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2 years in, can we call BS on the "power of SSD" in new consoles?

The power of the SSD was always bullshit. It was done by one group of people to try and even the spec sheets up after the console reveals.
The SSDs bring a host of excellent features and improvements to this generation.
Loading times. I think alot of us with new consoles have already forgotten just how fucking horrible the old PS4 and Xbox One loading times were. Go back and try to game on on of those consoles after being used to quick resume and you will want to stab yourself in the eye with a pen.
It helps to offset the need for additional RAM, which is why we only got a doubling of RAM this gen rather than the big increases over last generations.
It is a great improvement.

However, the PS5 SSD won't give you any advantage over loading times to the Xbox Series consoles.
We heard that only the PS5 SSD speed could do Ratchet and Clank. That horseshit was settled when people put slower SSDs in their PS5 and it ran R&C just fine.
Then it was that only the PS5 could do those rift changes in R&C. Then fortnite came out with the same shit on traditional hard drives and the fanboys became quite on that one.
Unfortunately those stupid fanboys trying to save their fucking console in the spec wars really muddied the waters about what SSDs can and will do.
That's why threads like this come up. Instead of having conversations about what these consoles can do with their SSDs we are having discussions about bullshit that should never have been said
I fucking hate fanboyism. It's just mind boggling how many grown men partake in such an embarrassing thing. It has actual ramifications too like the one you listed. Pathetic
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Many called BS before they came out. SSDs are no doubt great and much better than HDDs but the way Sony marketed them it was as if they would significantly improve performance beyond just loading times. It was quite embarrassing that SSD was the big hype feature for PS5.

I'm happy HDD's are disappearing from gaming machines and games being developed around SSD really benefit from them. As a PC gamer who has had an SSD for about 15 years I guess I didn't fall for it like many console users did.

It's good that consoles have finally got with the times. It should have happened in 2013 to be honest but of course the prices prevented that. Consoles need to be cheap and you couldn't just stick a good size SSD in a PS4 or XB1 back in 2013.

All we were ever gonna get was fast loading times and maybe some changes to the way games are made. I mean that's good but again I feel a lot of people expected more.

It's been nearly 2 years and while the new consoles were impressive at the time they are becoming dated already. If you want to see great performance then it'll be on PC thanks to DDR5 and PCIE 5 being used together with tech like DirectStorage and RTX IO.
Microsoft has to take an L for that, too. Phil was out there drunk on New Years saying that SSD was like RAM and tha he was glad Sony was investing in SSD, too. Then we got the "pretty cool, right?" presentation where Cerny said the I/O complex in the PS5 was made with stardust and magic. These are things people just want to believe. It's kind of cute in a way.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Some of these comments won't age well...

Do people really think Mark Cerny and Sony's engineers created a customized SSD with 8 priority levels just for loading between areas 😆 developers haven't even really utilized these boxes yet
 

Reallink

Member
There's certainly some hard truths to the OP. Promises of culling everything out of the camera's view then streaming it all back in on the fly as it moves certainly seems to have been some fantastical bullshit. Texture, geometry, asset quality would be seeing multi-generational leaps if that were actually possible. In practice Naughty God's are struggling to run PS4 assets on PS5 and Team Ninja are apparently working on PS3 Pro dev kits.
 
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Cause any day now... Right?
dumb-and-dumber-uh.gif
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
I guess an old spinning hard drive could do it. It would just take longer. So you may be right, It's not a function of the SSD but it is a very needed part of it.
I didn't know that thanks for the info. I guess the SSDs are more magical than I realized because QR sure seems like magic. ;)
 
It's cool but not revolutionary, designers sadly design for the lowest common denominator.
I think going back to near SNES/GEN/N64 cartridge style load times from 4 generations of disc and HDD load times bloating into near 5 minute long territory is a huge ordeal. I understand the rest can be seen as a bummer(so far) but I don't think what we were given should be undervalued like this thread is trying to do.
 

Three

Member
There's certainly some truth to this post. Promises of culling everything out of the camera's view then streaming it all back in on the fly as it moves certainly seems to have been some fantastical bullshit. In practice Naughty God's struggling to run PS4 assets on PS5.
Only because some people demand 60fps or 120fps cross gen games. Matrix Awakens wasn't fantastical bullshit and pretty much does this and looks great. 30fps though.

ND aren't really struggling to run PS4 assets on PS5, in what way? PS4 assets would all fit into memory anyway. That seems more like fantastical bullshit to me.
 

akimbo009

Gold Member
Next gen development, learning the ins and outs of the hardware is instant?

No. But this isnt new or novel hardware. It's been around for a decade. It's pretty silly to think "now it's on consoles... Let's truly unlock all the things".

It's not going to get much better that what we've seen - and if they could there'd be a race in the indie scene to take advantage of it. There isn't - cause it's not a thing beyond what we already seen. Love to be proven wrong, but out side a could fringe - questionably useful - mechanisms it's not going to change much from where we are.
 

Hoddi

Member
Next gen development, learning the ins and outs of the hardware is instant?
Two years is an awfully long instant. It's not like game developers are only now finding out about compute and pixel shaders because those have been around for a decade.

People act like these consoles have only just came out when it's been almost two years. We already had tons of 'next-gen' games by this time in 2015 and those were far bigger 'generational leaps' than what we've had so far.
 
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No. But this isnt new or novel hardware. It's been around for a decade. It's pretty silly to think "now it's on consoles... Let's truly unlock all the things".
Yes, things actually do work this way. Devs have had to work within the confines of both HD consoles and they've had to do so for years because that's where a big bulk of sales come from. It's one of the big reasons why PC gamers complained so much about consoles holding them back, and I'm sure the same will eventually happen this gen.


It's not going to get much better that what we've seen - and if they could there'd be a race in the indie scene to take advantage of it. There isn't - cause it's not a thing beyond what we already seen. Love to be proven wrong, but out side a could fringe - questionably useful - mechanisms it's not going to change much from where we are.
The generation is just starting to enter second gear in 2023. It's too early to make such claims. The part that you're right about is that it eventually won't get much better, because consoles have fixed hardware, leading to the point above.
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
sony made a normal and expected jump in storage speed seem like magic beans

I never believed the hype but it got a lot of sucke-I mean people really excited over a very obvious upgrade

I'm just glad we skipped pass sdd/hdd hybrid drives in consoles to cut costs
 

bitbydeath

Member
Bull crap. Prove it. Show me where the engineers that built the engine said that.
manux said:
The asset quality was downgraded and reason given for that was to make it work on all platforms. Original demo used 8k textures and extremely detailed assets. One reason for asset downgrade is disk storage space and other part is the demo fits in 64GB ram.
cwjs said:
What's the source on this?
manux said:
Brian Karis on one of the ue5 streams was talking about asset quality downgrade and reasons behind it.
Dictator said:
It was not brian karis talking about it - it was the artist responsible for the demo (Galen Davis)

There's also a vid attached to the artist but I couldn't get it to work.
The proof could also obviously be seen in that textures are only running at 4K on PC as opposed to PS5's 8K.
That's easily seen with your own eyes.
 
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Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
No. But this isnt new or novel hardware. It's been around for a decade. It's pretty silly to think "now it's on consoles... Let's truly unlock all the things".

It's not going to get much better that what we've seen - and if they could there'd be a race in the indie scene to take advantage of it. There isn't - cause it's not a thing beyond what we already seen. Love to be proven wrong, but out side a could fringe - questionably useful - mechanisms it's not going to change much from where we are.
SSDs with the speed of PS5's didn't even exist until around the time the PS5 launched, on top of that, what PC games are designed with a fast SSD as a requirement?
 
You're not only wrong. You are EXTREMELY wrong.

After playing Demon's Souls on PS5 I physically will never go back to old gen. The game virtually has no loading when you jump from 1 location to another.

Returnal is fast when you die and for a roguelike game you die a lot.

Assassins Creed no longer takes 10 million years to load in.

Quick resume on Xbox Series X is incredible.

I don't know what you been doing or playing. There is a massive difference in loading thanks to SSD. And like others have said, we have yet to really kick this gen off. Just be a bit more patient lol.

Are you aware that during the PS4 gen we still got cross gen games for over 2 years as well? Why do people always QQ about cross gen lol. It's been like that every generation, it takes time before old gen is left 4 dead.

This x100.

Fucking close the thread already. There's nothing to discuss. OP is just impatient AF.
 

Deerock71

Member
As others have said quick resume is the real game changer with ssd. Not much else to add. Ssd has not added a thing to gameplay though so it certainly was overhyped in that regard.
I think the jury's still out on that one, and I love gaming on my Switch, still. It might never come to fruition, but I believe an SSD can elevate games in the right developer's hands.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Two years is an awfully long instant. It's not like game developers are only now finding out about compute and pixel shaders because those have been around for a decade.

People act like these consoles have only just came out when it's been almost two years. We already had tons of 'next-gen' games by this time in 2015 and those were far bigger 'generational leaps' than what we've had so far.
Developers tend to get more power out of silicon on their 2nd release (not including crossgen obviously)
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
No. But this isnt new or novel hardware. It's been around for a decade. It's pretty silly to think "now it's on consoles... Let's truly unlock all the things".

It's not going to get much better that what we've seen - and if they could there'd be a race in the indie scene to take advantage of it. There isn't - cause it's not a thing beyond what we already seen. Love to be proven wrong, but out side a could fringe - questionably useful - mechanisms it's not going to change much from where we are.

Basically yes. Next gen-only console games like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo isn’t some game-changers on PC too (and soon Returnal).
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Maybe? Enjoy playing these "true next gen experiences" in 2025-2026 i guess
It should be 2023 - 2025 when we really start seeing the best use of the hardware especially since a lot of these studios are making changes to their next gen engines
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Judging by op post history he doesn't even own none of the next gen consoles. So why people are surprised by this take. Then you have the "ssd has being around for 20 years on PC is nothing special insecure people " 🙄 like pc doesn't live of console ports and minimum specs pcs.
Facts GIF by BET Awards
 

Guilty_AI

Member
It should be 2023 - 2025 when we really start seeing the best use of the hardware especially since a lot of these studios are making changes to their next gen engines
Correction: we'll get their annoucements in 2023... for 2024 release windows... that'll get delayed to 2025-2026.
But i've seen enough last gen to know some people truly prefer fantasizing about things years away more than putting their hands on the controller, so i guess plenty will be happy enough.
 
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Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Correction: we'll get their annoucements in 2023... for 2024 release windows... that'll get delayed to 2025-2026.
But i've seen enough last gen to know some people truly prefer fantasizing about things years away more than putting their hands on the controller, so i guess plenty will be happy enough.
I throughly enjoyed last gen we saw a good jump in visuals in games like Uncharted 4, TLOU Part II, Detroit, Red Dead Redemption 2 and some others, exceptional stuff!
 
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SLB1904

Banned
Correction: we'll get their annoucements in 2023... for 2024 release windows... that'll get delayed to 2025-2026.
But i've seen enough last gen to know some people truly prefer fantasizing about things years away more than putting their hands on the controller, so i guess plenty will be happy enough.
If nothing goes wrong spiderman 2 is supposed to release next year. Then we'll talk. That's the only game announced right now from playstation that start developing on a ps5 dev kit. And insomniac is already familiarised with system. I'll gladly eat a crow
 

akimbo009

Gold Member
Thats how you jinx things mate

If somehow additional io bandwidth fundamentally changes how games are made and played, I'd be the first one to sing it from the rafters. But been around along enough to smell marketing bullshit when I see it.
 

Hoddi

Member
I'm posting this one more time in case you missed it

0UTiZyA.jpg
I posted a whole ton of data on Beyond3D when I upgraded my PS5 SSD and the game isn't nearly as IO intensive as people think. I recorded a playthrough of the entire game and it only read ~1.5TB from disk over a full 8 hours of play.

Keep in mind though that 500MB read in 0.1s is still a read rate of 5GB/s. It's still a very good showcase of the SSD but people shouldn't think that it's reading at 5.5GB/s throughout the entire game. The actual average is only ~50MB/s.
 
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