SSD is a real game changer

Deleted member 4970 · Jun 2, 2020

The SSD will literally be the biggest hardware upgrade for consoles in 20 years.

It affects so many things: The OS, storage, memory, load times, game design, and more will all be insanely improved with the thing.

shark97 · Jun 2, 2020

Belthazar90 said:
Now imagine when all games are made to take advantage of that tech? It will be one of the biggest game-changers on this industry in a while

Not really. SSDs had really prohibitive prices until recently. It was definitely not feasible to have one of those on a console 7 years ago and even most PC gamers couldn't afford having a big enough one until very recently, so developing games to take advantage of it would mean a very small crowd being able to play your games.

Well I guess this is a console vs PC thing. I was relating it to PC's. As your OP is focused on.

In PC's SSD's have been hot for years. I fully know the cost part, but they were so trans formative most people had them. For a few years now I wouldn't buy any laptop or use any desktop without an SSD or at least eMMC, period.

leng jai · Jun 2, 2020

Cats said:
I see a huge difference on the OS level with applications, file browsing, ect., but I actually never really saw much a difference with most modern games. They load a tiny bit faster with SSD. You can tell with loading bars in games during online matches and my friends with their game loaded on SSD finish the same time or 1-2 seconds ahead of me. I bet if modern games were made for SSD it would probably see a better usage.

Outside of loading screens it usually helps in high end open world games when it comes to stuttering and pop in. Next gen should see much more noticeable gains once it's the console baseline.

shark97 · Jun 2, 2020

Cats said:
I see a huge difference on the OS level with applications, file browsing, ect., but I actually never really saw much a difference with most modern games. They load a tiny bit faster with SSD. You can tell with loading bars in games during online matches and my friends with their game loaded on SSD finish the same time or 1-2 seconds ahead of me. I bet if modern games were made for SSD it would probably see a better usage.

Yeah this can be true I was going to mention it. But I believe the issue is games not optimized for SSD. Which will change over time. I've read Doom Eternal for example loads nearly instantly from an SSD.

Similar to how using an external SSD on PS4/Xbox, besides being bottle necked by I believe Sata and USB, while they will speed loads , are nowhere near their potential.

Consoles of course offer the opportunity to use SSD as default and something devs can count on being in every box, which obviously is just going to be huge.

the-pi-guy · Jun 2, 2020

Mercador said:
Damn guys, don't fall for those UE5 bullshots... SSDs are on PC for several years and there's nothing like you saw in that UE5 trailer (the last sequence). I don't think we'll see something like that unless it's fully pre-generated, even with SSDs.

That's because games on PC aren't designed to take advantage of an SSD.

TheTyrantShow · Jun 2, 2020

Yeah it's nice but wait until things are built specifically for the SSD this gen.

It'll be great

AtomicShroom · Jun 2, 2020

This is gonna be such a game-changer. Even under-the-hood stuff you maybe haven't thought about is going to get significant changes. For example right now console OSes need to keep a lot of free memory for video recording because they can't write the video directly to storage fast enough. With SSDs, that shit is going straight to storage without having to be held in some cache, so the OS footprint is going to be smaller.

Arthands · Jun 2, 2020

Cats said:
I see a huge difference on the OS level with applications, file browsing, ect., but I actually never really saw much a difference with most modern games. They load a tiny bit faster with SSD. You can tell with loading bars in games during online matches and my friends with their game loaded on SSD finish the same time or 1-2 seconds ahead of me. I bet if modern games were made for SSD it would probably see a better usage.

Loading for online game is also dependent on network speed.

YaBish · Jun 2, 2020

If they weren't mostly dead at this point I'd figure next gen could be the golden age of immersive sims, whose main problem has always been loading areas.

Bucket-o-roadkill · Jun 2, 2020

I've used ssds for the best part of 8 years and I guess the novelty has worn off for me. I wouldn't exactly call my boot to os times blisteringly quick and game loading is nothing to write home about. I will say that current gen consoles feel like absolute dogs to me though..

Belthazar90 · Jun 2, 2020

shark97 said:
Well I guess this is a console vs PC thing. I was relating it to PC's. As your OP is focused on.

In PC's SSD's have been hot for years. I fully know the cost part, but they were so trans formative most people had them. For a few years now I wouldn't buy any laptop or use any desktop without an SSD or at least eMMC, period.

It sure was more popular on PC, but developing for SSDs would still alienate a bit portion of the userbase (taking REAL advantage of it would mean putting it as a system requirement, which publishers rarely do even today).

MatrixMan.exe · Jun 2, 2020

Recently built a PC with a couple of M.2 NVMe SSD's thrown in there. GAME CHANGER. Loading times for gaming have been reduced to comfortably under 10 seconds and the OS boots super quickly. PS5 and Series X can't come soon enough, honestly.

Arta · Jun 2, 2020

ItIsOkBro said:
will Shang Tsung finally be able to morph like he used to

That's all I want to know.

AtomicShroom · Jun 2, 2020

Bucket-o-roadkill said:
I've used ssds for the best part of 8 years and I guess the novelty has worn off for me. I wouldn't exactly call my boot to os times blisteringly quick and game loading is nothing to write home about. I will say that current gen consoles feel like absolute dogs to me though..

Keep in mind that current games aren't created to take advantage of SSDs because they aren't standard. So there's a lot of redundant data that slows the process down regardless. When games are created exclusively for SSDs, you will see a clear difference. Except SSDs to become a requirement to play PC games in the near future.

B1ggRandall · Jun 2, 2020

AtomicShroom said:
This is gonna be such a game-changer. Even under-the-hood stuff you maybe haven't thought about is going to get significant changes. For example right now console OSes need to keep a lot of free memory for video recording because they can't write the video directly to storage fast enough. With SSDs, that shit is going straight to storage without having to be held in some cache, so the OS footprint is going to be smaller.

Karspankey said:
The SSD will literally be the biggest hardware upgrade for consoles in 20 years.

It affects so many things: The OS, storage, memory, load times, game design, and more will all be insanely improved with the thing.

Hnnnnng *Bites lips*

hydruxo · Jun 2, 2020

I've wanted to upgrade to one for my PS4 for a while but it's so close to PS5 that it would be pointless so I'm holding out. I have a 2TB HDD right now. It's rough playing Destiny 2 with my friend who has a SSD because he'll load into areas a full 20 seconds or so before me at times. Next gen can't come any quicker.

Papacheeks · Jun 2, 2020

Outrun said:
Yeah I can't wait to see what the XSX and PS5 churn out.

XSX doesn't have 6 priority lanes. Nor the customized I/O and is half the speed. Games are going to still be amazing, but I wonder if developers on DX12 side are going to prioritize and leverage the SSD as much as Sony is on their first party.

Moebius · Jun 2, 2020

Wonder how long it will take to get 6tb ssds under $200.

Sabin · Jun 2, 2020

Moebius said:
Wonder how long it will take to get 6tb ssds under $200.

Not any time soon.

Maybe in 3-5 years.

Outrun · Jun 2, 2020

Papacheeks said:
XSX doesn't have 6 priority lanes. Nor the customized I/O and is half the speed. Games are going to still be amazing, but I wonder if developers on DX12 side are going to prioritize and leverage the SSD as much as Sony is on their first party.

I suspect that 1st party studios of MS and Sony will design to the strengths of each of their respective consoles.

I also suspect that the XSX SSD will be the baseline for 3rd party games.

Either way, we will see boundaries be pushed by the devs.

Iron Eddie · Jun 2, 2020

Papacheeks said:
XSX doesn't have 6 priority lanes. Nor the customized I/O and is half the speed. Games are going to still be amazing, but I wonder if developers on DX12 side are going to prioritize and leverage the SSD as much as Sony is on their first party.

I suspect the other way around, Sony will be leveraging the SSD more than 3rd party will. It will be very interesting to seen how those 3rd party games compare because it looks like XSX will have more brute force power which could lead to higher frame rates and higher resolutions.

What I find very odd is all this talk about fast loading yet so many seem content with the 30fps standard that is likely to come once again. I want next gen to be more than just faster SSD's, the game should also feel faster.

ghibli99 · Jun 2, 2020

Yeah, it's great. And in the OPs case, going from a 5400rpm HDD to NVMe M.2 is a particularly staggering jump. When I first went SSD on PC roughly a decade ago, drives weren't what they are now, but they were still a significant jump, especially when it came to Windows startup times. What's funny though is that even today, I tend to install most of my games to my WD Black HDD since I just don't have a ton of space to play with on my SSD.

logash · Jun 2, 2020

ghibli99 said:
Yeah, it's great. And in the OPs case, going from a 5400rpm HDD to NVMe M.2 is a particularly staggering jump. When I first went SSD on PC roughly a decade ago, drives weren't what they are now, but they were still a significant jump, especially when it came to Windows startup times. What's funny though is that even today, I tend to install most of my games to my WD Black HDD since I just don't have a ton of space to play with on my SSD.

I'm sure a lot of us will be doing the exact same thing on our next gen consoles while we wait for SSD prices to drop. I will be using my 5TB external drive to store PS5 games that I'm not using.

Neo Ankh · Jun 2, 2020

ItIsOkBro said:
will Shang Tsung finally be able to morph like he used to

Finally someone is asking the important questions!

nitewulf · Jun 2, 2020

I have been using an SSD in my PC since 2014. This thread is hilarious.

AuthenticM · Jun 2, 2020

Feep said:
Coincidentally I installed my first NVMe M.2 drive today, and holy SHIT. It's as high above an SSD as an SSD is above an HDD. It's wild.

Can't recommend this tech highly enough to everyone. It makes an incredible difference.

Which one did you buy?

zeuanimals · Jun 2, 2020

Tiago Rodrigues said:
I'm trying to picture the next God of War or whatever Naughty Dog is doing next and i actually get goosebumps.

One thing's for certain, Kratos and Thor are gonna be hitting each other hard enough to send one another through trees, mountains and across the map and possibly through a portal to another realm, all at incredible speed.

Igniz12 · Jun 2, 2020

....and then Bungie when they release Destiny 2 for next gen consoles: "Im about to end this whole mans career."

deejay8595 · Jun 2, 2020

ItIsOkBro said:
will Shang Tsung finally be able to morph like he used to

Lol!

Serious question, what is the reason he can no longer morph into any other characters now?

Finaika · Jun 2, 2020

SSD is the biggest game changer since G-Sync.

big_z · Jun 2, 2020

Feep said:
Coincidentally I installed my first NVMe M.2 drive today, and holy SHIT. It's as high above an SSD as an SSD is above an HDD. It's wild.

Can't recommend this tech highly enough to everyone. It makes an incredible difference.

Something was very wrong with your old ssd if you're seeing another jump like that. They're virtually indistinguishable outside of edge cases like transferring massive sized files from one drive to another.

Outrun said:
I suspect that 1st party studios of MS and Sony will design to the strengths of each of their respective consoles.

I also suspect that the XSX SSD will be the baseline for 3rd party games.

Either way, we will see boundaries be pushed by the devs.

Baseline will likely be sata 3 ssd. Most pc's can make that upgrade but moving straight to nvme is asking a majority of people to rebuild/buy a new pc which is a big ask. It will take most of next generation to transition to higher end ssd.

Sasaud · Jun 2, 2020

It's going to be amazing, people were arguing about the benefits of ssd other than loading time and for me that was the biggest revolution.
I can't stand loading anymore, almost every big game this gen has loading screens that take a couple of minutes to load and it feels like eternity when u die a lot or when u play a couple of games at the same time.

Feep · Jun 3, 2020

big_z said:
Something was very wrong with your old ssd if you're seeing another jump like that. They're virtually indistinguishable outside of edge cases like transferring massive sized files from one drive to another.

Baseline will likely be sata 3 ssd. Most pc's can make that upgrade but moving straight to nvme is asking a majority of people to rebuild/buy a new pc which is a big ask. It will take most of next generation to transition to higher end ssd.

??? I don't think so. The Windows install time was a really big difference, but I suppose that does count as transferring large files. That said, my old SSD was approximately five years old, so I dunno.

I bought this one.

azfaru · Jun 3, 2020

It shaved 10s of seconds off of the usual Destiny orbit loads. And I used to pour at least 3-4 hours to that game everyday, so it almost feels like a life upgrade lol. Massive value gained for me. Too bad other games don't seem to take advantage of it more.

vivftp · Jun 3, 2020

Walken said:
I suspect the other way around, Sony will be leveraging the SSD more than 3rd party will. It will be very interesting to seen how those 3rd party games compare because it looks like XSX will have more brute force power which could lead to higher frame rates and higher resolutions.

What I find very odd is all this talk about fast loading yet so many seem content with the 30fps standard that is likely to come once again. I want next gen to be more than just faster SSD's, the game should also feel faster.

How much 30 FPS content do we really know about so far? Valhalla is one, but what else? The UE5 tech demo was locked to 30, but Epic said they were targeting 60 FPS. Plus it's an unfinished engine that was running on a devkit so plenty of room to tweak there.

While I'm sure we will still get 30 FPS experiences from devs who have big ambitions, I'm also sure we'll see a ton of 60 FPS titles and maybe some that can hit in the 120 FPS range (maybe games with optional settings)

IIRC the folks at Polyphony have aspirations of hitting upwards of 240 FPS one day so the drive for higher frame rates should continue.

Astronut325 · Jun 3, 2020

I want a 2TB SSD. Just don't want to pay $250+ for one.

big_z · Jun 3, 2020

Feep said:
??? I don't think so. The Windows install time was a really big difference, but I suppose that does count as transferring large files. That said, my old SSD was approximately five years old, so I dunno.

I bought this one.

When I say big files I'm talking like multi GB videos files and such. Windows is a bunch of smaller files for the most part. What storage device you install windows from does play a big factor in how fast it'll install. So like a USB 2 stick vs a USB 3 will have a big speed difference.
But unless you're moving around big files or editing 4/8k video there isn't really any performance gain for the typical user going from sata ssd to nvme.

Carbon · Jun 3, 2020

Astronut325 said:
I want a 2TB SSD. Just don't want to pay $250+ for one.

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-2TB-SSD-WDS200T2B0A/dp/B073SBRHH6/

$230
There are cheaper options as well ($200) if you want to sacrifice sustained write performance.

If you want a super FAST 2TB drive, like an M.2 NVME SSD, yeah, that's still gonna cost you. But the prices will likely drop next year once the market is flooded with New SSDs using higher density NAND Flash.

arcadepc · Jun 3, 2020

I see difference between ssd laptop and hdd and usb3 hdd in desktop but when actual game loads there are no lags or delays or hdd readings that will affect the game and this is what matters. They are loaded to vram and ram anyway. Sata hdd is slightly faster than usb3

Deleted member 39374 · Jun 3, 2020

SSDs have been a game changer since like 2010-2011 but the cool part of these new console one is that the GPU can directly access it

DOA · Jun 3, 2020

in the old days (2009) i've bought a macbook pro with SSD, because i've decided to splurge, and since then i've found out that SSD is a real game changer. the OS loaded in seconds, the app and the whole system ran smooth as butter.
even on my desktop computers, when i had SSD, suddenly everything ran smoother and the loading times were close to nothing.

for a long time the bottleneck was the HDD, and finally it's nice to see that it is being treated right (no more 5400rpm drives)

Ocean Bones · Jun 3, 2020

Exclusives on each system should be interesting... But a lot of multiplatform games are gonna be built from the ground up with HDDs in older systems in mind as well as SSD.

Regardless I still look forward to the overall snapiness of the systems, fast loading, etc.

Dr Pears · Jun 3, 2020

Any PC game released today designed to take full advantage of SSDs?

Saint of Killers · Jun 3, 2020

I bet I can shutdown and boot up my PC multiple times in the time it would take my old PC to reach desktop (never mind the extra 2 minutes to be actually useable!) – SSDs are magic lol And I don't even have a NVMe.

Saint of Killers · Jun 3, 2020

Dr Pears said:
Any PC game released today designed to take full advantage of SSDs?

Going from what I read when Sony's PS5 SSD was announced, nope.

dock · Jun 3, 2020

I just ordered an external USBC 10gbps T5 SSD to install games onto, rather than clogging up the drive on my laptop. Is there any major drawback to using fast USBC SSD like this?

panda-zebra · Jun 3, 2020

bell_hooks said:
System responsiveness is a large part of why I wanna buy this console day 1. Also games like Hitman or XCOM are going to be finally playable instead of looking at loading screen all the time

It's this kind of simple improvement to current gen spec games that will make some of them, and games in their genres going forward, a far less frustrating experience on console.

But it's the raw potential of building an engine around new baseline possibilities, not crippling and stifling potential, but leaning on that massive throughput in IO with zero seek times; file systems with less granularity geared towards maximising read performance over write and designed not based on decades old multi-purpose all-rounder concepts more suited to productivity software than gaming, and game engines and game designs not held back by the actions a player might take within the next half minute, but rather just the next second or two.

Quicker loading for existing games is a mere side-effect. The true difference will come when the IO and raw speed is leveraged as a core piller of a game's creation.

nmkd · Jun 3, 2020

Dr Pears said:
Any PC game released today designed to take full advantage of SSDs?

Star Citizen.

Mabye not "full" advantage, but it's pretty much designed around SSDs.

orava · Jun 3, 2020

It's great to see this tech finally trickle-down to consoles. And it's a nice timing too. The latest bump in SSD tech is great and it's going to get significantly better in coming years, especially when the software side catches up properly. Iv'e been a SSD user almost decade now and keep updating to the latest stuff every couple years.

siteseer · Jun 3, 2020

Feep said:
Coincidentally I installed my first NVMe M.2 drive today, and holy SHIT. It's as high above an SSD as an SSD is above an HDD. It's wild.

Can't recommend this tech highly enough to everyone. It makes an incredible difference.

as a long time ssd user, this thread had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.

SSD is a real game changer

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