Ratchet & Clank technical analysis *spawn

[Karamazov]

I would not say RT is broken on PC, it's just a matter of internal settings that should be rapidly ajusted by Nixxes now they've been aware of it.
I don't think they were running side by side tests along with a PS5 to compare every pixel renredered in the reflections, so it can easily be missed.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I would not say RT is broken on PC, it's just a matter of internal settings that should be rapidly ajusted by Nixxes now they've been aware of it.
I don't think they were running side by side tests along with a PS5 to compare every pixel renredered in the reflections, so it can easily be missed.

I don't know, the RT grass shadows look pretty broken to me. That's more than just a settings tweak. Even the RT reflections showing lower detail on foreground objects than background objects seem more bug like than a settings tweak.

Although I seem to recall Spiderman had a very similar issue which was resolved fairly quickly so there's hope there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

is it needed or is it not" debate. I think the argument is a little silly tbh, of course it's needed to achieve the results as seen on the PS5 within the other constraints of that console. Is it also needed on PC? The answer for the most part seems to be yes, although nothing like the speed of the PS5 drive is required.

That's true on PS5 also for this game. Slower drives have been used successfully in PS5, and we are seeing now what the actual data transfer is, 1.2 GB/s

However it also seems very possible to get a great experience on PC with an HDD provided you have great hardware elseshere. I assume that's because the game will simply stream what it needs into VRAM or system RAM in the background before it's needed:

Indeed. 64 GBs RAM will do that - it's getting big enough to fit the entire game in RAM! Storage is about using data that can't fit in RAM.

 

[Karamazov]

the entire game in compressed form though. But with 64GB ram you'd still have enough room to uncompress what's needed when it's needed. But that's also where PS5 I/O system frees up the CPU from this task.

 

[pjbliverpool]

That's true on PS5 also for this game. Slower drives have been used successfully in PS5, and we are seeing now what the actual data transfer is, 1.2 GB/s

My point there was really that if you have a system with more memory than the PS5, then it seems the game on PC will leverage that memory via background streaming to reduce the requirement on the storage drive for high speed data loads. So I'd expect a PC with lots more memory than the PS5 to get by on even slower drives for a very similar result which the Game Riot video below seems to support.

Indeed. 64 GBs RAM will do that - it's getting big enough to fit the entire game in RAM! Storage is about using data that can't fit in RAM.

True although that amount of memory wouldn't be required (and probably not even beneficial in this game) to achieve that result.

 

[HolySmoke]

Hold onto your butts because this one's interesting.

SATA SSD - DirectStorage enabled

SATA SSD - DirectStorage disabled

Keep in mind that I have 32GB in my system. Disabling DS enables Windows' file cache to store game data which is why you're seeing fewer disk reads than with DS enabled.

This is also the reason that my HDD results from before showed fewer reads from disk. The game detects when it's run from HDD and enables the file cache.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Hold onto your butts because this one's interesting.

SATA SSD - DirectStorage enabled

SATA SSD - DirectStorage disabled

Keep in mind that I have 32GB in my system. Disabling DS enables Windows' file cache to store game data which is why you're seeing fewer disk reads than with DS enabled.

This is also the reason that my HDD results from before showed fewer reads from disk. The game detects when it's run from HDD and enables the file cache.

That is interesting. So that basically confirms the game is using system memory to cache and load the game files when using an HDD. At least if you have enough of it. But curiously it doesn't even try to do that with a SATA SSD under Direct Storage which seems pretty wasteful! That said, would those benefits only kick in on the second run if they're using Windows file cache which if I understand it correctly only caches files that have already been accessed? In order to make this worthwhile on the first run I assume the game would have to be intelligently pre-caching that data ahead of when it's needed. That could be easily tested by clearing the Windows file cache and running the sequence again on HDD to see how much data it's reading.

BTW, how do you get RTSS/Afterburner to show those SSD stats?

 

[HolySmoke]

That is interesting. So that basically confirms the game is using system memory to cache and load the game files when using an HDD. At least if you have enough of it. But curiously it doesn't even try to do that with a SATA SSD under Direct Storage which seems pretty wasteful! That said, would those benefits only kick in on the second run if they're using Windows file cache which if I understand it correctly only caches files that have already been accessed? In order to make this worthwhile on the first run I assume the game would have to be intelligently pre-caching that data ahead of when it's needed. That could be easily tested by clearing the Windows file cache and running the sequence again on HDD to see how much data it's reading.

I made sure to run both of these after a fresh reboot. The caching benefits just kick in very quickly because so much of this is repeat data. The full game is only 38GB after all.

I'll still need to test much further though. But, yes, that all seems to be the case for now.

BTW, how do you get RTSS/Afterburner to show those SSD stats?

HWinfo allows you to plug directly into the RTSS overlay. Here is how it looks when enabled for my SATA SSD and note the RivaTuner column on the right.

Keep in mind though that this doesn't work on NVMe drives which have BypassIO enabled while using DirectStorage. It otherwise works fine in non-DS applications but you'll need to disable it in Windows' registry to get DirectStorage results on NVMe. It otherwise works transparently on any SATA drives with or without DirectStorage..

 

[DavidGraham]

Tried the game on my 6TB HDD, max settings 4K DLSS Performance on a 2080Ti and 16GB of RAM, the game works fine, the famous portals sequence takes about 8 seconds to load between big portals, some portals even load instantaneously with a little bit of a one time stutter, so yes I think the game is caching heavily on RAM and VRAM, other than that it can be enjoyed on an HDD just fine. SSD is not even needed.

 

[Below2D]

I would not say RT is broken on PC, it's just a matter of internal settings that should be rapidly ajusted by Nixxes now they've been aware of it.
I don't think they were running side by side tests along with a PS5 to compare every pixel renredered in the reflections, so it can easily be missed.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I made sure to run both of these after a fresh reboot. The caching benefits just kick in very quickly because so much of this is repeat data. The full game is only 38GB after all.

I'll still need to test much further though. But, yes, that all seems to be the case for now.


HWinfo allows you to plug directly into the RTSS overlay. Here is how it looks when enabled for my SATA SSD and note the RivaTuner column on the right.

Keep in mind though that this doesn't work on NVMe drives which have BypassIO enabled while using DirectStorage. It otherwise works fine in non-DS applications but you'll need to disable it in Windows' registry to get DirectStorage results on NVMe. It otherwise works transparently on any SATA drives with or without DirectStorage..

Awesome, thanks!

 

[see colon]

at this point Drive speeds doesn't matter

View attachment 9279

also

View attachment 9280

This makes sense, right? If they are using Direct Storage, and passing compressed data from the drive directly to the video card, the bandwidth requirements should be lower on the drive side.

 

[pjbliverpool]

This makes sense, right? If they are using Direct Storage, and passing compressed data from the drive directly to the video card, the bandwidth requirements should be lower on the drive side.

Compressed data was always being fed off the drive. The difference now is that the bulk of that compressed data is being decompressed on the GPU rather than on the CPU.

 

[pjbliverpool]

More evidence that drive speed doesn't matter beyond a certain speed. Including Gen5 this time.

 

[Cyan]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1684266029755531272

 

[Shortbread]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1684266029755531272

Are these people serious? The problem isn't getting it to work on older HDD (which DF proves possible), but rather the benefits that a fast SSD/NVMe and new IO tech can provide during given gameplay elements. FYI, that warping time is shit in that clip.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I made sure to run both of these after a fresh reboot. The caching benefits just kick in very quickly because so much of this is repeat data. The full game is only 38GB after all.

Why is 75 GB required in the specs? 38 GB would literally fit in 64 GB RAM and be runnable without touching storage at all! That'd be true for so many titles, it's a kinda bonkers amount of RAM.

 

[Dictator]

Why is 75 GB required in the specs? 38 GB would literally fit in 64 GB RAM and be runnable without touching storage at all! That'd be true for so many titles, it's a kinda bonkers amount of RAM.

Maybe swap space? 38 + 37 in swap space?

 

[pjbliverpool]

Are these people serious? The problem isn't getting it to work on older HDD (which DF proves possible), but rather the benefits that a fast SSD/NVMe and new IO tech can provide during given gameplay elements. FYI, that warping time is shit in that clip.

Yeah that wasn't a great showing. There are video's out there showing much better HDD experiences on high end hardware though. I guess it depends how much RAM and VRAM you have available to pre-cache into. Obviously that scenario doesn't apply to the PS5 which is why the SSD in it's case was essential to the experience.

 

[HolySmoke]

Why is 75 GB required in the specs? 38 GB would literally fit in 64 GB RAM and be runnable without touching storage at all! That'd be true for so many titles, it's a kinda bonkers amount of RAM.

I've always assumed it's to account for patches/pagefiles or even just pulled from a hat.

The PS5 version is 34GB for reference.