Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]

[milk]

So do you believe that a PS4 with the PS5 IO would offer superior results to a PS5 with an HDD?

Let's put it this way. I think it would be possible to port R&C rifts apart to a hypothetical PS4 with PS5's IO, with all gameplay and level design intact, but with R&C PS4 level of graphics, maybe even a tad worse here and there because of overhead from portals and larger areas maybe.

While a PS5 with PS4's IO would be able to run the PS4 R&C with Rifts GRAPHICS.

The second game looks better, but the first one feels more next gen for sure.

 

[PSman1700]

don't think anyone is saying GPUs don't matter, but this time the IO advancements in this new gen of consoles is a bigger deal over their GPUs.

Absolutely not. Imagine if Sony still went with a jaguar like cpu and something 4TF of gpu power and 8GB GDDR6, but with a fast SSD. What some forget is that everything you see is actually rendered by the GPU, no matter where its coming from and with what speeds.

 

[Karamazov]

Absolutely not. Imagine if Sony still went with a jaguar like cpu and something 4TF of gpu power and 8GB GDDR6, but with a fast SSD. What some forget is that everything you see is actually rendered by the GPU, no matter where its coming from and with what speeds.

stop your non sense and read again the topic. we are not talking about just putting an SSD in an ancient architecture. We are saying this time the bigger leap over last gen might be the I/O system.

 

[PSman1700]

stop your non sense and read again the topic. we are not talking about just putting an SSD in an ancient architecture. We are saying this time the bigger leap over last gen might be the I/O system.

Well obviously, yes the SSD /storage is making a bigger jump since the PS4/Xone got a HDD just like the PS3 era consoles did. However, the RDNA2 gpu as compared to the HD7870 is going to be giving us a larger jump then the HDD>SSD.
Also, i i wasnt saying 'sony putting a modern SSD in PS4, i said 4TF gpu, 8gb GDDR6 etc. Theres a reason we have the slightest jump in graphics so far, the PS1 to PS2, PS3 to PS4 where all bigger jumps, as do the numbers suggest.

 

[Karamazov]

it's not just SSD, it's the I/O arch that comes with it, if it was only the SSD, they would let us play PS5 game on an external SSD.

Theres a reason we have the slightest jump in graphics so far, the PS1 to PS2, PS3 to PS4 where all bigger jumps, as do the numbers suggest.

and once again, that's just your point of view, it's not shared by everyone. And repeating it 100 times here won"t magically change our mind.

 

[PSman1700]

it's not just SSD, it's the I/O arch that comes with it, if it was only the SSD, they would let us play PS5 game on an external SSD.

Yes and when saying 'SSD' i mean the whole IO subsystem.

and once again, that's just your point of view, it's not shared by everyone. And repeating it 100 times here won"t magically change our mind.

Goes both ways.

 

[Seanspeed]

don't think anyone is saying GPUs don't matter, but this time the IO advancements in this new gen of consoles is a bigger deal over their GPUs.

This is just one of those things you cant really quantify meaningfully.

I think it's reasonable to say that the new I/O capabilities are paradigm-shifting in ways, but the GPU and CPU advancements are equally critical for delivering a next-gen experience.

And really, the huge I/O capabilities are also just kind of a replacement for a larger increase in memory quantity, which wasn't possible this gen thanks to memory prices per GB not improving a ton in the past 7 years. In any normal generational uplift, these consoles would have 64GB of RAM at minimum. So the fast SSD's weren't just some forward-thinking choice, they were basically mandatory.

 

[Jay]

And really, the huge I/O capabilities are also just kind of a replacement for a larger increase in memory quantity, which wasn't possible this gen thanks to memory prices per GB not improving a ton in the past 7 years. In any normal generational uplift, these consoles would have 64GB of RAM at minimum.

Just a general comment diving of from this.

When people think that the ssd and bandwidth is just too get around the lack of having more memory I find that crazy.
Or without ssd 64GB can simulate having it.
If console has that amount of memory but still used hdd, waiting 4+ mins for a game to load or trying to stream assets in to a huge buffer wouldn't solve a lot of the game design issues that is reduced by use of ssd, could actually just make it worse (general load times)

 

[techuse]

SSDs are a substitute for ram not processing power as i understand it. There is nothing the SSD affords that more ram would not. Processing power however is irreplaceable.

 

[Jay]

SSDs are a substitute for ram not processing power as i understand it. There is nothing the SSD affords that more ram would not. Processing power however is irreplaceable.

4+ minutes load times, and massive corridors, instead of fast travel have extremely slow.
I consider all those a backwards step to what can do with ssd.

More memory means you have more to fill, hdd becomes an even bigger issue.

 

[Remij]

I think ~2 seconds to completely fill RAM should be the balance they strive for going forward.

11GB/s(raw) or 22GB/s(decompressed) with 32GB RAM for next gen.

The biggest issue in the future may actually be storage capacity. The ability to store the sheer quantity of high quality assets in the first place. Unless compression ratios/efficiency can still improve dramatically somehow? Capacity is where the cost prohibitive factors really come into play.

Maybe that's where always online internet connections become a true requirement and the game must download assets into a cache on the SSD some arbitrary time in advance of the game requiring it?

 

[techuse]

4+ minutes load times, and massive corridors, instead of fast travel have extremely slow.
I consider all those a backwards step to what can do with ssd.

More memory means you have more to fill, hdd becomes an even bigger issue.

With enough ram it would just be 1 load upon start up.

 

[Jay]

With enough ram it would just be 1 load upon start up.

So 100GB memory and 20 minutes to start a game? Figures and times out my arse.
That's just going so far backwards I can't think of anyone who would play games.

The more memory, the more to fill, the bigger the hdd becomes a bottleneck.

 

[cheapchips]

So 100GB memory and 20 minutes to start a game

UE5 actually features flashing bars along the side of the loading screens while playing modem like sounds through your speakers.

 

[techuse]

So 100GB memory and 20 minutes to start a game? Figures and times out my arse.
That's just going so far backwards I can't think of anyone who would play games.

The more memory, the more to fill, the bigger the hdd becomes a bottleneck.

I’m not say it’s ideal but enough ram can provide anything an SSD does. There is no way to work around less processing power.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So 100GB memory and 20 minutes to start a game? Figures and times out my arse.
That's just going so far backwards I can't think of anyone who would play games.

The more memory, the more to fill, the bigger the hdd becomes a bottleneck.

While I agree on the loading time advantage of the SSD, its still a compromise compared with more RAM. VRAM has two orders of magnitude more bandwidth than the SSD and one order of magnitude lower latency.

The R&C installation is less than 40GB large. With 64GB RAM you could preload almost the entire game into RAM decompressed and that would open possibilities from a game design perspective far beyond what the current SSDs offer.

And initial load times wouldn't have to suffer much as you wouldn't have to fill RAM with the entire game content just to start playing. You load what you need to begin and stream the rest in during gameplay.

Also, switching to a much cheaper SATA SDD would bring those load times in by about 80% compared with an HDD which would take just 1min to fill 32GB which would still be large enough to store almost half of the entire uncompressed R&C game content.

 

[megre]

I think ~2 seconds to completely fill RAM should be the balance they strive for going forward.
11GB/s(raw) or 22GB/s(decompressed)

That would require a hefty and robust heatsink, I assume? If 4GB/s transfer rate already require one, I wonder how much heatsink it would require to cool an SSD with 11GB/s transfer rate.

with 32GB RAM for next gen.

I agree. We're going to see very incremental increase in RAM going forward. DRAM stopped scaling below 10nm. Unless they find a technological breakthrough, what will make DRAM a little bit less expensive in the future would be the Chinese entering mass production.

The biggest issue in the future may actually be storage capacity.

I also agree. NAND also stopped scaling below 10nm. We're going to have to rely on mass scale manufacture for potential production saving. But the savings afforded by scaling down on process no longer applies.

Unless compression ratios/efficiency can still improve dramatically somehow?

I do hope that's the case.

 

[chris1515]

While I agree on the loading time advantage of the SSD, its still a compromise compared with more RAM. VRAM has two orders of magnitude more bandwidth than the SSD and one order of magnitude lower latency.

The R&C installation is less than 40GB large. With 64GB RAM you could preload almost the entire game into RAM decompressed and that would open possibilities from a game design perspective far beyond what the current SSDs offer.

And initial load times wouldn't have to suffer much as you wouldn't have to fill RAM with the entire game content just to start playing. You load what you need to begin and stream the rest in during gameplay.

Also, switching to a much cheaper SATA SDD would bring those load times in by about 80% compared with an HDD which would take just 1min to fill 32GB which would still be large enough to store almost half of the entire uncompressed R&C game content.

There are tons of scenario this is impossible if you have an open world superman type hero of game where you can travel anywhere very fast with higly detailed scenery the SATA SSD would not keep up. And every portal would be very slow if the data is not inside memory 20 seconds portal Ratchet and clank Rift apart, some will be nearly instantaneous because they are in RAM and other will be very long. And there is probably other scenario, this is not working. For this type of scenario you need the full game in RAM.

The R&C installation is probably around 61 to 80 GB uncompressed depending if they use only oodle kraken or oodle texture. A 200 GB game will be around 400 GB uncompressed.

There is a moment the SATA SSD or an HDD with tons of RAM does not work anymore if you don't have the full game in RAM. The only reasonnable solution is to have a reasonnable amount of RAM for example 32GB and a fast SSD 2.4 GB/s or more with DirectStorage or to be future proof 400 GB of RAM and a SATA SSD, this is only 6/7 minutes to fill it fully but I am not sure current non server motherboard* support 400 GB of RAM but in Europe it cost more than 3000 euros for 400 GB of DDR4 + a 2,4 GB/s SSD.

And console are cost effective if having a SATA SSD and 400 GB of RAM was cheaper than having 16GB of RAM and a 2,4 or 5.5 GB/s SSD, it would habe been the choice of Sony and Microsoft.

*I doubt it but maybe it is the case.

 

[pjbliverpool]

There are tons of scenario this is impossible if you have an open world superman type hero of game where you can travel anywhere very fast with higly detailed scenery the SATA SSD would not keep up. And every portal would be very slow if the data is not inside memory 20 seconds portal Ratchet and clank Rift apart, some will be nearly instantaneous because they are in RAM and other will be very long. And there is probably other scenario, this is not working.

Tons of scenario's? Let's not exaggerate. How many games are going to give you access to the entire game content in an instant? Even fast travel doesn't do that because you're jumping between silo's from a content perspective so the worst case scenario is having to load an area of the game that isn't in VRAM, but then, only enough of it to actually start playing - and even that's only when you're far enough through the game to have opened up more of the world than you're able to fit in RAM. And much of the content would already be in VRAM anyway (the main character, certain audio files, some textures etc...). Having half the game content in RAM should be plenty for a R&C style game as it's not as if the game engine doesn't already known which worlds/environments are on the other side of that rift you're approaching, and which area of that environment you'll be exiting into.

Yes there will be some very niche scenario's were some game design compromises would have to be made but they'd be extremely limited in the grand scheme.

On the other hand, having the full game in VRAM (or a very significant chunk of it) would open all kinds of possibilities that aren't currently possible with less RAM and a fast SSD. So we need to stop trying to sell the fast SSD with less RAM as the perfect scenario, it's not, it's a compromise based mainly on cost that has advantages and disadvantages vs alternative, but possibly more expensive solutions.

The R&C installation is probably around 61 to 80 GB uncompressed depending if they use only oodle kraken or oodle texture. A 200 GB game will be around 400 GB uncompressed.

How many 200GB games are we likely to see this generation with the PS5's 800GB SSD? The only game that comes close last gen is CoD and there is no mechanic in that game which allows the user to instantly access any area of the game content they wish, as there isn't in basically every game ever made because it's a crappy mechanic. Games block content from the user for good reason, because otherwise there's no sense of progression.

There is a moment the SATA SSD or an HDD with tons of RAM does not work anymore if you don't have the full game in RAM.

And they'd be crazy rare when you're at the point of 50% of the game in VRAM. Think about R&C for a moment. How many different environments are there? 8? So you could have comfortably have 3 of them in memory persistently which means all the game engine would need to know is which ones you're going to have access to ahead of time to make sure the correct ones are pre-loaded. Or another approach would be to have the entry areas for every portal stored in VRAM and then stream areas in beyond the entry point once you've passed through the portal.

The only reasonnable solution is to have a reasonnable amount of RAM for example 32GB and a fast SSD 2.5 GB/s or more with DirectStorage.

More of everything is obviously better but there are absolutely pro's and cons from a game design and performance perspective of more RAM with slower IO vs less RAM with faster IO.

 

[chris1515]

Tons of scenario's? Let's not exaggerate. How many games are going to give you access to the entire game content in an instant? Even fast travel doesn't do that because you're jumping between silo's from a content perspective so the worst case scenario is having to load an area of the game that isn't in VRAM, but then, only enough of it to actually start playing - and even that's only when you're far enough through the game to have opened up more of the world than you're able to fit in RAM. And much of the content would already be in VRAM anyway (the main character, certain audio files, some textures etc...). Having half the game content in RAM should be plenty for a R&C style game as it's not as if the game engine doesn't already known which worlds/environments are on the other side of that rift you're approaching, and which area of that environment you'll be exiting into.

Yes there will be some very niche scenario's were some game design compromises would have to be made but they'd be extremely limited in the grand scheme.

On the other hand, having the full game in VRAM (or a very significant chunk of it) would open all kinds of possibilities that aren't currently possible with less RAM and a fast SSD. So we need to stop trying to sell the fast SSD with less RAM as the perfect scenario, it's not, it's a compromise based mainly on cost that has advantages and disadvantages vs alternative, but possibly more expensive solutions.



How many 200GB games are we likely to see this generation with the PS5's 800GB SSD? The only game that comes close last gen is CoD and there is no mechanic in that game which allows the user to instantly access any area of the game content they wish, as there isn't in basically every game ever made because it's a crappy mechanic. Games block content from the user for good reason, because otherwise there's no sense of progression.



And they'd be crazy rare when you're at the point of 50% of the game in VRAM. Think about R&C for a moment. How many different environments are there? 8? So you could have comfortably have 3 of them in memory persistently which means all the game engine would need to know is which ones you're going to have access to ahead of time to make sure the correct ones are pre-loaded. Or another approach would be to have the entry areas for every portal stored in VRAM and then stream areas in beyond the entry point once you've passed through the portal.



More of everything is obviously better but there are absolutely pro's and cons from a game design and performance perspective of more RAM with slower IO vs less RAM with faster IO.

There is moment in the game where you goes through multiples environnement very fast, they said it. If you want to have no game design limitation or the designer to think about solutions what you need to do the solution is or fast SSD and reasonnable amount of RAM 16GB UMA in console or 16, 24 or 32 GB on PC and an NVME SSD.

SSD is not only an advantage for the player but for the game and level designer where they don't need to think of any technical problem. Here if they need something in memory it will takes around 1 second if they need to reload the full memory.

On design side the only limitation are the size of the game and the limitation of CPU and GPU power. From dev they said RAM and streaming constraint was by far the MAIN limitation. They needed to reduce asset quality the GPU can render because there was not enough RAM or a fast streaming system to render it out of very lineat game like The Order 1886.

And R&C Rift Apart is a game if the beginning of the generation. I expect games to grow again in size. Most of the game will be around 100 GB because it is the size of a disk but some game will go above. And last generation game design will not be current generation game design, they don't have limitations anymore.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1240390143330189313

https://twitter.com/x/status/1240390145955598336

https://twitter.com/x/status/1240390147029385217

Andrew Maximov is ex technical art director of Naughty Dog.

Here GPU of PS4, XB1 could have render some assets at higher fidelity in Open world or wide linear games (Uncharted, TLOU2 or God of War) but the streaming system was the limitation. If a PS4 can render TLOU2 or The Order 1886, it can do it in an Open world but streaming system is the limitation.

EDIT: There are no advantage at all to have slow SSD and more RAM for the player. It is better to have some very fast loading beginning the game than a huge loading time when you want to play.

And if you think to have part of the game out of RAM with a slow SSD, it means limitations for game designer.