PlayStation 5 Specs Revealed by EuroGamer (See Threadmarks)

StraightToHell · Mar 25, 2020

Sekiro said:
Off topic but goddamn we got folks from all over the internet talking about what's happening in this specific thread, from Wccftech articles to threads from ye old site.

I mean look at this:

The PlayStation 5 SSD Will Not Change Open World Games Dramatically

Digital Foundry Content Producer Alexander Battaglia recently commented on the PlayStation 5 SSD and on how it will not, by itself, change open-world games

wccftech.com

An entire article and a horde of comments generated all because of a few posts by Dictator

They better be giving Dictator some moolah for all the traffic and clicks they're getting from his posts lol.

I do think the quote about OW titles is completely misleading - there are many methods to making open world titles (caveat, I've worked on OW titles on the current and previous gen), and many rely on a lot of baked data - usually a wide variety of detailed meshes that popular the world. Especially if it's set in a man-made environment and not using terrain for much of its floor space.

The obvious benefit of SSDs for open worlds are more dense environments, with regular & seamless transitions between interiors and exteriors.

However, what's being overlooked is large amounts of dynamic information that can be stored for a long time. Imagine Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system, which describes rank within a hierarchy and relationships with the player and extrapolate that out across all the NPCs in the world & covering so many more events than just direct combat. Maybe a new gang forms dynamically and they have their own tag that propagates across the world. Or an off-duty cop recognises you from earlier in the game. Some of that stuff can be generated procedural, but then can be baked down at some point

Or how a world can physically evolve based on your actions - a construction company repairing a building that was damaged a few days earlier. Some initial seeding to generate data is useful, but again, some stuff will end up being stored as data until it's no longer needed.

Jekked said:
doesn't change the fact that it's true. Or do you expect multiplatform open world games to be drastically different on PS5 compared to XSX and PC? If so, I have some bad news for you.

It depends on what you mean by "different". We've been able to render large, populated landscapes and urban environments for ages. The big thing is that they're usually pretty static, and the systems on top are simple.

The difference will be about detail - not visual, but sophistication of the simulations that run, leading to much more nuances in how the world acts and and reactions, hopefully leading to many more ways in which the player can interact with the world, and unique events that arise from those interactions.

Deleted member 30987 · Mar 25, 2020

What's the crusade wccftech are leading? Is it just for clicks?

eightg4 · Mar 25, 2020

It's the problem when you only analysis the numbers not the architecture itself.

The SSD of the Xbox Series X has indeed 2,5Gb/s SSD but only two lane and the PS5 has 5,5 raw Gb/s with twelve lanes, it's not only a bandwitdh improvment it's a bottleneck issue improvment bar quite a margin.

PS5 is focus it's not the raw power (the opposit strategy of affordable) but a strategy focuses on erase bottlenecks, to get a balanced architecture.

PS5: Faster SSD ?
> how can we address and manage the workloads ?
> on the cpu side ? Having a custom I/O chip
> and on the gpu side ? Having one pool memory instead of two to evoid the gpu cache to be erase in the workflow

Duderino · Mar 25, 2020

Dictator said:
I already said that these next gen boxes will change open world games (which was the whole point of us saying that an SSD is need foe Star Citizen and in every, Video covering these consoles) just that the one Box will not do it radically different than the other. I will happily content for quite a while that no open world dev should spend their time creating bespoke Layouts and assets when prcedural could Do it more efficiently. Yet people think my comment is about console wars and for some reason feel the need to quote it for console wars.

Curious, have you had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with Andrew Maximov's work at Naughty Dog, his GDC talks, or the middleware he is developing?

Promethean AI, or at least one component of it, is designed to assist asset population by learning asset correlation and population rules. I say assist because the goal is to get layout artists/designers 90% of the way there, then hand over the control. Why not all procedural? Because for many games a fully procedural system can easily fall apart when factoring in the need for spaces to be well suited for gameplay, tell a story, and/or direct the player.

Perhaps If you reach out to Andrew he might be up for chatting further about his experience exploring procedural systems, how it relates back to these new console SSDs, and how Promethean AI is tackling population optimization.

Seems like there is opportunity here to flip this around and turn it into a productive conversation with perspective from a different discipline.

2Blackcats · Mar 25, 2020

albz74 said:
What's the crusade wccftech are leading? Is it just for clicks?

It's embarrassing.

sncvsrtoip · Mar 25, 2020

2Blackcats said:
It's embarrassing.

don't be so rude, they just reading this thread with hope for next article materials ;d

gofreak · Mar 25, 2020

StraightToHell said:
I do think the quote about OW titles is completely misleading - there are many methods to making open world titles (caveat, I've worked on OW titles on the current and previous gen), and many rely on a lot of baked data - usually a wide variety of detailed meshes that popular the world. Especially if it's set in a man-made environment and not using terrain for much of its floor space.

Yeah, I don't think I see the same shift away from static data next-gen that Dictator might. Games will still absolutely be baking some lighting. We're not going to have the power to do a fully equivalent dynamic solution at high resolutions. You'll see hybrid solutions typically. Lighting aside - meshes, textures, animation, audio, scripts... these are static data. Even procedural methods are rarely purely procedural, but assembling/modifying/positioning assets from a bank of static component data.

A digression:

At the end of the day, as I understand it, for a system that streams data for traversal along two dimensions, which is how most do it, if e.g. PS5 needs to hold streamed data to accommodate 1 second of traversal, and XSX needs to hold streamed data to accommodate 2 seconds of traversal, then PS5 can spend 4 times as much memory per m2 on that data as XSX. If you have an open world with an additional heavily vertical component and are streaming in 3 dimensions, the relationship becomes cubic - 8x the 'streamed' data per m2. That's assuming equal RAM between the two of course.

The only question becomes if engines, these capacities, tap out the art pipeline at XSX's memory capacity rather than PS5's in a given game.

For a game where a character traverses at 6m/s, taking the 1 second and 2 second windows above and a streamed texture pool of 6GB, for example, PS5 could spend enough memory for multiples of 4K of texel data per m2. XSX could not spend enough memory for even 4K of texel data. PS5 could maintain a minimum streamed texel density of 4K per m2 for character traversal over 10m/s (e.g. around the gallop of a horse).

Of course - 1 second windows, 2 second windows, a 6GB texture pool... these are variables plucked out of the air. The question mark over game pipelines' ability to reach up to these texel or data densities remains. But I think potentially there's a big difference here, at least a non-linear one wrt the size of the streaming window - and actually, perhaps, a more realisable big difference for games that are smaller and spend more art time and more of an on-disk data budget on smaller spatial areas.

Papacheeks · Mar 25, 2020

Duderino said:
Curious, have you had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with Andrew Maximov's work at Naughty Dog, his GDC talks, or the middleware he is developing?

Promethean AI, or at least one component of it, is designed to assist asset population by learning asset correlation and population rules. I say assist because the goal is to get layout artists/designers 90% of the way there, then hand over the control. Why not all procedural? Because for many games a fully procedural system can easily fall apart when factoring in the need for spaces to be well suited for gameplay, tell a story, and/or direct the player.

Perhaps If you reach out to Andrew he might be up for chatting further about his experience exploring procedural systems, how it relates back to these new console SSDs, and how Promethean AI is tackling population optimization.

Seems like there is opportunity here to flip this around and turn it into a productive conversation with perspective from a different discipline.

Good post. Be nice if Andrew was on this thread to add a little insight.

AegonSnake · Mar 25, 2020

Dictator said:
Asset density in the main viewport for games where you are not rapidly moving around a World (like a plane) , in any one view, like the density of triangle, the amount unique assets, is a matter of draw calls, geometry throughput, shading, worries about over draw and triangle size. Yeah i think a PS5 exclusive and XSX exclusive will have similar density on those terms. I do think a PS5 game could have a higher density baked lighting if they wanted (if anyone really wants such a thing) and have LODs resolve further from the Camera in a game where the Camera moves really quickly and the main limitation for LOD Range is io speed and not some other thing.
but I am honestly not sure how much the matter is a common problem, as all the games I come into contact with Limit LOD Range based on shading limitations.

this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

nujabeans · Mar 25, 2020

AegonSnake said:
this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

This just makes me want a new AAA Wipeout game.

Dictator · Mar 25, 2020

AegonSnake said:
this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

Twice the travel speed or half the draw distance dissolve? I would imagine if this gen tells us anything, it will be half the draw distance dissolve assuming the that i/o is in fact the limiting reason for LOD distance and not some other matter of performance.

Makes sense - we have had games where popin is decidedly lessend on PC or the PS4pro or X1X due to them having generically higher LOD distances (LOD distances which were not decided on due to HDD speed).

TheRealTalker · Mar 25, 2020

AegonSnake said:
this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

Insomniac with that new SpiderMan/Ratchet and Clank and GG with Horizon 2 like

III-V · Mar 25, 2020

sncvsrtoip said:
don't be so rude, they just reading this thread with hope for next article materials ;d

no lies detected

Duderino · Mar 25, 2020

I'll say one other thing that perhaps is not being factored into this discussion yet.

The PS5's SSD in particular is going to be fantastic for cinematic storytelling. With the right game engine, transitions to new locals (without wrecking the pacing) could become a lot more feasible.

Firmus_Anguis · Mar 25, 2020

Duderino said:
I'll say one other thing that perhaps is not being factored into this discussion yet.

The PS5's SSD in particular is going to be fantastic for cinematic storytelling. With the right game engine, transitions to new locals (without wrecking the pacing) could become a lot more feasible.

BradGrenz · Mar 25, 2020

Dictator said:
Asset density in the main viewport for games where you are not rapidly moving around a World (like a plane) , in any one view, like the density of triangle, the amount unique assets, is a matter of draw calls, geometry throughput, shading, worries about over draw and triangle size.

You are making a huge mistake in assuming that those metrics will be any different in a scene with doubled asset variety. You will be using a similar amount of geometry, shading, draw calls, etc when you are drawing the same pool of assets twice as often as you would drawing a pool of assets that is twice as varied.

Deleted member 35631 · Mar 27, 2020

Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

Hockeymac18 · Mar 27, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

Missing the \s?

bsigg · Mar 27, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

Uhh......you know Sony did the same thing, right?

Deleted member 19533 · Mar 27, 2020

AegonSnake said:
this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

Maybe we'll get a proper Flash game.

Shpeshal Nick · Mar 28, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

quarantine making people crazy huh?

RoboPlato · Mar 28, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

They were going to get flown out to Sony's HQ but had to cancel due to the virus. Both Sony and MS use DF in an official capacity for hardware details.

JaseC64 · Mar 28, 2020

RoboPlato said:
They were going to get flown out to Sony's HQ but had to cancel due to the virus. Both Sony and MS use DF in an official capacity for hardware details.

Around when were John and team supposed to go there? When did they go to Xbox HQ?

Still kinda ticked Sony seems to be lagging behind a lot compared to MS. I feel they are dropping the ball at every chance they have to show this thing.

FF Seraphim · Mar 28, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

This is a hot take if I ever saw one. DF were able to talk to Cerny on the phone about the PS5. From my understanding they were going to do a more person to person interview but due to Covid19 that was changed.

Prine · Mar 28, 2020

RCU005 said:
Why would people believe Digital Foundry when they have been hired as PR for Microsoft? Come on, they can swear they are being impartial, but I don't believe it. The moment they accepted to do PR for Microsoft, they compromised their credibility.

This is quite flakey reasoning, by that token every review by outlets flown out have been compromised? Because that's how all big games work. Also, DF are well respected, and do notify paid for content vs reporting. Cerny spoke directly to them about PS5 specs days before the deep dive, they're perhaps the most recognised tech channel for gaming, and are well positioned to comment on both machines, more so then anyone else.

You're chronically misinformed or ignorant.

Fredrik · Mar 28, 2020

AegonSnake said:
this spiderman streaming demo shows just what a faster ssd could do. you can potentially have a ps5 game with twice the travel speed of a car, plane or superhero than what is possible on the xbox series x.

third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

You can't see any details at all in that video, it's mostly because of the low fps and motion blur of course but do you think we'll ever notice any compromise taken to reach the same speed with the SSD in XSX without the help of DF? I don't.

Pryme · Mar 28, 2020

AegonSnake said:
third party devs will obviously code for the lowest common denominator but first party devs or third party exclusives wont have to settle for less.

If it's first party exclusives alone, by definition you'd never really see any difference since there's zero comparison point.

What Dictator is saying is correct. The transformative effect of SSDs on open world game design is common to both consoles using fast SSDs. And I'd imagine the Xbox SSD is capable of pulling off all game design changes you can do on the PS5 SSD, even if devs have to put in more effort on memory management on the console with the slower SSD, or implement more tricks.

tusharngf · Mar 28, 2020

Dictator said:
Asset density in the main viewport for games where you are not rapidly moving around a World (like a plane) , in any one view, like the density of triangle, the amount unique assets, is a matter of draw calls, geometry throughput, shading, worries about over draw and triangle size. Yeah i think a PS5 exclusive and XSX exclusive will have similar density on those terms. I do think a PS5 game could have a higher density baked lighting if they wanted (if anyone really wants such a thing) and have LODs resolve further from the Camera in a game where the Camera moves really quickly and the main limitation for LOD Range is io speed and not some other thing.
but I am honestly not sure how much the matter is a common problem, as all the games I come into contact with Limit LOD Range based on shading limitations.

thank you for the post.. One personal question to you Dictator . How did you learn all this ? I have seen your videos and they have detailed info. Just wondering how did you amass this vast knowledge? :)

hateradio · Mar 28, 2020

Whie they've already spent a lot on R&D, with supply chains being the way they are now, I don't see how MS or Sony would willingly continue to want to deliver on these specs. The best option is to keep shuffling what they have now (PS4/XBX), and pause until the world resets next year.

thuway · Mar 28, 2020

This Coreteks video does an amazing job vindicating the PS5 design -

AMD's Checkmate

Get 20% off a premium annual subscription on Brilliant's great courses: https://brilliant.org/coreteks Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/coretek...

youtu.be

Fredrik · Mar 28, 2020

hateradio said:
Whie they've already spent a lot on R&D, with supply chains being the way they are now, I don't see how MS or Sony would willingly continue to want to deliver on these specs. The best option is to keep shuffling what they have now (PS4/XBX), and pause until the world resets next year.

Yeah I won't mind a delay tbh, I'm using Stadia and Geforce Now which isn't too far from what we'll get anyway, they should prioritize the health of the devs that gets even more difficult crunch to hit the nextgen console launch dates when coworkers are sick or working at home.

Hermii · Mar 28, 2020

Dan Thunder said:
So the takeaway from my limited technical knowledge is that both machines are extremely powerful and because they've both come at problems in different ways there's actually negligible difference overall?

Its all just speculation until we see games.

Deleted member 5028 · Mar 28, 2020

thuway said:
This Coreteks video does an amazing job vindicating the PS5 design -

AMD's Checkmate

Get 20% off a premium annual subscription on Brilliant's great courses: https://brilliant.org/coreteks Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/coretek...

youtu.be

They shouldn't need to vindicate either platform. Geez, why are folks so eager to flag wave for corporations. Just be excited without being defensive.

The PS5 will be absolutely fine

thuway · Mar 28, 2020

SlipperyFishes said:
They shouldn't need to vindicate either platform. Geez, why are folks so eager to flag wave for corporations. Just be excited without being defensive.

The PS5 will be absolutely fine

I don't think you've been reading posts around here but the prevailing theory is that PS5 was a last minute upclock decision with a massive performance deficit. This is further compounded by an overkill SSD that doesn't exactly do any thing to set it apart.

This video above at some level helps knock that down a peg.

Deleted member 5028 · Mar 28, 2020

thuway said:
I don't think you've been reading posts around here but the prevailing theory is that PS5 was a last minute upclock decision with a massive performance deficit. This is further compounded by an overkill SSD that doesn't exactly do any thing to set it apart.

This video above at some level helps knock that down a peg.

But does it really!? All it does is feed into supposition and defensiveness by offering best guesses about things only actual developers and SIE know about. It's the equivalent of saying Xbox first party are going to be amazing or absolutely dismal next gen based on absolutely nothing.

we are in for a year or more of these tales sadly.

ILikeFeet · Mar 28, 2020

thuway said:
This Coreteks video does an amazing job vindicating the PS5 design -

AMD's Checkmate

Get 20% off a premium annual subscription on Brilliant's great courses: https://brilliant.org/coreteks Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/coretek...

youtu.be

PS5 doesn't need vindication. It's a damn amazing system as it is.

RogerL · Mar 28, 2020

eightg4 said:
The SSD of the Xbox Series X has indeed 2,5Gb/s SSD but only two lane and the PS5 has 5,5 raw Gb/s with twelve lanes, it's not only a bandwitdh improvment it's a bottleneck issue improvment bar quite a margin.

Two lanes? Source for that?
I thought they XBox System X were using four with chips crammed together on a small stick, but then I found these

Toshiba BG4 Single Package M.2 2230 30mm NVMe SSD Review

The Toshiba BG4 NVMe SSD fits an entire SSD onto a single BGA package which can be soldered onto a motherboard or used as a M.2 30mm (2230) SSD

www.servethehome.com

a PCIe Gen.4 (two lane, 1 TB) would fit perfectly

Deleted member 62280 · Mar 28, 2020

RogerL said:
Two lanes? Source for that?
I thought they XBox System X were using four with chips crammed together on a small stick, but then I found these

Toshiba BG4 Single Package M.2 2230 30mm NVMe SSD Review

The Toshiba BG4 NVMe SSD fits an entire SSD onto a single BGA package which can be soldered onto a motherboard or used as a M.2 30mm (2230) SSD

www.servethehome.com

a PCIe Gen.4 (two lane, 1 TB) would fit perfectly

I'm pretty sure it's 8 compared to Sony's 12 lanes

edit also thuway Alex already debunked that video in the other thread. You don't need to vindicate what will be a decent console

ShapeGSX · Mar 28, 2020

CROAT_56 said:
I'm pretty sure it's 8 compared to Sony's 12 lanes

edit also thuway Alex already debunked that video in the other thread. You don't need to vindicate what will be a decent console

You'll have to clarify what you mean by "lanes". PCIe lanes? Both are using x4, as far as I know.

Or do you mean the Interface to the flash chips?

AgeOfZelda · Mar 28, 2020

I was going to get the PS5 anyway (more appealing exclusives to me), so hopefully this means it's cheaper.

Deleted member 62280 · Mar 28, 2020

ShapeGSX said:
You'll have to clarify what you mean by "lanes". PCIe lanes? Both are using x4, as far as I know.

Or do you mean the Interface to the flash chips?

I'm super laymen on this but yes I meant the second one on the chip. Don't know about pcie lanes but would guess both are 4

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