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Is the addition of SSDs really as big a deal as people are making it out to be?
- Thread starter supernova8
- Start date
Hustler
Member
Give it time. The initial wave of games are under the old design philosophy. Once they start designing games with SSD in mind, we should see drastically different game play types and worlds going off of what some devs have said. Give it 3-4 years for third party developers to take better advantage of SSD. 1st party developers? Just look at Ratchet and Clank as an example of early impressions, but this will evolve too.
TheAssist
Member
Even IF it was JUST faster loading, more snappy menus, instantly start the game (or at least within 5 seconds and not a freaking minute). Even if it was just quality of life improvements it would already be awesome. No matter what SSD.
A lot of the benefits of an SSD will go unnoticed by most people. It wont be the "HOOOOOOLLLLYYYYY SHIT, only an SSD could do that" moment. It will be subtle differences in level design and gameplay (faster move speed, instant teleporting, etc).
You will notice the difference when going back to an older gen. Its the same on PC. First time SSD is pretty cool, then you get used to it very quickly and then at some point you have to work with a PC that runs on an HDD. Maybe some older laptop or a work PC or something and it will be a horrible experience. Its like "how could we do this since the Saturn/PS1 era? How have we put up with this shit?"
A lot of the benefits of an SSD will go unnoticed by most people. It wont be the "HOOOOOOLLLLYYYYY SHIT, only an SSD could do that" moment. It will be subtle differences in level design and gameplay (faster move speed, instant teleporting, etc).
You will notice the difference when going back to an older gen. Its the same on PC. First time SSD is pretty cool, then you get used to it very quickly and then at some point you have to work with a PC that runs on an HDD. Maybe some older laptop or a work PC or something and it will be a horrible experience. Its like "how could we do this since the Saturn/PS1 era? How have we put up with this shit?"
Pedro Motta
Member
It's a flight sim, you are most of the time at several thousand feet in the air, the streaming is rather limited and the reason graphics can be pushed at those levels. It may be a next gen flight sim, but it's not representative of next gen.
VFXVeteran
Banned
That's silly. You can fly as low as you want. There are so many more elements in that sim compared to a game it's not even funny. Not to mention accurate physics calculations. Don't write it off because it's a flight sim or because it's not coming out for your platform of choice. Give a game it's due praise regardless of what platform it comes out for.
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killatopak
Gold Member
Instant loading on fighting games are huge.
LordOfChaos
Member
That seems like a stretch. RAM might have a typical latency of 8.33 nanoseconds. NAND has latencies in the few milliseconds. A millisecond is 1000000 nanoseconds...
Even throughput, 9GB/s closer to 448GB/s than say 40 to 448 (5700XT)?
It's an impressive controller that makes the SSD a far more deterministic data source than before and eliminates the bottlenecks in the way of fully benefiting from one, but NAND be NAND and RAM be RAM.
Pedro Motta
Member
LOL, I never dismissed anything (nor brought platform wars into this), the game is incredible and I know perfectly well the amount of things being simulated, but that's on the cpu side of things, not the SSD. You were the one that said next gen doesn't need SSD's because FS2020 doesn't need it, and that is a completely wrong take.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Yes, even if it just heavily reduces/eliminates loading, it will have been worth it.
I think the point is probably more that FS is a pretty unique project and not really a suitable benchmark for next gen graphics.
I'm no expert on it but it's basically leveraging the streaming of real world data isn't it? It's really amazing looking but is it really technology that could easily be implemented in regular games?
Maybe I'm wrong but it just doesn't seem like a fair standard to hold more normal games to...
VFXVeteran
Banned
No it's not. My stance is that you don't need an SSD in order to make a game look good. That's just a fact. You need a powerful GPU to make a game look good and run well.
I can see needing an SSD to enhance the gameplay experience but not making something like ray-tracing be better.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Only the Sony crowd is making a big deal about it.
PC gamers with good rigs still plug top end cpus and gpus as the key specs for great gaming. Never seen anyone overshadow that saying skip those and funnel it all to the latest fastest Samsung SSD.
PC gamers with good rigs still plug top end cpus and gpus as the key specs for great gaming. Never seen anyone overshadow that saying skip those and funnel it all to the latest fastest Samsung SSD.
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Wouldn't that be pointless given that things would have to be designed around the SSD?
A stronger GPU can just brute force a better result.
VFXVeteran
Banned
Well, it may not be but due to the fact that it looks so good and manages so much data. I guess what I'm saying is that there are elements in it that we should put a bar on for games. For example, the lighting is completely physically based and accurate. Way more accurate than pretty much all TOD open world games. The light energy conservation just looks so good. The cloud rendering is amazing and no other game touches it. The wide open visibility of terrain is another thing that open world games should strive for. Finally flying and seeing that kind of detail at a high rate of speed is going to be compared to games like Horizon that will have flying in their open world environment.
When I get the sim on Tuesday I will discuss a lot of the rendering techniques that I see that any game should strive to implement (like the cloud rendering).
BurnCoalMeltPole
Member
SSDs are a revolutionary technology that requires deep architectural changes in order to realize their full potential. Next generation consoles are expanding memory capacity by a factor of two, whereas in the past, expansion between generations was about 16x. The way to compensate for this deficiency is to optimize the I/O system. Done well, memory will be used more effectively, allowing for higher fidelity and more features. Adding a bulk storage device like NVMe, that offers fast random access, can do wonders for memory efficiency, virtually adding well over 100 GB to main memory. Assuming an average transfer rate of 10 GB/s, 160 MB or 320 MB of data would be available per frame for respectively 60 or 30 FPS.
Woo-Fu
Banned
You don't think some elements of game design exist the way they do simply because of the load times from optical and/or hard disk? I'm not a games developer but I would imagine that they have to factor those in to some decisions.
As far as the OP's question though, only time will tell. Like practically everything else in the console wars the proof is in the games, not in the endless speculation.
Pedro Motta
Member
Why would an SSD influence ray-tracong capabilities? You are completely missing the point here. FS2020 doesn't need data streaming with high speed, most of the data that is being streamed is placement data from the terrains to tell the GPU where to instance trees or buildings for example. Do you think if you fly an airplane in the middle of New York in FS2020 you will have the same detail as in Spiderman or a GTA? Not a chance. The SSD will not only be able to stream more data (geometry, textures, animation, baked simulations) but the second benefit is the ease of development, game design possibilities and quality of life improvements.
Relativ9
Member
Those two examples you mentioned (Rachet and Spiderman) are exactly why it's exciting. Those are built from the ground up for machines who exlusively have fast SSDs. When developers no longer have to downscale for HDD compadibility is when the true mythical "gameplay" changes from the SSD will start to immerge.
Some people think the Ratchet portals aren't impressive because there is some loading during the transition screen and Sony made the mistake of using the term "zero/instant loading" so anything that falls short of that is considered unimpressive...but the thing is, those 1-2 seconds of load during the portal transition screen....those would be 20-30 seconds on a HDD. Now consider this, the Ratchet demo is a somewhat gimmicky representation of the enhancements the SSD can provide, but the Ratchet demo is loading completely new enviroments...you don't have to do that. All kinds of things can be improved with fast SSDs: Ai's can have thousands of more animation sets which can be loaded instantly based on unpredictible player-interactions. Worlds can increasingly be built with two or more texture, lighting and even mesh "versions" allowing the game to switch between them at will (imagine instantly switching from regular world to nightmare world in Silent Hill(I believe they're doing something like this in The Medium). Enviroment destruction can in a similar way be drastically improved, with developers now able to store many many different versions of the same PBR textures which can be near-instantly switched to on the fly (provided the CPU can handle it) and blended depending on the player and the AI's interacting with the enviroments (Those who want the next Battlefield to have better destruction, a lack of a fast SSD and high res PBR textures were likely party to blame for it missing in the latest entries). And we're probably also going to see a large increase in level of detail far away from the player (in the distance) and an increased use of Megascans for enviroments (which could significantly shorten development times on photo-realistic games).
So in short; yeah it's a big deal.
Some people think the Ratchet portals aren't impressive because there is some loading during the transition screen and Sony made the mistake of using the term "zero/instant loading" so anything that falls short of that is considered unimpressive...but the thing is, those 1-2 seconds of load during the portal transition screen....those would be 20-30 seconds on a HDD. Now consider this, the Ratchet demo is a somewhat gimmicky representation of the enhancements the SSD can provide, but the Ratchet demo is loading completely new enviroments...you don't have to do that. All kinds of things can be improved with fast SSDs: Ai's can have thousands of more animation sets which can be loaded instantly based on unpredictible player-interactions. Worlds can increasingly be built with two or more texture, lighting and even mesh "versions" allowing the game to switch between them at will (imagine instantly switching from regular world to nightmare world in Silent Hill(I believe they're doing something like this in The Medium). Enviroment destruction can in a similar way be drastically improved, with developers now able to store many many different versions of the same PBR textures which can be near-instantly switched to on the fly (provided the CPU can handle it) and blended depending on the player and the AI's interacting with the enviroments (Those who want the next Battlefield to have better destruction, a lack of a fast SSD and high res PBR textures were likely party to blame for it missing in the latest entries). And we're probably also going to see a large increase in level of detail far away from the player (in the distance) and an increased use of Megascans for enviroments (which could significantly shorten development times on photo-realistic games).
So in short; yeah it's a big deal.
DaleinCalgary
Member
I hope so.
The waiting for loading in lobbies in Modern Warfare is painful and switching menus in Gran Turismo takes too long.
The waiting for loading in lobbies in Modern Warfare is painful and switching menus in Gran Turismo takes too long.
VFXVeteran
Banned
Yes. I think it will have the same detail as Spiderman. Spiderman's buildings, traffic, cars, pedestrians looked like garbage. A lot of instancing buildings in that game as well. Not to mention, you are dealing with a significantly limited area in that game compared to FS2020. I can guarantee you that NYC in FS2020 will be more accurate and more detailed. You are also missing the point that the GPU has to process this data. FS2020 on PC settings wouldn't run on a next-gen console. Spiderman can easily run on a PC without an SSD.
Pedro Motta
Member
Ok, I'll end my back and forth here with you, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Here is New York in FS2020, this on an SSD would look 100x better.
VFXVeteran
Banned
No it is you who don't understand rendering and how it works. An SSD doesn't magically make your scene come alive with CG details on a mid-low end GPU found in a PS5. I don't understand why you guys think that the SSD does all the computations. Do you not realize that if I increase texture sizes, the GPU has to still do the texture lookups? The SSD doesn't render the scene dude. Your bottleneck is going to be your GPU.
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Lethal01
Member
WOAH IS THIS SPIDERMAN PS6?!?!
KormaChameleon
Member
Are we having this thread? Yes. My OS loads within a matter of seconds when turning on and all of my games load rapidly compared to my previous HDD from my old build and console load times.
Elog
Member
So firstly, the sequence we are discussing is on a PC:
RAM->VRAM->GPU cache
On paper the first step is nowhere near the 448GB/s number quoted above since it moves over the PCE4.0 bus that at 16x has a theoretical max of around 31.5GB/sec. The bus is not the problem though but the driver overhead, i.e. each segment needs to be moved from RAM->CPU cache->CPU process step->VRAM. In reality this rate is measured in single GB/sec transfer rates and worse - with high latency due to the CPU involvement (i.e. driver overhead).
On the PS5 this is according to official information up to 22 GB/sec in actual bandwidth with low latency since it is read straight from the SSD into the VRAM. without CPU involvement.
Good comment from John Carmack about this:
The second aspect is something we know less about, but gives an unknown sized advantage to the PS5 over the PC as well. The GPU needs to load data into the GPU cache for processing. When the GPU is doing a lot of compute, cache management becomes increasingly important and a bottle-neck. How much of this bottle-neck that will be untangled by the cache scrubber hardware is unknown but I have a hard time believing it is 0%.
Net-net, the PS5 SSD acts roughly like 825GB of DDR3 RAM in terms of latency and bandwidth. If the official specifications are correct this is a mammoth sized difference to the current PC architecture.
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Lethal01
Member
Your GPU doesn't hold
When you're game is stalling or showing ps1 textures. because it's waiting for your SSD to transfer assets to your GPU memory the SSD is the bottleneck.
In modern 3d games storage is constantly a bottleneck.
The GPU will always be a bottle neck but you're acting like storage is never an issue. You just seem to be vastly oversimplifying thing down to
"IT'S THE GPU THAT RENDERS THE IMAGE"
When you're game is stalling or showing ps1 textures. because it's waiting for your SSD to transfer assets to your GPU memory the SSD is the bottleneck.
In modern 3d games storage is constantly a bottleneck.
The GPU will always be a bottle neck but you're acting like storage is never an issue. You just seem to be vastly oversimplifying thing down to
"IT'S THE GPU THAT RENDERS THE IMAGE"
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Pedro Motta
Member
And you don't know the difference between a game that's made to look good at 10.000 feet and not inside a city. GPU's can render billions of triangle nowadays, imagine with the help of mesh shaders or GE. The SSD will help stream in and out higher quality textures and models at a very fast rate, almost VRAM like, it will unlock latent potential on GPU's never seen before. Current gen we had to stream slowly and fill RAM and VRAM to accomodate severeal seconds or even minutes of gameplay, imagine if you don't have that limit anymore.
EDIT: I mean, did you see the video I posted?
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KormaChameleon
Member
Lethal01
Member
This on an SSD would look the same since it's the same data regardless of where it's streamed from.
A game designed exclusively for a Next Gen SSD however could look very different since they could have more complex assets.
The claim that This looks better than Spiderman however. is really dumb.
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Pedro Motta
Member
You are right. I should have phrased it “designed for an SSD”.
LordOfChaos
Member
The point of VRAM in the first place would be to keep as much processing local to the GPU as possible without crossing this bus, this is why using more than your physical VRAM amount will see a steep cliff of performance. What you're saying is that the PS5 has faster busses than standard PCs, and fair game there, it doesn't make your statement that the PS5's SSD is closer to its VRAM speed than a PC's RAM to its VRAM remotely true, you're looking at the next bus down and comparing that instead.
Then there's the even further fetched latency angle where the difference between a nanosecond and a millisecond is a million times removed.
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ManaByte
Gold Member
No it wouldn't. Actually this is probably running on a SSD as that's recommended for Flight Simulator.
Elog
Member
Hrm. Two things:
1) Actually, I just gave you the numbers that the SSD -> VRAM on the PS5 has lower latency and higher transfer speeds than the RAM -> VRAM on a PC due to the driver overhead on the PC. I am not sure what you meant to the contrary?
2) your first sentence is absolutely correct about performance. And why does the performance drop? See point 1) above. That is the whole point of the PS5 solution! This means that a developer does not need to think nearly as much in terms of VRAM budget for exactly this reason. You can use many more textures of much higher texture quality without performance drops - and this translates into graphical fidelity.
VFXVeteran
Banned
I mean take a look at what's already out now dude. There isn't a game yet released that exhibits a need for SSD.
VFXVeteran
Banned
We're done here. I hate armchair developers that haven't coded this stuff and trying to tell me I'm wrong. SSD isn't almost VRAM like. Are you serious?? I'll let one of the other Sony guys who is more rational convince you that you are being way too fanboish.
VFXVeteran
Banned
Makes no difference if the low-end GPU can't process the enhanced data. Most of the graphics pipeline is going to be spent on the GPU. There will never be a game on the PS5 that outperforms and looks better than it's PC equivalent.
Lethal01
Member
Horizon Zero Dawn Exhibits the need for an SSD by the fact that the flying feature was cut due to them not being able to stream fast enough for the hard drive. There are many other games with the same tale but with faster vehicles.
Games are literally designed around the fact that the HDD is slow so they avoid a hundred ideas or layouts that would put a strain on it. I can personally say I've seen asset quality downgraded not because of it straining the GPU but because of having to build for HDD.
Right now you are using the fact that developers choose not to make games that would hang for a second due to the slow HDD as evidence that games would not visually benefit from SSD.
Luckily it's very easy to find developers screaming to the heavens that their games were held back due to the hard drive.
I'm very much a layman on this stuff but it still fascinates me.
I'd always assumed processing geometry was just a GPU task, is that not correct? Or are the models basically held in memory and it's the size of RAM that determines how geometrically complex the game looks? Or a bit of both?
I'd always assumed processing geometry was just a GPU task, is that not correct? Or are the models basically held in memory and it's the size of RAM that determines how geometrically complex the game looks? Or a bit of both?
VFXVeteran
Banned
Well, yea for a PS4. That doesn't apply to the PC.
This has more to do with game design and execution as opposed to graphics tech. Speeding down the city as Spiderman doesn't contribute to the rendering of the city buildings or make the streets look good.
LordOfChaos
Member
Maybe I'm missing where there's a latency figure in there? I read "low latency" compared to "high latency" and GB/s figures which are throughput, but a fetch from RAM happens in nanoseconds, where a fetch from NAND happens in milliseconds, I'm not sure where you've contradicted this. A fast controller can bring up sustained throughput, data speed determinism, and somewhat reduce latency, but NAND still acts like NAND.
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VFXVeteran
Banned
You mean the swapping or the highest model of the LOD?
LOD errors/switching. Level of detail will be highly inconsistent.
VFXVeteran
Banned
We'll see. And why do you think it will be inconsistent? What do you think will be needed hardware-wise?
geordiemp
Member
Yeah thats rough up close, only works at a long distance so internet streaming can cope. time stamped.
Ok, thats FS out the way, next.
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captainraincoat
Banned
Look at pc gaming...it’s had ssds for years and it’s basically the same.....console gaming will continue that trend
cireza
Member
I am not talking about game design and the way games are built. I am talking about the gameplay, what we do as a player in the games.
I haven't seen gameplay fundamentally evolve since the PS360 era (and even back then, it wasn't that crazy, it was still pretty close to the gameplay we had on DC/PS2/GC/Xbox).
If nothing changed when going from PS360 to PS4One, I don't see why anything would change on PS5SeX.
Open worlds became a larger part of what makes our games in the last 10 years, but they existed already 30 years ago. VR is something that pushed gameplay boundaries. SSD, certainly not. They might offer new ways to develop the games, but they won't change much about the core gameplay.
Hardware is not a problem anymore in my opinion, and has not been since the PS360 era. If you want to create a large world with a great traversal speed, pretty sure you could do it without a SSD on 360. You simply design your game around your ideas.