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Tom Warren: Developers are saying CPU and SSD are key to next gen, not teraflops, Lockhart won't hold back games
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Sounds like a reasonable assessment. I honestly feel like there's more than enough power in these machines to do just about anything these days. Raytracing is a cool holy grail type of thing, but I think even pre-baked lighting looks great on current gen machines.
I can't imagine either company dropping the ball on specs considering that both will be an absurd leap over our current base machines.
They are quite expansive but I work with 15tb SSDs, these are even more expensive!
We will see how that goes in the end with expendable storage. Microsoft goes proprietary while Sony goes expensive to a point where they have requirements that nobody will buy more nvme storage for a long time.
Kyoufu was asking about load times in his initial post. I'm sure the full speed PS5 will have some awesome advantages but I don't think that'll stop your average game from having relatively quick load times on the XSX.
Something to keep in mind is buying the SSD expansion isn't technically necessary. It's fully possible to just keep using a huge HDD for cold storage, and then just swap games to the SSD when you want to play it. If you're willing to wait a handful of minutes for the transfer then it will be a far cheaper option to store games.
When it comes to what difference an SSD makes in game design and user experience and how this might translate to PC ports I'm thinking of my recent experience playing HL:Alyx on my PC.
Even before the game starts, this is the first game I've played in a while that has complained about available VRAM (i.e. GPU RAM not system memory) while launching. Apparently, this complaint about VRAM on my GTX 1080 is because of how much VRAM a lot of open browsers take up, regardless of the fact that I have 32GB of system RAM, most of it free. Clearly this game is using a LOT of texture memory. But I digress - I installed HL:A on my spinning disk because room on my NVME SSD was low. So now when I'm playing it takes what seems like a *very* long time to load and get into the game, and more importantly, even within a "level" or segmented portion of gameplay with a connected narrative, I see load screens as I traverse the level.
So I walk through a random door, and... loading. Climb a ladder and.. loading. This is commonplace in old games and still on some console games, but I don't really experience it on most modern titles. This is especially magnified in VR where a mid head-turn "pause" due to loading is mildly nausea inducing in effect.
Coming back to next gen consoles/games, if you have a game design decision regarding the size of a level and as Mark Cerny indicated in his pretty brilliant talk, a lack of "load hiding" twisty corridors in the game, then things better load pretty damn fast. So when porting the game to the PC (or a slower console) you have several options - change the level design to break it up more and hide loading, lower the fidelity of textures and/or geometry + LOD, or just let users see pop in and load animations and pauses. For some this will be acceptable, for some it will not work.
A final thought - even a 2x difference in resources is on the edge of "significant" or noticeable without critical analysis (even before optimizations taken to purposely flatten those differences). I tend to agree with those who think the new consoles will be a big jump on certain well designed games but are like to feel not so different from each other outside of painstaking objective analysis designed to magnify small differences.
Even before the game starts, this is the first game I've played in a while that has complained about available VRAM (i.e. GPU RAM not system memory) while launching. Apparently, this complaint about VRAM on my GTX 1080 is because of how much VRAM a lot of open browsers take up, regardless of the fact that I have 32GB of system RAM, most of it free. Clearly this game is using a LOT of texture memory. But I digress - I installed HL:A on my spinning disk because room on my NVME SSD was low. So now when I'm playing it takes what seems like a *very* long time to load and get into the game, and more importantly, even within a "level" or segmented portion of gameplay with a connected narrative, I see load screens as I traverse the level.
So I walk through a random door, and... loading. Climb a ladder and.. loading. This is commonplace in old games and still on some console games, but I don't really experience it on most modern titles. This is especially magnified in VR where a mid head-turn "pause" due to loading is mildly nausea inducing in effect.
Coming back to next gen consoles/games, if you have a game design decision regarding the size of a level and as Mark Cerny indicated in his pretty brilliant talk, a lack of "load hiding" twisty corridors in the game, then things better load pretty damn fast. So when porting the game to the PC (or a slower console) you have several options - change the level design to break it up more and hide loading, lower the fidelity of textures and/or geometry + LOD, or just let users see pop in and load animations and pauses. For some this will be acceptable, for some it will not work.
A final thought - even a 2x difference in resources is on the edge of "significant" or noticeable without critical analysis (even before optimizations taken to purposely flatten those differences). I tend to agree with those who think the new consoles will be a big jump on certain well designed games but are like to feel not so different from each other outside of painstaking objective analysis designed to magnify small differences.
There is multiple 5gb/sec for $200 for 1TB, the upcoming nvme's with new controllers (most notably samsung's first pcie 4.0 nvme) are 6/7gb/sec & the price won't be that high.
I think we will hear more about the actual necessary specs soon. What is necessary in sustained bandwidth, for example, what about the different metrics around small files, mixed read and write performance and so on. The maximum bandwidth is important but only one of quite a few performance metrics when it comes to SSDs.
It's too easy to discount the technical investment required to make the launch titles happen, and what developers learn from trying to take advantage of the hardware even on a limited title. The Decima engine at the heart of several of Sony's key PS4 titles, for example, had to come together in its initial form for a launch title. Being able to focus exclusively on one hardware configuration and optimize solely for that architecture has historically been a hallmark of first-party titles. Not that Microsoft's approach is a bad business decision by any stretch of the imagination. Differentiating your strategy from your primary competitor is definitely smart, and there's no question that it gives them a broader customer base to address. As a technology enthusiast, though, I always like to see what happens when titles push a fixed architecture as far as it can go.
That's what will be fascinating when the CPU and SSD advances this generation wind up being taken advantage of by developers. What exactly will the priority be? Are we going to see more complex systems to enable emergent gameplay, like BotW's fire and thermal drafts but up another level? Or will we see AI that learns from the player's engagement style? Is the SSD going to be used just to stream more intricate static worlds, or will it be used to deliver just-in-time animations and audio for a wider range of dynamic gameplay events? There's a lot that's possible now that simply wasn't before, and novelty has always been a huge win when it comes to entertainment.
Yet again you are claiming that launch games have something to do with how well they are perceived. And last of us was a better game than those I agree but it could have been even better if ND did not have to implement loads of boxes and ladders to hide loading times.
Last gen introduced nothing that was as transformative as the ssd in this one when it comes to game design. The fact that this is the first real X86 build upon X86 generations also means development tools are far more mature and ready out the gates and developers have never been as ready to tackle it head including the SSD and what it brings to the table.
Once again we're do you get that Spider-Man was build for PS5 from?
Well then it's a good thing both will be offering SSD's then isn't it?
That he does not mind being constantly bombarded with people quoting him asking questions when he already said he is done answering. We already have had other insiders stop entering these kinds of threads specifically citing it as the reason why.
Matt said multiple times in this thread both systems will be very close, first party and third party. Some stopped (insiders in other threads) because once they gave their opinion a few didn't like the answer and decided to change the narrative favoring their brand of choice.
it's 4000$... ten times the price of these new consoles basically.
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I see people talk about 1800p. This is too much. 15% less than native 4k is between 1991p and 1992p.
I always thought it was developer code doing a flyby of the games engine, not the actual game just running to demonstrate the speed.
So with our jump to way better CPUs i am curious about the following....
SMT - Will this allow even more gain if developers opt to use that method? Trying to google differences of using it or not and find articles that show SMT is actually slower, albeit 1% usually. and other articles saying its nothing important and probably should disable it for certain wordload applications. lol
hmmmmmmm
SMT - Will this allow even more gain if developers opt to use that method? Trying to google differences of using it or not and find articles that show SMT is actually slower, albeit 1% usually. and other articles saying its nothing important and probably should disable it for certain wordload applications. lol
hmmmmmmm
If you would have read our conversation you would have understood that it was about cross gen games and those games can't take advantage of the SSD outside of load times and you can't design games around the ssd.
I appreciate its not necessary but I will want it. I'm not going to be happy with just 6 games or so on the internal, and having to manage moving around data is going to be time consuming and a problem for me. Transfer time from a mechanical will be rough. It would take how long to move 100gig? And you would have to move the data off the ssd first. So you are talking moving the game you think you don't want to play to your mechanical.. then moving the game you want from your mechanical. Then what happens if you want to play the old game, same again. Far from ideal.
Exactly how does any of what you said mean he is perfectly fine being asked and quoted multiple times and not only annoyed after he said he is done answering questions?
As MS told us, SMT will be used by vast majority of devs. It's only the early titles and cross gen games that will settle for non SMT as some devs are more familiar.
Based on PC data that gets throwna round, SMT is something like a ~30% advantage in games that utilize it well.
Lol, that's not even a competition, at least I didn't know it was.
Edit: I have to edit that, I should not assume anything as I don't know you at all. Still a weird comment from your side.
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Considering how every game is deved on PC and research for engine tech is done there. Um. Yeah that won't happen.
Every new generation has cross-gen titles and most launch games hardly every really get to the metal of the system because they are usually rushed to get ready for launch. Most people just want well made games, which explains how a game like Breath of the Wild can sell systems all on its own. There is a lot on Halo Infinite to deliver because that is still one of Microsoft's big IP's they have. The wildcard is what will Sony launch with because history has shown they don't put a lot of emphasis on it and rather instead rely mostly on third party until their big games are ready.
Anyone will get annoyed being asked the same questions over and over or asked questions he obviously can't answer repeatedly. What I was referring to were the others being driven away, which you didn't exactly tell the whole story. That is some got pestered by those who didn't like the answers because it didn't favor their brand of choice.
yeah i seen a quote by intel saying there could be up to 30% improvements, but other real world tests from years ago and last year don't show those increases. perhaps this is just a case where they'd have to build a game around SMT im guessing?
Yeah, current games are better off with SMT turned off, for the most part. Just as we need games designed around SSDs, we need the same for SMT.
Oh, we're very sure.
Awesome, so they used the ps4 back compat version. We can expect these loads once the ps5 is out i guess?
The "metal" have never been easier to target as this gen with basically the same architecture and no need from creating new tools or anything like in the past basically making taking advantage of everything new a much easier task even for those targeting launch.
I would belive it's annoying getting question and quoted regardless if it's a new question or not if you already said your done answering.
We don't know at all because while we don't for sure something have/haven't been made to the code we also have Sony saying this was the "slow" devkit and what that means.
I don't even understand the point you are trying to make. You are comparing the SSD controller in PS5 to enterprise class SSD controllers. PS5 packs a data center class 12 channel 6 priority level SSD controller. Those enterprise class SSD controllers are 8 and 16 channel with 2 priority level. Consumer class SSD top out at 8 but majority use 4 channels.
CES 2020: Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Makes An Appearance
Could be resolution, could also be enhanced visual elements, could also be better framerate.
Depends on where devs plan to spend the extra GPU & CPU budget.
Definitely expect better load times on the PS5. There's also a school of thought that the PS5 SSD's advantage could help with LoD stuff.
It took me 1 second to find a better GPU than the one in the XSX
NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation Graphics Card
Powered by the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture.
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Damn. Next gen consoles are doomed.
There is no indication that they wanted to show bc in that demo. They wanted to show off their SSD solution which was then advertised as the fastest available. So why would they then show the SSD in a limited scenario where it only runs in bc mode? This doesn't make sense. But I feel that you'll say otherwise and we won't agree, like we don't on any other point, it seems.
He is trying to point how PS5 ssd is not that impressive while instead doing the exact opposite.
I never started to begin to compare PC components with console components, though 🤷 the starting point to the whole discussion was off right from the start. But thanks for proving this point even further.It took me 1 second to find a better GPU than the one in the XSX
NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation Graphics Card
Powered by the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture.www.nvidia.com
Damn. Next gen consoles are doomed.
I really can't express how naive I find this argument because they will ban me. They did it before for just expressing politely my legit opinion.
So I will just say that Fifa 14 and NBA 14 current-gen versions didn't come to PC even if every game is deved on PC and research for engine tech is done there. I am not saying that this will happen again. It is my estimation for the early years and it is not a matter of hardware capabilities decision. Maybe things will change, but if your argument was valid, then every game would come to PC day one, past gens.
This is not how industry works. :)
Well, the 1TB Samsung 970 Pro with a 3.5 GB/s sequential read speed costs $327 on Amazon right now. I'm not sure the upcoming 1TB 6.5 GB/s 980 Pro would be any cheaper.
We might see cheaper PCIE 4 options on the market by year end, but i'd plan for around $300 at least.
definitely plan to use regular USB hdds for storage/management for a while if you're on a budget
Imagine also caring about the Zen 2 CPUs when we could get ourselves a threadripper.
www.tweaktown.com
What other comparisons can we make to make next gen consoles look worse? Why stop with comparing a 4000 dollar SSD to something in a 500 dollar console?
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What other comparisons can we make to make next gen consoles look worse? Why stop with comparing a 4000 dollar SSD to something in a 500 dollar console?
I dont think c0de is trying to do that at all. There is no denying how impressive the ps5 ssd is. It wasn't c0de that started comparing pc parts to consoles. There was some blatant downplaying of a consoles ssd earlier that he was responding too.
It's not even like cross-point memory is something that would blindside us even if it wasn't an order of magnitude more expensive than NAND: that's literally what ReRAM is, and it was discussed plenty before the specs were revealed. That post just doesn't make sense as anything but a veiled (and failed) attempt at downplaying.
'What's going on there' is that it isn't the same code running on both machines.
Can't say I agree with that. I feel like Raytracing is huge because lighting just isn't good enough right now. It's the one area that feels way behind everything else. Especially in the daytime, it looks sooooo flat in most games.