PC system impacts from tech like UE5? [Storage, RAM] *spawn*

[eastmen]

It depends on the game, but take for example something like R&C. Let's say there are 12 worlds each consisting of 10 GBs, for a 120GB game. As you play each level, the PC version would only need to load 10 GBs which won't take long. But when you start dimension hopping arbitrarily, on PS5 you access that data at any point on the SSD whereas on PC, half of it won't be in RAM (if you can't account for prefetching) and you'll have to wait until its copied into RAM before you can hop there.

So long as a game cannot traverse between 40 GBs of data at a time, the 64 GB PC would be able to prefetch effectively. If a game can hop anywhere around the 120 GB data, the 64 GB caching system won't work.

For another example, let's grab an Elder Scrolls. Let's say each vicinity has its own art style and vases and pots unique to an area. When you move to a new area, the PC can load all its assets to RAM. If you travel there over land, it can stream them in seamlessly, and if you teleport, a short teleportation animation could cover it up. But what if you grab a vase from one area and place it in another? Now you need to fetch data from all across the storage. Start moving and mixing assets and suddenly your cache might not work.

Worst case though, you may suffer some pop-in. It might be workable overall.

In something like ratchet and clank are you actually going to random worlds or does the game know exactly where your going ? Because it seemed like the first segment was on rails and you have no control over where you went (and it didn't seem in game either like the later parts) while the second portion it seemed like you were hopping to just one other part. So if the game already knows when you'd be moving to the next zone the engine could already start swapping data out for the new zone.

We don't know about the ps5 but if its similar to the xbox series x it sounds like there will only be 13 gigs of total system ram avalible for the games. Some of that is going to be cpu related data. But if we assume 12 gigs for assets a system with 24 gigs of ram free allows you to store double the assets in main memory. If you have 48 gigs free you store 4 times the data. If you have a 3gb/s drive vs say 10gb/s data transfer your only looking at a little over 3 additional seconds to load in the data but 2 to 4 times the data stored in main system ram.

In your Elder scrolls example if the player has a pot on them why would they remove the proper textures from memory ? Wouldn't it just be smarter to keep the textures for items on the character in storage to reduce fetching ? Also at the same time your still fetching additional from a nvme drive to the avalible ram , its just a slower drive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In something like ratchet and clank are you actually going to random worlds or does the game know exactly where your going ?

Dunno. I used its premise as a hypothetical example;.

In your Elder scrolls example if the player has a pot on them why would they remove the proper textures from memory ?

"But what if you grab a vase from one area and place it in another?"

If the player relocates the pot to some other part of the world, like their home, when moving to their home they need to access the resources for that area, plus the resources from the areas of content moved there. Potentially, the data from every area may need to be present.

Also at the same time your still fetching additional from a nvme drive to the avalible ram , its just a slower drive.

Yes. I said the issues might just be a bit of pop-in.

 

[eastmen]

I wonder how the pc statistics for nvme ssd's are. i.e. once directstorage is here how big the customer base supporting it will be?

It would also be interesting to know if someone has idea how big part of pc users really have 32GB or more memory? Is this use ram more academical thing and (sata or nvme) ssd is reality or opposite? If people have to go upgrade anyway it wouldn't be that expensive to have some basic 1TB nvme ssd at around 2GB/s read speed. That should be plenty fast to work well and avoid any shortcomings of use more ram and somehow preload/cache more smartly approach.

PC's are all about scaling. I think you will see more games require an ssd but not nvme. The first step is to remove HDD as gaming drives. Games as far as i can remmber since the early 90s at least had minimum specs and recommend. Gamers will buy what they can afford. I don't know many people gaming that are buying 16 gigs of ram unless its a laptop but those would be the lower end gaming ones

 

[pcchen]

I wonder how the pc statistics for nvme ssd's are. i.e. once directstorage is here how big the customer base supporting it will be?

It would also be interesting to know if someone has idea how big part of pc users really have 32GB or more memory? Is this use ram more academical thing and (sata or nvme) ssd is reality or opposite? If people have to go upgrade anyway it wouldn't be that expensive to have some basic 1TB nvme ssd at around 2GB/s read speed. That should be plenty fast to work well and avoid any shortcomings of use more ram and somehow preload/cache more smartly approach.

Unfortunately Steam Hardware Survey does not tell us which types of storage are on the users' computer.
However, they do have data on system RAM size. Unfortunately (again), it does not have data on sizes more than 16GB, but only a "more than 16GB" number (7.79%). Of course, fractional sizes are very unlikely and "more than 16GB" are likely to be 24GB/32GB/64GB and more.

 

[eastmen]

Dunno. I used its premise as a hypothetical example;.

"But what if you grab a vase from one area and place it in another?"

If the player relocates the pot to some other part of the world, like their home, when moving to their home they need to access the resources for that area, plus the resources from the areas of content moved there. Potentially, the data from every area may need to be present.

Yes. I said the issues might just be a bit of pop-in.

I mean how is that handled now? Wouldn't it check a data base of where each item is in the game and know to preload it all in at the same time ? I mean how does it know something is supposed to be there in the first place ?

 

[manux]

I know steam surveys are not be all end all and they likely skew heavily towards china/cheap internet cafe machines. That said based on steam statistics it's roughly only 8% folks with more than 16GB, around 40% for 16GB, 34% for 8GB.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

One upside on streaming is that it scales very nicely with lod and also resolution. 1080p gamer would roughly only need 1/4th of texture resolution versus 4k. More detailed LOD could easily be pulled in as needed in priority order. For folks who don't have fast streaming/warm cache endure a bit of pop in.

If one would assume decent nvme pcie3 ssd can serve 4k then plain old sata ssd would likely do fine for 1080p. And perhaps one of those pcie4 ultra fast ones can push something out that gives ultra and minimal pop in.

 

[pjbliverpool]

It depends on the game, but take for example something like R&C. Let's say there are 12 worlds each consisting of 10 GBs, for a 120GB game. As you play each level, the PC version would only need to load 10 GBs which won't take long. But when you start dimension hopping arbitrarily, on PS5 you access that data at any point on the SSD whereas on PC, half of it won't be in RAM (if you can't account for prefetching) and you'll have to wait until its copied into RAM before you can hop there.

So long as a game cannot traverse between 40 GBs of data at a time, the 64 GB PC would be able to prefetch effectively. If a game can hop anywhere around the 120 GB data, the 64 GB caching system won't work.

Yes agreed it's not going to solve initial load times either at the start of the game or during sudden and unpredictable transitions between areas of the game that don't share many common assets (like certain fast travel scenarios).

I was more presenting it as a solution to the idea of streaming in lots of high detail assets from disk during normal gameplay to an extent not possible on a system with a slower IO.

You are assuming all the data can be loaded into ram. What if this is not true? Consider gta next. Maybe each car interior is big enough that you cannot fit all of them into ram. Would you limit the amount of unique car interiors or endure random load time/pop up effect when entering car?

On the contrary I'm assuming that not all data will be in RAM, but that a significant enough proportion if it (or at least the data your current environment is using) will be to result in less new data needing to be loaded in from the SSD. Streaming will still be required, you just won't need as much of it.

Using the GTA Next example, perhaps on the PS5 you need to stream in all the in car assets every time you change cars. Whereas on a PC, you might have certain common in car textures stored in RAM, resulting in you only having to stream half the textures from SSD as opposed to all of them. Hence you've halved your streaming bandwidth requirement.

 

[manux]

Using the GTA Next example, perhaps on the PS5 you need to stream in all the in car assets every time you change cars. Whereas on a PC, you might have certain common in car textures stored in RAM, resulting in you only having to stream half the textures from SSD as opposed to all of them. Hence you've halved your streaming bandwidth requirement.

Once you start to add limitations then all kinds of things become possible. Even the always stream but also always cache low level lod in ram wouldn't take that much space. Then depending on your stream speed it's a pop in fest or not. when higher level lods are pulled in(and cached as memory allows) Or recycle assets and avoid consuming much memory.

The killer is going to be quick travel. If game supports arbitrary quick travel it's pretty darn difficult to avoid load screen. Another killer seem to be that in real life it looks like not that many pc's have more memory than consoles(~8%).

What I'm trying to argue for is that in ideal world we would just have fast streaming and no need to workarounds/limit creativity. Have ridiculously high level assets available and stream as needed. But we don't live in ideal world and it's interesting to see what developers come up with. In ideal world perhaps next next gen doubles ssd speed or perhaps we are ready to use something like optane in steroids at that point.

Especially in VR streaming would be handy. Considering something like alyx it's not that uncommon to look at objects in VR very, very closely.

 

[Rurouni]

Honestly, I think the impact will be very little. It would probably take few years for that first game that really need to have fast (storage) i/o to affect the PC landscape in terms of requiring fast i/o to be common enough. More memory can definitely help to reduce the impact of not having fast i/o but at the same time that is basically proposing a more costly solution vs simply buying a SSD. So I don't think most devs will create a game that is unplayable or have super annoying load time when you don't have SSD. If a PC have SSD then it will speed up loading time, or it can bring higher lod asset faster, etc, but they will not make a game where you need to instantly grab random 5GB data.

For me, what needs to happen on PC regarding this fast i/o thing is that for something like Steam or MS to be able to use SSD as a game cache in a transparent manner. Basically a user can simply buy an external SSD, plug it into their USB3 port (and you need to pray that they plug it to at least USB3 port), and your game will be aware of it (either via game launcher like Steam or on OS level) and use it to run the game from it. Installing to SSD is of course better, but the key is how PC will manage it between HDD and SSD in a way that is relatively fool proof.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I know steam surveys are not be all end all and they likely skew heavily towards china/cheap internet cafe machines. That said based on steam statistics it's roughly only 8% folks with more than 16GB, around 40% for 16GB, 34% for 8GB.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

The same survey also says over 90% of PC users are using 6-core CPUs or less, and when next-gen multiplatform games arrive that will probably need to change pretty fast.

 

[eastmen]

The same survey also says over 90% of PC users are using 6-core CPUs or less, and when next-gen multiplatform games arrive that will probably need to change pretty fast.

It depends on what your doing. I have my gaming rig and then I have my surface pro 6. I haven't gotten a survey from steam on my main rig for over a year but i did a survey on my pro 6 3 months ago.

I have games from 10 or 15 years ago on steam that run like a dream on my pro 6.

 

[Albuquerque]

If the player relocates the pot to some other part of the world, like their home, when moving to their home they need to access the resources for that area, plus the resources from the areas of content moved there. Potentially, the data from every area may need to be present.

This pre-supposes a rather rigid storage model in the game, where only one "map pack" can be loaded at a time, and where objects models and textures are uniquely grouped into the same storage blob as any one specific "map pack.". This contrivance seems highly unlikely. Modern games are built to stream from source media (thanks due to consoles limited memory, really) which results in well developed visible asset management systems in any modern gaming engine. Assets being the map, being textures and objects, and most of these items being reusable across the game.

 

[manux]

His console killer build missed at least case, os licence and controller. It's even more difficult than he made it to be.

 

[iroboto]

Now I'm pretty sure this video has been discussed elsewhere, but a popular youtuber tried to build a "console killer" PC for a similar price as in the past. His conclusion? This time you cant come close. He built PC with 3700X (he admitted this is a little faster than XSX CPU), 16GB low end DDR4, the cheapest b450m motherboard he could find, a 1TB NVME SSD, and the best AMD GPU available the 5700XT, and it came to....$1080. And that's with a significantly less powerful GPU. For Nvidia it would have to be a 2080Ti he concluded (I agree, although some here claim a 2080, either way it's insanely expensive).

He mentioned for example PSU prices have nearly doubled (something I noticed being in the market), and for the 650 watt PSU for the build he had to pay $70. He blamed it on Covid's impact on manufacturing. I also think the stimulus plays a part.

The point is it made me very much conclude we maybe better brace for 599, where before I was sure of 499. MS and Sony wont be able to completely escape things like doubling PSU prices, either. Could be wrong.

I just spent 1000, on a mobo and cpu. Still missing the nvme, I'm running 2400 DDR4, and I need a video card to compete. At this point in time the final build will be over 2000. I figured if I go big, I go very big. Or I stay small LOL, and go back to consoles to save money

 

[PSman1700]

I just spent 1000, on a mobo and cpu. Still missing the nvme, I'm running 2400 DDR4, and I need a video card to compete. At this point in time the final build will be over 2000. I figured if I go big, I go very big. Or I stay small LOL, and go back to consoles to save money

Yes that's how i do. I'm waiting for zen3 and ampere/rdna2 15TF or higher gpu, maybe optane depending on how things are. Going low/mid range i'd rather buy one of the next generation consoles i think

 

[iroboto]

Yes that's how i do. I'm waiting for zen3 and ampere/rdna2 15TF or higher gpu, maybe optane depending on how things are. Going low/mid range i'd rather buy one of the next generation consoles i think

With DlSS2.0 being successful as of right now, I’m fully invested into ampere. RDNA 2 could be 15-20 TF and still not have the power to render equivalency to dlss2 upscale.

 

[eastmen]

Now I'm pretty sure this video has been discussed elsewhere, but a popular youtuber tried to build a "console killer" PC for a similar price as in the past. His conclusion? This time you cant come close. He built PC with 3700X (he admitted this is a little faster than XSX CPU), 16GB low end DDR4, the cheapest b450m motherboard he could find, a 1TB NVME SSD, and the best AMD GPU available the 5700XT, and it came to....$1080. And that's with a significantly less powerful GPU. For Nvidia it would have to be a 2080Ti he concluded (I agree, although some here claim a 2080, either way it's insanely expensive).

He mentioned for example PSU prices have nearly doubled (something I noticed being in the market), and for the 650 watt PSU for the build he had to pay $70. He blamed it on Covid's impact on manufacturing. I also think the stimulus plays a part.

The point is it made me very much conclude we maybe better brace for 599, where before I was sure of 499. MS and Sony wont be able to completely escape things like doubling PSU prices, either. Could be wrong.

You can build a console killer for about $500. If you mean an upcoming console killer well its hard to say because you can't even buy those consoles. AMD is in the middle of multiple refreshes of hardware and nvidia also has refreshes coming out shortly.

Aside from that any investment in my pc is worth while as i also use it for work.

 

[PSman1700]

You can build a console killer for about $500. If you mean an upcoming console killer well its hard to say because you can't even buy those consoles. AMD is in the middle of multiple refreshes of hardware and nvidia also has refreshes coming out shortly.

Aside from that any investment in my pc is worth while as i also use it for work.

This, i don't get all these 'console killer' builds. Both have components that aren't available yet, to unknown prices and performance metrics. Aside from the CPU then. Things get expensive if you want console killer SSD performance though. You'd have to go Optane.

 

[AzBat]

What about a 1080p Lockhart-like machine? Maybe not smaller than XB1X, but that can be built for about $500 no? That's what I was looking at a few months ago & I just gave up at that budget range.

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

This, i don't get all these 'console killer' builds. Both have components that aren't available yet, to unknown prices and performance metrics. Aside from the CPU then. Things get expensive if you want console killer SSD performance though. You'd have to go Optane.

or you invest more in ram ? you can do 32gigs of ddr 4 3200 for about $150 sometimes less if you wait for a good sale. You'd have double the total system ram of the complete ram count in next gen systems. So would that coupled with a pci-e 3 ssd or even sata ssd be enough to compete with the faster console ssds ? I mean pci-e 3 nvme drives at 1tb can be as low as $115. We don't know how unreal engine 5 will scale on pc. We also have a thread on this in the pc side.