The Youtube channel Hardware Unboxed published a video yesterday taking a look at gaming loading times on PC using NVME PCIE 4.0 SSDs. They performed synthetic benchamrks and then looked at gaming load times for a variety of different drives - PCIE 4.0, PCIE 3.0, SATA SSD, and regular HDDs.
As expected, it confirmed what we all know - there are major bottlenecks that exist on PC when it comes to gaming I/O. Despite the fact that PCIE 3.0+ NVME SSDs offer signficant performance improvements over SATA SSDs, there is effectively zero meaningful improvement in the loading times of games.
Here are the synthetic benchmarks, which gives you an idea of just how much faster PCIE 3.0/4.0 drives are when compared to a regular SATA SSD:
And despite these significant improvements in drive speeds, this is the result in PC games -
A lot of people have said that developers will just "require a SSD" for PC games in the near future, but that doesn't even begin to address the bottleneck issues on PC, nor the colossal difference in speed between a SATA SSD and a NVME SSD. If you look at the synthetic benchmarks, you'll see that a SATA SSD is actually closer in performance to a 5400 RPM HDD than it is to a PCIE 3.0/4.0 NVME SSD.
Both NVME SSDs solutions in the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are significantly faster than a SATA SSD on PC. So what happens going forward for PC games? Do developers require not just a SATA SSD for their PC games, but a NVME SSD? If you're building a game to stream data at a given rate, and the PS5 can do it at 5.5 GB/s raw, and the Series X|S can do it at 2.5 GB/s raw, are developers actually going to require PCs to have those PCIE 3.0+ drives that can do 2+ GB/s reads?
Recently we've heard a lot about DirectStorage and RTX I/O. But just because these technologies exist does not mean they're anywhere close to being utilized on the PC. Developers have to take up these tools, build them into their game engines, and then actually implement them into the core design of their game.
And then they have to not only raise the minimum requirement of their game to a SATA SSD, but all the way up to a NVME PCIE 3.0+ SSD. Along with a RTX card for RTX I/O. Is that even realistic within the next 5 years? What percentage of PC gamers will have a NVME PCIE SSD and a RTX based GPU three years from now?
I've seen some discussion that the larger RAM pools on the PC will make up for the difference, but is this really going to be the case? Sure, the $2,000+ PCs will have GPUs with 10+ GB of VRAM and and 32+ GB of system RAM, and in that case a 500 MB/s SSD could maybe make sense, given that additional data could be moved and stored in RAM to make up for the lack of I/O speed relative to the consoles. But your average gaming PC is going to have 16 GB of system RAM with a GPU with 6-8 GB of VRAM. I have 16 GB of RAM in my current PC right now, with only 9.3 GB available due to browsers, Discord, and various other apps and processes running in Windows. 9 GB + 8 GB of VRAM on my GPU gives about 17 GB of total RAM for a game - not that much more than the next-gen consoles.
The simple reality is that these bottlenecks are going to continue to exist for a while on PC while having evaporated for consoles. Developers can start building a game on PS5 or Xbox Series X|S and can take advantage of those ultra fast drives immediately, without having to calibrate or limit the design of the game to work on hardware that may not be sufficient.
I want nothing more than to see the next-gen consoles push the requirements for PCs sky high, because that means more revolutionary experiences for everyone. I just fear that the PC is going to lag behind for a while in this regard.
www.youtube.com
As expected, it confirmed what we all know - there are major bottlenecks that exist on PC when it comes to gaming I/O. Despite the fact that PCIE 3.0+ NVME SSDs offer signficant performance improvements over SATA SSDs, there is effectively zero meaningful improvement in the loading times of games.
Here are the synthetic benchmarks, which gives you an idea of just how much faster PCIE 3.0/4.0 drives are when compared to a regular SATA SSD:
And despite these significant improvements in drive speeds, this is the result in PC games -
A lot of people have said that developers will just "require a SSD" for PC games in the near future, but that doesn't even begin to address the bottleneck issues on PC, nor the colossal difference in speed between a SATA SSD and a NVME SSD. If you look at the synthetic benchmarks, you'll see that a SATA SSD is actually closer in performance to a 5400 RPM HDD than it is to a PCIE 3.0/4.0 NVME SSD.
Both NVME SSDs solutions in the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are significantly faster than a SATA SSD on PC. So what happens going forward for PC games? Do developers require not just a SATA SSD for their PC games, but a NVME SSD? If you're building a game to stream data at a given rate, and the PS5 can do it at 5.5 GB/s raw, and the Series X|S can do it at 2.5 GB/s raw, are developers actually going to require PCs to have those PCIE 3.0+ drives that can do 2+ GB/s reads?
Recently we've heard a lot about DirectStorage and RTX I/O. But just because these technologies exist does not mean they're anywhere close to being utilized on the PC. Developers have to take up these tools, build them into their game engines, and then actually implement them into the core design of their game.
And then they have to not only raise the minimum requirement of their game to a SATA SSD, but all the way up to a NVME PCIE 3.0+ SSD. Along with a RTX card for RTX I/O. Is that even realistic within the next 5 years? What percentage of PC gamers will have a NVME PCIE SSD and a RTX based GPU three years from now?
I've seen some discussion that the larger RAM pools on the PC will make up for the difference, but is this really going to be the case? Sure, the $2,000+ PCs will have GPUs with 10+ GB of VRAM and and 32+ GB of system RAM, and in that case a 500 MB/s SSD could maybe make sense, given that additional data could be moved and stored in RAM to make up for the lack of I/O speed relative to the consoles. But your average gaming PC is going to have 16 GB of system RAM with a GPU with 6-8 GB of VRAM. I have 16 GB of RAM in my current PC right now, with only 9.3 GB available due to browsers, Discord, and various other apps and processes running in Windows. 9 GB + 8 GB of VRAM on my GPU gives about 17 GB of total RAM for a game - not that much more than the next-gen consoles.
The simple reality is that these bottlenecks are going to continue to exist for a while on PC while having evaporated for consoles. Developers can start building a game on PS5 or Xbox Series X|S and can take advantage of those ultra fast drives immediately, without having to calibrate or limit the design of the game to work on hardware that may not be sufficient.
I want nothing more than to see the next-gen consoles push the requirements for PCs sky high, because that means more revolutionary experiences for everyone. I just fear that the PC is going to lag behind for a while in this regard.
Best SSD for Gaming: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 vs SATA vs HDD Load Time Battle
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hardwareunboxed Storage Devices Used: Samsung 870 QVO - https://amzn.to/3lwzzjH Sabrent Rocket Q - https://amzn.t...
www.youtube.com
