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

[pcchen]

I thought it was only Sandforce controllers that used compression.

Yeah, they were among the first (if not THE first) to do so, and it's not being adopted on mainstream SSDs for some time. More recent controllers do show slight improvement on compressible data.
Compressing data is probably more important with more SSDs are using TLC and QLC flash memory chips (for life span reasons).

 

[Davros]

Well it's unlikely we'll have anything like the consoles' i/o compression on PC any time soon.

Do we need it, games already use compressed data files and compressing already compressed files often results in larger files

 

[Rootax]

It's about very fast decompression.

 

[Davros]

So its sort of a general purpose shape (the xb1 audio chip)

 

[Cyan]

I already removed the graphics card and got a couple of SSDs

 

[Davros]

From where ?
and why is it an either or choice ?

 

[Albuquerque]

It's about very fast decompression.

No, it really isn't.

This whole conversation about "I/O compression will mean consoles are finally faster than PC's at something!" ignores an obvious fact: consoles have, for years, been doing I/O compression the same way PC's have been able to do it for 20+ years: the actual files themselves are compressed. In order to cram more and better assets onto a reasonably-sized storage (and even memory) footprint, game assets have been compressed for almost as long as games have existed; certainly for as long as 3D textured games have existed.

For as long as this site has existed, B3D has hosted conversations about texture compression schemes, depth compression schemes, audio compression schemes, mesh compression schemes, video compression schemes (back when it made sense, instead of now just using the real-time game engine to produce cutscenes), now on to using procedural math to create effects instead of static objects, even intermediary frame buffer compression schemes. Nobody sends enormous, uncompressed assets onto media to be distributed because it's wasteful.

So, all this blabber about "I'm gonna totes compress the I/O" makes a dumb assertion: that the underlying I/O is compressible to begin with. The news might be there's now a "hardware offload" for the decompression side, but that's not saying compression got literally any better based on all the things I just covered in the sentences above. PC's are in no specific danger of being "I/O outclassed!!one!11eleventy!!" by a console. Even today there are games that take dozens of seconds to load a level (looking at YOU, Red Dead Redemption) on arguably the lowest-latency storage hardware in existence (an Optane 905p on a 4.2Ghz Ryzen 3950x.)

Let's stop the insanity, shall we?

 

[Rootax]

So, the hardware kraken "decompressor" bloc dev. by the kraken guys and sony is useless or bs ? Same thing for the BCpack stuff on the MS side ?

"
richgel999@richgel999

Some back of the envelope figures:
- Kraken: Reduces the size of a complex non-RDO encoded BC7 format texture (say a normal map) by approx. 20-30%.
- BCPack: Approx. 50+% size reduction. Depends on how far MS pushed the tech. Definitely more effective than just Kraken alone.
"

So, we have gains on the size. But now it will decompress faster than before, and without taxing the cpu or the gpu. It's a good thing moving forward imo.

And I'm not saying PC is dead btw, but if it's used on console, we can see a situation where loading times are longer on PC. Not everything will scale with multicore cpus we have.

 

[orangpelupa]

And I'm not saying PC is dead btw, but if it's used on console, we can see a situation where loading times are longer on PC.

Also bigger game size and high RAM requirements I suppose. At least for games that are highly optimized to use the SSD on PS5 / xsx

 

[Albuquerque]

I never said it was "BS", I said it was not the wild crazy thing you and others have bought as part of the enormous sales spiel being put on by people whose job is to sell you things.

Compression ratio is not a guarantee; the values they've suggested have no specific sample metrics to demonstrate the savings. The whole game set isn't going to shrink by 20-30% for the Kracken line, just like BC pack isn't going to cut everything in half either. Those are sales numbers; they're best case, and they're certainly not applicable to the entire set of assets in any given game.

The statement here is this: compression exists, has existed, will continue to exist, and this isn't some new ZOMG thing. Turns out hardware texture decompression has also existed for years in your GPU's, or had you forgotten? Doesn't mean games got smaller, in fact they got bigger as more and more assets get crammed into an ever growing media footprint.

 

[Albuquerque]

Oh, and back to the original topic: for pure gaming, I vote for a high quality SSD with a moderate amount of RAM for all the reasons previously specified. Most modern "big" games are programmed to stream directly from the storage device anyway, and I'd prefer level load times to be as short as possible.

I've discovered my Optane 905 drive loads most things faster than my PCIe 4 NVME drive, even though the Optane has less total throughput. The increase in load performance on the Optane can only mean it's a latency play rather than a pure throughput issue, as that's the big win for Optane versus any typical flash-based SSD.

 

[Per Lindstrom]

Been there, done that.
He is partly right, but loading times, can be taxing, the first time, and updating Windows can be a nightmare.
Important to have Windows on SSD, HDD can handle most games fine.
I have 64 GB of system memory, and an 250GB SSD for windows rest is on HDD.

 

[Rodéric]

So very long game startup (2 minutes for 64Gio on 500Mo/s SSD) then no loading screens ever versus very short startup (4 seconds for 16Gio on 5000Mo/s NVMe) and very short to inexistent loading screens...
I guess people will prefer the latter...

 

[homerdog]

No, it really isn't.

This whole conversation about "I/O compression will mean consoles are finally faster than PC's at something!" ignores an obvious fact: consoles have, for years, been doing I/O compression the same way PC's have been able to do it for 20+ years: the actual files themselves are compressed. In order to cram more and better assets onto a reasonably-sized storage (and even memory) footprint, game assets have been compressed for almost as long as games have existed; certainly for as long as 3D textured games have existed.

For as long as this site has existed, B3D has hosted conversations about texture compression schemes, depth compression schemes, audio compression schemes, mesh compression schemes, video compression schemes (back when it made sense, instead of now just using the real-time game engine to produce cutscenes), now on to using procedural math to create effects instead of static objects, even intermediary frame buffer compression schemes. Nobody sends enormous, uncompressed assets onto media to be distributed because it's wasteful.

So, all this blabber about "I'm gonna totes compress the I/O" makes a dumb assertion: that the underlying I/O is compressible to begin with. The news might be there's now a "hardware offload" for the decompression side, but that's not saying compression got literally any better based on all the things I just covered in the sentences above. PC's are in no specific danger of being "I/O outclassed!!one!11eleventy!!" by a console. Even today there are games that take dozens of seconds to load a level (looking at YOU, Red Dead Redemption) on arguably the lowest-latency storage hardware in existence (an Optane 905p on a 4.2Ghz Ryzen 3950x.)

Let's stop the insanity, shall we?

I think you're selling it a bit short. The CPU/GPU can't work with compressed data in most cases, so doing realtime decompression in hardware should be a nice gain. I promise they wouldn't have added this in hardware if it wasn't a substantial improvement.

 

[orangpelupa]

Loading games from hdd is not fine

Sure some games are fine but more and more took too long too load.

Hence hybrid storage like fusion drive were awesome. But the one from amd was too fragile. It corrupts mine in just a month IIRC.

Currently I'm using SHDD and while the first load is slow, the next load is fast. As long as I didn't play too many games. I was only playing ff15, alyx, and beat saber off it. It seems to works fine except for alyx. It never gets fast. Long time to load the main menu, slow to load a game....

 

[homerdog]

Loading games from hdd is not fine

Sure some games are fine but more and more took too long too load.

Hence hybrid storage like fusion drive were awesome. But the one from amd was too fragile. It corrupts mine in just a month IIRC.

Currently I'm using SHDD and while the first load is slow, the next load is fast. As long as I didn't play too many games. I was only playing ff15, alyx, and beat saber off it. It seems to works fine except for alyx. It never gets fast. Long time to load the main menu, slow to load a game....

A 1TB SSD is like $100... even a pretty good 1TB NVME drive is like $150. Seems like if you have a VR headset you could afford a real SSD.

 

[Albuquerque]

I think you're selling it a bit short. The CPU/GPU can't work with compressed data in most cases

Not at all. Tell me, how many DirectX or Vulcan texture formats are uncompressed? Further, for the overwhelming super-majority of texture formats which are compressed, tell me how many of those aren't directly manageable by the GPU in their native, compressed formats?

I don't need a comprehensive list, the questions are rhetorical because the answer to both is sorely obvious. There is decompression hardware for multiple types of compression methods on modern GPUs; this is simply a slightly newer method.

I do agree that modern SSD's are inexpensive and, if you're running enough computing hardware to have a VR headset, an SSD should be a no-brainer.

 

[BRiT]

A 1TB SSD is like $100... even a pretty good 1TB NVME drive is like $150. Seems like if you have a VR headset you could afford a real SSD.

I'm pretty sure SSD's haven't been invented yet in @orangpelupa 's timeline, and he's using those 3D Anaglyph or 3D Stereoscopic glasses for his "VR" setup.

 

[orangpelupa]

A 1TB SSD is like $100... even a pretty good 1TB NVME drive is like $150. Seems like if you have a VR headset you could afford a real SSD.

Already have 1TB ssd. But only around 50GB free due to destiny 2, video files, aerial mapping files, Photoshop files, and 64GB pagefile.

Can't add more nvme. Only 1 slot available on motherboard.

 

[orangpelupa]

I'm pretty sure SSD's haven't been invented yet in @orangpelupa 's timeline, and he's using those 3D Anaglyph or 3D Stereoscopic glasses for his "VR" setup.

What is this anaglyph you are talking about! Its monoglyph red!

(emoji roling on floor, emoji dizzy head, emoji star eyes)