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It's true. PC games were restricted by last gen consoles. (Unrestricted loading)

Stacey

Stacey

Banned
Feb 8, 2020
4,610
Regarding loading times.

Dirt 5 races load in 9 seconds


Watch Dogs Legion loads current save game in under 12 seconds


Godfall loads from area to hub in under 2 seconds, hub to area in 6 seconds


I've had this ssd (Corsair MP600 PCIe 4.0) in my pc for almost a year begging to be let loose, Its a marvelous sight to behold.
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
The Fallen
Jul 14, 2018
23,577
The best is yet to come regarding this. These games are still made with HDDs in minds.
 

Raigor

Member
May 14, 2020
15,143
Of course games on PC are being held back by the old Xbox One and PS4 consoles.

This is known no?
 
Xando

Xando

Member
Oct 28, 2017
27,310
Valhalla is where it first stood out to me. Loads quite a lot faster than Odyssey for me
 
Ukumio

Ukumio

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
1,415
Australia
Is anyone saying consoles don't? It's pretty well known that towards the end of a console generation that PC's are superior in almost every way (few exceptions) and then a new generation launches and consoles catch up or overtake PC's in terms of performance and the cycle repeats.
 
Lashley

Lashley

<<Tag Here>>
Member
Oct 25, 2017
59,971
Well yeah, it'll only get faster too when games are developed with SSDs in mind.
 
Cenauru

Cenauru

Dragon Girl Supremacy
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,967
I've really been wondering how much PC games are also gonna benefit from games now being made to better utilize SSD's as the standard, this gen is gonna be so good.
 
Jaded Alyx

Jaded Alyx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
35,370
I feel like people are missing OP's point.

I don't think people ever really considered consoles holding back PCs in terms of LOADING since PCs have had SSDs forever.
 
Fire Bocchi

Fire Bocchi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,648
Ukumio said:
Is anyone saying consoles don't? It's pretty well known that towards the end of a console generation that PC's are superior in almost every way (few exceptions) and then a new generation launches and consoles catch up or overtake PC's in terms of performance and the cycle repeats.
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well yeah except that the ps4 and xbone were holding back pc gaming from the moment they released
 
Ukumio

Ukumio

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
1,415
Australia
FireWarrior said:
well yeah except that the ps4 and xbone were holding back pc gaming from the moment they released
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Yeah, honestly this last generation was a bit of a weird one. I guess Sony was scared of making their machine too pricey because of the PS3's launch woes and Microsoft already had the Kinect bumping up their price so they couldn't go much higher in cost either meaning both sort of underperformed in terms of power.
 
Irminsul

Irminsul

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,039
I mean, it always depends on the game. Control loads pretty quickly on my PC (and it's not even on a particularly fast SSD), but No Man's Sky just takes ages.
 

VG Aficionado

Member
Nov 6, 2017
1,385
Whatever your take is, I don't think it's surprising that any game expected to sell more on console would result in its main version to be designed around the lesser hardware, then upgraded to more powerful but less optimized platforms such as PC.

The main upgrade for all games this generation will be the 8/16, roughly equivalent to R7 3700 AMD CPU. The graphics can always scale more easily with resolution and effect quality, but a better base CPU means that new titles can be a lot more ambitious in terms of game logic, physics, AI and also framerate while you're at it. It's the main reason why we're seeing so many 60 fps games at launch (many with dynamic resolution) and even some 120 fps ones.
 
Fire Bocchi

Fire Bocchi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,648
Ukumio said:
Yeah, honestly this last generation was a bit of a weird one. I guess Sony was scared of making their machine too pricey because of the PS3's launch woes and Microsoft already had the Kinect bumping up their price so they couldn't go much higher in cost either meaning both sort of underperformed in terms of power.
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the biggest problem with last gen, is when they decided to go with pc architecture at the worst possible time, where intel would be too expensive, and amd cpus were complete trash
 
Sparks

Sparks

Senior Games Artist
Verified
Dec 10, 2018
2,879
Los Angeles
I wish this narrative would end, it's a tale as old as time. They both help each other out... consoles force a new minimum to be pushed up every generation and force in new technology. PC's help push the hardware specs higher throughout the generation. Nothing is holding the other back, they coexist and create a good landscape for developers.

If consoles did not exist, its not like suddenly developers would start developing exclusively for SSD's, they'd still be trailing behind.
 
Grand Galvantula

Grand Galvantula

Member
Nov 14, 2017
2,835
It's definitely the thing I'm most excited for this gen. I'm just curious how future PC versions of multiplats will take advantage of unrestricted loading since not every PC gamer has a SSD. Will the game just be able to detect that it's installed on a SSD and load it as such?
 
onyxxxxxxx

onyxxxxxxx

Banned
Nov 4, 2020
36
just wait a few years and consoles will again hold back PC. I wonder why that happens time and time again the past decades ;)
 
Vimto

Vimto

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,714
It won't really shine until we get RTX IO and AMD's equivalent.

The current method for transferring data from SSD's to VRAM needs to be changed.
 

Deleted member 10726

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,674
ResetERA
Warframe also loads a ton faster with the new engine enabled, it's been installed on my SSD and it's like night and day between the old and the new engine.
 
Ra

Ra

Rap Genius
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
12,207
Dark Space
Ukumio said:
Is anyone saying consoles don't? It's pretty well known that towards the end of a console generation that PC's are superior in almost every way (few exceptions) and then a new generation launches and consoles catch up or overtake PC's in terms of performance and the cycle repeats.
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The PS4 and Xbox One broke that cycle. They never even caught up to the mid-range PCs of their day.
 
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Vimto

Vimto

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,714
Spark said:
Watch Dogs Legion Raytracing on consoles is already below the lowest settings on PC. If raytracing is to be the next big thing then PC and Nvidias RTX technology is already surging ahead.
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Consoles brought RT to the masses, hence more devs will utilize it hence more time will be spent optimizing and pushing the tech forward.

So in a sense consoles having RT will push it forward for PC users. Not holding it back like you are imagining.
 
Ploid 6.0

Ploid 6.0

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,440
This was the thing I was most jealous of, I'm so tired of long load times even with a NVMe SSD. The most recent game that I got which recommend a SSD was Marvel Avengers, and it's load times annoy the heck out of me. I hope when the next gen versions launch they remove the load restraints on the PC version. Let us skip long loading masks, and shorten the actual load times.
 
Qassim

Qassim

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,532
United Kingdom
Vimto said:
Consoles brought RT to the masses, hence more devs will utilize it hence more time will be spent optimizing and pushing the tech forward.

So in a sense consoles having RT will push it forward for PC users. Not holding it back like you are imagining.
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It's a mix of the two.

The consoles having RT capability absolutely means it'll be in a lot more games that PC gamers will be able to benefit from. You're right.

But the relatively limited RT performance of the consoles means the RT implementations will likely be limited and will mean RT will be held back on PC. Purely from a technically perspective, but what games get made and how factors in more than just what technical capabilities are available.

I don't really see that as a knock against the consoles though, if AAA PC gaming was big enough by itself - then that wouldn't be the case - but it isn't. We wouldn't have many of these AAA graphically intense games at all without the consoles.
 
MrKlaw

MrKlaw

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,053
Jaded Alyx said:
I feel like people are missing OP's point.

I don't think people ever really considered consoles holding back PCs in terms of LOADING since PCs have had SSDs forever.
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Yeah I'm actually a little surprised by this. It seems a little odd as PCs have faster SSDs for loading and faster CPUs for decompressing. I assumed there were significant OS overhead issues but doesn't appear to be so - in that case DirectStorage perhaps isn't that necessary (or loading times will get really crazy fast in a couple of years)
 
leng jai

leng jai

Member
Nov 2, 2017
15,118
This was always obvious. PCs have had SSDs for a decade but they were never utilised properly because they've never been considered the baseline spec.
 
Vimto

Vimto

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,714
Qassim said:
It's a mix of the two.

The consoles having RT capability absolutely means it'll be in a lot more games that PC gamers will be able to benefit from. You're right.

But the relatively limited RT performance of the consoles means the RT implementations will likely be limited and will mean RT will be held back on PC.

I don't really see that as a knock against the consoles though, if AAA PC gaming was big enough by itself - then that wouldn't be the case - but it isn't. We wouldn't have many of these AAA graphically intense games at all without the consoles.
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Just because consoles will have limited RT doesn't mean PC will be limited as well. You can see the big difference already in watch dogs and it will get wider with time. Pro consoles in few years will help close the widening gap as well.
 
Pargon

Pargon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,013
MrKlaw said:
Yeah I'm actually a little surprised by this. It seems a little odd as PCs have faster SSDs for loading and faster CPUs for decompressing. I assumed there were significant OS overhead issues but doesn't appear to be so - in that case DirectStorage perhaps isn't that necessary (or loading times will get really crazy fast in a couple of years)
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It's not OS overheads - it's inefficient IO paths in the engines which were being masked by slow HDD access on consoles, and were not a priority for fixing on PC since brute force still worked to speed them up somewhat.
Now that SSDs are standard, and you have games like Miles Morales loading into the world in only a couple of seconds, developers are starting to work on it.
Of course PCs will also benefit from the DirectStorage API which should help reduce overheads which are there for things like decompression.

Vimto said:
Just because consoles will have limited RT doesn't mean PC will be limited as well. You can see the big difference already in watch dogs and it will get wider with time. Pro consoles in few years will help close the widening gap as well.
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I think we're a lot less likely to see full RT implementations due to the limited RT performance on consoles, and it's more likely that we'll be stuck with hybrid solutions for most of the generation though - even if a full RT implementation would have been viable on PC hardware.
 
MrBob

MrBob

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,670
I just checked Watch Dogs Legion with my Crucial MX500 SATA SSD, 26 seconds. That's a nice jump on the nvme gen 4.
 

Bucéfalo

Banned
May 29, 2020
1,566
K.Jack said:
The PS4 and Xbox One broke that cycle. They never even caught up to the mid-range PCs of their day.
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This. Base PS4 GPU was roughly a HD 7870, with some customization, which was already a mediocre GPU for late 2013 standards. Xbox One base was even worse.

Ps4 and XOne CPU were also kind of poor for its time.
 
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