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

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
And all that is possible with more ram. I’m not saying ssd are not beneficial. I’m saying they don’t improve image quality. They are just being used as a ram substitute.
With the SSD you don't have asset duplication hogging the memory and you're freeing up seeks because it's instant using the SSD. It's more efficient overall
 
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Kagey K

Banned
With the SSD you don't have asset duplication hogging the memory and you're freeing up seeks allows you
But games are still 100 gigs.

Shouldn't they be in the 10 - 15 range if that were true (assuming most were 50 gigs last gen)
 
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bender

What time is it?
Or it won't break. They still want to get thier hours of exposition, regardless of if the game is loaded or not

You can't just play it, you need to feel it

The creative solutions used the past served a dual role, but I've been playing Max Payne 3 via BC on XSX. It was my first playthrough in fact. I'm now going back to the levels where I missed golden gun parts and all of those cutscenes, and there are a ton, aren't skippable which makes the exercise a chore.

Expecting this to be a revolution is a bit foolish however. We've seen benefits already in load times and file sizes. Games take forever to develop and games are usually targeted for a wide breadth of systems. I know we've seen some PC games with minimum I/O spec recently, but I don't think that's the norm.
 
Thats because you forgot the loading times on PS4 Pro. I donno how much it will do for gaming but the fact that I can press an icon and start playing a level in about 5 seconds is good enough for me compared to last gen where big games like GoW etc took 30 seconds to load a level.
 

Corndog

Banned
With the SSD you don't have asset duplication hogging the memory and you're freeing up seeks because it's instant using the SSD. It's more efficient overall
I doubt most games use duplicate assets unless you have a really slow drive.

Plus we are taking asset duplication on the hard drive not ram. So, no you won’t have duplicate assets in ram unless you are a crap programmer.

Finally, ssds have a seek time it is just small and fairly static I believe. Maybe someone with more knowledge can clarify my claim or repudiate it.
 

Kagey K

Banned
I showed you proof straight from the horses mouth
Wut?

No.

You clearly were wrong on every single point you tried to make, I'm not going to bother with this further until you either come back with something good, or realize it.

I'm doubting either will happen.
 

Corndog

Banned
That’s the 4K PC version.
The 8K PS5 version is a whole different ballpark.
Let me ask you this. What is the 8k referring to? In other words what is at 8k resolution?
Second, how do you know the pc version is lower?

Edit: also if your source is beyond3d I suggest you read the link again. The only lowering of assets was to make the demo easier to distribute over the internet, not for io reasons.
This video is by the developer who has full access to all data and code.
 
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recma12

Member
Thats because you forgot the loading times on PS4 Pro. I donno how much it will do for gaming but the fact that I can press an icon and start playing a level in about 5 seconds is good enough for me compared to last gen where big games like GoW etc took 30 seconds to load a level.

I think people are getting hit with the same effect you have a few days after getting a new phone or TV.
At first it seems like a massive improvement, you are super happy but after a few days the new phone/TV becomes the standard and you forget how shitty the previous devices were.
I recently played XB3 on Switch and the loading times when fast travelling kinda annoyed me, made me really miss my SSD consoles.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Let me ask you this. What is the 8k referring to? In other words what is at 8k resolution?
Second, how do you know the pc version is lower?

Edit: also if your source is beyond3d I suggest you read the link again. The only lowering of assets was to make the demo easier to distribute over the internet, not for io reasons.
This video is by the developer who has full access to all data and code.
8K textures.
The proof was in the developer video Dictator (yes that Dictator) provided on B3D.
You can even do your own research, it’s not that hard to see the difference.
 

bender

What time is it?
I guess you don’t know what most means.
And as I stated, that doesn’t cause an increase in ram usage. It increases game size on the hard drive. His point is asset duplication hogs memory.

I might not know what most means but I do know what pretentious asshole means. Did I mention anything about RAM? No. It increases size on the hard drive to reduce the amount of seeks needed to grab the data in the first place. It not so dissimilar to how data was structured on discs back in the day before systems had internal storage.
 

Kagey K

Banned
8K textures.
The proof was in the developer video Dictator (yes that Dictator) provided on B3D.
You can even do your own research, it’s not that hard to see the difference.
Can you point to which assets were 8k vs 4k without a video showing you?

Do you believe still that one SSD over the other can provide those assets? Or are they both now capable?
 

bitbydeath

Member
Can you point to which assets were 8k vs 4k without a video showing you?

Do you believe still that one SSD over the other can provide those assets? Or are they both now capable?
All textures in the PS5 demo were 8K, and the difference is clearly visible.

As for your second question, it depends on the SSD’s in question. It’s like any other hardware component though, a 1080 video card won’t be as capable as a 3080.
 

Kagey K

Banned
All textures in the PS5 demo were 8K, and the difference is clearly visible.

As for your second question, it depends on the SSD’s in question. It’s like any other hardware component though, a 1080 video card won’t be as capable as a 3080.
Sure sure.

As a 4k only console, I guess we will take thier words for it.

As a standard console it should be easy.

You claimed to see the difference easily between the 4k Sony output and 4K PC output. I was hoping you could enlighten us that couldn't see the difference.
 
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From a game design standpoint, yeah so far we've seen almost nothing. Matrix demo doesn't need that much bandwidth, a good, modern HDD could probably handle it. Maybe Ratchet needs one for the portal stuff, but (from what I've seen) the portals aren't part of the core gameplay and are more of a tech demo showing off the SSD.

I hope we see games fully designed around the SSD soon.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
We still in the early current gen and cross gen period, if gen 2 current gen games still dont show the powerbof the SSD then yes OP you have a point, but its a little to early to make this determination.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Wut?

No.

You clearly were wrong on every single point you tried to make, I'm not going to bother with this further until you either come back with something good, or realize it.

I'm doubting either will happen.
So you know more than Insomniac Game's own developers?
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I guess you don’t know what most means.
And as I stated, that doesn’t cause an increase in ram usage. It increases game size on the hard drive. His point is asset duplication hogs memory. It doesn’t.
It actually does when you have duplicate assets that have to reside on the drive, the SSD frees up that memory. SSD seeks are virtually instantaneous

A lot of the memory in Marvel's Spider-man on PS4 was from duplicated objects. Cerny spoke about this
 
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EDMIX

Member
Those were supposed to be the revolution in the use of memory
It very much is, why would you count "2 years" and not the actual next gen only titles that use those features to judge it?
All games made so far can run on last gen still, with some simple downgrades, it seems.

A moot point.

Thats like saying GTA 3 can exist on PS1, oh but with simple "downgrades" lol Sure bud, any game with enough downgrades can work on some other system, but clearly it won't 100% be the same game, FFVII was being made on N64....as in a game CALLED FINAL FANTASY VII, what we know today as FFVII was never going to exist on N64, it needed to be a completely different game.

We've seen more then enough to show its a massive improvement and there is no going back to long ass load times.
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.

Agreed 1000%. Think about the future titles that will be next gen only that use the SSD to allow for seamless transitions in many interiors of open world titles? People want to try to overlook it and pretend just cause a fucking loading screen could be there on last gen, that the experience would magically be the same or something.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Load times are amazing and quick resume with game pass is an absolute game changer.

Everything else that was hyped up by engineers has not come to fruition and I imagine we may see one game...maybe this gen that uses any of that kind of tech. We are talking about hundreds of developers in a team having to change the way they've made games for the last 20 years and to make sure their games will run on PC. It ain't going to happen I don't think.
 

Corndog

Banned
It actually does when you have duplicate assets that have to reside on the drive, the SSD frees up that memory. SSD seeks are virtually instantaneous

A lot of the memory in Marvel's Spider-man on PS4 was from duplicated objects. Cerny spoke about this
Please explain to my why you would need to have duplicate assets resident in ram?
Edit: if you listen to cerny all the duplicates are on the hard drive or Blu-ray. Nowhere does he mention ram. There is no reason for a duplicate in ram just like there is no reason to duplicate it on the ssd.
 
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Corndog

Banned
8K textures.
The proof was in the developer video Dictator (yes that Dictator) provided on B3D.
You can even do your own research, it’s not that hard to see the difference.
Dictator is not a developer. Dictator is not Bryan karris, one of the developers of this engine who produced the video I posted to dispel all the rumors that the ps5 demo couldn’t run on pc.

Edit: some of you guys would argue the sky isn’t blue because sometimes it gets cloudy.
 
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Mung

Member
In terms of loading they have already delivered big time. Its hard for me to go back to old school loading now.

In terms of game design and features it is too early to say. Cross gen has been extended due to covid and hardware shortages. I'm going to judge over the next few years with current gen specific engines and games.

I'd also add that certain current gen specific games like Ratchet show the SSD's potential and give a taste of what's to come.
 
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Corndog

Banned
All textures in the PS5 demo were 8K, and the difference is clearly visible.

As for your second question, it depends on the SSD’s in question. It’s like any other hardware component though, a 1080 video card won’t be as capable as a 3080.
Again how do you know Brian karris texture resolution is 4K? Where does he state that?

Edit: also in the same beyond3d thread Andrew Lauritzen posted. He is another epic developer. He explains more about data streaming. Here is a quote from post #2233.

“All of this is pretty orthogonal to Nanite though and the tldr was meant to be "all of these platforms can happily stream all this data just fine, as you can see". Nothing fancy required.”

So in other words you don’t need a fancy ssd to stream the data in.
 
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GymWolf

Member
No, but we can call bullshit on jimbo crossgen politic that is why you don't see games using the ssd that much.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Please explain to my why you would need to have duplicate assets resident in ram?
Edit: if you listen to cerny all the duplicates are on the hard drive or Blu-ray. Nowhere does he mention ram. There is no reason for a duplicate in ram just like there is no reason to duplicate it on the ssd.
Duplicate assets were so that they could fetch data quicker from ram. If you needed a couch to be rendered, the system could just pull one of the duplicates instead of searching all over the harddrive for that specific couch. And with the old consoles everything you needed to load had to be close enough to seek in time, so objects not even on screen had to sit in ram. With PS5 and the SSD they can basically dump the data and refill ram way quicker. This allows for things like denser textures with the "free" memory

Like the tweet I posted from Insomniac, they can put all of the bandwidth into a close-up of Ratchet or Rivet and whatever assets are next to you and do it all over by the time you turn around
 
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Corndog

Banned
Duplicate assets were so that they could fetch data quicker from ram. If you needed a couch to be rendered, the system could just pull one of the duplicates instead of searching all over the harddrive for that specific couch. And with the old consoles everything you needed to load had to be close enough to seek in time so objects not even on screen had to sit in ram. With PS5 and the SSD they can basically dump the data and refill ram way quicker. This allows for things like denser textures with the "free" memory
Wrong. Listen to the video again. You don’t fetch data from ram. You get it from a storage device and load it into ram.

The reason it needed to be duplicated was because of not knowing where the read heads would be on the Blu-ray and hard drive. The heads have to physically move like the arm on a record player. If the read head is on the inside of the platter and needs to load something on the outside of the platter it’s going to take a while. That’s the seek time.
If you put that data uniformly on the platter than you can lower the average seek time.
To sum up there is no reason to have duplicates in RAM. Like the ssd the memory access time is low and fairly consistent. There would be no access advantage to having duplicates in memory.
 
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Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Wrong. Listen to the video again. You don’t fetch data from ram. You get it from a storage device and load it into ram.

The reason it needed to be duplicated was because of not knowing where the read heads would be on the Blu-ray and hard drive. The heads have to physically move like the arm on a record player. If the read head is on the inside of the platter and needs to load something on the outside of the platter it’s going to take a while. That’s the seek time.
If you put that data uniformly on the platter than you can lower the average seek time.
To sum up there is no reason to have duplicates in RAM. Like the ssd the memory access time is low and fairly consistent. There would be no access advantage to having duplicates in memory.
Part of your comment is basically saying the same thing I just said and the other part is wrong. The duplication of assets is what they had to do last gen btw, so you're agreeing with me there as far it being one of the SSD benefits

Will Smith Smh GIF by The Academy Awards
 
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bitbydeath

Member
Dictator is not a developer. Dictator is not Bryan karris, one of the developers of this engine who produced the video I posted to dispel all the rumors that the ps5 demo couldn’t run on pc.

Edit: some of you guys would argue the sky isn’t blue because sometimes it gets cloudy.
It was all explained in the B3D link from the Epic dev, there isn’t much more to say.
 

Corndog

Banned
Part of your comment is basically saying the same thing I just said and the other part is wrong. The duplication of assets is what they had to do last gen btw, so you're agreeing with me there as far it being one of the SSD benefits

Will Smith Smh GIF by The Academy Awards
I never said it wasn’t a benefit compared to the ps4. I said you are wrong about it freeing up ram by getting rid of duplicates. It doesn’t. It frees up space on the ssd.

I think you are confusing data streaming memory benefits with this hard drive data duplication.
 
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T-Cake

Member
Obviously there's been a substantial decrease in load times but I'm wondering whether we will ever have the feature whereby the world around you is loaded in as you turn around. I think Mark Cerny over exaggerated that situation.
 

Corndog

Banned
Obviously there's been a substantial decrease in load times but I'm wondering whether we will ever have the feature whereby the world around you is loaded in as you turn around. I think Mark Cerny over exaggerated that situation.
I think there is some truth to that. More likely it would being loading in higher res textures as you get closer to objects. And hopefully less pop in.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
Quote it then where the epic dev says they used lower quality textures on pc do to io being to slow as compared to PS5.
Do you know how to work Twitch?
If so, go to that B3D link I sent through earlier.
They explain exactly why it was downgraded on PC.
 

Corndog

Banned
Do you know how to work Twitch?
If so, go to that B3D link I sent through earlier.
They explain exactly why it was downgraded on PC.
That B3D link proves you wrong. Did you not look at the post I sited? He said no special io was required to run the demo. If that’s the case there is no reason to downgrade the textures to get the demo to run on pc.

Edit:
Here’s another post from that B3D thread from Andrew.

“Sure, but there's a difference between "we need/really want an SSD because they are hilariously faster and lower latency than HDDs and optical drives that previous consoles relied on" and "we need tons of bandwidth and lots of fancy stuff on top of that". Don't get me wrong, all the new fancy IO stuff is great and I'm sure will help improve things further in the future across the board in games, but I feel like Epic has been pretty clear from the start that this stuff works well on all of the target platforms and will continue to get better.”
 
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bitbydeath

Member
That B3D link proves you wrong. Did you not look at the post I sited? He said no special io was required to run the demo. If that’s the case there is no reason to downgrade the textures to get the demo to run on pc.

Edit:
Here’s another post from that B3D thread from Andrew.

“Sure, but there's a difference between "we need/really want an SSD because they are hilariously faster and lower latency than HDDs and optical drives that previous consoles relied on" and "we need tons of bandwidth and lots of fancy stuff on top of that". Don't get me wrong, all the new fancy IO stuff is great and I'm sure will help improve things further in the future across the board in games, but I feel like Epic has been pretty clear from the start that this stuff works well on all of the target platforms and will continue to get better.”
You’re conflating the two, the SSD isn’t required for the PC version, (you’re link).
And the reason for that was provided in my link, because they moved the resources to RAM, which required a downgrade for it to run on PC.
 

Sentenza

Member
SSDs *are* a massive improvement to the user experience when it comes to anything related to home computing.

The bullshit side of the narrative was the attempt to claim that they would be a miracle from God only now, with their recent implementation as a standards on console, when they are doing exactly what they did for roughly a decade since they became a widespread thing on PC.

And yes, with continue iterations both the drives themselves and the management of I/O bandwidth from operating systems keep improving over the years, as it's often the case.
But that doesn't mean that their introduction on home consoles was the "starting point of the revolution" as marketing drivel wanted you to believe.
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
The Last of Us Part I, linear game build from the ground up for PS5 by Sony's premiere studio loads slower than big open world like Cyberpunk on my PC.

Yes, it's bullshit.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
I never said it wasn’t a benefit compared to the ps4. I said you are wrong about it freeing up ram by getting rid of duplicates. It doesn’t. It frees up space on the ssd.

I think you are confusing data streaming memory benefits with this hard drive data duplication.
Let me make sure I got you right. You're saying a SSD like the one in the PS5 can't be used to load assets very quickly, therefore freeing up space in ram for other things like textures??
 
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