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PS5 And Xbox Scarlett SSD Will Have Biggest Impact On Games Development

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

We recently spoke to Traxler in an interview, and eventually asked him about his thoughts on the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett’s SSDs, and how he thinks they might improve performance of games. According to Traxler, while games such as his own Exception might not be affected as much, seeing as they’re level-based games that load in almost all assets upfront, other titles, such as open world ones, will benefit from SSDs greatly.

“I think we’re going to see SSDs have the biggest impact on open world titles that constantly stream textures and models into a scene,” Traxler told GamingBolt. “Level-based games like Exception may see less of a benefit from SSDs, since most of the assets are loaded up-front and the load times are already brief. I’m sure that developers will come up with some great new uses for SSDs once these become standard in consoles. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.”

Thanks mods for the title change💪
 
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Kagey K

Banned

We recently spoke to Traxler in an interview, and eventually asked him about his thoughts on the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett’s SSDs, and how he thinks they might improve performance of games. According to Traxler, while games such as his own Exception might not be affected as much, seeing as they’re level-based games that load in almost all assets upfront, other titles, such as open world ones, will benefit from SSDs greatly.

“I think we’re going to see SSDs have the biggest impact on open world titles that constantly stream textures and models into a scene,” Traxler told GamingBolt. “Level-based games like Exception may see less of a benefit from SSDs, since most of the assets are loaded up-front and the load times are already brief. I’m sure that developers will come up with some great new uses for SSDs once these become standard in consoles. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.”
I don’t trust this dev, waiting for another particular dev to chime in before I believe him.
 

Aintitcool

Banned
Well yes. The first thing people will notice is how now with an SSD open worlds with every building being enterable without load is now possible, and also evolving gameplay maps. Lots of physics information can be kept in memory like number of ragdolls. Enemy varieties can be AI driven with lots of differentiation.

Everything that used to cost memory in ways that ram would deplete fast, now have a side door that is slightly slower but fast enough for gaming.

But I want ray tracing and AI neural hardware for next gen chips and not just current gen but high spec pc. Those things can bring innovation like no generation before.

AI neural hardware on consoles could really bring up quality in every single aspect of a game and innovate. Kinda like its doing in high end smartphones now.
 
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NeoGiffer

Member
AliveUniqueAtlanticspadefish-size_restricted.gif
 

Shifty

Member
I don’t trust this dev, waiting for another particular dev to chime in before I believe him.
Or you could consult the veritable litany of PC developers that have been building games for systems with SSDs since the late 2000s.

What he says isn't inaccurate- level-based games will load faster, and open-world games will stream faster. The latter is going to be more noticeable because of things like pop-in or frame drops caused by CPU resources waiting on disk I/O.

Well yes. The first thing people will notice is how now with an SSD open worlds with every building being enterable without load is now possible, and also evolving gameplay maps. Lots of physics information can be kept in memory like number of ragdolls. Enemy varieties can be AI driven with lots of differentiation.

Everything that used to cost memory in ways that ram would deplete fast, now have a side door that is slightly slower but fast enough for gaming.
The idea of using the disk as a memory cache is nothing new- combined with data streaming that's essentially how Bethesda's Creation Engine games maintain the state of physics objects when areas get loaded or unloaded.

And the cached objects still need to be moved back into RAM for the CPU to use them for physics simulation, so ultimately it all comes back to streaming speed. Loading funnels like elevators, airlocks and slow walk sequences will probably be the first thing to go.
 

Kagey K

Banned
Or you could consult the veritable litany of PC developers that have been building games for systems with SSDs since the late 2000s.

What he says isn't inaccurate- level-based games will load faster, and open-world games will stream faster. The latter is going to be more noticeable because of things like pop-in or frame drops caused by CPU resources waiting on disk I/O.

It was a joke.

I was basically saying I only trust Hellpoint dev, when it comes to next gen info.

Explaining the joke ruins it.
 

Bigfroth

Member
I'm not a developer or an armchair developer, but open-world games were the first thing I thought would benefit greatly from standard SSD support across all consoles. I can't wait to see what developer's come up with when SSD's are standard.
 

Chromata

Member
How will this influence PC's? Our current knowledge of next gen consoles suggests they're using a custom SSD solution that's faster than traditional PC SSD's (Cerny confirmed this too). Games will likely be optimized around these faster SSD's.

Does this mean people with traditional SSD's will have performance limitations?
 
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I think it'll be a must to install games on the ssd in order to play them on the performance they speak of if not then I think the ssd will be a very special kind of ram bundled with a big capacity HDD
 
Since they couldn't make the 128gb of ram needed for a 16x next gen leap they decided to create a special ssd ram I'm guessing this is what's happened
 

McHuj

Member
How will this influence PC's? Our current knowledge of next gen consoles suggests they're using a custom SSD solution that's faster than traditional PC SSD's (Cerny confirmed this too). Games will likely be optimized around these faster SSD's.

Does this mean people with traditional SSD's will have performance limitations?

That is a very good question as it comes to multi platform games. We could potentially see min read/write SSD bandwidth requirements added to PC requirements.

If a game is designed around very fast load times, PC’s will have to support that as well. I’m sure they will, but it might necessitate another round of upgrades.

I’m kind of hesitant about upgrading this year until I see what the consoles look like especially around the storage.

Hopefully Windows doesn’t get in the way.
 

scalman

Member
SSD cant be impact for anything if you make shitty game it will be shit if you make good game it will be good . yes it will help but nothing more . power will help most here ...MORE power
 

xGreir

Member
SSD cant be impact for anything if you make shitty game it will be shit if you make good game it will be good . yes it will help but nothing more . power will help most here ...MORE power

Yeah, like Black desert, isn't it? I hate that goddamn awful pop in :lollipop-medical:
 

Ar¢tos

Member
How will this influence PC's? Our current knowledge of next gen consoles suggests they're using a custom SSD solution that's faster than traditional PC SSD's (Cerny confirmed this too). Games will likely be optimized around these faster SSD's.

Does this mean people with traditional SSD's will have performance limitations?
Probably just longer loading times and more pop-in.
 
How will this influence PC's? Our current knowledge of next gen consoles suggests they're using a custom SSD solution that's faster than traditional PC SSD's (Cerny confirmed this too). Games will likely be optimized around these faster SSD's.

Does this mean people with traditional SSD's will have performance limitations?
That is a very good question as it comes to multi platform games. We could potentially see min read/write SSD bandwidth requirements added to PC requirements.

If a game is designed around very fast load times, PC’s will have to support that as well. I’m sure they will, but it might necessitate another round of upgrades.

I’m kind of hesitant about upgrading this year until I see what the consoles look like especially around the storage.

Hopefully Windows doesn’t get in the way.
Why would u need a ssd as memory on pc when you already have a big chunk of ddr4 + a high end GPU, they had to design next gen consoles with ssd as a type of ram because there was no way they'd get a 16x boost on next gen with 128gb gddr6
 
Why would u need a ssd as memory on pc when you already have a big chunk of ddr4 + a high end GPU, they had to design next gen consoles with ssd as a type of ram because there was no way they'd get a 16x boost on next gen with 128gb gddr6
Next gen consoles will have as much, if not more memory than typical current PCs. The rumor is the PS5 will have 24 GB of GDDR6. Even if that is an overestimation, the PS5 will definitely have at least 16 GB which is at the upper end of mainstream PC main memory capacity. Also note that consoles have unified memory, so they make much more efficient use of memory versus PC's main memory and GPU memory split. In short, typical gaming PCs won't have excess RAM over next gen consoles to use in place of an SSD.

Another issue is the scale of SSD capacity versus RAM. An SSD will have around two orders of magnitude more storage than RAM. Because of that, their use cases will be completely different. Finally note that SSDs persist their memory once the power goes out, while RAM does not. That means even if ram could be used in place of SSDs, there would still be a loading times needed to get all that data into RAM once the game is loaded up. SSDs will not need such loading times because the data will already be there.
 
Next gen consoles will have as much, if not more memory than typical current PCs. The rumor is the PS5 will have 24 GB of GDDR6. Even if that is an overestimation, the PS5 will definitely have at least 16 GB which is at the upper end of mainstream PC main memory capacity. Also note that consoles have unified memory, so they make much more efficient use of memory versus PC's main memory and GPU memory split. In short, typical gaming PCs won't have excess RAM over next gen consoles to use in place of an SSD.

Another issue is the scale of SSD capacity versus RAM. An SSD will have around two orders of magnitude more storage than RAM. Because of that, their use cases will be completely different. Finally note that SSDs persist their memory once the power goes out, while RAM does not. That means even if ram could be used in place of SSDs, there would still be a loading times needed to get all that data into RAM once the game is loaded up. SSDs will not need such loading times because the data will already be there.
I get your point but the reason Sony and Microsoft had to go with ssd memory was majorly because they couldn't surpass the 16x ram capacity boost needed for a next gen console due to higher dram prices and even worse now the trade war so to compensate with the situation they had to be ingenious and design their own special ssd memory remember PS1 2mb ps2 32mb PS3 512mb PS4 8gb so ps5 was supposed to be 128 gb, this could only be possible if they waited another 10 years to release a ps5 and lastly consoles have always utilised architectures different to the pc but pcs have always been on par I think if it's true that a Scarlett can pull off 8k 120fps at 500-800$ then pcs have a very big problem convincing people
 
Microsoft did say they can pull out 8k 120fps so go and ask em how

no i'm asking you, how do you think 8k120fps is possible on a 500$ console, for most people when they hear or read this BS it means that it will output 8k (low settings) at... or 1080p/1440p at 120fps depends on the setting at higher graphics 1440p60fps
 
no i'm asking you, how do you think 8k120fps is possible on a 500$ console, for most people when they hear or read this BS it means that it will output 8k (low settings) at... or 1080p/1440p at 120fps depends on the setting at higher graphics 1440p60fps
I'm not an engineer in Microsoft my point has no value there's no way in hell I'll know if or not they can pull that off so go ahead and ask em, you can get their head quarter address in Google
 
no i'm asking you, how do you think 8k120fps is possible on a 500$ console, for most people when they hear or read this BS it means that it will output 8k (low settings) at... or 1080p/1440p at 120fps depends on the setting at higher graphics 1440p60fps
Here's a picture of GT5 running at 4k 240 FPS this was before the PS4 release so like that said the scarlet is 4x the one X it might be 4 one X at 30 FPS like shown here to output 8k its basically what they mean
88AzIf4.jpg


88AzIf4.jpg
 
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McHuj

Member
Why would u need a ssd as memory on pc when you already have a big chunk of ddr4 + a high end GPU, they had to design next gen consoles with ssd as a type of ram because there was no way they'd get a 16x boost on next gen with 128gb gddr6

Are you suggesting that PC’s will have 64GB-128GB memory? Enthusiasts, sure. Low tier, budget PC and most mainstream Pc’s? No way.

Even if consoles got such a huge increase for their RAM to something like 64GB, it would be under utilized without SSDs. Load times are atrociously long to load the 5-6 GB game allocation nowadays, imagine the load times for something 8x the size of that.
 
Are you suggesting that PC’s will have 64GB-128GB memory? Enthusiasts, sure. Low tier, budget PC and most mainstream Pc’s? No way.

Even if consoles got such a huge increase for their RAM to something like 64GB, it would be under utilized without SSDs. Load times are atrociously long to load the 5-6 GB game allocation nowadays, imagine the load times for something 8x the size of that.
the major problems isn't load times that's just a diversion of the real problem and the elephant in the room problem is it doesn't matter how fast you load a program if you have 8gb of memory that's all you can carry on a single frame that's all your memory can load doesn't matter how fast the assets you see on one frame are still going to be 8gb as far as I'm concerned if all the ssd does is increase speed then it's not special as you saw on that Spiderman demo it still had PS4 assets on a single frame but as you move faster it quickly loads other assets but it's still 8gb on that frame they are simply tricking people! What we need to see is more polygons textures objects and characters on screen and memory speed doesn't solve that problem unless they have a solution with the ssd
 
the major problems isn't load times that's just a diversion of the real problem and the elephant in the room problem is it doesn't matter how fast you load a program if you have 8gb of memory that's all you can carry on a single frame that's all your memory can load doesn't matter how fast the assets you see on one frame are still going to be 8gb as far as I'm concerned if all the ssd does is increase speed then it's not special as you saw on that Spiderman demo it still had PS4 assets on a single frame but as you move faster it quickly loads other assets but it's still 8gb on that frame they are simply tricking people! What we need to see is more polygons textures objects and characters on screen and memory speed doesn't solve that problem unless they have a solution with the ssd
It's a conspiracy

Like, they just wont give us more ram, maaan
 
It's a conspiracy

Like, they just wont give us more ram, maaan
Maybe 24gb as rumoured is enough but I don't know if that'll make a big difference if every games going to be 4k 60 and the other problem is consumers don't want to spend above 500$ so goodbye to more memory if people are delluded enough to think they'll get a next gen console with enough ram below 500$ then Sony and Microsoft are mad!
 

Norse

Member
PC already have this SSD config available. It's pretty much like Intel optane memory. System has regular RAM and then an optane SSD RAM module plus a standard hdd which can be a SSD or hdd. The optane ram is used pretty much how ps5&2X special SSD will be used according to what we've read so far.

Everything about optane
 

FStubbs

Member
Next-gen focusing on open world again? Eh, don’t really care. As long as SSDs are going to give me faster load times in general then I’m fine with that

The hope is with these improved specs, the open worlds can be packed with more things to do and be more interesting to play in ... but what we'll get are slightly shinier graphics that only DigitalFoundry will be able to tell are any better.
 
PC already have this SSD config available. It's pretty much like Intel optane memory. System has regular RAM and then an optane SSD RAM module plus a standard hdd which can be a SSD or hdd. The optane ram is used pretty much how ps5&2X special SSD will be used according to what we've read so far.

Everything about optane
Nope I'm not sure it's simply like how a pc works they must have configured the ssd as a complete special ram and not just a pagefile of some sort, consoles are wired completely different if it was just like how pc ssd works then they woulndt have to brag and talk about it
 

Norse

Member
Nope I'm not sure it's simply like how a pc works they must have configured the ssd as a complete special ram and not just a pagefile of some sort, consoles are wired completely different if it was just like how pc ssd works then they woulndt have to brag and talk about it
Did you even click on the link in my post? Your reply suggests you didn't.
 
Did you even click on the link in my post? Your reply suggests you didn't.
Yes I read about optane before but I think the type they'll put on next gen consoles will be more low level, basically it's resistive ram but anyhow I'm waiting to see how the ssd theyr bragging about will bring to the table, what I'm interested in seeing is more graphics fidelity not just better resolutions and FPS while the graphics are still PS4 like, cause I wasn't impressed with the halo trailer or flight simulator they don't look so next gen
 

Mista

Banned
The hope is with these improved specs, the open worlds can be packed with more things to do and be more interesting to play in ... but what we'll get are slightly shinier graphics that only DigitalFoundry will be able to tell are any better.
I’m not in a rush to be honest mate. I just don’t want empty open world games for the fuck of it. Which makes do the same thing over and over. I’d take an open world filled with lots of activities instead of doing the same thing
 
Maybe 24gb as rumoured is enough but I don't know if that'll make a big difference if every games going to be 4k 60 and the other problem is consumers don't want to spend above 500$ so goodbye to more memory if people are delluded enough to think they'll get a next gen console with enough ram below 500$ then Sony and Microsoft are mad!

your the only one thinking that, why do you think next gen need more than 24gb ?
that Spiderman Demo was just showcasing the SSD on a PS4 .

Here's a picture of GT5 running at 4k 240 FPS this was before the PS4 release so like that said the scarlet is 4x the one X it might be 4 one X at 30 FPS like shown here to output 8k its basically what they mean
88AzIf4.jpg


88AzIf4.jpg

scarlet is 4X xbox1x doesn't mean it's 4X GPU, it can be anything but that, you could at least think of 2x GPU and the rest is due to RYZEN being so op .
 
your the only one thinking that, why do you think next gen need more than 24gb ?
that Spiderman Demo was just showcasing the SSD on a PS4 .



scarlet is 4X xbox1x doesn't mean it's 4X GPU, it can be anything but that, you could at least think of 2x GPU and the rest is due to RYZEN being so op .
Who gave you the idea that 24gb is enough, your looking at the perspective of current games maybe for you Spiderman is visually enough for me it isn't and next gen consoles have to show a significant leap in visuals and memory in consoles or gaming overall has always been the bottleneck you just can't have enough memory, developers have always complained about memory there's certain features they want to add but sadly find out the ram is full, maybe to you playing current gen games at 4k is enough
 
Who gave you the idea that 24gb is enough, your looking at the perspective of current games maybe for you Spiderman is visually enough for me it isn't and next gen consoles have to show a significant leap in visuals and memory in consoles or gaming overall has always been the bottleneck you just can't have enough memory, developers have always complained about memory there's certain features they want to add but sadly find out the ram is full, maybe to you playing current gen games at 4k is enough

i never said that ... :pie_diana: ????, i'm letting you know stop dreaming buddy, you kinda expecting some crazy tech in a 500$ box, chill oussaaa
 

vpance

Member
the major problems isn't load times that's just a diversion of the real problem and the elephant in the room problem is it doesn't matter how fast you load a program if you have 8gb of memory that's all you can carry on a single frame that's all your memory can load doesn't matter how fast the assets you see on one frame are still going to be 8gb as far as I'm concerned if all the ssd does is increase speed then it's not special as you saw on that Spiderman demo it still had PS4 assets on a single frame but as you move faster it quickly loads other assets but it's still 8gb on that frame they are simply tricking people! What we need to see is more polygons textures objects and characters on screen and memory speed doesn't solve that problem unless they have a solution with the ssd

Now think about what happens if you don't move Spiderman at jet speed but have 100x faster read speed. How big can your dataset be?
 
Now think about what happens if you don't move Spiderman at jet speed but have 100x faster read speed. How big can your dataset be?
Your data cannot exceed 8gb if that's how much ram you have the scene will always contain 8gb memory speed is just good for loading stuff quickly that's why they showcase Spidey running quick because it updates new assets quick but when u pause Spidey all you see is still 8gb it's simply a trick, the ram gets the assets from the HDD and fills it's 8gb and the CPU fetches from the ram the CPU doesn't store the 8gb it simply processes it as it fetches from the memory what speed does is simply reads and sends it to the processor as quick as it's needed, you can have 1million GB per second on the PS4 but Spidey will always look the same
 
Your data cannot exceed 8gb if that's how much ram you have the scene will always contain 8gb memory speed is just good for loading stuff quickly that's why they showcase Spidey running quick because it updates new assets quick but when u pause Spidey all you see is still 8gb it's simply a trick, the ram gets the assets from the HDD and fills it's 8gb and the CPU fetches from the ram the CPU doesn't store the 8gb it simply processes it as it fetches from the memory what speed does is simply reads and sends it to the processor as quick as it's needed, you can have 1million GB per second on the PS4 but Spidey will always look the same
The PS4 has 8 GB of which 5gb is dedicated to games with 170 GB per second of bandwidth now say your playing a game at 60 FPS that's 170/60 that's 3 GB of assets in every frame of that 60 and 5 GB of assets at 30fps it can't display above 5gb on a scene
 
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