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PS5 SSD May Not Necessarily Translate into Much Quicker Loading Times, Says Remedy Technical Director

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
SSD brought to this gen would help it in so many ways (loading times, faster etc.) once you add on graphics, and how much developers will make open worlds bigger, planning on using thousands of more pixels SSD will essentially break even and that's really disappointing.
Not really. the purpose of the ssd or hdd is to fill up ram with assets needed to load a level. with ram being only 13-14gb and ssd speeds pushing 5.5 gbps, you are looking at 3-4 second load times max.
 
I would rather equate it to what moving from catridges in the 16-bit era to optical gave us. It wasn't massive a gigantic shift right away, but it was the start of something revolutionary.

That's also probably an apt comparison considering the relative tradeoffs (SSDs being more expensive vs. disc or platter HDDs, in terms of price-per-GB, etc).

We can probably also compare PS5's SSD to a normal-sized DVD and XSX's SSD to a Gamecube mini-disc. Not necessarily due to size but because what those disc formats meant for bandwidth of data access off of them for that generation. Just as really basic analogies, though.
 
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SleepDoctor

Banned
I wonder why Remedy only references PS5. I hope they haven't stopped producing games for my beloved Xbox.

Edit: just looked at the article. It's from 2019. Phew... hope Sony don't buy them. I love their games.

Troll harder 🤦🏻‍♂️

I just watched both of the new DF videos on XBox Series X and everything they showed was great. I like everything they are doing with the console. All the consideration put into performance and efficiency. Plus all the positive user-facing features and developer-friendly features.

The expandable storage is also really awesome.

Having said all that, no matter how hard I try, I just don't seem to be able to get excited by Xbox and I don't know why. It's a real shame. I feel like there is even less chance of me buying an Xbox now than ever before.

It's possible that to me, Microsoft is the Windows company, and I don't really hate Windows at all even though I'm a Mac user, but lately I've been using Linux more. I use all the OSes.

I think the only thing that could make me buy an Xbox Series X is if I could install Windows on it.
 

CJY

Banned
That's also probably an apt comparison considering the relative tradeoffs (SSDs being more expensive vs. disc or platter HDDs, in terms of price-per-GB, etc).

We can probably also compare PS5's SSD to a normal-sized DVD and XSX's SSD to a Gamecube mini-disc. Not necessarily due to size but because what those disc formats meant for bandwidth of data access off of them for that generation. Just as really basic analogies, though.
yeah, you could be right.

I'm curious how much those priority levels will come into play. 6 vs 2, and the fact that PS5 SSD has 12 channels vs. the 4 in XSX. It probably just means PS5 will have faster and more potentially more reliable IO.

I also wonder where that tipping point is in terms of IO speed where the SSD will have some serious tangible outcomes for the size and quality of worlds that can be created on screen. Some leaks actually suggest that Sony's implementation is actually like having 100GB of VRAM which sounds a lot like Radeon SSG to me.

edit: in before people say "SSD can't replace RAM!!!!!111!"
 
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I just don't see how that'd be possible outside of sloppy coding.

The ps5 outputs 5.5GB/s of data from the ssd, and since it seems it all uses compression that turns into 8-9GB/s of data arriving at ram. With 16GB of ram, that means in two seconds the entire ram has been filled with brand new data.
That's what he was saying lazy developers will not optimize.
 
This kind of reminds me of 30'40gig patches for games that could be shrunk in half if devs put the time into. But devs or publishers are more focused on the fixes than the gamers hard drive space or may not have the resources. Not all of course, but certain ones.
 
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It's kind of a silly situation though.

"Devs might not optimise data on the faster machine so you get the same loading times"

"Devs might not optimise their graphics on the faster machine so you get the same graphics"

I mean yeah that could happen but that's on the dev.
Yeah reason I say sounds like he saying some developers will be lazy about their coding. Only thing I can take from that.
 

CJY

Banned
I would like to know where all this data would be loading to because if the main RAM is 16GB & the SSD is 5.5GB/s & the decompression hardware can move up to 20GB/s how can a dev be bad enough to make the loading times as slow as games using a HDD?
That's very true and insightful of you. You fill the RAM and you're in the game. That article is not making sense now :p
 

CJY

Banned
People is really expecting SNES like loading times? lol I mean LOL
Suppose it depends on the game. Would need the devloper's intent of eliminating load times. Others we'll still get some loadtimes, but as O onQ123 alluded to, it's almost impossible for load times to be longer than the time it would take to fill up the RAM for the first time, which is in the seconds.
 
SSDs will be a great benefit to consoles but the PS5 SSD is not going to be such a benefit over the Series X SSD that games won't work even if they were targeting the Sony SSD whichnthey won't
 

Niked

Member
Are you forgetting ALL THEM YEARS they had to endure the PS4 shitting all over the XboxOne? :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Their rage has been building up to this point, my good sir. Now they can finally feel better!
Its must have been hard feeling dead inside all these 7 years 😂 just wait untill they found out there is a PS5 PRO launching along side base PS5



Ax98Idg.jpg
 
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S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
I fully expected this. The SSD isn't only there to decrease loading times, that's just one (relatively minor) factor. Games need to be made and thought about totally differently than today to see the true advantages, but the potential is massive in the area of game design, not necessarily loading times.
You are expecting way too much out of devs.
 
Why would Xbox gamers be happy about this? XSX has a fast SSD as well :/

Its obvious whoever posted this was trying to console war and didn’t realize it would also affect Xbox. In reality, it’s Remedy being lazy asses and not wanting to optimize their game. You would think they would have learned their lesson after how badly Control ran, but I guess not.
 

CJY

Banned
You are expecting way too much out of devs.
I'm actually not expecting hardly any devs to properly take advantage of the SSD except for 1st party. At least initially.

If you look back at PS2, it was kinda Jak & Daxter that pioneered the streaming of assets from OD to create seamless worlds without load screens. What followed after was GTA3. I'm expecting a very select few devs to show the way next-gen and it's entirely possible we won't see anything close to that kind of innovation, but I'm definitely hopeful.
 
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Its obvious whoever posted this was trying to console war and didn’t realize it would also affect Xbox. In reality, it’s Remedy being lazy asses and not wanting to optimize their game. You would think they would have learned their lesson after how badly Control ran, but I guess not.
I posted it. Happened to see the article. Didn't realize it was last year. And I even stated at the bottom it will affect XSX too. Wasn't trying to start anything.
 

pr0cs

Member
where production
might be cheaper and faster when not optimising content
I mentioned that in the other thread except the usual ps5 idiots kept suggesting I didn't watch the Cerny PS5 presentation.

I swear technical threads now are so painful because console warriors refuse to accept facts
 

ZywyPL

Banned
In his presentation, Cerny talks about streaming ssd/ram. A player look around in 0.5s, and ssd puts 4GB on RAM.

Maybe 13GB RAM for games could be not sufficient for big open-world 4k games. And streaming ssd/ram could be the smart thing to do.

Cerny actually explained why next-gen's 16GB will allow to store 30x more data than current-gen's 8GB for each second of gameplay, exactly thanks to SSD.
 

drotahorror

Member
So some devs will take advantage of SSD's in other ways instead of just faster load times. Nice to know HDD's (and consoles) have been holding back gaming since SSD's became mainstream.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
An Remedy makes games good production values and physics stuff.

As the Rem guy said, they'll just overload the system with tons of data and that SSD bandwidth goes into the shitter.

It's like patches. Funny how they were all like 5-10 megs during the 360 days when people had 20gb HDD the first 3-4 years. Devs figure out a way to fix bugs and tune gameplay. But once everyone got unlimited internet and Xbox Ones with 500gb - 1TB drives as a start (and more storage if you bought an external HDD), suddenly those patches zoom to 30 gigs.

I think Dead Rising was one of the first big culprits with a 5 or 10 gig patch.
 
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Yeh, show me where people are making duplicate threads of things that have already been discussed.


The level of desperation and anxiety around the PS5 SSD's potential strengths is palpable.

Xbox fans are too busy trying to downplay the PS5's SSD instead of enthusiastically talking about the Series X's strengths and what it will mean for games on the platform.

For shame.
No one is trying to downplay the PS5 SSD, however many people are greatly overstating the implications of it not only by itself but also against the Series X solution.

Nov 22, 2019

:messenger_tears_of_joy:
What does the date have to do with anything? What was true then is true now.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius



This will definitely apply to XSX games.

Please, PS5 is not special in any way whatsoever... please stop being excited, it is not the metric you need to care about. Congrats you found another article where if you squint real hard you can see bad news about PS5.

True PS5 fan, concerned about PS5 or... no, it cannot be an Xbox fan trying to post his n-th thread to create concern around PS5?!
 
PS5 SSD speeds are double of XSEX. If anything this would be an issue XSEX. Cause if its a problem for PS5 then its twice as worse on XSEX. Aka Bottleneck.
 
One thing people don't bring up much with the PS5 SSD situation is that it may be user replaceable but it's not user expandable.

PS5 does not have an expansion port, you literally have to REMOVE the current drive and replace it with a bigger drive to increase storage.

If you have a Series X and you want 2 TB of storage you buy one of the 1TB expansion cards and plug it in

If you have a PS5 and want 2 TB of storage you have to buy a 2TB PCIE 4 SSD that is capable of 5.5 gbps, that is going to cost near as much as the PS5 itself for at least a few years. Those drives aren't even out yet.

For all practical purposes you are pretty much locked into the 825 GB you get with the PS5 unless you want to wait for drive to come out and spend a fortune.

This is a major flaw in Sony's design
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
One thing people don't bring up much with the PS5 SSD situation is that it may be user replaceable but it's not user expandable.

PS5 does not have an expansion port, you literally have to REMOVE the current drive and replace it with a bigger drive to increase storage.

If you have a Series X and you want 2 TB of storage you buy one of the 1TB expansion cards and plug it in

If you have a PS5 and want 2 TB of storage you have to buy a 2TB PCIE 4 SSD that is capable of 5.5 gbps, that is going to cost near as much as the PS5 itself for at least a few years. Those drives aren't even out yet.

For all practical purposes you are pretty much ,ocked into the 825 GB you get with the PS5.

This is a major flaw in Sony's design

Not sure why differentiating between expandable (it is expandable anyways for PS4 games playback and backup and for PS5 games storage/backup) and replaceable matters... oh yeah, I see back to the proprietary storage being the true pro consumer solution :rolleyes:.

Edit: they talked about a drive bay as if you could add a disk there. Considering how custom their solution is I would not be surprised if their SSD is soldered to the motherboard.
 
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