Support NeoGAF

[Sosokrates]

Series S doesn't have one either, but what a remarkable little machine it is at 299

PS5 DE at 399? nahhh

PS5 DE does not have gamepass.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Tim Sweeney Explains Exactly Why the PS5’s SSD and I/O Architecture Is Way More Efficient Than PC’s
Systems integration and whole-system performance. Bringing in data from high-bandwidth storage into video memory in its native format with hardware decompression is very efficient. The software and hardware stack go to great lengths to minimize latency and maximize the bandwidth that's actually accessible by games.

Those PC numbers are theoretical and are from drive into kernel memory. From there, it's a slow and circuitous journey through software decompression to GPU driver swizzling into video memory where you can eventually use it. The PS5 path for this is several times more efficient. And then there's latency.

On PC, there's a lot of layering and overhead. Then you have the issue of getting compressed textures into video memory requires reading into RAM, software decompressing, then calling into a GPU driver to transfer and swizzle them, with numerous kernel transitions throughout.


Even Nvidia and Microsoft with RTX IO and Direct X Storage realized this.

Difference with the PS5 is it has dedicated hardware for decompression.

I don't get why both of you spread misinformation for no reason.

Read the context of my posts before replying with (for this discussion useless) general information and claiming I spread misinformation.

 

[Elog]

300 mb/s was confirmed to DF for the Matrix demo. For the 2020 demo, we have the PC version which rarely exceeds even 200 mb/s. There have also been statements saying that Nanite generally doesn't use that much bandwidth, which one could basically consider a feature of it.

We are primarily talking textures streaming requirements to the VRAM pool though which that comment does not cover. I have not seen anyone actually trying to gauge what the peak SSD->VRAM texture stream requirement is when moving fast and to what extent that is rate limiting for frame rate when for example moving fast through the city scape.

Just to highlight why I challenge your statement. The number you provide gives the false impression that we are close to diminishing returns on VRAM pool size,SSD latency and SSD speeds - the complete opposite is the truth.

If you do a real-time render outside of games 1 NPC might have around 100 textures in total. At 4 K texture resolution this represents 10 GB of uncompressed texture data - and that is one NPC. Imagine doing a real time render of the famous Star Wars bar scene where every person looks completely different from the next. The texture pool required for that render at high-resolution is obscene.

We are not even close to diminishing returns in terms of texture quality. The hardware requirements to fairly consistently use high-resolution textures are very high in a complex environment and even moderate improvements will provide significant visual upgrades.

 

[Heisenberg007]

PS5 DE does not have gamepass.

Oh yes, there it is. Because we were talking about subscription services, not the performance : price parity of consoles in this thread

 

[Three Jackdaws]

300 mb/s was confirmed to DF for the Matrix demo. For the 2020 demo, we have the PC version which rarely exceeds even 200 mb/s. There have also been statements saying that Nanite generally doesn't use that much bandwidth, which one could basically consider a feature of it.

Source for this? Seem's like Epic themselves are confused on how the PS5 demo was developed and optimised and whether or not it relied on the high bandwidth of the PS5's SSD, otherwise they wouldn't have said the following:

"You could render a version of this [demo on a system with an HDD], it would just be a lot lower detail," said Tim Sweeney.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fast-ssd...-unreal-engine-5-demos-super-detailed-scenes/

"So Nanite enabled the artist to build a scene with geometric complexity that would have been impossible before. there are tens of billions of triangles in that scene and we simply couldn't have them all in memory at once so what end up doing is streaming in triangles as the camera is moving through the environment, and the I/O capabilities of the PS5 are one the key hardware features that enable us to achieve that level of realism".

This quote was taken from Epic's VP of Engineering Nick Penwarden in his interview with Geoff Keighly.

Here's another interview with Epic's Brian Karris, Penwarden and Sweeney where they cover SSD's extensively and how it is critical going into the next-generation of gaming. I recommend giving it a read.

"We're able to show the difference from what's possible today with what's possible tomorrow": Inside Epic's Unreal Engine 5

Edge speaks to the wizards behind Epic Games' next-generation game engine

www.gamesradar.com

 

[lepermessiah]

The point is that it is more complex than that as well.

Take the example that the UE5 utilises the CPU through nanite for each frame. This principle also applies if you use procedurally generated graphics (e.g. clouds, water etc). The CPU calculation output ends up in the CPU cache.

On a PC this output then needs to be moved/copied to the VRAM to be accessible by the GPU. The calculation as such is mostly not even close to the CPU performance limit so the bottle-neck is the transfer of the information to the GPU for utilisation.

On consoles this is much faster since the CPU is on the same piece of silicon as the GPU. However, from what we can assess there is an important difference between the XSX and the PS5 here. On the XSX the CPU cache is not addressable by the GPU so the CPU output needs to me moved/copied to the GPU cache to be utilised while on the PS5 the GPU can (seemingly) utilise information directly in the CPU cache.

The point is that the I/O pieces are critically important but does not make for easy marketing outside of performance benchmarks.

It'd be easy to market if we all started screaming I/O master-race because, well, it's literally unavailable tech elsewhere. What else has that Kraken compression hardware? Right, nothing else.

I/O master-race bebe.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Did he? Source?

I am not sure he is being serious anyways, at this point we are pretending not to differentiate latency and throughput (how Sony’s solution is perhaps meant to address the former as much if not even more so than the latter) or how transparent the solution is for devs or not (in a thread where the main defense picked is essentially “a year after the console launch Epic needed one of MS best first party teams to tune UE5 for XSX and XSS and achieving parity with UE5 on PS5 optimised by Epic only” and saying that with a straight face as if it was a point of strength ). So, there is the focus on required throughput not maxing the available max bandwidth, not on how quickly the data fetched arrives in RAM from disk and is fed to the GPU (data transferred per frame and how quickly the data arrives)…

On top of that apparently XSX not being able to flex its compute and memory bandwidth as roaming speed is increased inside the demo is something better to brush under the carpet too .

 

[Panajev2001a]

Oh yes, there it is. Because we were talking about subscription services, not the performance : price parity of consoles in this thread

Notice how far we are getting from the original discussion, latched on the “cheaper” adjective and derail . We also got another GamePass plug of course.

 

[Sosokrates]

Oh yes, there it is. Because we were talking about subscription services, not the performance : price parity of consoles in this thread

You enjoy a console with no games?
Ok who let the out.

 

[Sosokrates]

Notice how far we are getting from the original discussion, latched on the “cheaper” adjective and derail . We also got another GamePass plug of course.

It was you who brought up the "cheaper" adjective...

 

[arvfab]

PS5 DE does not have gamepass.

Correct. It has PSNow which has more games while being cheaper. But I think this is going a little bit OT.

 

[Schmick]

You enjoy a console with no games?
Ok who let the out.

Don't you get Astrobot free with PS5? What about the PS+ Game collection?

 

[Concern]

This has to be the lamest console warring fight in a long time. Holy shit some of you have been repeating the same garbage like 6 pages now lol

 

[Loxus]

300 mb/s was confirmed to DF for the Matrix demo. For the 2020 demo, we have the PC version which rarely exceeds even 200 mb/s. There have also been statements saying that Nanite generally doesn't use that much bandwidth, which one could basically consider a feature of it.

That 300MB/s comes from loads and asset streaming during game play.

By then most assets need are already in RAM, why would you need 22 GB/s the load in a couple of new assets?

That 22 GB/s comes in to play when first booting the game or fast traveling.

 

[adamsapple]

Oh yes, there it is. Because we were talking about subscription services, not the performance : price parity of consoles in this thread

We were talking about Unreal Engine 5 in this Unreal Engine 5 topic, not performance : price parity before you shoehorned it in here either.

The palpable is ironic

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yes but it doesn't have disc drive.
Sorry for focusing on one point.
They are both very good hardware. I dont think its really lobsided in either direction. I would not put hardware performance at a point of contention when deciding which one system to get. Overall the seriesX does seem to be performing better now, the last several digital foundry comparisons have shown the majority of games performing better on the seriesX, but we do get some games performing better on PS5 so for me its a game by game basis, but other things influence my decision more as a multi console owner

Thing is that we were not talking about what makes you buy a console or the other (with similar performance for example I am swayed by the DualSense features, but it is also orthogonal to what we were discussing).
The best defense of the XSX and XSS in this demo is apparently that a year after the console launch the biggest multiplatform Engine maker needed one of MS best developers to optimise the engine to achieve parity with PS5 (for XSX) while Epic could handle PS5 on its own with a lot less help as Sony was able to give them a good stable SDK very early on. This sounds like praise for Cerny’s team more than anything (it is the result you observe if you have good system architecture).

 

[Panajev2001a]

We were talking about Unreal Engine 5 in this Unreal Engine 5 topic, not performance : price parity before you shoehorned it in here either.

The palpable is ironic

We were talking about performance, what are you talking about? Ok, maybe you want to go back to the tools being lost again or some other way to discuss why about a year AFTER launch Epic had to call a MS team in to optimise the demo on XSX|S that actually makes the state of the platform look good .

 

[yewles1]

So your point is that a year after the XSX|S have launched in stores that the XSX and XSS tools got lost again / taking advantage of them is troublesome or… what?

This an odd flex to make… scaling down to XSS is trivial, XSX being much faster than PS5, GDK allowing to treat XSX as a PC which for a PC developer like Epic should be a dream come true… where did all of that go?

TC has been working with UE5 code access for over a year and they know the engine well. Still, I think were called in to optimise the Xbox version, but something tells me it was more for the XSS than the XSX (far more for the former than the latter).
If you think that their help was needed to get the XSX up to speed with PS5… well, it might be true, but it is a point I would expect a Sony fanboy to make… it does not make the state of XSX tools and GDK’s ease to extract performance out of the console (or the ease of actually tapping all of the on paper theoretical performance of the machine, theoretical vs actual) look that good or make their competitors’ plan look even better.

Considering engine used in games tend to lag the most up to date version (like the one TC optimised for this demo), you are stating that most devs on UE5 were working with tools that favoured PS5.
So, you are stating that the cheaper console (yet breaking even for a while), that had its dev kits sent out earlier, that had better yields and more units sent to market (I guess if it is true that MS is using a good number of XSX SoC’s for Xcloud we know where their priorities lie), the one with supposedly much lower sustained performance but in reality is going toe to toe (and in some cases pulling ahead) in most games with the faster monster XSX… this is also the console with a non PC like custom console graphics API that got earlier support by one of the biggest multi platform engines without requiring the first party teams to optimise the engine for Epic… and you think this happen on its own without planning? Interesting praise for Cerny here .

I think it was definitely XSS...

 

[Panajev2001a]

It was you who brought up the "cheaper" adjective...

Because the HW is cheaper and for all intents and purposes for most people (are we going to count the PS+ Collection too now?) and it is cheaper without the company taking a bath in it… which is a good indication of a good architecture and product design and execution (which is the job of the platform architecture team).

 

[MasterCornholio]

Thing is that we were not talking about what makes you buy a console or the other (with similar performance for example I am swayed by the DualSense features, but it is also orthogonal to what we were discussing).
The best defense of the XSX and XSS in this demo is apparently that a year after the console launch the biggest multiplatform Engine maker needed one of MS best developers to optimise the engine to achieve parity with PS5 (for XSX) while Epic could handle PS5 on its own with a lot less help as Sony was able to give them a good stable SDK very early on. This sounds like praise for Cerny’s team more than anything (it is the result you observe if you have good system architecture).

They definitely could have brought Sony in to help with the PS5 but it's interesting that they didn't. Not saying that bringing in TC was a bad thing but it's just curious that something similar wasn't done with the PS5. Really wished Epic would share that information with us.

 

[adamsapple]

This has to be the lamest console warring fight in a long time. Holy shit some of you have been repeating the same garbage like 6 pages now lol

It really is, we've seen the Matrix demo give different results on either console depending on whatevers happening on screen at the same time.

edit: And now we're comparing game pass and PS+ (lol) .. this thread's really gone off the hook now

 

[Schmick]

This has to be the lamest console warring fight in a long time. Holy shit some of you have been repeating the same garbage like 6 pages now lol

And not just in this thread.

The same arguments;

MS are liars through their PR e.g. XSS capabilities
Sony are liars through their PR e.g. believe in generations fiasco.
PS5 I/O is overkill
PS5 doesn't have as many next gen features as XSeries
Gamepass is the death to gaming
No one owns anything.
Batteries vs internal (ffs, what a ridiculous argument)


But really.... how about we stop for a moment and think; how does this really effect me as a gamer. As a gamer will I still be able to enjoy the games I play. Of course you will. None of the above actually means anything.

There are clearly people here in this forum who dismiss games because of the platform they are on. What a rubbish way to judge a game. Granted some games may not meet your preference but shit on a game because of the platform its on!?

Be a gamer. Play the games.
Be a gamer and let's have constructive discussions about games.

 

[Panajev2001a]

They definitely could have brought Sony in to help with the PS5 but it's interesting that they didn't. Not saying that bringing in TC was a bad thing but it's just curious that something similar wasn't done with the PS5. Really wished Epic would share that information with us.

I agree, but I have to say that the only way this does not look good for the PS architecture/delivery team is if you think this is all a conspiracy because of Sony’s earlier investment… .