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DF Direct: The PS5

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Held back how exactly?

xbox-one-fat-com-defeito-do-plimm-D_NQ_NP_779372-MLB31837358012_082019-F.jpg


3t85jp.jpg
 
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hyperbertha

Member
Lets be honest with ourselves the SSD's in these systems will be just for faster loading times, that is about it. Just like they are used today on PC's (gaming wise). Developers (other than 1st party) are not gonna take the extra time to do most of this fancy stuff that people are parroting.

We will see less pop-in, and faster loading times. Thats is all you really need. The updated specs of both consoles will result in better resolutions and better performance (hopefully).
First party devs are going to be doing amazing stuff with the SSD actually. Its going to make a big difference.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
So gears of war 5 ran on Xbox one and ran on top end PC’s with much much higher settings. Was the Xbox one holding them back?

Yes, it's designed to work for Xbox One, and only got resolution, ray tracing, and fps bump. Wait to see 1st party games exclusives for next gen to grasp what's possible, or maybe 3rd party games made exclusively for next gen with NVMe requirement for PC's.
 

CJY

Banned
Held back how exactly?
PS5 1st party games and 3rd party devs who choose to take advantage of PS5 SSD will develop games based on 5.5GB/s of IO throughput. Like Cerny says, you only load into RAM what is needed for 1 second of gameplay. Whereas current gen you need to load 30 seconds into RAM, because the IO is so slow. Therefore in current gen, a lot of the RAM is left unused, filled with 30 seconds of data "just in case". PS5 devs will be streaming that data into memory as you turn the camera in-game, for example. This requires massive, reliably fast IO. And according to many, many people, will lead to revolutionary new game ideas.

What these games will be is unknown right now and the potential is completely untapped and unexplored. There are ideas flying around, but you'd have to assume that some devs will create something amazing with 100x IO throughput.

Now, lets say you're on Xbox and want to develop the same theoretical game that requires this massive IO throughput, you might be able to do it on XSX, but how do you get the game to run on Xbone, which has a HD that's 100x slower? How do you get the game to run on PC where most people have machanical HDs? You don't. You target the lowest common donominator, which is the mechanical hard drive, because everyone needs to be able to run the game. You'd end up just not making that game or at least changing it in such a way that it really just wouldn't be pushing the limits of what the SSD of XSX is capable of... except for loading speed.

XSX will be running prettier version of today's games, but due to being held back by PC and Xbone, we won't see any games pushing that SSD in ways that are impossible on previous gen and PC. Again, except for loading speeds. It'll be faster at loading a game than PC or Xbone. That's it.

Unless MS change their policy of every 1st party game coming to PC and supporting Xbone, you're going to see far more game innovation on Playstation.

Whether you believe having an SSD in PS5 will lead to innovative gaming ideas is open to debate. You maybe don't or won't until you actually see it with your own eyes...
 
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hyperbertha

Member
Pretty much. 1st party will use it and it will be fantastic. 3rd party will shy away because they will want it on as many system as possible.

There are only two 3rd party caveats. One can come from platform holder sponsorship, where Sony or MS sponsors the game and gets the best version with watered down ports for the rest. OR a console sells significantly more than the rest warranting it as the defecto target platform.
Actually, now that I reflect even more on this, the SSD is really meant as a buffer for memory limitations isn't it? On PC, theoretically, devs can get over this by simply bumping up the minimum memory requirements of the PC version to like about 24 gb. So 3rd party support can happen as long as they ensure 24 gb minimum becomes a standard on PC.

Edit: Actually, I really doubt 24gb is going to be enough. The ps5 essentially has 825 gbs of latent memory if I understand it all correctly, which practically lets developers render scenes with 100s of GBs of data at a time given the chance, as long as the frame being rendered stays within the 16 GB plus the 5 GB of streamed data. which I do see happening next gen due to all that new processing power. So SSD becoming standard could really be the only solution. :(
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Fundamentally, games on Xbox will be limited due to all their games also being PC compatible where practically everyone is still running mech HDs/slow SSDs. XSX devs will never be able to take advantage of the SSD properly, even in their exclusives. It's going to be at least 4-7 years before SSDs will become the standard in PC-land. Not to mention the Xbone which their games also have to run on.

Bottom line is only on PS5 will we see developers truly pushing the new game ideas and concepts that are made possible by blazingly fast SSD. Not saying XSX isn't capable of doing what PS5 will do, just that you won't see it due to the issues I mentioned above.

Im dying to know what this additional bandwidth the ps5 has will enable devs to achieve that they cant do with less bandwidth! Microsoft next gen games will likely require PCs to have ssds of a similar spec to the XSX.

It depends what goals the devs have, i dont think the ps5 will do things that cant be done on xsx.

Its like i need to drive to work everyday, today (current gen) I have a very old honda civic, it does the job but could be a lot better, i have a choice of two new cars (next gen) , a tesla model S (xsx) and a tesla model s p100 (ps5) while the p100 maybe be more fun to drive the model s does every thing i need it too.

Another example is to think about what games will be made.
Lets take GTA6 for example i think the way the game can be most improved is more realistic NPCs and more world interactivity, will more ssd bandwidth even be needed then 1gb/s?

Its rather frustrating because cerny did not show examples of why ssd streaming is better and a comparison between there ssd and slower ssds.
At the moment its just words.

Im guessing ssd streaming the way cerny described is beneficial because it will free up RAM that can be used for other things, however there will be limitations for what the ssd can be used for which is why im wary on how radical a difference between a 8gb/s vs 4.8gb/s will be. Especially when we consider the extra 112gb/s additional ram bandwidth on the XsX.
 
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njean777

Member
First party devs are going to be doing amazing stuff with the SSD actually. Its going to make a big difference.

Like I said first party we may see some cool stuff. The majority (3rd party) will not. Just be prepared for the only differences being faster loading and less pop-in this coming next gen. Which is more than enough for me honestly. Having used PC ssd's for games these days its better than the console HDD's any day of the week.
 

CJY

Banned
Im dying to know what this additional bandwidth the ps5 has will enable devs to achieve that they cant do with less bandwidth! Microsoft next gen games will likely require PCs to have ssds of a similar spec to the XSX.
I'm not a game developer and I don't have the answer for what kind of games can come about through the use of PS5's SSD, but someone I do trust in is John Linneman and he says it's the biggest innovation in 20 years and I choose to believe it. He didn't say the same about XSX because MS took a fundamentally different approach and as far as I can see, the only true benefit there is faster load times compared to mechanical harddrives. That's not innovation in the truest sense of the word.

It depends what goals the devs have, i dont think the ps5 will do things that cant be done on xsx.
I totally agree with you here, most things will be possible on XSX that are possible on PS5. It's just the PC and Xbone holding devs back therefore you just won't see them, even though it may be technically feasible.

Its like i need to drive to work everyday, today (current gen) I have a very old honda civic, it does the job but could be a lot better, i have a choice of two new cars (next gen) , a tesla model S (xsx) and a tesla model s p100 (ps5) while the p100 maybe be more fun to drive the model s does every thing i need it too.
I would equate it more to dial up internet (Xbox platform) and broadband(PS5). When everyone had dialup, you got the internet, many great things came from the Internet. It was cheap(using existing phonelines), and yeah, you could download stuff like video to watch at very slow speeds. Even though fast broadband existed in the age of dialup, it didn't make sense for services such as Netflix or Youtube, game streaming to exist because not many people had fast broadband. Probably not many people foresaw what pervasive fast broadband would bring us, but also, a lot of people could feel and sense the potential.

Microsoft next gen games will likely require PCs to have ssds of a similar spec to the XSX.
I can't see MS doing this, because it would likely cause a major backlash in the PC community, but certainly it's something they need to do.


im wary on how radical a difference between a 8gb/s vs 4.8gb/s will be. Especially when we consider the extra 112gb/s additional ram bandwidth on the XsX.
It's just not as simple as 8GB/s vs 4.8GB/s. It's down to fundamentally how the systems were designed, the goals and whole business model surrounding the respective platforms. Once PS5 releases, all SWWS will shift focus to PS5 and develop games solely for PS5 and targeting 8GB/s. All Xbox devs will still be developing games that can run on IO on 100MB/s.
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I really do think the PS5 was planned for 2019 and would be clocked at more reasonable 1800mhz so sony dont have to spend time designing a complex cooling system , despite what cerny says the way the ps5 has been designed sounds counter intuitive, i bet if they went with 44cus @1830mhz the performance would be very similar to what they went with, might even be better because of it being locked.
The only reason i can think why cerny would choose 36cus is price and BC reasons.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Ok to clear out what Mark Cerny is saying here at 10:00

(@ 10:00)



It's this intelligent technique that's been used in Horizon Zero but now it got a massive turbo (5.5GB/s raw speed). It not only works at looking in a direction, but even looking up and down! Watch at 18:15



For in-depth explanation, I advice watching this:




Conclusion: 5.5GB/s RAW, 9-11GB/s compressed IS a game changer.
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I'm not a game developer and I don't have the answer for what kind of games can come about through the use of PS5's SSD, but someone I do trust in is John Linneman and he says it's the biggest innovation in 20 years and I choose to believe it. He didn't say the same about XSX because MS took a fundamentally different approach and as far as I can see, the only true benefit there is faster load times compared to mechanical harddrives. That's not innovation in the truest sense of the word.


I totally agree with you here, most things will be possible on XSX that are possible on PS5. It's just the PC and Xbone holding devs back therefore you just won't see them, even though it may be technically feasible.


I would equate it more to dial up internet (Xbox platform) and broadband(PS5). When everyone had dialup, you got the internet, many great things came from the Internet. It was cheap(using existing phonelines), and yeah, you could download stuff like video to watch at very slow speeds. Even though fast broadband existed in the age of dialup, it didn't make sense for services such as Netflix or Youtube, game streaming to exist because not many people had fast broadband. Probably not many people foresaw what pervasive fast broadband would bring us, but also, a lot of people could feel and sense the potential.


I can't see MS doing this, because it would likely cause a major backlash in the PC community, but certainly it's something they need to do.



It's just not as simple as 8GB/s vs 4.8GB/s. It's down to fundamentally how the systems were designed, the goals and whole business model surrounding the respective platforms. Once PS5 releases, all SWWS will shift focus to PS5 and develop games solely for PS5 and targeting 8GB/s. All Xbox devs will still be developing games that can run on IO on 100MB/s.

Yes I agree cross gen games will be a totally different beast, they will essentially be like high end pc versions on the series X.
Im talking about next gen games, ms is not forcing 3rd parties to put there next gen games on current gen.
I agree that if sony have next gen exclusive games for the ps5 it will def be an advantage.
However i was talking about if the PS5s ssd tech will produce differences. Even if the worst case scenario happens for ms and they can stream 2.5gb per 0.5 secs of gameplay compared to sonys 4gb, ee dont know what that will entail and its not even taking into account the GPU, RAM, CPU and the fact the xsx can run both cpu + and GPU @ max locked frequency.
If a game requires the ps5s gou @ 2.23ghz that means the CPU cant run at 3.5ghz, devs have to pick and choose over max cpu or max gpu, the xsx does not have this problem.

Dont get me wrong what cerny has said about the SSD is very exciting what is annoying though is context in relation the xsx, people are trying to spin this has a huge win or no win at all for the PS5, we simply dont have enough info yet, however the ram,CPU and gpu improvements on the xsx are obvious at this point.
You have some people acting like the numbers dont reflect real world performance while this is true, when the architecture are so similar these raw specs do indicate that the xsx is a step above, this is not the case with the ps5s ssd.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
PS5 1st party games and 3rd party devs who choose to take advantage of PS5 SSD will develop games based on 5.5GB/s of IO throughput. Like Cerny says, you only load into RAM what is needed for 1 second of gameplay. Whereas current gen you need to load 30 seconds into RAM, because the IO is so slow. Therefore in current gen, a lot of the RAM is left unused, filled with 30 seconds of data "just in case". PS5 devs will be streaming that data into memory as you turn the camera in-game, for example. This requires massive, reliably fast IO. And according to many, many people, will lead to revolutionary new game ideas.

What these games will be is unknown right now and the potential is completely untapped and unexplored. There are ideas flying around, but you'd have to assume that some devs will create something amazing with 100x IO throughput.

Now, lets say you're on Xbox and want to develop the same theoretical game that requires this massive IO throughput, you might be able to do it on XSX, but how do you get the game to run on Xbone, which has a HD that's 100x slower? How do you get the game to run on PC where most people have machanical HDs? You don't. You target the lowest common donominator, which is the mechanical hard drive, because everyone needs to be able to run the game. You'd end up just not making that game or at least changing it in such a way that it really just wouldn't be pushing the limits of what the SSD of XSX is capable of... except for loading speed.

XSX will be running prettier version of today's games, but due to being held back by PC and Xbone, we won't see any games pushing that SSD in ways that are impossible on previous gen and PC. Again, except for loading speeds. It'll be faster at loading a game than PC or Xbone. That's it.

Unless MS change their policy of every 1st party game coming to PC and supporting Xbone, you're going to see far more game innovation on Playstation.

Whether you believe having an SSD in PS5 will lead to innovative gaming ideas is open to debate. You maybe don't or won't until you actually see it with your own eyes...
so they won't make any game on the ps5 and the ps4 for the next few years?
 

vpance

Member
Cool comment from a dev on PS5 SSD

What John is saying sounds pretty right to me! I don't want to down play GPU power, but I promise everybody that you will be absolutely blown away by visuals on both consoles. However, the SSDs are the big difference when coming into this gen. We're not talking about "load times" in the classic sense. That's an antiquated way of thinking about data coming from your hard drive. For the last 10+ years we've been streaming worlds on the fly. The problem is that our assets are absolutely huge now, as are our draw distances, and our hard drives can't keep up. It means that as you move through the world we're trying to detect and even predict what assets need loading. Tons of constraints get put into place due to this streaming speed.

An ultra fast drive like the one in PS5 means you could be load in the highest level LOD asset for your models way further than you could before and make worlds any way you want without worry of it streaming in fast enough. The PS5 drive is so fast I imagine you could load up entire neighborhoods in a city with all of their maps at super high resolution in a blink of an eye. It's exciting. People don't realize that this will also affect visuals in a big way. If we can stream in bigger worlds and stream in the highest detail texture maps available, it will just look so much better.

I think the Xbox drive is also good! The PS5 drive is just "dream level" architecture though.
 
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Filippos

Banned
Yes, it's designed to work for Xbox One, and only got resolution, ray tracing, and fps bump. Wait to see 1st party games exclusives for next gen to grasp what's possible, or maybe 3rd party games made exclusively for next gen with NVMe requirement for PC's.

It will run at 4K with rocksolid 120FPS on series X. This is fucking amazing and I’d rather have this as a standard nextgen - or at least 4K@60fps.
Much better than a marginally better looking game with cinematic framerate and blurry resolution.
 

hyperbertha

Member
Yea. He is excited for an SSD. Xbox series X also has an SSD. So he is excited for series x too.
He doesn’t say he is excited for ps5 ssd or PS5 super fast ssd.
Ssd is ssd. This is the most important thing.
Couldn't be more wrong. MS's SSD isn't designed to have instantaneous seek time that ps5 gets thanks to its dedicated DMAC (that has the power of 1 or 2 Zen2 cores) and the I/O coprocessors. Then the ps5 has more than twice Xbox's bandwidth, add to that the compression system (KRAKEN) that gives 9 GB/s throughput post compression and it creates an immense difference. Xbox's SSD is just not designed to work like the ps5's ssd to create a revolutionary shift in game data access.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Who? Sony themselves? I seriously doubt any of their AAA studios will produce games for PS4 anymore once PS5 releases.
did they stop producing ps3 games as soon as the ps4 launched? also didn't they say they were planning to support the ps4 for 10 years?
 
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hyperbertha

Member

My point still stands. Series X doesn't have seek times needed(and quite likely the bandwidth) for instant access of high quality assets. Does it have an SSD? Yes. Does the SSD provide for more efficient use of RAM due to scenes not having to be pre loaded 30 seconds ahead of time? Yes. But will it allow loading of data on a frame by frame basis that actually gives you much higher visual quality? NO based on info currently available.
 

LordKasual

Banned
Kinda.

It does kinda feel more like the PS3 than the PS5 as far as “developers need to think outside the box to maximize the gains” style of programming, instead of just offering a simple brute force option.

They mentioned that the problem of limits and downclocking is going to be minimal. And in alot of ways the SSD IS a brute force option.

Couldn't be more wrong. MS's SSD isn't designed to have instantaneous seek time that ps5 gets thanks to its dedicated DMAC (that has the power of 1 or 2 Zen2 cores) and the I/O coprocessors. Then the ps5 has more than twice Xbox's bandwidth, add to that the compression system (KRAKEN) that gives 9 GB/s throughput post compression and it creates an immense difference. Xbox's SSD is just not designed to work like the ps5's ssd to create a revolutionary shift in game data access.

The Xbox's SSD times are revolutionary too. Just not as good as PS5's. XSX also put work into its SSD technology to remove overheads and provide newer possibilities.

Of course this is yet to be determined, but the solution of streaming data from the PS5 seems to be more elegant than the XSX. Not to say XSX isn't advanced, it's just that Sony clearly threw more at its solution.

While XSX has controllers and tech designed to kind of optimize what's being passed from SSD into RAM, Sony's solution seems to just say "You can get whatever whenever, just take it/dump it, it's so fast the player can't even notice, it doesn't even matter."

So both are going to be crazy, but the extremes in practice have yet to be seen.


Honestly, the REAL revolutionary thing out of this gen is sounding like PS5's focus on 3D Audio. If that actually works out, i can imagine it's going to be something that can really drive experiences over the edge.
 
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They mentioned that the problem of limits and downclocking is going to be minimal. And in alot of ways the SSD IS a brute force option.



The Xbox's SSD times are revolutionary too. Just not as good as PS5's. XSX also put work into its SSD technology to remove overheads and provide newer possibilities.

Of course this is yet to be determined, but the solution of streaming data from the PS5 seems to be more elegant than the XSX. Not to say XSX isn't advanced, it's just that Sony clearly threw more at its solution.

While XSX has controllers and tech designed to kind of optimize what's being passed from SSD into RAM, Sony's solution seems to just say "You can get whatever whenever, just take it/dump it, it's so fast the player can't even notice, it doesn't even matter."

So both are going to be crazy, but the extremes in practice have yet to be seen.


Honestly, the REAL revolutionary thing out of this gen is sounding like PS5's focus on 3D Audio. If that actually works out, i can imagine it's going to be something that can really drive experiences over the edge.

Personally, I’m very excited for the audio performance. It’s a selling point for me.

how many people favor audio over visuals, though?
 

hyperbertha

Member
They mentioned that the problem of limits and downclocking is going to be minimal. And in alot of ways the SSD IS a brute force option.



The Xbox's SSD times are revolutionary too. Just not as good as PS5's. XSX also put work into its SSD technology to remove overheads and provide newer possibilities.

Of course this is yet to be determined, but the solution of streaming data from the PS5 seems to be more elegant than the XSX. Not to say XSX isn't advanced, it's just that Sony clearly threw more at its solution.

While XSX has controllers and tech designed to kind of optimize what's being passed from SSD into RAM, Sony's solution seems to just say "You can get whatever whenever, just take it/dump it, it's so fast the player can't even notice, it doesn't even matter."

So both are going to be crazy, but the extremes in practice have yet to be seen.


Honestly, the REAL revolutionary thing out of this gen is sounding like PS5's focus on 3D Audio. If that actually works out, i can imagine it's going to be something that can really drive experiences over the edge.
Doesn't xbox have 3d Audio too? https://mspoweruser.com/xbox-series-x-audio-hardware-accelerated-3d-audio/
 

Humdinger

Member
Just watched the DF video. That was very good, very helpful in understanding what the SSD can do. If I'm understanding correctly, the fact that it's twice as fast as the Xbox SSD will give Sony's SSD that much more ability to assist in memory operations. That may go some distance to narrowing the raw TF gap.

I was happy to learn about the 3-D audio. I do think audio gets short shrift in games (although I admit I give it short shrift myself by listening through TV speakers). What they are doing sounds innovative. I hope it works. I'll have to invest in a good pair of headphones.

Question about the audio: Since this is a proprietary Sony chip, does that mean that games will need to be designed with this chip in mind, in order to utilize it? If so, how many 3rd party developers do you think will use it? Or will it be only Sony first party studios that take advantage of it?
 
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sendit

Member
Just watched the DF video. That was very good, very helpful in understanding what the SSD can do. If I'm understanding correctly, the fact that it's twice as fast as the Xbox SSD will give Sony's SSD that much more ability to assist in memory operations. That may go some distance to narrowing the raw TF gap.

I was happy to learn about the 3-D audio. I do think audio gets short shrift in games (although I admit I give it short shrift myself by listening through TV speakers). What they are doing sounds innovative. I hope it works. I'll have to invest in a good pair of headphones.

Question about the audio: Since this is a proprietary Sony chip, does that mean that games will need to be designed with this chip in mind, in order to utilize it? If so, how many 3rd party developers do you think will use it? Or will it be only Sony first party studios that take advantage of it?

Yup. If you're looking at this from a pure TF perspective. The type of SSD that Sony is using definitely took a chunk of their price target. Speed over power in this case.
 

LordKasual

Banned
Personally, I’m very excited for the audio performance. It’s a selling point for me.

how many people favor audio over visuals, though?

I dunno, i sure as hell don't.

But them throwing this much energy into making it good has me excited.

I'm very much reminded of HDR, where i didn't care at all until i actually experienced it and it blew me away.


Yeah, but PS5's attention to Audio is about on par with its attention to its SSD, it's looking like it's going to be alot more sophisticated.
 
My point still stands. Series X doesn't have seek times needed(and quite likely the bandwidth) for instant access of high quality assets. Does it have an SSD? Yes. Does the SSD provide for more efficient use of RAM due to scenes not having to be pre loaded 30 seconds ahead of time? Yes. But will it allow loading of data on a frame by frame basis that actually gives you much higher visual quality? NO based on info currently available.

But couldn't MS use Series X SSD to do exactly that type of high quality asset streaming that Sony intends to do with PS5???

I'm lost in all of this...
 
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