Ok i finally enforced me to write this up. I
did not wanted to because it stresses me out to a Level that iam exhausted. Exhausted by the realisation that internaly Sony is seeing PC as a very very big Source of Income and that they will do almost everything to make sure that Ports to PC will be possible easy and fast. Even cripple their own consolewich they spend Millions on to develop..
Ok lets dive in:
Cerny said in his Talk that PS5s internal SSD has 5.5Gb raw speed. And additional 4 priority Levels in comparision to normal Nand Drives. They come with 2. So PS5s SSD can use 6. Just a little later Cerny stated that in order to be on par with PS5s internal SSD the Third Party SSD would need to have some additional Speed to even out the missing 4 Priority Levels. Probably the Kraken Controllers job to synthesize 4 more prio lvls with the additional speed.
So much for that Talk and the Perspective he laid out.
so in Oktober last Year we heard that Western Digital would release the first PS5 certified Third Party SSD with their sn850 here the Article about that :
500GB, 1TB, and 2TB options
www.pushsquare.com
It was then also no suprise that the sn850 would bring a 7Gb raw Throughput on the table. Very much the overhead that we assumed would be neccessary to make up for missing 4 priority Lvls.
After that came nothing from Sony at all about the Third Party SSDs.. until NOW..
But what we miss here is what has happend within Sony in exactly that timespan inbetween the first report about WDs sn850 and this beta invitation with the infromation that a mere 5.5Gb would miraciously befast enough for PS5...
Off course it is about Sony engagement in PC gaming.
What was heard in that timespan?
Sony released more Exclusives and inofficial info about Uncharted4 and other Exclusives made it to the public. They bought Nixxes and everybody understands this as a move to help their PCPort strategy.
So they rated around summer last year the WD sn850 to be sufficiently fast enough to be on par with PS5s internal SSD.
Then came this big BIIG Intrest for PC Gaming to light.
And all of a sudden 5.5GB is enough to be "on par" with PS5s internal SSD?
The Thing is - 5.5GB will never be fast enough to be on par with the same SSD that has 4 Priority Levels more in its Sleeve.
The Problem here is sadly - while this is true - we never find out how much true it is.
Because:
We know that this SSD in the PS5 was planned to be used as a leverage for 9GB/s realtime datastreaming . First title who datastream in realtime many GB/s was Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. Insomniac tweeded out that they make use of real time datastreaming and that everything you do not see on screen is not in memory. - hence every move of the camera will induce a realtime stream of Data comming of the SSD.
So Ratchet and Clank seemingly work fine with a 5.5GB Third Party SSD like some ealry adopters of the beta Programm and indeed Insomniac themselfs point out . But Ratchet and Clank is far from using PS5 potential with they claimed openly in the DF Interview with John Linneman. They said (paraphrasing here) :,, we found out that our engine needs to be updated to be able to handle so much data at once."
So their Game cannot be a Benchmark for Third Party SSD at all.
Or can it?
If Sony allowes 5.5GB SSDs then no Devs Third Party or Sony Studios alike could make a Game that would need a SSD that needs a raw speed of 7GB/s period
That Train has left.
9Gb/s (up to 22GBs) Throughput of PS5 that Train has left too. I cannot imagine that they did not incorporate the PS5s additional 4 Prio Levels in these Numbers.
So since no further overhead available to the Kraken Controller there is no additional 4 Prio Lvls available for PS5 Exclusives also. Even on the PS5s internal SSD!! This Ghost is out of the Bottle and cannot be put back into it. Since all available Third Party SSD do not have those 6 Prio lvls , Developers now need to all the Time assume that someone puts a 5.5GB raw SSD with 2 prio lvls in his PS5.
PS5 Downgraded - one year after Release . Absolutly amazing!!!
And why????
because their internal projections were as such that PC Gamers will only very slowly adopt 7GB nand Storage and it would be immensly difficult (or outright impossible) to port Games form Sony Studios wich leveraged the full PS5s I/O capabilitys in the development of their respective exclusive Title.
With that of course is the dream over for immensly more detailed worlds wich would need 9GB/s of realtime Datastreaming. I could imagine also that they internaly tested this 5.5Gb/s to be equvivalent to Xbox capabilitys, further reducing PS5 specific Dev Effort..
Because to me a 5.5GB/s SSD with only 2 Prio Levels instead of PS5s internal 6 sounds quite like what the Xbox could dream to achieve with its mere 2.5Gb/s Storage.
I am sure that iam not to far off here in regards of all my assumptions and what sealed the deal here for me were actually the Twitters Actions of Insomniac Fitzgerald and Cerny himself.
First that Fitzgerald wrote this "5.5Gb oh yeah its fine its fine we tested it yada yada" Tin Can. He was pushed on that stage like a Clown on a Pub Stage by someone higher than him to go and write something the more technical PS5 Fans would swallow.
And when Cerny actually gave his recommendation for the "suprise" WD sn850,( remember ? It was rated last year under Sonys "old" Strategy , when PS5 capabilitys weren´t thrown under the bus for some more sells on PC) it was clear that he also is not happy with this decision. Clearly he is not. How could he?
Sony says 5.5GB raw is enough and the system architect recommends a 7Gb/s raw Storage?? Sounds like "civil disobidience" to me.
Hopefully this 5.5GB/s recommendation is pulled / denied/ dismissed so this this wall of text here has no validiy anymore.
I hope i am wrong. But i am not, iam afraid..
