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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?

mogster7777

mogster7777

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Oct 27, 2017
3,975
Like it's not exactly instant gaming on PC with the SSD's of today even like the m2's. You still have to load and install games and they're nowhere near as instant and pick up and play as Sony are saying. I mean PC's are definitely faster than consoles with SSD's. but not really by a whole lot?

Are the ones made for next gen SSD's super duper ones or something?

I don't get it? Is it just a marketing ploy?
 
z0m3le

z0m3le

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Oct 25, 2017
5,418
Because the PS4 Pro and XB1X already undercut performance improvements of next gen consoles.
 
Kyoufu

Kyoufu

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Oct 26, 2017
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Because consoles are the baseline for multiplatform titles therefore it's console limitations that dictate game design.
 
QuiteSomething

QuiteSomething

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Feb 26, 2018
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Because games where made with HD limitations in mind. When SSD will become baseline with next gen - game design will change with it
 
Diarrhea Day-Lewis

Diarrhea Day-Lewis

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Oct 27, 2017
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Well I imagine the fact that PC games can't be designed exclusively for SSDs has something to do with it? With new consoles, if there is an SSD in every box every developer can use it to its full potential?
 
bloodyroarx

bloodyroarx

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,850
Ontario, Canada
When you can plan that every console has one you can design around it

Like how the 360 couldnt use the hard drive for game performance because not every console had one originally
 
Chivalry

Chivalry

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Nov 22, 2018
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Because gamedevs will no longer have to hide loading screens with stupid forced walking/crawling/etc sections and can speed up openworld gameplay. Making games with ssds in mind is a big deal.
 
OddSock

OddSock

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Oct 27, 2017
126
South Africa
It's a little bit marketing, and a little bit of tech stuff. It's not a standard SSD (you won't be able to upgrade storage easily and installs to internal storage are /mandatory/) but it will also change how games are developed. As has been said, the consoles set the baseline; so games are developed largely /for them/. By developing games and their files and file structures in a way that a *mandatory* SSD can take advantage of them, you'll see decent gains. Also remember that the consoles aren't going to be using the same file systems that you get on PC, which in some ways can still be archaic in how they handle files. (Fat, Fat32, NTFS etc).
 
Derachi

Derachi

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Oct 27, 2017
7,699
Games on current consoles/pc are designed in such a way that they can't guarantee an SSD is there. PS5 games will be designed knowing an SSD is there. There's a huge difference that they actually get into in that Wired article. I recommend you actually read it.
 
hikarutilmitt

hikarutilmitt

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Dec 16, 2017
11,393
It's a combination of going from the hdd standard to the ssd that at least sony is using, with most signs pointing to it being a PCIe 4.0 nvme or similar custom variant. PCs using them are definitely faster than before we had them, but a lot of games don't even try to take advantage of them, plus with PCs things aren't as integrated as a console.
 
daninthemix

daninthemix

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Nov 2, 2017
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Even if it's a super fast NVMe next gen SSD I still have doubts about the ability of the system to process that amount of data. This is somewhat evidenced by many PC benchmarks that shows gaming load times are significantly improved going from HDD to SSD, but show little improvement going to NVME SSD.
 
Semfry

Semfry

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Oct 25, 2017
1,951
?? It's certainly not every game, but there are still many games that SSD's make a massive difference to, and that's only going to improve with games built around their capabilities.
 
Lexxon

Lexxon

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Oct 25, 2017
83
It hasn't made much difference in PCs for the same reason consoles "hold back" multiplat titles--you have to develop for the lowest/slowest possible hardware. If PC games required an SSD, there could be changes on that end as well. I've been gaming with an SSD for almost 10 years on PC, and going back to console's load times is extremely noticeable.

HDD is by far the biggest bottleneck in any modern hardware, and not having to develop around that opens up tons of avenues for how game data is laid out and how worlds are built.
 

Deleted member 1003

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The change will ultimately help all games even on PC as developers can design around the SSD now instead of the baseline HDD.
 
funo

funo

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Oct 27, 2017
431
mogster7777 said:
but not really by a whole lot?
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And that's where you are wrong.
Try going back from SSD to HDD on your PC and you'll clearly see how big of a difference it actually is.
Switching from HDD to SSD was a greater boost than buying more RAM or a new CPU for me.

Also, as others have already pointed out, devs can use console's SSDs to their full potential because they know every console has one built in.
They even said that in the Wired article, for Spider Man for example thy had to save certain files 400 times in order to increase load times on HDDs because the heads of the HDDs are too slow to jump back and forth that often.
 
sambills

sambills

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Nov 14, 2017
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because consoles dictate the performance of multiplatform games. Designed with SSD in mind now.
 

Deleted member 135

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Devs will be able to use it as a second source of active memory. So, in theory, it should drastically cut down on load times, remove the need for games to duplicate data and take up space that could be used for more content, remove issues like texture streaming and geometry loading problems, increase the actual speed games can take place at (a Flash game would actually be viable now) due to the removal of the previous issues. A PCIE 4.0 NVME SSD solution is faster than what even the vast majority of PCs today can do.
 
Wintermute

Wintermute

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Oct 27, 2017
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for developers, who frequently have to deal with the compute, gpu and other hardware constraints when developing titles, how quickly they can stream in data makes a HUGE HUGE difference to them. this change is important to them, even if it's not obvious to you why. there are so many cheats/hacks/methods for dealing with data loading to create seamless game experiences, having a highly performant SSD makes a world of difference, and considering a huge number of people play on consoles, this is significant.

and tbh SSDs have made a huge difference to my pc gaming experience. ymmv but i think it's great.
 
TheGhost

TheGhost

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Oct 25, 2017
28,137
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Idk...I set up a SSD on my Xbox and I load into strikes on Destiny a whole 60 seconds or more faster than the rest of the people I matchmake with. Hell I load in before the enemies do.
 
Olaf

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Oct 27, 2017
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Doesn't this mean that you won't be able to play multiplatform games from an HDD on a PC anymore? You actually need to have a PC that can keep up with the SSDs in the consoles. Sounds problematic.
 
Cordelia

Cordelia

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Jan 25, 2019
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It means that at the very minimum game devs can get rid of long hallway and lifts to hide loading screen to make it seems seamless.

mogster7777 said:
I mean PC's are definitely faster than consoles with SSD's. but not really by a whole lot?
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mogster7777 said:
I don't get it? Is it just a marketing ploy?
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Yes. Combination between marketing and ignorance.

Btw for gaming performance, nvme and sata doesn't have much difference.
 
Hyun Sai

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Oct 27, 2017
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What ? I remember my first SSD on PC, I couldn't believe how fast it was compared to my previous harddrive.

The premise of this thread is so wrong...
 
Cordelia

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Jan 25, 2019
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Olaf said:
Doesn't this mean that you won't be able to play multiplatform games from an HDD on a PC anymore? You actually need to have a PC that can keep up with the SSDs in the consoles. Sounds problematic.
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Ehh more or less like today. People with faster load time always have to wait for people with slower load time. And that is assuming cross play.
 
Kenzodielocke

Kenzodielocke

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Oct 25, 2017
12,835
Polk said:
There's nothing that suggests that in any PS5/Scarlet news.
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Cerny said in his first interview that this SSD type isn't available yet, even on PC's.

but Cerny claims that it has a raw bandwidth higher than any SSD available for PCs.
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www.wired.com

Exclusive: What to Expect From Sony's Next-Gen PlayStation

Don't expect it anytime in 2019, but the next PlayStation console is well on its way—and it's packing ray-tracing support and a loadtime-killing solid-state hard drive.
www.wired.com www.wired.com
 
thirtypercent

thirtypercent

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Oct 18, 2018
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I'd say that the difference in load times between PC and PS4X1 are very significant. Whenever I dare to turn on my PS4 (has an SSD but we know the interface and CPU are killing its speed) I have to wait exponentially longer to get anywhere, it adds up to hours wasted over the course of a long game and is a pain in the butt. Makes me not wanna bother even for the rare exclusive I'm interested in anymore, it's that severe if you're used to very short loads. Nextgen catching up to me when I bought my first SSD half a decade ago will be nice.

And then you have the 'coding the magical metal' faction who has no clue about how any of this works, have zero real world experience with that stuff and thinks these consoles will somehow defy what's possible right now, eat up every PR tidbit and whip themselves into a frenzy about how in the span of a few months gaming will change forever and everyone but them shall be left in the dust. It's mostly platform war and people spending too much time on forums talking wishful thinking and theoretics instead of actually using what we got right now and drawing realistic conclusions about the near future. Games will certainly eventually be able to do new things beyond faster loading but let's calm down until it happens.

Kenzodielocke said:
Cerny said in his first interview that this SSD type isn't available yet, even on PC's.
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He also said his SSD-equipped notebook takes ages to switch between Word and Excel, impossible to take him seriously after that. His words mean little, it's still PR and he probably just meant the PCIe 4.0 interface anyway, which is now available on PC. Of course everyone is free to expect some never before seen hyperfast SSD only Sony could come up with and put into a 500€ machine.
 
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Hektor

Hektor

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Oct 25, 2017
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Because it's the dawn of a new console generation, we will again have to pretend with the help of marketing and wishful thinking that the next gen will be high-end quantum computing
 
Bomblord

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Jan 11, 2018
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I've seen a claim that it exceeds the speeds of current consumer SSD's. Not sure how that would work but there are a ton of theoretical benefits to that like near instant loading (basically eliminating loading screens) and the ability to stream in assets more efficiently so you can have more dense and varied open world games with little to no noticeable pop-in.
 
Geobros

Geobros

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Dec 31, 2018
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Switch is the first console with SSD internal but nobody spoke about game changer. :p
 
JamboGT

JamboGT

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Oct 25, 2017
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When you know there is definitely an SSD you can design the game, and the layout of data, with that in mind.

Also going from an HDD to SSD in a PC was huge, especially for the OS.

Also having the bandwidth to then use that transfer speed will be important.
 
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