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How long will mechanical disks on PC be a bottleneck now consoles have SSD as standard?

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
The idea that you'll see mass adoption of the latest and most expensive NVMe drives (in the multiple millions), that MS will somehow fix overhead issues with Windows on time on the software side, that motherboards will be redesigned and massively adopted and that millions of PC gamers will upgrade en masse and own equivalents of Zen 2 core CPUs and RTX2800s... and that these new rigs will be mainstream at console's launch, in year 1 or even in year 2.... :messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_beaming::messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_savoring: ... ohhh and that they'll come with "consumer friendly pricing"....:messenger_sleeping:

What a pipedream. Here's what's guaranteed: Both Sony/MS will sell as many consoles as they can produce within their first year. (Provided MS releases quality software - has to be noted).

PC gamers will be holding consoles back for at least 1 1/2 year to 2 years until the whole PC manufacturing space starts addressing the bottlenecks and releasing the components at consumer friendly pricing. That is a guaranteed fact. The disbelief is this thread is amusing to say the least but not in the least unexpected.

OP don't worry about the flak. Wear a vest.

Can't wait to see PS5 players blaming pc folks for their upscale 4k and unstable 28 fps while pc rocks native 4k ultra settings in 144 fps.
 
Your will have to spend at least twice the cost of the consoles for the pc to beat them, which some posters repeatedly forget to mention, and until they get the same speed of ssd then this will be a first generation where the pc is not miles ahead at the start.

A Corvette costs more than a Camaro for a reason.

But how can we discuss costs when:

a) PC costs vary on individual builds and are mitigated by several factors after the initial purchase
b) New console prices still haven't been released

PC costs are frankly overblown despite the initial investment being high. Figuring out costs, I've actually saved money since ditching the Xbox and PlayStation consoles despite spending a lot on my PC. I can sell old parts, I've saved a ton of money on games, I don't have to pay for online and I would have a PC for other things regardless so I can factor that cost in. I've also been playing games at max settings at 4K/60fps for years while even the 1.5 consoles struggled with mid-low settings at 1440p/30fps. My PC build did initially cost more than the combined price of the Xbox one, Xbox One X, PS4, and PS4 Pro, but I've had more than twice the performance and infinitely more utility as a result the entire gen and will continue to do so moving forward. The longer I stick to PC the less the initial cost matters.

Current PCIe 3.0 motherboards cap at 4 GB/s and NVMe SSD prices are pretty close to SATA SSD pricing. PCIe 4.0 motherboards are already on the market and can handle up to 8 GB/s which is actually closing in on the 8-9 GB/s PS5 compressed transfer speed figure shown. PCIe 5.0 is the current PCIe standard and will offer up to 16GB/s which far exceeds the console speeds on top of the vast difference in system ram. PCIe 5.0 will be available in 2021 with Zen 4 according to AMD's roadmap. Now also consider that PCs are also capable of using compression techniques when moving data to and from the SSD.

As for SSDs themselves, there are already several PCIe 4.0 NVME drives that can reach 5.0 GB/s on the market like the Sabrent Rocket, the Gigabyte Aorus and the Corsair MP600 SSDs. The Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 drive is likely releasing before the PS5. It's a 6.5 GB/s drive and it's most likely still not going to be the fastest NVMe drive on the market when the new consoles arrive as Sabrent is targeting a higher number than the 980 Pro. These may both be available to install in PCs before the new consoles launch.

So at the console launch, a new gaming PC will have available: PCIe 4.0motherboards, 6.5 GB/s + Gen4 SSDs, the 2080ti (or possibly the 3080) and access to as much as 256 GB of DDR4 by regular users. EDIT- (In 2021, not by 2021) In 2021 PCs will have access to PCIe 5.0 motherboards, 8.0 GB/s PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and possibly faster PCIe 5.0 drives, and the 3080ti assuming they gap it's release from the 3080's release date.

It's going to be an exciting year for the gaming hobby either way.
 
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Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I just wonder how long it will be before mechanical drives become a thing of the past........like, as in they won't even bother to really sell them anymore. I know there are a lot of factors involved before they can be phased out completely.....like SSD's reaching the higher GB's that mechanical drives can without being priced in the stratosphere for one thing. But still, computer tech ages in dog years. So....what? Mechanical HDD's have like a couple more years? Five years? A decade? Or will they not go away for a much longer time?
A long ass time. Even tape storage hasn't gone away yet.
 
Can't wait to see PS5 players blaming pc folks for their upscale 4k and unstable 28 fps while pc rocks native 4k ultra settings in 144 fps.

I'm already blaming Samsung cause my SSD, while fast, can't load games instantly or in few seconds, or stream high quality assets just as fast as a PS5. I wonder why they have to be scaled down to deal with the bottlenecks of my current rig. I'm also blaming Samsung, Intel, AMD and Asrock for forcing me to buy a PS5 to truly enjoy next gen experiences cause it damn well can't be found on multiplats. And when I say forced, I say it because I'm dam well sure I won't be port begging for Sony exclusives for 5 years on end.
 
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I'm already blaming Samsung cause my SSD, while fast, can't load games instantly or in few seconds, or stream high quality assets just as fast as a PS5. I wonder why they have to be scaled down to deal with the bottlenecks of my current rig. I'm also blaming Samsung, Intel, AMD and Asrock for forcing me to buy a PS5 to truly enjoy next gen experiences cause it damn well can't be found on multiplats. And when I say forced, I say it because I'm dam well sure I won't be port begging for Sony exclusives for 5 years on end.
What a complete dork.
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
I haven't seen posts like this since that brief period between when the Xbox360/PS3 launched and the release of the 8800GT

3080TI "It's over PS5 I have the high ground(clocks)"

PS5 "You underestimate my SSD speeds"
 

Portugeezer

Member
I expect a lot of gamers don't mind upgrading to SSD, some have already, but I do wonder what the lowest required speeds will be for multiplatform games.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
You'll never get a definitive answer because no one has it. The only ones capable of giving an answer are Valve (through Steam) and Epic (through the Epic's game store) by profiling the rigs of their consumers. Do they profile their consumers? Will they ever profile their consumers? Will they ever release the data and make it public? Prob not.

But it's only them who can give a clear picture as to what a mainstream PC rig looks like today (components wise) and what variation in components is seen year to year, and how many of them there are (in millions). I don't think they're in the least interested in doing that.

We can't even go by sale numbers of components from manufacturers because we know for a fact that many rigs with quality and expensive components are not used for gaming all at... but instead for video editing, professional/youtube etc or bitcoin mining or the infinite other uses a PC has.
You do realize Valve has been doing hardware surveys for years right?
 
You do realize Valve has been doing hardware surveys for years right?

It's not comprehensive. I said profiling, not optional surveys a user has to buy into - which I myself have been asked and opted out - like probably the overwhelming majority because people don't like been snooped on. Not to mention, even with that sample base data you're not getting the numbers condensed to make a meaningful reconstruction of what a "mainstream rig" is components wise and you'll lose a lot of veracity if you try to extrapolate to millions of rigs. After all, a rig is as weak as the weakest link in the chain - be that a CPU, RAM, Storage/ I/O(new) or GPU mismatch - for comparison purposes to a console obviously.
 
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Orta

Banned
I'm already blaming Samsung cause my SSD, while fast, can't load games instantly or in few seconds, or stream high quality assets just as fast as a PS5. I wonder why they have to be scaled down to deal with the bottlenecks of my current rig. I'm also blaming Samsung, Intel, AMD and Asrock for forcing me to buy a PS5 to truly enjoy next gen experiences cause it damn well can't be found on multiplats. And when I say forced, I say it because I'm dam well sure I won't be port begging for Sony exclusives for 5 years on end.

Well you enjoy your PS5 then because frankly, I doubt if your average PC gamer gives a single solitary flying fuck about you or your little Sony box :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
Using that data gets you nowhere. If for trolling purposes we were to use it, as limited as it's, it clearly shows PC gamers are not in the least ready for next gen and upgrading will have to be massive. Thus reinforcing the whole point of the thread.... are they the lowest common denominator going next gen? Outside the 1%rs Yes.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
That's at least a good starting point.
16 GB RAM is most popular.
Nothing about SSD/HDD though...
Yeah, probably because it never mattered until now so they didn't bother specifying.
One interesting part of the survey that "could" be an indicator is that "250 GB to 499 GB" total storage space is seeing a growth as big as +1TB ones (while 500GB to 999GB are either stagnated or dropping). Currently, the SSDs with the biggest cost-benefit tend to be around that storage capacity. Also, buying HDDs with any less storage than 500GB isn't worthwhile so it wouldn't make sense to see a rise on those numbers without considering SSDs.
 
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RedVIper

Banned
i hope developers just straight up cut off support for HDD so that absolute minimum requirements are nvme SSD drives with 2GB/s or above which would also kill off the pathetic SATA3 SSD drives which only have like 500-600MB/s.

What, why, most games don't need an SSD.
 

Hinedorf

Banned
Using that data gets you nowhere. If for trolling purposes we were to use it, as limited as it's, it clearly shows PC gamers are not in the least ready for next gen and upgrading will have to be massive. Thus reinforcing the whole point of the thread.... are they the lowest common denominator going next gen? Outside the 1%rs Yes.


PC upgrading is always meant to be massive, my new rig just ran under 3500, not only am I ready for the next generation but I'm going to bend it over and fuck it's brains out.

It's a totally ignorant thing to compare a PC consumer to a Console consumer, it's more or less like comparing a smart person to a dumb one. Consoles have and will always be the low budget level of video gaming, anybody who's committed to high quality PC gaming assumes the increased cost or they ask their parents to buy them a console.
 
PC upgrading is always meant to be massive, my new rig just ran under 3500, not only am I ready for the next generation but I'm going to bend it over and fuck it's brains out.

It's a totally ignorant thing to compare a PC consumer to a Console consumer, it's more or less like comparing a smart person to a dumb one. Consoles have and will always be the low budget level of video gaming, anybody who's committed to high quality PC gaming assumes the increased cost or they ask their parents to buy them a console.

If you're not representative of the larger share of gaming consumers on PC as a 1%er, and operate under the assumption that you represent a majority then your voice has the worth of a copper nickle broken into five pieces and melted - at least as it regards to this topic.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
PC upgrading is always meant to be massive, my new rig just ran under 3500, not only am I ready for the next generation but I'm going to bend it over and fuck it's brains out.

It's a totally ignorant thing to compare a PC consumer to a Console consumer, it's more or less like comparing a smart person to a dumb one. Consoles have and will always be the low budget level of video gaming, anybody who's committed to high quality PC gaming assumes the increased cost or they ask their parents to buy them a console.
Don't bother discussing with him. I considered doing it myself but its impossible to argue with someone who denies stuff you see in basic statistic courses as if it were the natural thing to do.
 
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DiegoAndrad

Member
l1MvV6Y.png


Considering that cross-gen games are a significant proportion of the releases during the first 3 years of a new generation, I can't see how PCs are going to be a bottleneck. And by 2023 I expect that SSDs will be the norm among PC gamers.
 
Don't bother discussing with him. I considered doing it myself but its impossible to argue with someone who denies stuff you see in basic statistic courses as if it were the natural thing to do.

Talk is big, walking the walk is another. I could troll using that data (you know, cause you can't deny statistics). It's ripe for the picking and only reinforces my claims and educated guesses but I'm not.
 
So what? He's not wrong, PCs will be the lowest common denominator while devs don't demand M.2 NVME drives as minimum requirements for their games.
I feel like my point was already made in my post. I said that a constantly evolving platform can't be defines as a solid base anchor point.
Also it was no attack on him but I shared my stance, no reason to go "so what?" defensively.
 

njean777

Member
I'm already blaming Samsung cause my SSD, while fast, can't load games instantly or in few seconds, or stream high quality assets just as fast as a PS5. I wonder why they have to be scaled down to deal with the bottlenecks of my current rig. I'm also blaming Samsung, Intel, AMD and Asrock for forcing me to buy a PS5 to truly enjoy next gen experiences cause it damn well can't be found on multiplats. And when I say forced, I say it because I'm dam well sure I won't be port begging for Sony exclusives for 5 years on end.

you really drank the sauce, or you are trolling. There is absolutely no way someone can be this ignorant about technology.
 
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Go ahead. Trust me it'll be pretty entertaining for me no matter what you try to come up with.

You're not too bright. The bait goes both ways. I'm going to make it easy for you, lets pick the Xbox Series X (cause the PS5 I/O solution is too much to handle for the master race atm). Lets pick the Series X as the baseline - because it's the console that's is the easiest and most likely to be emulated by a PC gaming rig pound for pound (in the future of course).

What are the components that you'll need to buy? Motherboard, CPU, PSU, RAM, NVMe Drive (without paying attention to the inherent disadvantage you'll get regardless by using a PC and all its overhead), GPU. We have to create caveats for this to even work.

Now that you've come up with the comprehensive list of equivalent parts - list them. Tip: just google it.

Ok, now go back to that optional survey data compiled from Steam that you posted that is no way representative of the PC gaming rigs out there, (not even their own users) and find out the percentage of users that already own each of the components. Surprised with results? I bet.... now extrapolate with a wild guess the incremental change you'll see in those numbers in 2021 and 2022, taking into account price etc. Those guesses will be indeed wild.

Now e-mail Steam and ask them that they create a survey or simple profile those that opt in and report data on users that have rigs that have at least all of those equivelant components making up their rig. How many? How many have all of those components with some of components of higher performance? Because again what good does it do knowing only 3% of users own an RTX 2080 when they may be pairing that with 8 gigs of Ram, an HDD or a lower spec CPU (instead of equivalent). The numbers shall be not in the least extremely surprising for some.

Do that work and prove I'm ignorant. Don't come up with a spin. That'll just be poor play.
 
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Bogey

Banned
I wouldn't worry too much about that.

The new consoles release.. End of this year?
In all likelihood, it'll take at the very least another year from then until major releases stop targeting cross gen. So we're probably looking at something like early 2022 or later until a significant number of games would realistically leverage SSDs for anything other than just shorter loading times.

That's plenty of time to do a fairly minor and cheap upgrade for pc gamers (I recently bought a 1tb nvme ssd for less than 100 bucks).

Sure, not everyone will do such an upgrade - but I'm guessing the vast majority of those folks won't have a gpu or CPU expensive/capable enough for next gen games anyway then.
 

Lupin3

Targeting terrorists with a D-Pad
I can't even remember the last time I had a mechanical drive in my computer. It's been cluttered with SSD's for years.

What is this thread?
 
Considering that cross-gen games are a significant proportion of the releases during the first 3 years of a new generation, I can't see how PCs are going to be a bottleneck. And by 2023 I expect that SSDs will be the norm among PC gamers.

The discussion is whether they'll be the lowest common denominator. We can make a good educated guess that by 2021 there will be roughly at least 10 million next gen consoles (PS5/XSX) in consumer hands. If there are only 1 million PC gamers who have rigs of equivalent power and speed, and the overwhelming majority are still stuck with GTX 1060's or a combination of components that slow their rigs (bottleneck, that be CPU, or RAM, or the SSD) that means that third party developers will be slower in releasing next-gen only titles and that those next-gen titles will take full advantage of next-gen console advances. That's is the essence of holding back and being the lowest common denominator.
 
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I can't even remember the last time I had a mechanical drive in my computer. It's been cluttered with SSD's for years.

What is this thread?
You are enough into the hobby that you frequent a gaming forum. There are tons of people with HDDs. Just like a lot of people here have 2080tis and shit, but the average person doesn't. Hell, I think the 970 dominates the steam hardware survey. Enthusiast forums aren't representative of the general population.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
You're not too bright. The bait goes both ways. I'm going to make it easy for you, lets pick the Xbox Series X (cause the PS5 I/O solution is too much to handle for the master race atm). Lets pick the Series X as the baseline - because it's the console that's is the easiest and most likely to be emulated by a PC gaming rig pound for pound (in the future of course).

What are the components that you'll need to buy? Motherboard, CPU, PSU, RAM, NVMe Drive (without paying attention to the inherent disadvantage you'll get regardless by using a PC and all its overhead), GPU. We have to create caveats for this to even work.

Now that you've come up with the comprehensive list of equivalent parts - list them. Tip: just google it.

Ok, now go back to that optional survey data compiled from Steam that you posted that is no way representative of the PC gaming rigs out there, (not even their own users) and find out the percentage of users that already own each of the components. Surprised with results? I bet.... now extrapolate with a wild guess the incremental change you'll see in those numbers in 2021 and 2022, taking into account price etc. Those guesses will be indeed wild.

Now e-mail Steam and ask them that they create a survey or simple profile those that opt in and report data on users that have rigs that have at least all of those equivelant components making up their rig. How many? How many have all of those components with some of components of higher performance? Because again what good does it do knowing only 3% of users own an RTX 2080 when they may be pairing that with 8 gigs of Ram, an HDD or a lower spec CPU (instead of equivalent). The numbers shall be not in the least extremely surprising for some.

Do that work and prove I'm ignorant. Don't come up with a spin. That'll just be poor play.
Ray tracing ready cards:
+12% users

+16GB RAM
+45% users

1TB storage spaces (similar price as some cost-beneficial SSDs)
50% users

Thats all before new gen even went in, or games utilize new tech properly at all. Also:
"How many have all of those components with some of components of higher performance?",
Answer: +12%.
Because people who build PCs with $300 to $500 videocards will also include other high-end components.
Of course, you can just assume a person who bought an expensive RTX series decided to put only 4GB or RAM or some ultra slow CPU... for some reason. I'll let others decide the likeness of that scenario.
 
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Ray tracing ready cards:
+12% users

+16GB RAM
+45% users

1TB storage spaces (similar price as some cost-beneficial SSDs)
50% users

Thats all before new gen even went in, or games utilize new tech properly at all. Also:
"How many have all of those components with some of components of higher performance?",
Answer: +12%.
Because people who build PCs with $300 to $500 videocards will also include other high-end components.
Of course, you can just assume a person who bought a expensive RTX series card decided to just put only 4GB or RAM or some ultra slow CPU, but i'll let others decide the likeness of that scenario.

I said of equivalent parts, don't just throw numbers out there so we have to manually and incorrectly guess how you're coming up with the numbers and what parts you're bundling together. I gave a clear baseline, the Xbox Series X. Anything that dips below it, will be by definition - holding back. As for the extrapolation guesses of future adoption - do use the historical percentage changes shown in that very flawed data to at least pretend to stay true to it.... otherwise we would just be bulltshitting for the sake of it.
 
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prag16

Banned
Yawn. I feel like this discussion happens every time we're on the doorstep of new consoles. Even with the PS4 to some extent (though not as much as usual) because ZOMG 8GB GDDR5.

PS5 and XSX sound like nice boxes for the likely price. Very nice even. But don't fall for the marketing bullshit.
 

DiegoAndrad

Member
The discussion is whether they'll be the lowest common denominator. We can make a good educated guess that by 2021 there will be roughly at least 10 million next gen consoles (PS5/XSX) in consumer hands. If there are only 1 million PC gamers who have rigs of equivalent power and speed, and the overwhelming majority are still stuck with GTX 1060's or a combination of components that slow their rigs (bottleneck, that be CPU, or RAM, or the SSD) that means that third party developers will be slower in releasing next-gen only titles and that those next-gen titles will take full advantage of next-gen console advances. That's is the essence of holding back and being the lowest common denominator.

You think they will continue to support HDDs by the time next-gen only games are the norm? I don't think so, I believe next-gen only games will require an SSD to run on PC. As for the other components, they will also be cheaper by then.
 

Lupin3

Targeting terrorists with a D-Pad
You are enough into the hobby that you frequent a gaming forum. There are tons of people with HDDs. Just like a lot of people here have 2080tis and shit, but the average person doesn't. Hell, I think the 970 dominates the steam hardware survey. Enthusiast forums aren't representative of the general population.

I was actually rocking a 970 until a year ago or so, but I left HDD's behind long before that. Couldn't stand the downside of mechanical drives. I'm not saying anything about the average joe (although I'm one of them) and his/her drive setup, but the OP is just way out there.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
I said of equivalent parts, don't just throw numbers out there so we have to manually and incorrectly guess how you're coming up with the numbers and what parts you're bundling together. I gave a clear baseline, the Xbox Series X. Anything that dips below it, will be by definition - holding back. As for the extrapolation guesses of future adoption - do use the historical percentage changes shown in that very flawed data to at least pretend to stay true to it.... otherwise we would just be bulltshitting for the sake of it.
Eh, thats not really how it works though.
If you have an SSD + good amount of RAM + Ray Tracing ready card you're already ticking all the boxes for next gen tech. If it dips slightly below it, say, from a RTX 2080 to a RTX 2070 or a RTX 2060, its not too hard to compensate by lowering things like resolutions, targeted frame-rates, etc. Its not really holding back anything since its pretty simple stuff to do.
 
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Eh, thats not really how it works though.
If you have an SSD + good amount of RAM + Ray Tracing ready card you're already ticking all the boxes for next gen tech. If it dips slightly below it, say, from a RTX 2080 to a RTX 2070 or a RTX 2060, its not too hard to compensate by lowering things like resolutions, targeted frame-rates, etc. Its not really holding back anything since its pretty simple stuff to do.

Wait up wait up... we can't just conveniently redefine terms when it suits us in the argument - and we know how the term has been used historically: firm. If you have a GTX 1060, with an i7 CPU you're, as a PC user, being held back by consoles. Of course you can downscale to a Jaguar PS4. That all of the sudden doesn't make the PS4 equivalent hardware. I can be fair to admit there are degrees to this but it's a slippery slope and debatable how far you can drawback the slider. Thus to stay true, it's better not to dwell into that. Not that it makes any significant difference in the argument - the stats are still horrible with million of caveats to help you out......... but still, we gotta keep frosty.

That's why you gotta open up how you came up with those numbers and what cards you're using. You can mislead with statistics in billions of ways... anyone that studied statistics in college knows it. By now you know you're in a pinch.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
I said of equivalent parts, don't just throw numbers out there so we have to manually and incorrectly guess how you're coming up with the numbers and what parts you're bundling together. I gave a clear baseline, the Xbox Series X. Anything that dips below it, will be by definition - holding back. As for the extrapolation guesses of future adoption - do use the historical percentage changes shown in that very flawed data to at least pretend to stay true to it.... otherwise we would just be bulltshitting for the sake of it.

People aint running 4k on PC.

Same for streaming, why bother streaming in 8x or how much they had 8k textures on PC? when u sit at 1080p resolution? Boom requirements go down massively. Now imagine physx running on the GPU intead of the CPU and more memory and v-ram already today with less overhead then consoles and disabling raytracing if that game uses it and boom performance skyrockets.

PC aint holding back anything. These consoles murder themselves entirely on there 4k gimmick.

We also don't know what next gpu's bring, could very well be that next nvidia gpu's have far faster raytracing even on there budget chips then those rdna2 chips on consoles, current rumor is that even the budget gpu out of the series is having faster then 2080ti raytrace performance, then ai upscaling etc with it. Yea i don't see much bottleneck on PC going on this front.

Then we didn't even talk about high end PC gamers right now.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
Wait up wait up... we can't just conveniently redefine terms when it suits us in the argument - and we know how the term has been used historically: firm. If you have a GTX 1060, with an i7 CPU you're, as a PC user, being held back by consoles. Of course you can downscale to a Jaguar PS4. That all of the sudden doesn't make the PS4 equivalent hardware. I can be fair to admit there are degrees to this but it's a slippery slope and debatable how far you can drawback the slider. Thus to stay true, it's better not to dwell into that. Not that it makes any significant difference in the argument - the stats are still horrible with million of caveats to help you out......... but still, we gotta keep frosty.

That's why you gotta open up how you came up with those numbers and what cards you're using. You can mislead with statistics in billions of ways... anyone that studied statistics in college knows it. By now you know you're in a pinch.
I mean, you can drawback from a RTX 2080 to a RTX 2060 without much issue though...
If you wanna know where the numbers come from, i simply took all the users with RT ready cards from that totally unreliable survey, done by those people with probably absolutely no knowledge on statistics studies, that work for that very obscure platform who obviously didn't even plan to use that certainly false data for their purposes.
 
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I own a PC with a SSD and a PS4 Pro with a SSD more expensive than it. The delusion of some PC gamers is funny. Apparently all SSDs are the same.
 
I guess it falls on to me to do it – some people just can’t be honest with themselves. We’ll be using the Xbox Series X as baseline hardware (aka minimum reqs) because it’s the easiest to emulate with off-the-shelf PC parts. Here’s what that limited, opt-in only survey as of May 2020 tells us.

Steam Survey - click here.

And before you ask why not use Sony’s PS5 as baseline? Because Sony’s nontraditional use of clocks, + the custom hardware and super charged I/O and SSD make sustained performance as a whole unpredictable and unknown. Now you can strongly believe and think adding a component here or there could make a significant statistical difference but as you’ll eventually conclude after reading the walls of text below, it does not in the slightest.

Anyway, minimum reqs are a package of components that must all be present in a configuration so that we can properly match performance to fixed console hardware. Example: You can’t have an equivalent performing CPU, GPU, and RAM but be missing an NVMe Drive yet claim an old Sata SSD is equivalent as a data streamer. It doesn’t work that way. Only components that provide equal or higher performance can only be taken taking into account. Components that are close to equivalent but provide lesser performance are in effect underperforming and thus defacto holding back the baseline hardware (The Xbox Series X).

Lets start:

GPU:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER – 1.34%(gift)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 – 1.72% (gift)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 – 0.95% - baseline (MSRP: $800)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 ti – 0.79%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER – 0.55%

Total: 5.35% of PC Gaming users surveyed are comfortably ready for next gen GPU Wise.

Thus we can conclude that 94% of PC gaming users surveyed do NOT have a capable and equivalent GPU to match the next-gen baseline. In other words, 94% of those surveyed will have to upgrade by November 2020, in 2021 or in 2022 or be left in the dust, and it won’t be cheap, not even with “discounts”.

Now don’t be surprised at these numbers and the numbers that will follow for other components because the price for those cards tell you everything and ALL you need to know about why adoption is so low. Feel free to google.

CPU (gift) :

As for CPU’s; we don’t have individual data for specific components but instead generalized data on cores and frequencies used which gives us literally nothing to work with. Even using blindly the flawed metric (as presented) tells us that the majority are woefully not ready. There is too much variation in performance within that data that makes it impossible for us to speculate the potential amount of AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (baseline - around $270) and Intel Core i5-9600k users within that survey.

Thus the only thing I can do to help the argument of the opposing view is to equate the same percentage of GPU equivalent adoption with CPU equivalent adoption.

In short: 6% are ready. I’m doing this as a helpful gift and not giving any thought to conventional wisdom which tell us that PC gamers cycle and upgrade GPU’s at a faster rate than CPU’s (because it’s less costly – and doesn’t require a motherboard upgrade). In other words, in all likelihood, if we had the numbers, next-gen ready, baseline matching CPU percentages would be lower than GPU percentages. Considering the mainstay of all old graphic card like GTX 1060 (and lower), most PC gamers are probably running on a CPU released around the same time (2016-2017-2018).

Thus we come to the conclusion that out of that survey, 94% of PC gaming users DO NOT have a capable and equivalent CPU.

Storage/ I/O:

Ohh boy….

Now the big question: How many PC gamers today own an NVMe 4.0 SSD? The answer to that is obvious: extremely, extremely few. Of those, how many own one that can push an I/O throughput of 2.4GB Raw/4.8 GBs compressed?

The closest on the market is a Sabrent 1TB NVMe 4.0 at $200.

How many PC gamers, even if they wanted and had the money to acquire said NVMe SSD would not only have to contend with the upgrade of a new SSD but also a new motherboard because it’s not ready to support it (due to slot space or bottlenecked architecture etc)? Thus the problem here is an avalanche of compounding costs (not cheap at all).

Now you ask, how in hell did you come up with the idea that few PC gamers have an NVMe 4.0 capable set up? Same rationale as with the lack of concise data for a CPU. By looking at the GPU usage data, we can extrapolate the date and motherboards in use for the overwhelming majority of users (90-94% or so). We just then use the date of the new NVMe 4.0 SSDs released in the market and it all falls into place.

So we’re in the same position as with the CPU here. Just that in this case, the adoption rate to an equivalent SSD can be safely speculated to be even lower.

There is no velocity architecture at work here either. As for the PS5, well let just say it’s better not to dwell on that beast as initially prefaced.

In short: PC gamers are ABSOLUTELY not ready on the SSD front given this survey. Any SSD won't do for the sake of the argument.

RAM:

RAM paints a better picture for the opposing view.

16 GBs of RAM or better can be found in 48% of user rigs surveyed (with 7.7% of that 48% being above). However we all know the devil is always in the details and not all RAM is equal. We do not get data on clock frequency unfortunately. It’s safe to say however, that out of that 48%, a number of the users surveyed are running with lower frequency RAM compared to the baseline (XSX).

This is the least costly area of an upgrade process, ranging from $50-100 to get equivalence.

Thus, between 52 -60% of those users surveyed have, in some way or another, a need to upgrade their RAM to get up to par.

MOTHERBOARD:

This is where it all falls apart for that survey. There is no data here.

What we know for sure is that given the need for 90-94% or so of the users surveyed to at least have a need for an upgrade; more than likely it will require a new motherboard (especially if the CPU is your problem or if it’s a combination of components).

To get to an equivalent for the Series X, using AMD Ryzen 7 boards as the baseline this can range between $120 (good luck) - $450 and above for enthusiast models.

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There are obviously other costs like a PC case, fans etc that bump the price up. In short, if you want to be next gen ready, you should probably have saved that stimulus check, and beg the turtle Mitch McConnell to approve another one. Frankly, just buy a god damn console.

Conclusions:

Based on this limited data, as of May of 2020, of a limited - opt in survey (of which we have no idea how many participants took part) tells us that PC Gamers are woefully unprepared to sit on November 2020 at the same table with future next-gen console owners. Using the slow variation in upgrade % for components in this data tells us that PC gamers upgrade at a constant but extremely snail-like pace (0.3%-2%) - progressively, and not drastically in jumps. PC users do not behave like console users on the cusp of a new generation who buy-in and rush en masse to adopt hardware.

Even if we were to be generous by doubling, or tripling the rate of percentage change (upgrades) on PC (due to incentive of new minimum reqs by devs); it still would be too low a number, too slow to outpace, match, or keep within striking distance next-gen console adoption. Not mention, it’s consoles who are dragging PC gaming forward, and not the other way around. Why the snail pace? PC gaming is becoming prohibitively expensive.

Making the educated guess that by the end of 2021 there will be roughly at least 10 million next-gen consoles (in user hands) tells us that PC users for at least the very the first year of this next gen cycle will be, without a doubt, holding back console hardware and its advances – and are defacto, the lowest common denominator. This is all the result of the quality of hardware that’s shipping with next gen consoles, the custom chips that help achieve optimal performance by removing bottlenecks and the consumer friendly pricing to be expected (or in other words, the high cost PC users will face when upgrading to an equivalent set-up).

Now of course I wasn't a proponent of using this data, as I think it's devoid of details, and too limited in sample size. For us to have truly representative data, Steam would have to profile every concurrent PC gamer in the span of 1 fiscal year, release yearly data, be detailed components wise, and must do this through data mining not as an opt-in survey but as part of Steams TOS (to include as much data as possible).

Now of course there will be those who will still be myopic about reality and come in and claim that they spent 3k on their rig, have a ferrari parked outside their homes and that they’ll smoke consoles, barbeque them etc…. that’s a cool story and all but you know there’s the door out…

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Paracelsus

Member

Great post, wait until real world performance because every time they say you need a $4000 pc and every time you need something like a 3060 to stomp consoleS.
Last gen you could do better than both PS4 and PS4 Pro with 750ti and 1060/1070.
Wait until a 3600x and a 3060/3060S + generic ass SSD outperforms both machines.
 
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Larryfox

Member
From my limited understanding of the SSD in series X and ps5 that just slapping a SSD in the Pc will still be a problem, because of the custom hardware in the next gen consoles that take away the bottlenecks.
 
Great post, wait until real world performance because every time they say you need a $4000 pc and every time you need something like a 3060 to stomp consoleS.
Last gen you could do better than both PS4 and PS4 Pro with 750ti and 1060/1070.
Wait until a 3600x and a 3060/3060S + generic ass SSD outperforms both machines.

I don't think it will require anywhere near that much and that is obvious exaggeration that people make for platform war purposes but, ideally, we're looking at $1k for the majority, which is still hella expensive, specially in this economy. I still remember I built my rig in 2016 and it cost me $650, to match and beat slightly a PS4. Today, prices are crazy.
 
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Yoboman

Member
Can't they just make SSDs a recommended spec and any without it are subject to longer loads, downgraded visuals etc
 
What a nothingburger. Any PC worth its salt in 2020 has an SSD. Hell, I was a HDD holdout for a long time (and I still put most of my games on a 4TB HDD...it's just more economical), but even I bit the bullet and got an SSD a while ago.

Nice bait though.
 

Degree

Banned
Can't they just make SSDs a recommended spec and any without it are subject to longer loads, downgraded visuals etc

of course. And that is what they are going to do.
Then Developers will build their games around those minimum PC SSDs/IO.
then the games will have shorter loading times on XSX and PS5. And that’s it.
 
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