Pretty much. Companies want to sell these new devices so every change is presented as revolutionary. I still remember PS4's "supercharged PC architecture".
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Why is SSD in PS5 made to look like a game changer? PC’s have had it for decade and it hasn’t made that much difference?
- Thread starter mogster7777
- Start date
Pretty much. Companies want to sell these new devices so every change is presented as revolutionary. I still remember PS4's "supercharged PC architecture".
A game being multiplatform don't change that a company can design around PC hardware .
The problem come backs to them not wanting to risk it because the user base it not there .
The lowest common denominator being not only consoles but also PC .
New consoles help get rid of that risk which is why the base line moves up .
I think what you're going to see consoles take advantage of is more RAM. They'll use the RAM to prefetch from SSDs and virtually eliminate loading. Memory is extremely underutilized on the PC side of things right now, but a lot of that comes down to current gen consoles having very little RAM.
I fully expect 32GB to become the recommended amount of RAM on PC once next gen hits.
I fully expect 32GB to become the recommended amount of RAM on PC once next gen hits.
this, pretty much. happens with every new gen, it's not anything new.
It does have an impact, though, especially on consoles where there is a real world threshold for data streaming. Something like Spider-Man then had to be designed around those read speeds including what kinds of assets they end up streaming, how fast Spider-Man can go at maximum speed, etc.
You also see how games get around known loading limitations and hardware behavior by doing things like dropping you into a new section, allowing them to unload the area behind you, or using a "climb between areas slowly" segment to hide more loading and unloading.
While they are hyping up the specs with buzzwords and whatnot, it does not mean there isn't actual substance to what we will see next gen thanks to the baselin of an SSD paired with (presumably) a nice pool of fast RAM.
M.2 NVME's have been mainstream in PC's since 2016. It's hardly something devs haven't been familiar with.
Until Sony releases more info on the SSD tech used, it's tough to speculate. But in order to hit the $400-$500 price point, Sony will likely use some sort of hybrid ssd/hdd system, or we will be running with 1TB total capacity again next gen.
"That marketing buzz" that's been shown to have a considerable difference in load times and development.
That remains to be seen. Also with PCIe 4.0 now available there are faster and faster SSDs releasing all the time. The rest is just the usual daydreaming of consoles defying everyone else because somethingsomethingoptimization. Folks gotta finally realize that everyone is only cooking with water, while trying to sell it as fairy dust.
Last edited:
Can you build a PC back then or today that uses GDDR4 (or 5, or 6) as main memory?
People always point to the Jaguar cores (and yes, it's low-end and slow) but architecturally the PS4 does do things different than a PC despite having PC guts.
Not quite sure why some is calling this "That marketing buzz"
Shorter load times? With the amount of buzz this has been generating you'd expect it to be more dramatic than that. I've had a SSD in my PC since 2014, and a notable amount of games have load times in the seconds. If that's what this buzz is about it's pretty old news.
Of the three things you said only one of them is true. And that one says a lot about your stance.
What? It makes a huge difference in loading times, which is a very common complaint for console games.
It's quite simple.
The slowest part of a modern console are 1. The Blu Ray Drive and 2. The hard drive. Forcing everything to load from a solid state drive is going to remove a major bottle neck in how fast a console can load data.
Before this, games needed to break up environments with load times or reduce the detail or data in large environments with pop in textures, or reduce the travel speed of the main character in a large scale environment because only so much information can be loaded at once.
With faster access to game data at this level, you can, for example, have a lighting fast racing game in a DENSE open world city with tons of detail and physics without needing to hit loading screens. Imagine something like Burnout Paradise but with the density and detail of something far more modern with tons more simulations happening throughout the open world with the power of a far better CPU.
Being able to quickly load tons of data in less than a frame is going to be a huge game changer when you combine it with a better cpu and ram.
The slowest part of a modern console are 1. The Blu Ray Drive and 2. The hard drive. Forcing everything to load from a solid state drive is going to remove a major bottle neck in how fast a console can load data.
Before this, games needed to break up environments with load times or reduce the detail or data in large environments with pop in textures, or reduce the travel speed of the main character in a large scale environment because only so much information can be loaded at once.
With faster access to game data at this level, you can, for example, have a lighting fast racing game in a DENSE open world city with tons of detail and physics without needing to hit loading screens. Imagine something like Burnout Paradise but with the density and detail of something far more modern with tons more simulations happening throughout the open world with the power of a far better CPU.
Being able to quickly load tons of data in less than a frame is going to be a huge game changer when you combine it with a better cpu and ram.
I'm not talking about load times, but the actual gameplay impacts. If assets and streaming are being desinged with a fast SSD as the baseline, then there's no way you can play the games on PC on a HDD. Something like GTA won't be playable from a HDD anymore, because the world just can't load fast enough as you're driving.
You have no idea what you're talking about, mazi. Go watch some technical post-mortems of video games to get a better understanding of game design limitations that stem from slow HDD speeds.
It remains to be seen how much of a difference it makes besides loading (which, mind you, are not small differences even on a PC).
The fact that the new baseline will have SSD's as a standard (while many types of SSD are mainstream in the PC front, they're not standard or the baseline storage device for every single machine) might have an impact in how devs work with large amounts of data that need to be loaded very fast (see the Spider-Man example in the PS5 devkit) or it might not amound to much in the long run.
Time will tell, but having SSD's will at the very least mean loading times should be much faster even for the "big" games.
The fact that the new baseline will have SSD's as a standard (while many types of SSD are mainstream in the PC front, they're not standard or the baseline storage device for every single machine) might have an impact in how devs work with large amounts of data that need to be loaded very fast (see the Spider-Man example in the PS5 devkit) or it might not amound to much in the long run.
Time will tell, but having SSD's will at the very least mean loading times should be much faster even for the "big" games.
You mean like every open world games on console this gen with all those assets pop in?
SSDs in computers are held back by HDDs in a similar way that the mid gen console refreshes are held back by the original boxes.
You can't design exclusively around them, which leads to limitations. The Wired PS5 article gives a pretty good example of this with the data duplication dilemma we have right now.
And as many have said already, even with things as they are, SSDs have improved game speed immensely.
The real question is will some PC games make SSDs part of their requirement spec? If they truly optimize next gen like they say they are, factoring for not having an SSD would probably be a sizeable task with and might even require a separate executable.
You can't design exclusively around them, which leads to limitations. The Wired PS5 article gives a pretty good example of this with the data duplication dilemma we have right now.
And as many have said already, even with things as they are, SSDs have improved game speed immensely.
The real question is will some PC games make SSDs part of their requirement spec? If they truly optimize next gen like they say they are, factoring for not having an SSD would probably be a sizeable task with and might even require a separate executable.
Just look at Destiny load times between console and PC if you think SSDs dont make a huge difference.
I'm going by what was explicitly said. I obviously can't predict the future to know if they are lying.
Yes, it absolutely means companies can't design around multiple different hardware configurations, some of them vastly different, without massive budgets.
And you yourself just agreed that consoles including SSDs makes the baseline move up, which is sort of my entire point.
Multiplatform games can't ignore consoles, and so when consoles move the baseline up, it results in substantial game design changes.
Uhh... not sure where the "it's just marketing" people are coming from but SSDs are one of the simplest/cost effective ways to make your PC quicker/more responsive. And that is going from a 7200RPM drive to an SSD... consoles use 5400RPM drives (commonly found in laptops) which are even slower.
Having this by default in both consoles will make this the baseline for devs... whereas previously devs were limited by the slow hard drives consoles used and therefore programmed accordingly. This will make booting the system up quicker, launching applications and games quicker, loading screens in games shorter, and devs won't have to use game loading tricks like slow opening doors or squeezing between rocks while the game loads the next scene. Playing on a PC with an SSD can often be comical because you will get one word into reading the loading screen tip by the time it's loaded the next scene/level.
This is definitely not "just marketing" and will make a huge difference next gen
Having this by default in both consoles will make this the baseline for devs... whereas previously devs were limited by the slow hard drives consoles used and therefore programmed accordingly. This will make booting the system up quicker, launching applications and games quicker, loading screens in games shorter, and devs won't have to use game loading tricks like slow opening doors or squeezing between rocks while the game loads the next scene. Playing on a PC with an SSD can often be comical because you will get one word into reading the loading screen tip by the time it's loaded the next scene/level.
This is definitely not "just marketing" and will make a huge difference next gen
It's a pretty big difference I think. I remember playing RE7 on PC first, nice fast loading. Then I tried the PS4 version years later. A full goddamn minute. Capcom pls.
Not being able to read the loading screen tips on Witcher 3 is a nice 'problem' to have as well
Not being able to read the loading screen tips on Witcher 3 is a nice 'problem' to have as well
They can. Won't stop people with lower hardware from playing though. It's not as if your spec doesn't met the recommended specs you won'tt be able to play the game.
I'm well aware that's why I specifically said "while having no moving parts" and put "SSD" in quotes. As the style of SSD referred to in this thread uses a completely different interface and method of reading and writing storage.
You need some very special posters to see the jump from HDD to SSD being downplayed like this.
Like, you can't be serious.
Like, you can't be serious.
It's kind of the way that most applications work. A lot of stuff is loaded into memory. Thankfully, SSDs are far more resilient and reliable than HDDs are, but enough read/writes will still cause issues for the drive later on down the line. Games aren't designed around being loaded off an SSD, otherwise PC ports would have at least tampered with the idea.
I'm not 100% on the process, I don't develop games but it's mostly
Game loads from drive > needed info into memory/drive cache > process repeats when new information is needed (loading screens)
Some information will be pulled from the drive when required, but not large chunks. Changing the way games work to constantly push/pull information from the drive is a terrible idea.
It depends. If a game will run like that Spider-Man demo, it's practically unplayable on a hard drive. You will get continues freezes due to textures and objects being loaded. So yeah, you will be able to play, but it will be "unplayable".
Sure, PCs have had SSD for a long time. Some are super fast, some are slow. Many PCs (most) still have physical hard drives, some are fast, some are super slow. Because of that, game developers can't depend on drive speed for gameplay purposes, so they don't even try. PS5 being a console with a set storage performance speed is different, they can take advantage of it. They can have an open-world game designed around streaming a TON of data in realtime, more than could fit in memory. They can push it far beyond what they could do on PC. I think it was brought up in the interview, console games still often have to hide loading times, they put gameplay elements in to slow the player down to give the next area time to load; this won't have to be done if every player has high-speed storage.
This is exactly the reason that console games are able to look as good as they do with years-old hardware, because this principle applies throughout the hardware ecosystem. On PC, game developers have to go to extra effort to provide low quality assets for people with the minimum specs, a game pushing only the high end would only be playable for a few people, so they generally aim somewhere in the middle instead to be easy to lower for the low end (some developers don't do this, and become infamous for it...can it run Crysis?). But on console, they know exactly what everybody has, so can provide the best graphics that hardware is capable of.
This is exactly the reason that console games are able to look as good as they do with years-old hardware, because this principle applies throughout the hardware ecosystem. On PC, game developers have to go to extra effort to provide low quality assets for people with the minimum specs, a game pushing only the high end would only be playable for a few people, so they generally aim somewhere in the middle instead to be easy to lower for the low end (some developers don't do this, and become infamous for it...can it run Crysis?). But on console, they know exactly what everybody has, so can provide the best graphics that hardware is capable of.
Last edited:
Go check OP's other threads. I still remember them making thread about game achivement is required by law.
Where, when, how exactly? We're still a year away from release and know very few details. Most likely consoles will just catch up for a short while, PC will keep on trucking, evolving. PC gamers are buying SSDs in droves anyway already, so the idea of them becoming the norm being a problem is ludicrous. Or should I say wishful thinking by people who are clamoring for a 'gotcha' moment.
Bandwith becomes theoretical if you move to PCIe 4.0, at least for the next couple of years. And even PCIe 3.0 can deliver so much data in an instant that you won't notice a difference when just loading/streaming games. Everyone should take a look at the transfer speeds and how big games are currently. Different matter with content creation and moving data around but people banking on consoles clobbering PCs who already only take a few secs or less to load stuff? Ehhhh.
Also the question remains, if it's custom tech, how exactly can I expand my internal storage? I'd rather be able to simply plug in a bigger M.2 drive.
Last edited:
It sounds like it's not just a standard SSD shoved in there though. It might even be soldered onto the main board and their might be some special memory setup that could hugely increase the bandwidth over even the fastest SSD drives on PC. Time will tell but it sounds like it's going to be pretty impressive, games booting up in well under 10 seconds. New levels or tracks loading up in less than a second where you might have been waiting noticeable amounts of time previously. Sounds genuinely game changing and game design will change and improve as a result with developers able to create far more dynamic gameplay as a result.
Also yeah, now that SSDs will be the baseline all game design will improve for PC players as well and SSDs might become mandatory.
Also yeah, now that SSDs will be the baseline all game design will improve for PC players as well and SSDs might become mandatory.
lol. And some people complain about wasting time with graphics settings and updating video drivers.
Also:
Last edited:
Sure but when people are talking about SSD they aren't thinking about microSD cards or even eMMC storage.
Also, developers waste hundreds of megabytes of data to hide pop-in (duplicate frames) , with SSD the data can stream so fast that developers don't need
to waste assets (data space).
High speed SSD is a game changer on PC though.
Loading times on console that take 1-2 minutes take just few seconds in comparison. Most games are near instant on my PC.
If your experience of SSD is via console then unfortunately performance is severely crippled by the weak CPU and bandwidth.
Next gen games won't load instantly, but as near to as you would want. And the short load times wherever necessary will be short enough to be hidden with splash screens, fade outs, transitions, cutscenes etc
Loading times on console that take 1-2 minutes take just few seconds in comparison. Most games are near instant on my PC.
If your experience of SSD is via console then unfortunately performance is severely crippled by the weak CPU and bandwidth.
Next gen games won't load instantly, but as near to as you would want. And the short load times wherever necessary will be short enough to be hidden with splash screens, fade outs, transitions, cutscenes etc