hits disk.
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Rootax
Veteran
But I wonder about the decompression block. We don't have that on pc now. Granted we can have more cpu core, but still. Is Direct Storage API coming to PC (I mean the stuff presented by MS with the futur Xbox, not the actual Direct Storage found in W2016) ?
cheapchips
Veteran
Probably this for next gen at least, given that games with AAA graphics will be designed for consoles.
(Star Citizen seems to keep cropping up in SSD discussions. It's not a good example of any typical development though. No one else is going to develop a $20m+ PC only title, nevermind a $200m+ one)
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
No, but developers will adopt some of the things that they are doing as it applies to their titles, especially with the focus on SSD storage for the next generation of consoles.
It's quite likely their world building systems will get adopted by some games next gen. as well as it is extremely well suited to the type of use cases that both Sony and MS designed their storage subsystems for.
In the case of Microsoft, that work will migrate down to the PC as well in some form (DirectStorage for games).
Regards,
SB
Compression isn't necessary if raw bandwidth exceeds that of even PS5 compressed bandwidth. Which PCIe5 comfortably does.
Storage efficiency be damned.
Well it's unlikely we'll have anything like the consoles' i/o compression on PC any time soon.
Many SSD already have in-drive compression in order to squeeze more space for over-provisioning though.
Did not know that. Cool.
Rootax
Veteran
Yeah but nothing like compacting like games do, and console will, with very fast decompression.
The console thing is different. XboxSX and PS5 are compressing/decompressing on the host so you get bandwidth savings over the PCIe bus. The drives pcchen mentioned only compress to save space with no effect on host->drive bandwidth. The two things also are not mutually exclusive though having a drive with native compression probably wouldn't do much since compressing already compressed data isn't very effective.
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