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

[Per Lindstrom]

SSD have excellent sequential and good random read, HDD have good sequential and poor random read.
SSD is what you want when handling many small files, but a HDD is still very capable of handling few large files.

My Windows installation is 19.1 GB, have 267 163 files and 69 088 folders, Borderlands 3 is 70.8 GB, have 483 files and 84 folders.
That's why Windows should be on an SSD, and that's why a HDD can handle most games fine.

 

[Malo]

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.

Wait, you have an SHDD and and SSD but you have huge video, mapping and photoshop files on the SSD... ??

 

[orangpelupa]

Wait, you have an SHDD and and SSD but you have huge video, mapping and photoshop files on the SSD... ??

Yeah, I need them to be loaded ASAP. SHDD caching doesn't work for them. Because I won't be loading the same file again and again.

The worst came when I was doing a presentation when I stupidly put the aerials on SHDD to save space on ssd. Ugh the loading when scrolling around the map...

 

[homerdog]

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.

I know textures are compressed, which is why I said "in most cases". That is a specific example where the hardware is designed to work with compressed data. And yet realtime color compression has yielded huge benefits to GPU -> VRAM bandwidth. It's not like these things are mutually exclusive.

 

[Per Lindstrom]

Yeah, I need them to be loaded ASAP. SHDD caching doesn't work for them. Because I won't be loading the same file again and again.

The worst came when I was doing a presentation when I stupidly put the aerials on SHDD to save space on ssd. Ugh the loading when scrolling around the map...

Maybe more system memory can help?
Or another SSD that's not NVMe?

 

[homerdog]

Yea I mean for games it doesn't make much difference if it's SATA or NVME.

 

[orangpelupa]

Maybe more system memory can help?
Or another SSD that's not NVMe?

the SATA ports also already full
Dunno why, QGIS wont ever break 2.x GB memory usage.

i think i could buy PCIE sata or nvme card.

 

[Albuquerque]

I know textures are compressed, which is why I said "in most cases". That is a specific example where the hardware is designed to work with compressed data. And yet realtime color compression has yielded huge benefits to GPU -> VRAM bandwidth. It's not like these things are mutually exclusive.

I get it, but at the same time, how much of this was not already being used in any modern game platform?

This whole "compression I/O" thing is already in existence, it's just now a bit more hardware accelerated than it perhaps was in the prior generation. It might also yield some better results in specific use cases; it isn't a rift that is so big as to be compared to a complete doubling of throughput as it might relate to PCIE v4 to v5, and it surely doesn't apply to all assets (or even applicable assets evenly.) The railing is not about it existing, nor is it about compression being useful, it's about pointing out this is a sales spiel for a thing we've already been doing for decades.

 

[Davros]

he's using those 3D Anaglyph or 3D Stereoscopic glasses for his "VR" setup.

Oi I have a set of those glasses (and yes i do look sexy)

Of course real men dont need glasses or a headset in quake 2 we create vr with the power of our minds
Quake 2 Absird
http://www.lewcid.com/lg/download/SIRD/q2/index.html

 

[orangpelupa]

About the compression, IIRC Nvidia use compression for stuff that radeon doesn't. Resulting Nvidia gpu have higher performance in pcie with lower bandwidth. E.g. When you use wifi card slot for external gpu mod.

Found this http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/diy-egpu-experiences.418851/page-122
Nvidia is doing pci compression since Fermi

Oi I have a set of those glasses (and yes i do look sexy)

Of course real men dont need glasses or a headset in quake 2 we create vr with the power of our minds
Quake 2 Absird
http://www.lewcid.com/lg/download/SIRD/q2/index.html

You can do 3d with normal screen without wearing glasses as long as it's 3d side by side.

 

[Albuquerque]

About the compression, IIRC Nvidia use compression for stuff that radeon doesn't. Resulting Nvidia gpu have higher performance in pcie with lower bandwidth. E.g. When you use wifi card slot for external gpu mod.

Found this http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/diy-egpu-experiences.418851/page-122
Nvidia is doing pci compression since Fermi

No no, now we're just confusing things.

The compression being discussed there is the final framebuffer of the whichever active video card is rasterizing to or from whichever one is actually displaying. The specifics are related to supported Intel IGPs and externally connected PCIe v1-based NVIDIA cards. There's a good description of the basic technology here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...orms-into-smaller-ion-2/?comments=1&post=1967

The performance boost is when using the integrated LCD panel to receive frames from the external NVIDIA card. Rather than sending the whole uncompressed frame, the NV driver will comrpess it, send it over the wire, and then decompress it into the memory mapped region of the systems' main memory where the supported IGP would keep it's own framebuffer.

This technology function is to enable Optimus-like capability (Switchable graphics) on external video cards which normally couldn't do such a thing. It's really not linked to the conversation we're having about anything a console gaming box would do.

 

[Cyan]

Many SSD already have in-drive compression in order to squeeze more space for over-provisioning though.

also DirectStorage would help, 'cos of the PC's typical I/O input overhead. With current technology, the NVMe of my PC which is about standard, not the fastest -2,8GB/s though I wonder if it can sustain it-, it reads RE2R in about 1-2 seconds. Load times on the PS4, and similar, from the videos I've seen, are so slow by comparison.

 

[pjbliverpool]

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?

Do you know if Kraken and BCPack work on all data types or is it just an additional layer of texture compression? I'd thought but could easily be wrong, that they were general compression schemes that basically compress the entire SSD so that everything going over PCI-E is compressed rather than just textures like the PC.

But in any case this does highlight that the comparison of the new consoles compressed throughput vs raw throughput on the PC isn't a fair one since even though a PC may not be taking advantage of 2:1 BCPack compression that Microsoft is claiming for the XSX to give an "effective" throughput of 4.8GB/s, it will still be getting higher than the base throughput of the SSD. At least in terms of how the Sony/Microsoft are defining throughput.

 

[manux]

PS5 compression is hw implementation of this: http://www.radgametools.com/oodlekraken.htm ? It seems to be generic, not just graphics

 

[jlippo]

This is probably a odd question, but let's say you have 128+GB of system memory would a HDD still give you slow texture loading and stuttering in Star Citizen and future open world games designed for SSD?

Games sadly rarely continue loading content to empty memory, so it does take a while to stuttering to end. (64GB system with spinning HDD wasn't best experience.)
If there is enough memory, one could create ramdisk and install the game fully into it.

 

[orangpelupa]

Games sadly rarely continue loading content to empty memory, so it does take a while to stuttering to end. (64GB system with spinning HDD wasn't best experience.)
If there is enough memory, one could create ramdisk and install the game fully into it.

some games have options to allocate ridunkolous amount of memory, but its very rare. Btw if the game was made using unreal engine, it probably can be forced to allocate tons of RAM via .ini file editing. I never tried it with UE4 tho, only years ago on UE3 mass effect.

 

[jlippo]

some games have options to allocate ridunkolous amount of memory, but its very rare. Btw if the game was made using unreal engine, it probably can be forced to allocate tons of RAM via .ini file editing. I never tried it with UE4 tho, only years ago on UE3 mass effect.

I wonder would it load data outside the gameplay area player is within?
Meaning preloading future levels etc.

 

[orangpelupa]

I wonder would it load data outside the gameplay area player is within?
Meaning preloading future levels etc.

probably they wont, until the player goes to the preload zone. Unless the game is an open world where you can dictate how wide of the world is loaded. maybe Fallout or skyrim series. But historically, their engine always crumbles on itself when you load too much of the world.

 

[SlmDnk]

Perhaps related?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1260361521248432128

 

[CarstenS]

Perhaps related?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1260361521248432128

Maybe rather to this: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/a-first-look-at-unreal-engine-5