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?

[DevilMayGuy]

Go play MHW on PS4 and then boot it up on PC and tell me that SSDs make no difference. Hell, try playing Path of Exile on an HDD and tell me that loading for 15 seconds between zones that you're constantly porting to compared to less than 1 second on an SSD isn't a fucking gamechanger

It's a special thread when people downplay the single cheapest and most impactful way to drastically upgrade the responsiveness of one's PC experience.

For those extra special posters claiming this is a Sony hype driven thing.... MS is also going to have an SSD in their next console. Why is this a SoNy pOnY thing to you? You guys mind backing up those claims that it's just a Sony thing?

 

[correojon]

This makes you wonder if multiplatform devs actually do make console SSD's the baseline. Because if the game also needs to run on PC, you'd have to take in account the fact that the majority of PC's are still running HDD's.

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At least the first 2-3years of the generation this won´t be the case as devs will still focus the bigger install-base, which will be PS4-Xbox1. So I guess this is something we really won´t start to see until at least 4 years from now.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Again, look at BB. It was developed exclusively for PS4, yet the design didn´t consider for a second the slow access speeds of HDDs in the game´s design. The standard is now HDDs and we have many games that don´t consider the slow speeds of HDD by forcing the game to load frequently.
With next gen, the standard will be SSDs, ok. But why will devs take into account loading strategies if they aren´t doing it now when it is much more critical? I see it more probable for devs to keep doing what they´re doing and just use the wider bandwidth to stream more or more-intensive content, to a point that it may even get to offset the speeds of SSDs so we ultimately get a similar experience to what we have now (this is elucubration on my part). No new design principles will be developed to change how games load content even if the new standard are SSDs.

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Devs do take into account loading strategies but they have to work with what they have and design games around that even if loading is long .
In fact this gen we move to HDD because blu ray was to slow to do what devs wanted .
The same has become of HDD there are now to slow for devs and that is why they wanted SSD.
Even if devs just load more content that is change since that is something they can't do now because of the speed of the HDD.
Some will used the SSD for gameplay changes but all of them will used it for loading and streaming of data for there engines \which could mean more content , better LOD , effects etc etc .

 

[Yerffej]

It's a special thread when people downplay the single cheapest and most impactful way to drastically upgrade the responsiveness of one's PC experience.

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But people in this thread were saying it's just buzzwords and hype talk. Who do I believe???

 

[chris 1515]

At least the first 2-3years of the generation this won´t be the case as devs will still focus the bigger install-base, which will be PS4-Xbox1. So I guess this is something we really won´t start to see until at least 4 years from now.

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We will see it very fast for exclusives game for example on PS5. Two- to three years after launch we will see exclusives games making good use of the SSD. And I speak about Insomniac, or Guerrilla or Naughty Dog games. Maybe before with HZD2 with most of the development on PS5, They probably have early devkit since 2018.

 

[DevilMayGuy]

But people in this thread were saying it's just buzzwords and hype talk. Who do I believe???

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The truth is out there

 

[correojon]

Go play MHW on PS4 and then boot it up on PC and tell me that SSDs make no difference. Hell, try playing Path of Exile on an HDD and tell me that loading for 15 seconds between zones that you're constantly porting to compared to less than 1 second on an SSD isn't a fucking gamechanger

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It´s better? Yes. Game changer? Not by a mile in the current situation. I have a PC with a SSD and yes, loading times are short, but due to the games having to load content many times (when you warp between bonfires in Souls games, when you do almost anything in DMCV...) the constant interruptions are still very bothering and the content loading problem is still very present.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

At least the first 2-3years of the generation this won´t be the case as devs will still focus the bigger install-base, which will be PS4-Xbox1. So I guess this is something we really won´t start to see until at least 4 years from now.

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I don't see cross gen lasting that long 2 years max .
Bigger install base is not always they most important aspect , how active it is also important .
The more active base will be the next gen system base and things will move over rather fast.

 

[Polk]

This makes you wonder if multiplatform devs actually do make console SSD's the baseline. Because if the game also needs to run on PC, you'd have to take in account the fact that the majority of PC's are still running HDD's.

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Is the subset of people who play such games and don't have SSDs is even big? People with weaker hardware are already bottlenecked by GPU/GPU and play on lower details so HDD speeds might be enough.

 

[ScribeofGeadhain]

From the way they're talking about it, I'm guessing it's an M2 drive, which is a class above laptop-sized SSDs.

 

[correojon]

Devs do take into account loading strategies but they have to work with what they have and design games around that even if loading is long .
In fact this gen we move to HDD because blu ray was to slow to do what devs wanted .
The same has become of HDD there are now to slow for devs and that is why they wanted SSD.
Even if devs just load more content that is change since that is something they can't do now because of the speed of the HDD.
Some will used the SSD for gameplay changes but all of them will used it for loading and streaming of data for there engines \which could mean more content , better LOD , effects etc etc .

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I get what you say, but people are acting like SSDs are the advent of a new content loading paradigm that will be immediately adopted industry-wide, while the data we have now shows that many devs just don´t give two fucks about that aspect and are happy to stick to the principles of the PS1 era.
Also, and this is something I have no idea about, but is it possible that devs will use the new speeds to up content size and in the end have the gain in speed offset by the new asset size? For example, PS4 should be able to run any PS3 game at 60fps, yet we´ve seen how many PS4 games released at 30fps because devs just sued the additional power of the PS4 for other stuff and that ended up limiting the speed. Can the same potentially happen with SSD access speed or are the magnitudes of speed just orders above what content size can offset?

We will see it very fast for exclusives game for example on PS5. Two- to three years after launch we will see exclusives games making good use of the SSD. And I speak about Insomniac, or Guerrilla or Naught Dog games.

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Yup, I agree that exclusive games by platform-owned studios will be the ones that will truly make use of the faster speeds in new ways more integrated with the overall game´s design and tech. But I have trouble seeing the rest of the industry following suit.

 

[Pargon]

So what nand exactly are sony using for this magical performance? Cheap nvme drives don't even saturate a 4 lane pci bus.

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It's not necessarily the NAND, but the controller, and how parallel the SSD is set up.
It's actually beneficial for an SSD to be using many low capacity NAND chips than fewer high capacity NAND chips.
Years ago, back when SSDs were relatively new, I paid a little bit extra for an SSD which was designed like that and it was considerably faster than the competition at the time. If I recall correctly, it was the first to saturate the SATA3 bus.

They can claim whatever they want, Optane memory will be in another league most probably. I don't know why they make such claims, to be honest.

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Optane has super-low latency, and high random performance, but falls behind on sequential performance.
I'm wanting my next drive to be an Optane one, but the sequential performance, and waiting to see what the PS5 drive actually is, has kept me from upgrading for now.
Optane DIMMs are even better, being faster than RAM drives, but are limited to only working with Intel systems right now - and are very expensive.

I'd be cautious on the "faster than anything on PC". Cerny already pulled a similar trick with the "supercharged pc architecture" for PS4.

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When they made that claim, PCIe 4.0 drives were not available for purchase yet - so it could just be a basic PCIe 4.0 SSD.
If they wanted to really mislead people, it could be a slow drive; e.g. 2GB/s, which just uses a PCIe 4.0 interface. Technically the interface would be faster than anything available in PCs at that time, even if the drive was not taking advantage of it.
But I believe their design goal is to fill the system RAM in one second, based on how they have been talking about it, and the demo that they showed off.

 

[abellwillring]

They're overselling it a lot but the difference should be incredibly noticeable over the ponderously slow boot times now so there are elements of truth. Even with a digital copy and a PS4 Pro, it takes me like a minute or so to get to the menus in FIFA.

 

[Deleted member 5457]

Just imagine sometnig like Destiny on PS5 with new storage solution, it would be a different world. They should COMPLETELY redesign that game in terms of loading screens, flying ships and all that. I can't imagine a better example for an upgraded current gen game that this. We'll just hop in anywhere.

 

[MonsterMech]

It makes a big difference with PC rigs now, but it'll be more of a prominent feature with consoles because that will dictate the new baseline (since both NextBox and PS5 will feature one).

Instead of games being built for the ground up around traditional HDD's and then loading speed times with SSD being a side benefit, games will instead be designed specifically around SSD speeds, which could open up new opportunities and focuses in game design.

Side note, the rumours aren't just that the PS5 will have SSD, but that its speeds will be far higher than what is typical of SSD set ups in PC's today, so there's that too.

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There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

The "consoles are baseline" talk does not make sense in the face of reality.

Yes SSD will improve load times and give devs a bit more freedom to how they load assets, but no it won't be this amazing game changer in game design people are expecting it to be. We will get faster loading and less elevators/forced walking, and that's about it.

 

[nib95]

There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

The "consoles are baseline" talk does not make sense in the face of reality.

Yes SSD will improve load times and give devs a bit more freedom to how they load assets, but no it won't be this amazing game changer in game design people are expecting it to be. We will get faster loading and less elevators/forced walking, and that's about it.

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That's a fair point, but I figure those people on the PC side will essentially be an afterthought to the console markets. Or the ports will have to account for that after console version optimisations and development is taken into consideration. There will also be many console exclusives that take better advantage of that baseline too.

 

[Marble]

There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

The "consoles are baseline" talk does not make sense in the face of reality.

Yes SSD will improve load times and give devs a bit more freedom to how they load assets, but no it won't be this amazing game changer in game design people are expecting it to be. We will get faster loading and less elevators/forced walking, and that's about it.

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It will most likely be in (console) exclusives. Just look at the Spider-Man loading demo. For example they can pull off insane movement speeds and larger drawing distances and basically annihilate pop-in/texture streaming.

 

[WarioLuigi22]

There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

The "consoles are baseline" talk does not make sense in the face of reality.

Yes SSD will improve load times and give devs a bit more freedom to how they load assets, but no it won't be this amazing game changer in game design people are expecting it to be. We will get faster loading and less elevators/forced walking, and that's about it.

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It will for PS5 exclusives, which I'm assuming won't have many PC versions, if any at all.

 

[Polk]

There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

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How many of those millions will play games that take advantage of SSDs in the first place? Do you think there wil be many people who will have hardware to play comfortably let's say Assassin's Creed 2021/2 or next GTA yet still using standard HDDs?

 

[MonsterMech]

It will most likely be in (console) exclusives. Just look at the Spider-Man loading demo. For example they can pull off insane movement speeds and larger drawing distances and basically annihilate pop-in/texture streaming.

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That's just a tech demo. Spider-Man moves fast enough. Would be no point In arbitrarily speeding him up.

The faster movement was for moving the camera around the world faster in photo mode. Less pop in and longer draw distances are welcome, but again not game changers as the stronger hardware in general will achieve this same thing.

 

[MonsterMech]

How many of those millions will play games that take advantage of SSDs in the first place? Do you think there wil be many people who will have hardware to play comfortably let's say Assassin's Creed 2021/2 or next GTA yet still using standard HDDs?

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Majority of gamers on PC regardless of what games they like to play do not have top of the line hardware.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

There will still be millions of PCs running traditional hard drives.

The "consoles are baseline" talk does not make sense in the face of reality.

Yes SSD will improve load times and give devs a bit more freedom to how they load assets, but no it won't be this amazing game changer in game design people are expecting it to be. We will get faster loading and less elevators/forced walking, and that's about it.

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Those millions of PC gamers will just have to upgrade just like they do with everything else.
You already had a good amount doing that over the years and it will continue .
Just like how some of them will have to get new CPUs because the consoles ones won't be shit any more.
Most AAA games don't target everyone to begin with which is why they have a min spec.

 

[MonsterMech]

Those millions of PC gamers will just have to upgrade just like they do with everything else.
You already had a good amount doing that over the years and it will continue .
Just like how some of them will have to get new CPUs because the consoles ones you be shit any more.
Most AAA on consoles don't target everything to begin with .

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That's not how it works. Game dev is a business. Devs try to maximize their potential customer base. They won't tell millions of gamers "just upgrade" or they would have already done it.

 

[MonsterMech]

It will for PS5 exclusives, which I'm assuming won't have many PC versions, if any at all.

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What types of improvements would you expect?

 

[gundamkyoukai]

That's not how it works. Game dev is a business. Devs try to maximize their potential customer base. They won't tell millions of gamers "just upgrade" or they would have already done it.

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That is how it works since they make most of there money on consoles .
They are not going to hold back games because certain people won't have a SSD when millions of PC and consoles will have them .
Once again big AAA games don't target the lowest of hardware which is why the have a min spec .
Like every gen they tell people get more ram but some PC gamers normally ahead any way so it's not big deal to them .

 

[Polk]

Majority of gamers on PC regardless of what games they like to play do not have top of the line hardware.

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So they might be as well hampered by CPU/GPU and using SSD would give them minimal if any advantage. And lower the details you need to stream less data.

 

[MonsterMech]

That is how it works since they make most of there money on consoles .
They are not going to hold back games because certain people won't have a SSD when million of PC and consoles will have them .
Once again big AAA games don't target the lowest of hardware which is why the have a min spec .

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The min spec on most AAA games is nowhere near top of the line stuff.

Xbox one and PS4 will still be active and viable communities for years after the next gen starts.

They are not throwing all that money away. And beyond that, there's not much a SSD can do that isn't scaleable to a standard drive.

What do you expect a SSD to do?

 

[MonsterMech]

So they might be as well hampered by CPU/GPU and using SSD would give them minimal if any advantage. And lower the details you need to stream less data.

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Sure, and devs will always take those people into account when designing games.

 

[Linus815]

Some people here actually thinking that PC gamers will have to throw their PC's in the trash just because PS5/XB2 releases makes me scratch my head. It's obviously gonna be a massive jump for consoles, but it's not like a switch that you flip.

The PS4/X1 generation had a big cross gen period where most of the big titles were also available on older platforms. The next gen will probably have an even longer period of that, in part thanks to the existance of Pro/X consoles.

It will be a while before SSD becomes "manditory" to play a game. It will provide immediate improvements in the form of faster loading and smoother asset streaming,sure, but straight up refusing to run on a HDD or slower/older SSD? Not gonna happen for a considerable amount of time.

That is how it works since they make most of there money on consoles .
They are not going to hold back games because certain people won't have a SSD when million of PC and consoles will have them .
Once again big AAA games don't target the lowest of hardware which is why the have a min spec .
Like every gen they tell people get more ram but some PC gamers normally ahead any way so it's not big deal to them .

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Don't downplay PC. You can check ubisofts earning reports and find that it's actually consistently beating the X1's results and recently have been head to head with the PS4. And Ubisoft is a major AAA publisher, so it's safe to assume the situation is similiar elsewhere. Hell, its the one platform where publishers can have 100% of the profit through their launchers.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

The min spec on most AAA games is nowhere near top of the line stuff.

Xbox one and PS4 will still be active and viable communities for years after the next gen starts.

They are not throwing all that money away. And beyond that, there's not much a SSD can do that isn't scaleable to a standard drive.

What do you expect a SSD to do?

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We are not talking about top of the line stuff we are talking about SSD .
Which most hardcore PC gamers have any way.
I am not saying they going to build games around top of the line SSDs but even without that we should see a big jump in streaming assets and loading.

Don't downplay PC. You can check ubisofts earning reports and find that it's actually consistently beating the X1's results and recently have been head to head with the PS4. And Ubisoft is a major AAA publisher, so it's safe to assume the situation is similiar elsewhere. Hell, its the one platform where publishers can have 100% of the profit through their launchers.

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Not down playing PC but you also have to think about the PC user base that buys those games .
When it comes to hardware they is be at least mid range and a good amount would have a SSD already .
It's not like they would be starting from zero when it comes to SSD on PC.

 

[Marble]

That's just a tech demo. Spider-Man moves fast enough. Would be no point In arbitrarily speeding him up.

The faster movement was for moving the camera around the world faster in photo mode. Less pop in and longer draw distances are welcome, but again not game changers as the stronger hardware in general will achieve this same thing.

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He would move faster in real life. If you jump of the Emire Stade Building with a rope attached to a building, you're gonna move a lot faster than Spider-Man does in het game. His speed is limited due to bandwith streaming limitations, just like many other games are limited in spead to cover that kind of stuff up.

The fast travel section in God of War will be completely eliminated, to name another example.

The whole principle just eliminates one of the biggest obstacles devs are dealing with nowadays.

 

[MonsterMech]

He would move faster in real life. If you jump of the Emire Stade Building with a rope attached to a building, you're gonna move a lot faster than Spider-Man does in het game. His speed is limited due to bandwith streaming limitations, just like many other games are limited in spead to cover that kind of stuff up.

The fast travel section in God of War will be completely eliminated, to name another example.

The whole principle just eliminates one of the biggest obstacles devs are dealing with nowadays.

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Spider-Man moves as fast as he does because it's a video game and you need to see what's going on.

Fast travel being faster is welcome, but no game changer, and nothing that couldn't be scaled to a standard drive.

 

[NoWayOut]

From the way they're talking about it, I'm guessing it's an M2 drive, which is a class above laptop-sized SSDs.

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M2 is just a form factor. There are M2 SATA drive which have the same 6 Gbps bandwidth limit of regular 3.5" SATA drive. Then there are M2 PCIe (also known as NVMe) which are the current top of the line when it comes to performance. My guess is that PS5 will use a NVMe drive, probably the new PCIe 4 spec.

 

[WarioLuigi22]

What types of improvements would you expect?

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How the heck should I know? I don't work on consoles or games

The point was that PS5 exclusives aren't going to need to worry about most PCs still having HDDs

 

[MonsterMech]

We are not talking about top of the line stuff we are talking about SSD .
Which most hardcore PC gamers have any way.
I am not saying they going to build games around top of the line SSDs but even without that we should see a big jump in streaming assets and loading.

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"Hardcore" gamers are a very small portion of the market.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Spider-Man moves as fast as he does because it's a video game and you need to see what's going on.

Fast travel being faster is welcome, but no game changer, and nothing that couldn't be scaled to a standard drive.

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No spidey moves as fast as he does because that was limit on PS4 .
You can see them talk about in there GDC talk , along with other aspect that had to change because of the slow HDD.

"Hardcore" gamers are a very small portion of the market.

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So is consoles gaming if we look at the overall market .
Still when you add consoles and hardcore PC gamers you have a good amount of install base.

 

[sleepr]

Spider-Man moves as fast as he does because it's a video game and you need to see what's going on.

Fast travel being faster is welcome, but no game changer, and nothing that couldn't be scaled to a standard drive.

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Hum no, the devs themselves said they had to limit it due to HDD speed limitation.

 

[Marble]

Spider-Man moves as fast as he does because it's a video game and you need to see what's going on.

Fast travel being faster is welcome, but no game changer, and nothing that couldn't be scaled to a standard drive.

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No he doesn't and they already explained this, just like gundamkyoukai also says. Devs (especially in the case of open world games) have to be extremely creative with how they design stuff because of streaming bandwith limitations. They can make stuff at a much greater scale in the future.

And I"m no dev, but I'm sure we will be suprised in the coming years.

 

[Deleted member 20297]

No he doesn't and they already explained this, just like gundamkyoukai also says. Devs (especially in the case of open world games) have to be extremely creative with how they design stuff because of streaming bandwith limitations. They can make stuff at a much greater scale in the future.

And I"m no dev, but I'm sure we will be suprised in the coming years.

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To make things even worse, both Sony and Microsoft put a limit on the maximum bandwidth on the consoles they can use from mass storage, they don't even utilize the drive's full capacity.

 

[MonsterMech]

Hum no, the devs themselves said they had to limit it due to HDD speed limitation.

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Devs say a lot of things. They were building hype for new hardware.

There comments were more about streaming assets than wanting Spider-Man to move faster. Movement speed is optimized for fun and game controllability. Not realism.

 

[sleepr]

Devs say a lot of things. They were building hype for new hardware.

There comments were more about streaming assets than wanting Spider-Man to move faster. Movement speed is optimized for fun and game controllability. Not realism.

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They're not building hype for anything, it was a GDC talk about how the open world was developed. It had nothing to do with PS5 or SSD.

And btw there are games that are faster moving than spiderman, wipeout comes to mind.

 

[MonsterMech]

No he doesn't and they already explained this, just like gundamkyoukai also says. Devs (especially in the case of open world games) have to be extremely creative with how they design stuff because of streaming bandwith limitations. They can make stuff at a much greater scale in the future.

And I"m no dev, but I'm sure we will be suprised in the coming years.

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Yes they have to be creative. It's why forced walking sections and elevators exist.

Less elevators, aren't a "game changer"

Welcome improvements? Yes

 

[Marble]

Devs say a lot of things. They were building hype for new hardware.

There comments were more about streaming assets than wanting Spider-Man to move faster. Movement speed is optimized for fun and game controllability. Not realism.

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Sure, let's just play the "Devs say a lot of things" card so you can get out of the argument. Well done.

 

[MonsterMech]

They're not building hype for anything, it was a GDC talk about how the open world was developed. It had nothing to do with PS5 or SSD.

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Yeah, they were selling hype. And as we see in this thread, they did a good job.

And btw there are games that are faster moving than spiderman, wipeout comes to mind.

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Right, therefore Spider-Man's speed was not limited by the hardrive.

 

[MonsterMech]

Sure, let's just play the "Devs say a lot of things" card so you can get out of the argument. Well done.

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Lol, "SUPERCHARGED PC ARCHITECTURE"

"BLAST PROCESSING"

"TILED RESOURCES"

"THE CLOUD"

The hype is real. Lol

 

[Marble]

Lol, "SUPERCHARGED PC ARCHITECTURE"

"BLAST PROCESSING"

"TILED RESOURCES"

"THE CLOUD"

The hype is real. Lol

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What game devs are those quotes from and at what panel about what games were they talking?

 

[MonsterMech]

What game devs are those quotes from and at what panel about what games were they talking?

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You got google. Look it up.

 

[TeaToe]

How large is the SSD 1tb? 2tb?

It will quickly be filled up, especially with bc.

Then you will be gaming with external HDD. Nothing changed.

 

[Raybunzy]

Yeah, they were selling hype. And as we see in this thread, they did a good job.


Right, therefore Spider-Man's speed was not limited by the hardrive.

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As if the ps4 had to stream as much information/data in Wipedout compared to Spider-Man...

 

[sleepr]

Yeah, they were selling hype. And as we see in this thread, they did a good job.

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If you say so. lol

Right, therefore Spider-Man's speed was not limited by the hardrive.

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Ofc it was, the visuals and designs on both games are completely different. But keep telling to yourself that is was due to gameplay. lol