Support NeoGAF

[it_wasn't_me]

Explanation by AMD on how Smartshift works.

10% increase in the performance when you enable the smartshift tech.

Naaaah! It's a crappy notebook tech

 

[Agnostic2020]

10.3 was peak performance with smartshift. What are you going on about?

That is an inaccueate statment .gpu is operating at 10.3 tf almost all the time and rarely it shifts to 10.08 by dropping the clock frequency by couple of % to reduce power draw by 10%

 

[devilNprada]

Either way. I prefer easy,simple replacement of rechargeable batteries vs taking the controller apart.

Stop.. the sticks will wear long before the battery ever does.

Battery technology is pretty great these days, good enough in fact, to not use those heavy cumbersome shaped AA's anymore... That is the only battery technology that hasn't changed in the past 40 years.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Because it can reach up to 22GB/s with devs seeing 20GB/s in action, faster than DDR4 ram at 15GB/s. Making it a VRAM that you can run your OS directly from it instead of wasting 2.5GB from the RAM like in XSX. Plus you need to load and calculate much more less assets as you can upload/offload up to 22GB/s or 2GB per 0.1 second!!! Assuming you're playing DOOM and turning insanely fast.

It's too huge that normal people like us are still struggling to comprehend until we see some demo in action.

Think about it like the Horizon Zero Dawn technique but on steroids:




Making you deal with MUCH, MUCH less work on the GPU/CPU/RAM.

You can’t run an OS from the SSD. The OS handles all the sharing and streaming and it needs to be in RAM at all times.

 

[VanSiriusGabriel]

10.3 was peak performance with smartshift. What are you going on about?

Nothing, I was barely supposing anything.
10.3 is calculated with clocks and CU, smartshift efficiency in moving power from CPU to GPU is not about TFs is directly about performance. At very least, the calc Cerny did didn't say it was thanks to smartshift, was 10.3 normally, then smartshift helps. Again, this is what I recall from the conference.

 

[SonGoku]

For the Series X, Microsoft have probably designed a hardware audio chip that can efficiently handle the audio model so the CPU/GPU don't have to. Again, this technique is a replacement of audio RT, not an implementation of it. Using the simplified audio model for each game environment, you don't actually need audio RT for realistic audio.

Sorry i misunderstood you. So this actually like a devtool that comes with Azure backing it, like devs baking GI?
One thing though Audio RT is a very light load for dedicated RT hardware and the advantage of doing it in real time is it will be more dynamic and thus retain realism outside the scripted scenarios.

 

[eastwood333]

Stop.. the sticks will wear long before the battery ever does.

Battery technology is pretty great these days, good enough in fact, to not use those heavy cumbersome shaped AA's anymore... That is the only battery technology that hasn't changed in the past 40 years.

Stop? I find quickly swapping out rechargeable batteries more convenient. Why change something that isn't broke? And where do you even buy those type of batteries? I don't see them at my local Walmart.

That's fine if you prefer that over rechargeable batteries.

 

[SgtCaffran]

You can’t run an OS from the SSD. The OS handles all the sharing and streaming and it needs to be in RAM at all times.

But I'm sure that with the PS5 SSD, you could only keep the bare OS minimum in RAM and then just load whatever you need on the fly. (when PS button or share button is pressed)

 

[quest]

Stop.. the sticks will wear long before the battery ever does.

Battery technology is pretty great these days, good enough in fact, to not use those heavy cumbersome shaped AA's anymore... That is the only battery technology that hasn't changed in the past 40 years.

You should tell Sony that and my launch ps4 controller that had always had sub 10 hour battery life. You can make an argument for both this generation. My rechargeable last 30 hours on the one x. 30 hours and instant swap vs sub 10 hour and needing to have to run cord to charge for a long weekend of gaming.

 

[eastwood333]

That is an inaccueate statment .gpu is operating at 10.3 tf almost all the time and rarely it shifts to 10.08 by dropping the clock frequency by couple of % to reduce power draw by 10%

Then why have variable clocks at all?

 

[ResilientBanana]

Nothing, I was barely supposing anything.
10.3 is calculated with clocks and CU, smartshift efficiency in moving power from CPU to GPU is not about TFs is directly about performance. At very least, the calc Cerny did didn't say it was thanks to smartshift, was 10.3 normally, then smartshift helps. Again, this is what I recall from the conference.

He mentioned it in the video when he spoke directly about smartshift and how it takes power from the GPU to the CPU and in reverse. It’s neat tech but it’s variable and not streamline.

 

[Lone Wolf]

But I'm sure that with the PS5 SSD, you could only keep the bare OS minimum in RAM and then just load whatever you need on the fly. (when PS button or share button is pressed)

Which would take away memory from the game and hurt performance. Stop believing all this nonsense. The OS will not be offloaded to the SSD and audio will not take up 20% GPU. For Gods sake stop falling for the trolling.

 

[SgtCaffran]

Sorry i misunderstood you. So this actually like a devtool that comes with Azure backing it, like devs baking GI?
One thing though Audio RT is a very light load for dedicated RT hardware and the advantage of doing it in real time is it will be more dynamic and thus retain realism outside the scripted scenarios.

Yes exactly, that is what I think is Project Acoustics! I think it's very comparable to baked GI. That also means for dynamic environments, this won't work (as well).

I agree audio RT is a light load (as indicated by Cerny as well) so I would be very interested in a comparison when the boxes are out. Considering sounds travels by wave and not by ray, I wonder how easy it is to actually model audio with raytracing. Waves have some unique qualities to them that might be hard to capture with just rays. Exiting times ahead!

 

[Agnostic2020]

Then why have variable clocks at all?

To drop the electrical power draw by 10% if needed by a minor % reduction in clock so the fan stays silent

 

[VanSiriusGabriel]

He mentioned it in the video when he spoke directly about smartshift and how it takes power from the GPU to the CPU and in reverse. It’s neat tech but it’s variable and not streamline.

So he directly said that THANKS to smartshift PS5 reaches 10.3? Because I really don't recall this, the 10.3 was a number simply extrapolate by him from CU and clocks as normal.
But ok.

 

[SgtCaffran]

Then why have variable clocks at all?

Because Sony has opted for a fixed power budget for the PS5 and the power is not only affected by the clock speed but also by the load. If the load is suddenly very high, the GPU (or CPU if it's under utilised at that moment) will be able to downclock slightly to stick to the power budget.

Which would take away memory from the game and hurt performance. Stop believing all this nonsense. The OS will not be offloaded to the SSD and audio will not take up 20% GPU. For Gods sake stop falling for the trolling.

Audio won't take up 20% GPU, I agree.

However, I think loading only the core OS into the RAM would be a brilliant solution. It would not hurt performance, instead, it would improve it! The PS5 might give 15.5 GB out of 16 GB to developers to use if they only need 500 MB for the core OS. The PS5 SSD is so fast that by the time you start pressing the PS button, the required OS data is already loaded into RAM.

 

[Gamernyc78]

10% difference in real-world performance, not TF.

TF difference is 16%, Cerny quotes 2% clockspeed reduction to reduce power consumption 10%, let's go worst case scenario based off what we know so far and double that to 4%. So a 20% TF advantage to XSX..

The PS5 clock speed is running 17-23% faster than the XSX. The XSX still has more CUs but it's easier for devs to schedule jobs for less, faster CUs and those CUs will work more efficiently (data can get in and out quicker, less time waiting for other elements of the GPU etc.). Outside of the CU the rest of the GPU front and back end is also running faster. Bringing all these factors together it's fair to expect the gap to be mitigated by roughly half.

Expect PS5 to have an advantage in pixel rate and cache speed; and XSX to have an advantage in texture rate. XSX will maintain a compute advantage due to compute width but the gap will be mitigated somewhat by the advantages of a higher clockspeed.

He hasnt been a game developer for 12 years and his twitter is all about xbox and it has been posted many times already

Once he used the word "staggering" for tht level of power difference you know he's full of shit lol I wonder what he thought with xbox one versus ps4 levels of power difference? Deadly? Ridiculous? Jarring?

 

[MARTYWOLF]

I'm still confused on ps5 storage. If someone can help me out

Is it a spare a nvme slot or is it just replaceable? If only replacable I can imagine alot of people just moving games back and forth from external hdd back to internal this applies to series x too.

I have it in my mind that I'll likely get 3 series x external nvme's and name them based on my 3 big game genres and keep everything else on the internal. I'm gonna assume swapping out the ps5 nvme if it's indeed just replaceable and not a spare slot will not require screws or anything to get too?

 

[kyliethicc]

Then why have variable clocks at all?

I assume the variable clocks is to allow the GPU to run at a higher clock SOME of the time then would possible to run the GPU ALL of the time. With a fixed clock, some lesser loads on the GPU wouldn’t push it to the max limit, so why not allow for the GPU to boost even higher when it can? And when it can’t, lower it back down to whatever it can. Makes sense to me. With a fixed clock, as was on PS4, you end up with a few games/moments of super loud fan noise and heat. This should eliminate that, and allow other times for the system to hit a clock speed that it can’t be used all the time. Seems cool, but I’m not a developer so idk.

 

[geordiemp]

He hasnt been a game developer for 12 years and his twitter is all about xbox and it has been posted many times already

Probably was sat outside gamestop watching how many Xbox were sold with timdog.

These people are crazy lol, seriously need medical attention and some treatment.

 

[SgtCaffran]

I'm still confused on ps5 storage. If someone can help me out

Is it a spare a nvme slot or is it just replaceable? If only replacable I can imagine alot of people just moving games back and forth from external hdd back to internal this applies to series x too.

I have it in my mind that I'll likely get 3 series x external nvme's and name them based on my 3 big game genres and keep everything else on the internal. I'm gonna assume swapping out the ps5 nvme if it's indeed just replaceable and not a spare slot will not require screws or anything to get too?

It's an additional M2 slot so you can have additional storage. You will probably have to install it with a few simple screws but nothing complex.

 

[kyliethicc]

I'm still confused on ps5 storage. If someone can help me out

Is it a spare a nvme slot or is it just replaceable? If only replacable I can imagine alot of people just moving games back and forth from external hdd back to internal this applies to series x too.

I have it in my mind that I'll likely get 3 series x external nvme's and name them based on my 3 big game genres and keep everything else on the internal. I'm gonna assume swapping out the ps5 nvme if it's indeed just replaceable and not a spare slot will not require screws or anything to get too?

The PS5 will have a second M.2 SSD bay for expansion, like how the Switch has a SD card slot. The PS5 internal SSD is 12 chips of flash storage (probably soldered to the board) and cannot be removed. Unlike the PS4, which only had 1 internal HDD we could replace.

 

[MARTYWOLF]

It's an additional M2 slot so you can have additional storage. You will probably have to install it with a few simple screws but nothing complex.

Sweet as thank you so I'll be buying multiple nvmes for ps5 too lordy storage is gonna be expensive for both

 

[devilNprada]

Stop? I find quickly swapping out rechargeable batteries more convenient. Why change something that isn't broke? And where do you even buy those type of batteries? I don't see them at my local Walmart.

That's fine if you prefer that over rechargeable batteries.

Your rechargables are AA's? Again that AA cumbersome shape and weight is the only battery technology that has not changed in 40 years.
you can actually pack more energy in less volume these days.

I find easiest to rotate controllers.

 

[MARTYWOLF]

The PS5 will have a second M.2 SSD bay for expansion, like how the Switch has a SD card slot. The PS5 internal SSD is 12 chips of flash storage (probably soldered to the board) and cannot be removed. Unlike the PS4, which only had 1 internal HDD we could replace.

Maybe I'll even get external ssds for the next consoles I know they won't play games from them but transferring games should be quicker than a normal external hdd

 

[Lone Wolf]

Because Sony has opted for a fixed power budget for the PS5 and the power is not only affected by the clock speed but also by the load. If the load is suddenly very high, the GPU (or CPU if it's under utilised at that moment) will be able to downclock slightly to stick to the power budget.


Audio won't take up 20% GPU, I agree.

However, I think loading only the core OS into the RAM would be a brilliant solution. It would not hurt performance, instead, it would improve it! The PS5 might give 15.5 GB out of 16 GB to

Because Sony has opted for a fixed power budget for the PS5 and the power is not only affected by the clock speed but also by the load. If the load is suddenly very high, the GPU (or CPU if it's under utilised at that moment) will be able to downclock slightly to stick to the power budget.


Audio won't take up 20% GPU, I agree.

However, I think loading only the core OS into the RAM would be a brilliant solution. It would not hurt performance, instead, it would improve it! The PS5 might give 15.5 GB out of 16 GB to developers to use if they only need 500 MB for the core OS. The PS5 SSD is so fast that by the time you start pressing the PS button, the required OS data is already loaded into RAM.

lets say your brilliant idea is a exactly what Sony is doing. What stops MS from doing the same?

 

[VanSiriusGabriel]

lets say your brilliant idea is a exactly what Sony is doing. What stops MS from doing the same?

Half SSD speed on average, not accounting the 22 GB\s that may be theoric but that SeX just can't never do.

 

[M-V2]

With "fancy" I mean that 10% can be less, just asking how possible is to get such a boost with this. For the long answer I will see the video I guess.

Oh I see, and yeah see the video let me hear what you think about it.

 

[eastwood333]

Your rechargables are AA's? Again that AA cumbersome shape and weight is the only battery technology that has not changed in 40 years.
you can actually pack more energy in less volume these days.

I find easiest to rotate controllers.

Controllers aint cheap. 60 bucks a pop unless u find a sell. I'd rather buy 6 rechargeable batteries for like 12 bucks, swap them out and you're good for at least a yr depending on play time. And swapping takes seconds. I don't care if they've been around 100 yrs.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Sweet as thank you so I'll be buying multiple nvmes for ps5 too lordy storage is gonna be expensive for both

hold off doing this. cerny said not all will work or size might be an issue. ps5 design is done tho so we should know soon.

also current ones dont work with ps5 for the same speeds. he said at the end of this year we should have ones with similar speeds to the ps5 so it will work flawless as if it were part of the system

 

[Bo_Hazem]

i think MS next gen will be like Sony this gen.

They should pass PS3 (Sony's failure) before dreaming that much.

 

[VanSiriusGabriel]

hold off doing this. cerny said not all will work or size might be an issue. ps5 design is done tho so we should know soon.

also current ones dont work with ps5 for the same speeds. he said at the end of this year we should have ones with similar speeds to the ps5 so it will work flawless as if it were part of the system

Not quite, because most if not all SSDs would still lack the priority channels that the original has, leading to less optimized data management even at same speed. Cerny words.

 

[zeroeffect]

When this guy or Jason quote "devs" are they first-party devs from Sony or Microsoft or third-party? That's kinda an important distinction to make so saying stuff like this or what Jason says is a lot of absolutely nothing. Specify. You don't have to tell us who but at least tell us what group they belong to. If you're not getting information from third-party devs what do you expect the first-party dev to say? Of course they're going to hype their employer's box up.

Saying "staggering" seems like hyperbole to me. I would need to see the proof of this. I doubt you're going to see a big performance difference between the games. Hypothetically the power gap is smaller here than in X1 vs. PS4 and the performance difference in those games was not big. Certainly not "big" like PS3 vs. 360 when you had Bayonetta running at 60fps on 360 and 30fps on PS3. I think PS3 proves there's a lot more to console design than raw power.

 

[SonGoku]

According to All Might (it's a dev?) in a very detailed post, Smartshift ain't gonna do much in reality, like few %, maybe it's "up to 10%".
Otherwise smartshift alone could reduce the gap in raw performance between the two GPU to almost nothing, and I stopped believing in fancy names doing fancy tricks. At that point RT would be the only practical difference.
Let's see.

Its main benefit I think will be to run power hungry GPU loads at peak performance (10.28TF)
Depending of the scenario CPU might run at slightly lower frequency or retain peak frequency but run lighter loads

 

[SgtCaffran]

lets say your brilliant idea is a exactly what Sony is doing. What stops MS from doing the same?

I don't know.

But if I had to make an educated guess:
- Slower SSD
- less optimised IO stack
- Windows

 

[eastwood333]

When this guy or Jason quote "devs" are they first-party devs from Sony or Microsoft or third-party? That's kinda an important distinction to make so saying stuff like this or what Jason says is a lot of absolutely nothing. Specify. You don't have to tell us who but at least tell us what group they belong to. If you're not getting information from third-party devs what do you expect the first-party dev to say? Of course they're going to hype their employer's box up.

Saying "staggering" seems like hyperbole to me. I would need to see the proof of this. I doubt you're going to see a big performance difference between the games. Hypothetically the power gap is smaller here than in X1 vs. PS4 and the performance difference in those games was not big. Certainly not "big" like PS3 vs. 360 when you had Bayonetta running at 60fps on 360 and 30fps on PS3. I think PS3 proves there's a lot more to console design than raw power.

Ever heard of resolutiongate? 1080p vs 720 0r 900p?

 

[devilNprada]

Controllers aint cheap. 60 bucks a pop unless u find a sell. I'd rather buy 6 rechargeable batteries for like 12 bucks,

That's you not me... easy to just grab the other controller, I'm happy to pay for convenience.
I made sure nothing in my house uses traditional batteries... but that's me.
So we just agreed to disagree.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Not quite, because most if not all SSDs would still lack the priority channels that the original has, leading to less optimized data management even at same speed. Cerny words.

no he did not say that.

he said the ps5 has 6 priority levels and the current m.2 standard is 2.

he said the drive would have to be faster than the ps5's just to make up the difference for the I/O controller on the nvme drive to run at ps5 level. they hook up directly to the I/O drive that the ps5 is also using.

Road to PS5, 21 minute mark

 

[kyliethicc]

Maybe I'll even get external ssds for the next consoles I know they won't play games from them but transferring games should be quicker than a normal external hdd

Thankfully we can also store and play PS4 games on any external hard drive. So no need to use the internal SSD for old games. Same with Xbox.

 

[zeroeffect]

Ever heard of resolutiongate? 1080p vs 720 0r 900p?

I wouldn't consider that a big gap in performance. When a game is gimped down to 30fps and another is running at 60fps...I'd consider that a major performance gap. A minor bump in resolution is nothing when most people probably couldn't even tell the differences. Also, you're comparing something based on the average person and what TV they're using, how far they're sitting, angles, etc. FPS impacts gameplay for every player whether they recognize it or not. That's a staggering performance gap not a minor resolution bump to please your eyes.

"staggering" seems like major hyberbole to me using that word to compare the performance gap considering PS5 has their own advantages. There's too much in play here for anyone to give realistic variables on how well games will perform. Wait until the games are being made before anyone judges either console.

 

[VanSiriusGabriel]

no he did not say that.

he said the ps5 has 6 priority levels and the current m.2 standard is 2.

he said the drive would have to be faster than the ps5's just to make up the difference for the I/O controller on the nvme drive to run at ps5 level. they hook up directly to the I/O drive that the ps5 is also using.

Road to PS5, 21 minute mark

Yes, you were saying that SSDs with similar speeds will come out and they will work no problem.
Now you say that, exactly because of priorities factor, a faster SSD is needed. So we are saying the same thing I guess, just depends on the definition of "similar".

 

[kyliethicc]

no he did not say that.

he said the ps5 has 6 priority levels and the current m.2 standard is 2.

he said the drive would have to be faster than the ps5's just to make up the difference for the I/O controller on the nvme drive to run at ps5 level. they hook up directly to the I/O drive that the ps5 is also using.

Road to PS5, 21 minute mark

Yeah Cerny made it seem like to use a M.2 SSD it needs to be around 7 GB/s read (PCIe 4.0). That’s not gonna be available until 2021 and will probably be at least like $150 for 512 GB. $250 for 1 TB. What Xbox chooses to charge for their proprietary 1 TB expansion card is gonna be fascinating.

 

[Disco_]

hold off doing this. cerny said not all will work or size might be an issue. ps5 design is done tho so we should know soon.

There's no drive on the market that would be sufficient, IIRC.

Not quite, because most if not all SSDs would still lack the priority channels that the original has, leading to less optimized data management even at same speed. Cerny words.

The controller itself is on the die. That's why you can use other NVMEs as long as they're faster than the internal drive.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

this is more accurate

More like how Xbox fanboys see it. It's only 14.8%.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

There might be some automation at play where devs set loads and priorities and the system takes care of the rest, they can then do fine adjustments to balance resolution and performance
The specifics are unknown but i would assume the learning curve isn't steep considering time to triangle is lower than PS4.

edit: Also going by Cerny's comment about GPU/CPU staying at or very close to their capped frequencies most of the time, I would assume the edge cases that require fine grain adjustments of power allocation are few and spread out

Dunno; I just don't see it being that straightforward. For tasks that are very cycle-dependent there's going to be at least some bit of a manual balancing act, the important part is that it doesn't become a game of minute micromanagement.

The 'time-to-triangle' thing is just one facet of development, it doesn't necessarily mean the actual development time gets shorter unfortunately. Ambitions and budgets will continue to rise so dev process in terms of time will probably stay about the same as this gen. Also I remember Sony saying a long time back they were interested in going with fewer AAA games, but making them bigger and bolder in ambition. So that'll all probably even out the development time on big games for next gen, all things considered.

 

[eastwood333]

More like how Xbox fanboys see it. It's only 14.8%.

More like 18-25% depending on how much each game stresses the PS5s variable clocks load.

 

[it_wasn't_me]

Pfffft, i'm more suspicious of you lot.

Permanent

Timdog apostle. Find something better to do with your time.

LOL

 

[Asciitronaut]

Xbox Series X’s BCPack Texture Compression Technique Reportedly Better Than the PS5’s Kraken

gamingbolt.com

Nice...

Also : https://wccftech.com/former-sony-dev-ps5-xbox-series-x-power-shocking/

 

[Bo_Hazem]

 

[Bo_Hazem]

More like 18-25% depending on how much each game stresses the PS5s variable clocks load.

I like your sense of humor.