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PS5 Load Time Hype - This is an SSD Thread
- Thread starter bitbydeath
- Start date
Kazekage1981
Member
825GB of the SSD storage is not enough, 100GB will be taken away for system functions which only leaves you with 725GB.
I want to buy 2TB+ of SSD storage, but with the same bells and whistles as the internal one (especially with the I/O). Anyone have any leads on this? It doesn't matter how fast the extra storage is, because the bottleneck will be the I/O. So what external SSD storage can give:
-2TB+ of storage
-Fast or faster speeds of compressed/uncompressed data compared to the internal SSD storage
-Getting rid of the bottleneck I/O
Muchas Gracias.
I want to buy 2TB+ of SSD storage, but with the same bells and whistles as the internal one (especially with the I/O). Anyone have any leads on this? It doesn't matter how fast the extra storage is, because the bottleneck will be the I/O. So what external SSD storage can give:
-2TB+ of storage
-Fast or faster speeds of compressed/uncompressed data compared to the internal SSD storage
-Getting rid of the bottleneck I/O
Muchas Gracias.
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THE DUCK
voted poster of the decade by bots
A) as of today, there have been zero compatible drives confirmed, so no expandible storage
B) due to its high speed, could be very expensive
C) having consumers who can barely boot windows by themselves rip open a ps5 is a bad idea
D) could easily be compatibility issues, some won't buy the right drives
E) not transferable/easily moved between mutiple consoles
Basically the only pro might be price, and we don't even know if it has that. So I stand behind bad idea.
iHaunter
Member
When you're done using your tinfoil hat, put a pizza in the oven for me.
Sentenza
Member
Suuure. Or maybe you can sell this marketing bullshit fanction to fools who will buy it.Maybe because in consoles, where they become the minimum / default specs and you have the ability to deploy a new software stack taking full advantage of its speed (and enough HW to offload processing and moving of such massive flow of data) without worrying about all sorts of possible HW configurations and old legacy programs out of left field, people have the expectations that games can be truly optimised around them... but sure it is not the PCMR people in denial.
Write down these words: all you'll get is faster loading times for a good chunk of this generation, which is not half bad, but it's also what everyone with SSD will get on any other platform.
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TaylorSwiftFan
Member
You know that you could have SSD on the consoles before the PS5, right?
Are you also aware that this is the first time since cartridges that we are getting next to no loading times?
If developer wants to take full advantage of and optimize for the speed of the PS5's I/O it's going to need to design a game that is massive in file size. For example, Demon Souls remake is 60 GB, PS5 raw SSD speed is 5.5 GB/s. That essentially turns Demon Souls into an 11 second game, which is completely unrealistic but it highlights a new bottleneck in this architecture (not even taking into account compressed speeds) I highly doubt if we see any game this generation that will fully saturate the bandwidth of the PS5's I/O without being hundreds of GB in size. PS5's SSD bandwidth is bottlenecked by game file sizes and will be for probably the entirety of this generation.Maybe because in consoles, where they become the minimum / default specs and you have the ability to deploy a new software stack taking full advantage of its speed (and enough HW to offload processing and moving of such massive flow of data) without worrying about all sorts of possible HW configurations and old legacy programs out of left field, people have the expectations that games can be truly optimised around them... but sure it is not the PCMR people in denial
Sentenza
Member
Sure, I also know that they were bottlenecked as hell. But that's not the point anyway.
The bullshit is how some of you groupies seem to think Sony invented SSDs with this move.
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
It’s not the SSD that people are excited about but the whole IO system. An SSD by itself wouldn’t have eliminated load times.
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I can’t wait to see the “RE Engine” logo in RE Village and the fast world transitions in Demon’s Souls. I put a SSD in my desktop and I won’t ever go back. To me, it’s an already great platform enhanced by the SSD.
DESTROYA
Member
My only worry is if has enough actual storage space , 825GB seems a little low and SONY has yet to tell us what SSD’s are compatible with the PS5.
Can you still use external storage on the PS5 ? But then again you loose the benefits of the very fast SSD
With file sizes of todays games you won’t be able to store many AAA titles on the SSD.
Can you still use external storage on the PS5 ? But then again you loose the benefits of the very fast SSD
With file sizes of todays games you won’t be able to store many AAA titles on the SSD.
Razvedka
Banned
How certain are we that the 825GB figure doesn't already subtract the OS requirements? For instance, a 1TB drive on a PC will yield 931GB of usable space.
@thread
As others have noted, it's not the SSD per se that's exciting or interesting. It's the I/O system built into the PS5 that's the real magic.
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Handy Fake
Member
I think we're fairly sure. Marketing 101 tells us that if there's a 1TB drive in there, it'll say 1TB on the box, whether there's an amount taken by OS or not.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
What are you talking about? First of all you made it all about PS5 in an almost interesting effort to depict its bandwidth as wasteful (I am waiting for the not far away post where someone will describe that actually thanks to hidden feature A the XSX is actually just as fast, etc...).
Second, you can make a game using its bandwidth to the max as long as the total amount of data needed is above what you can store in RAM (taking into account the fact that a lot of data in RAM is dynamically allocated... front and back buffers, buffers for render to texture effects, etc...) and you need to swap data in and out.
Especially if you treat the SSD as extended virtual RAM, low latency, low CPU data transfer overhead, and high throughout matter a great deal. Not sure why they would need various hundreds of GB’s games to show it off.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Believe what you want. It is up to you to think whatever you want... PC’s biggest strengths is its weakness compared to consoles: variety of HW, users’ expectations of being able to change components and for the OS to keep working at full speed regardless, for software API’s to be supported for decades and adapt to such an open HW model, etc... see Direct Storage being in use in production on Xbox Series X/S this year and possibly going in beta next year for a stable release in maybe 2022 and games may take a long while to adapt as enough critical mass of users adopts capable OS and HW.
In the meantime the huge amount of RAM in PC’s will have to do (16-32 GB of main RAM and 8-24 GB of RAM for the GPU).
PC’s have a lot of strong HW, but the ecosystem is designed around a much lower species common denominator and abstracted to support much more diverse HW that users can swap, mod, etc... but you do you and call everything you do not feel comfortable with marketing bull* or whatever.
danielJackson
Banned
Then answer this:
PCs have had SSDs for years, why PC games wont load in 2s?
(hint: because there is not one "pc", there is hundreds of confics and most of them are slow & old, so good luck waiting until average and worse PCs have fast enough SSDs to implement these features fully)
BigLee74
Member
I love the amount of people now that throw around phrases and words like 'I/O' and 'bottleneck', as if they've been aware of and using them for years, despite clearly just swallowing a little tech presentation a few months back, with as of yet no neutral hands on experience of the actual system and how it runs compared to the opposition. 
This will boil down to much faster loading times for all consoles, and that's it. But they won't be eliminated.
Do you really think that 2 minutes for GTAV is just gonna disappear?
This will boil down to much faster loading times for all consoles, and that's it. But they won't be eliminated.
Do you really think that 2 minutes for GTAV is just gonna disappear?
killatopak
Member
lol, played all of them.
You only get repeated loadings when you die
Farming Pure Bladestone is ten seconds over and over and over and over.
Need to go back to nexus repeatedly to respawn the enemy that drops the loot.
cireza
Member
Faming looks tedious. I play video-games for fun.
small_law
Member
It's also a complete lack of incentive to optimize for solid state storage. Developers have to target the lowest common denominator, and that's a 5400 RPM HDD. Load times are what they are on SSDs comparatively because of the differences in the technology. No one's optimizing for it, and certainly not for NVME speeds.
Big thing this generation is going to do is incentivize developers to optimize for r/w in excess of 3500-4000 Mbps. Because everyone with a PlayStation or an Xbox has storage capable of those speeds (faster I think), developers can count on it and optimize for it.
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NoMoChokeSJ
Banned
Conventional SSD's aren't as nearly as fast a an NVME drive. Windows loads on my PC in probably 5 seconds with my drive on a 570 board. Games aren't as instantaneous as the PS5 but the technology definitely makes a difference.
BigLee74
Member
I'm glad I left the PC game 10 years ago if lowest common denominator components cost that much!
Another pro is you're not nerfing the performance of what sounds like one of the key features of the console by allowing something cheaper and slower which is, in my opinion, worth dealing with your list of grievances.
This is entirely subjective but I was also okay with changing the HDD in the PS4 which was more difficult procedurally than it will be to expand storage in the PS5.
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FunkMiller
Member
lol, played all of them.
You only get repeated loadings when you die
Oh, you died. You know you died. Over and over. Just like the rest of us.
Though I first timed Rom AND Abyss Watchers AND NO-ONE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME.
The Series X is going to have the same issue. The raw bandwidth speed most certainly is going to be wasteful for a large portion of games, especially the ones smaller in total file size as it is not very bandwidth intensive to keep 16 GB of RAM fed with a 60 GB game especially when the raw bandwidth is 2.4 - 5.5 GB/s. If you increase the size of the streaming pool, the size of the game also needs to also increase to realize the benefit of those gains. In order to fully saturate a 5 GB/s + streaming pool you would need quite a large game as it's not really feasible to need to cycle through that much data at once.
Let's say we stopped using RAM to hold entire levels and started using it to hold just what's visible on screen (i.e. the road to PS5), think about how many GBs of data you would need for an hour long game if you're able to fill RAM in 3-6 seconds. You would have 2 options at this point for a consistent experience, a game that is streamed in slower at a reasonable file size or a game that is streamed in at full speed and massive in file size. I mean sure you could use the SSD in bursts to quick load the next level but if a game required a 8 GB chunk of RAM to be swapped per level do that 10 times and that's 80 GB for a 10 level game.
This is why there has been such a large focus on data compression as a highlight of next gen consoles.
small_law
Member
Up here in the ivory tower 4000 Mbps r/w speeds might be commonplace, but I'm willing to bet that half of Steam and console users have never booted a PC/console game from an SSD, SATA III or otherwise. Seriously. I got a buddy that's thrilled to shit with his new 2TB external HDD because it's "so fast." When this kids finally get their hands on PS5 and Series X, they're going to think they're seeing through time.I'm glad I left the PC game 10 years ago if lowest common denominator components cost that much!
MasterCornholio
Member
I also read that since PC is an open platform it's going to be very difficult to get rid of all the bottlenecks. With a closed system it's pretty easy to design it to eliminate said bottlenecks with dedicated hardware. That's something that Cerny talked about in the presentation. I also remember that Tim Sweeney said something similar on twitter.
bitbydeath
Member
I love the amount of people now that throw around phrases and words like 'I/O' and 'bottleneck', as if they've been aware of and using them for years, despite clearly just swallowing a little tech presentation a few months back, with as of yet no neutral hands on experience of the actual system and how it runs compared to the opposition.
This will boil down to much faster loading times for all consoles, and that's it. But they won't be eliminated.
Do you really think that 2 minutes for GTAV is just gonna disappear?
I don’t know if you read the OP but the claim is that their will be no load screens at all on PS5 and all the examples in the OP back that up.
FeiRR
Banned
Attention span of a child is up to 15 minutes. I give Craigs a week.
BigLee74
Member
And yet there in the OP there is a quote for Res Evil with no "load times".
Behave yourself, and stop grasping. Loading times are still there, as will be loaing screens of some sort in a lot of games.
bitbydeath
Member
Loading times are different to loading screens. Loading screens are needed when loading times exceed an acceptable timeframe such as 2-3 seconds.
BigLee74
Member
No shit, Sherlock! Thanks for the clarification.
Time will tell. I confidently predict there will be loading screens in many games. Its not just about dumping stuff into RAM. There are often many Internet related shinanegans going on behind the scenes that are at the mercy of connectivity performance.
As I've said before. Do you think a game like Gtav, taking 2 minutes to load, will suddenly come in at 2 secs?
You will have your screens. You will have your clever masking (DS fog when going through gate etc). Just less of them, and for not as long.
bitbydeath
Member
GTA load screens will be gone and yes 2 seconds is doable since it only takes that amount of time to fill the RAM.
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Kenpachii
Member
It's all software really, here booting up a game that uses SSD a bit more but still not completely. Seems about the same shit to me.
Loading hasn't been much of a issue for a while now on PC really, the improved load times we get what games start to make use of it is appreciated but that's about it.
Loading hasn't been much of a issue for a while now on PC really, the improved load times we get what games start to make use of it is appreciated but that's about it.
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DrumNBassDanTTV
Member
We haven't seen anything from Sony really, like the demons souls thing...how do we know the game doesnt take a while for initial load? like GTA5 now as an example? Also R&C has loading screens they are just well integrated into the game, like when he jumps thru the cracks, please dont be dumb.
megreotsugua
Banned
Games will boot in a second according to Cerny in his Road to PS5 presentation. (If it's two seconds, I'll give him a pass.)
You can also boot up straight to a level in game or to a multiplayer lobby in an instant as hinted by Cerny in the wired interview as well as rumors circling around.
DJT123
Member
2s or 10s, it really doesn't matter that much. Where were your complaints about the INSANE console loading times this whole gen, until Sony started marketing the SSD?
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megreotsugua
Banned
It will be more than about loading time. The PS5 demo of Unreal Engine 5 already demonstrated that.
Sony is marketing SSD because it will compensate for the lack of RAM next-gen. RAM for the past generations made 16x jump, but memory chip density has hit a wall and price no longer allow that.
Sony embedded 6 custom chips for the I/O to remove all bottlenecks. Developers won't be all over the moon about Sony's solution for nothing.
megreotsugua
Banned
...
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megreotsugua
Banned
sorry multiple post. Internet problems
Roman Empire
Member
I can't wait to finally enjoy playing fighting games on console. It takes me out of the mood waiting 30 seconds or more to load a match that can last a minute and half max sometimes. The time piles up quite fast during a session that by the end of the fifth match I'm already wondering about the loading times.
Rikkori
Member
Only fanboys believe this. The literate among us can read & see the orders of magnitude difference between I/O speed & system memory, not to mention the limited interconnect speed. The SSD system overall will help with bandwidth management but in no way will that make up for not having more vram. Luckily it doesn't matter too much because after the aborted abominations that were base consoles this gen PS5/XSX will seem like spaceships; and also console players are used to low settings so they won't know or complain about the difference.
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megreotsugua
Banned
Nope, only fanboys would deny what incredible job Sony has done with their I/O. UE5 demo already proved it's true. Streaming billions of triangles and 8k assets on the fly. Those assets won't fit in the RAM.
Sony's solution can deliver data from SSD straight to GPU caches due to their coherency engines and cache scrubbers as opposed to sending the data first to RAM to perform several steps to the data.
https://d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.n....jpg/EG11/resize/337x-1/quality/75/format/jpg
Again, there's a reason developers are over the moon over Sony's SSD solution.
Bojanglez
The Amiga Brotherhood
Not just that, hopefully PS5's I/O sped and geometry engine will allow them to replace their LoD techniques (grouping together sections of the map in the distance as low poly objects) with displaying high quality assets. It would look incredible.
This blog post is really great at showing some of the techniques used currently, it may give an idea as to what may be overhauled in a remaster http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study-part-2/
CuNi
Member
You're not made for Soulsborne games if you haven't withstood initial unpatched Bloodborne loading times.
First of all, congrats on attributing a industry wide move to just Sony because they merely announced it first? Let's conveniently forget Microsofts Velocity Architecture or NVIDIAs RTX IO.
Secondly, you don't really think that the game constantly streams all the data and holds nothing in RAM, do you?
If the game runs on 60FPS, you merely have 16,7ms to output the frame. Even if we would assume you have this whole window time to load in assets (which you don't since you also need to render eventually and that also takes time) you'd "only" have 375mb per frame that you can stream in. Yes obviously that is a lot of data, I'm not going to downplay this here, but "8k Assets and billions of triangles" need more than just that. 4k textures with 8-bit already need roughly 50MB so you can load whopping 7 1/2 4k textures in. If we even take away only 3-4ms of streaming downtime you already dip below 290MB that you can stream per frame. Those games will look beautiful and will load very fast compared to today's consoles, but stop hyping yourself up and please expect realistic features.
If they would be able to just stream everything in, cache scrubbers and other techniques to reduce the actual need to stream things in all the time would not exist. You also still have to consider that your GPU still has limits, even when you take away the bandwidth bottleneck. That thing can't render infinite details just because you throw it at the GPU. It still needs to compute things.
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