Support NeoGAF

[reinking]

• If you are not in the beta wait until Sony releases their official list.
• If you "have to" buy a drive now buy one with the recommended specs and suggested by the people with beta access.
• If you "have to" buy one now but you "have to" have one with lower recommended specs be prepared to either move games that have issues to the internal drive or in a worst case scenario have your none whitelisted drive blocked by Sony after the beta.
• If you have an Xbox and do not plan to buy a PS5. This should be no concern of yours. I am sure there is something on Game Pass/xCloud that is a better use of time.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

I’d guess not even R&C uses the full potential of the I/O.

They started building the game before the final specs were finalized, so it would be kinda wierd if they knew exactly how to max it out.

Uh fucking duh !!

This should be obvious to people able to think beyond a thread title.
Add in the fact most games are cross gen at the moment and the pandemic still being a thing, it will be a long time still before we start seeing next gen games taking full advantage of these SSD's.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Weird test.

For example R&C example he did not even get in gameplay warps and so…

This is what I was going to ask about. Loading times is fine but does the actual gameplay support it.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Weird test.

For example R&C example he did not even get in gameplay warps and so…

They have revised their article and since claims they got into gameplay with this statement:

Hopping through dimensions in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, I saw no appreciable difference with the slowest SSD in gameplay

So there was some difference there just how much is the question

 

[MrLove]

Ratchet's definitely pulling GB's of data per second off the drive when you're entering a new world through a portal, but I don't think it's anywhere near 5.5GB/s, probably around 2 or 3GB/s when you're using the portals. The big thing with this game is the fact that it isn't even utilizing the GE and the Primitive Shaders feature (which I think is the most game-changing feature these consoles have next to the CPU) where the I/O architecture and SSD are gonna play big roles, because you're gonna be constantly culling & drawing triangles on a per-frame basis in future games like how it was shown with the first UE5 demo, which Rift Apart isn't even doing.

Which is why I think it's fuckin' hilarious people think drives with speeds below 5GB/s are gonna be enough when the second wave of PS5-only games start comin' out. Lots of self-proclaimed engineers here claiming Sony went overkill with the I/O setup and that it won't help improve graphics performance lol, we'll see if Sony wasted all that R&D money on the SSD and I/O setup when the games are shown off and how they stack up next to the competitor's first-party titles.

Im sure its much more as 2-3 Gb/s. 5.5GB/s is just raw, with Kraken + Oodle ~17-22GB/s (3.16 multi) for all data types ( cuz cerny removed all bottlenecks) . I believe for portals we see at least 8-10GB/s. The PS5 can easily fill the completly RAM with new assets in 1second.

5,5GB/s * 3.16 = 17.38 GB/s
3.9GB/s * 3.16 = 12.32 GB/s - is still enough but not later.

 

[Mr Moose]

Uh fucking duh !!

This should be obvious to people able to think beyond a thread title.
Add in the fact most games are cross gen at the moment and the pandemic still being a thing, it will be a long time still before we start seeing next gen games taking full advantage of these SSD's.

Insomniac:
"Behind the scenes, there’s so much to peel back about the SSD and the I/O around it," he says. "We’re just scratching the surface of it. As a developer, that will be really cool to see how it turns out."

People:
"They are using the full potential!"

 

[DenchDeckard]

If you can deliver a game like ratchet with 3.9 gbs I kinda wish they just had a 1tb 4.0gbs ssd standard drive saved money and made it bigger.

I'm saying this now and something mind-blowing might come a long but I really do think it's not gonna happen this gen because every game will be made with pc in the back of sonys mind.

 

[ethomaz]

They have revised their article and since claims they got into gameplay with this statement:

Hopping through dimensions in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, I saw no appreciable difference with the slowest SSD in gameplay

So there was some difference there just how much is the question

Well I already expected him to update the article several times lol

 

[reksveks]

They have revised their article and since claims they got into gameplay with this statement:

Hopping through dimensions in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, I saw no appreciable difference with the slowest SSD in gameplay

So there was some difference there just how much is the question

You can find the original sentence in the OP, he has just reworded the sentence to highlight he was talking about gameplay.

Sometimes it’s a second slower, sometimes a second or two faster, but basically it’s a total wash. Hopping through dimensions in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, I saw no appreciable difference with the slowest SSD.

 

[Werewolfgrandma]

If you can deliver a game like ratchet with 3.9 gbs I kinda wish they just had a 1tb 4.0gbs ssd standard drive saved money and made it bigger.

I'm saying this now and something mind-blowing might come a long but I really do think it's not gonna happen this gen because every game will be made with pc in the back of sonys mind.

Unless it's huge (storage size wise) and short no games are going to need constant 5.5 GB's drives. There is no scenario where you can add .2 seconds to something occasionally or just reduce texture quality a smidge to compensate. I would put money on any game this gen not requiring it.

 

[reinking]

So there was some difference there just how much is the question

I'm going to go out a limb and say 15%.

 

[twilo99]

Looking forward to multiple articles from different sources covering the same thing so we can see what's really going on because the verge can't be trusted.

 

[twilo99]

They can afford to use 8k textures if they bother with it. That meager 13GB of usable RAM will not hinder them when they can load assets 'just in time'.

Is that why they have 8K printed on the PS5 box?

 

[MasterCornholio]

Is that why they have 8K printed on the PS5 box?

I think that's more due to the HDMI2.1 specs than anything else.

Technically both consoles can output 8K through their respective ports. Doesn't mean there will be any 8K games though.

 

[RoboFu]

But of course, only 90% of us said it’s not just the ssd that makes loading fast on the ps5.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Well to be fair that slow drive performs similarly to the PS5s if you didn't know. However put in a slow GEN3 drive and I'm pretty sure it might be a lot slower.

Anyways I don't see how this is a mark against the PS5s SSD since you need a similar drive to achieve that level of performance. Now if you could do the same with a 2GB/s drive that is definitely a disaster.

Mostly agreed, but I think it depends a lot on the requirements of the game itself. Not every game streaming data off the PS5 SSD solution is going to do so at 5.5 GB/s, or anywhere near that. Even for games that might do so, their rate of doing so could vary greatly both in terms of overall accesses at that bandwidth and duration per access at that bandwidth.

So for some games you probably could get the same results with a 2 GB/s drive. Outside of maximum bandwidth there's actually not much difference between a Gen 3 and Gen 4 NVMe drive, as they both operate on the same NVMe specification. Or better to say, the PCIe bus interface does not determine what NVMe specification a peripheral drive uses, because all of NVMe "generation 1"s features are generally compatible with both PCI and PCIe, regardless of the gen of at least PCIe (to my knowledge, tho PCIe Gen 1 & 2 use 8b/10b encoding which would affect performance a ton).

For example, bit encoding is the same (128b/130b) on both; if Gen 3 PCIe were still 8b/10b for example then yeah that would create a massive performative difference but that isn't the case. If however either of these consoles used an NVMe 2.0-speced drive and users tried installing NVMe 1.0-speced drives, you would have (potentially) major penalties in performance for the 1.0-speced drives. 2.0-speced drives aren't set to release on the market for a while tho.

NVMe 2.0 information

 

[scydrex]

Insomniac:
"Behind the scenes, there’s so much to peel back about the SSD and the I/O around it," he says. "We’re just scratching the surface of it. As a developer, that will be really cool to see how it turns out."

People:
"They are using the full potential!"

Thanks for pointing this.

 

[mckmas8808]

It proves R&C is not "impossible to run" in other hardware due to "the exclusive ultra fast ssd on the ps5"

Why can't people understand this point? They don't any way to test games that come out 2 years from now. So, as of today, this info is true. But buy at your own peril.

 

[Little Chicken]

 

[Daymos]

3900mb/sec is slow..?? what's the ps4 like 200mb/sec??

Load times on "loading screens" are never going to matter now.. it's that magic crap Sony was spewing about flying a jet 500mph and streaming data in on the fly.

 

[scydrex]

Post in thread 'The PS5 worked fine with the slowest compatible SSD we could find' https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-...ible-ssd-we-could-find.1614733/post-264282029

Please read the article before saying things like they didn't test the portals

I read the article before they updated saying they played the game and tested the portals but thanks.

 

[MasterCornholio]

3900mb/sec is slow.. what's the ps4 like 200mb/sec??

Load times on "loading screens" are never going to matter now.. it's that magic crap Sony was spewing about flying a jet 500mph and streaming data in on the fly.

I believe it was more like 80-100MB/s for the PS4/PS4Pro. The PS5 gives you a maximum of 5.5GB/s.

 

[01011001]

I believe it was more like 80-100MB/s for the PS4/PS4Pro. The PS5 gives you a maximum of 5.5GB/s.

the advertised speed of the (base) PS4 HDD is 125MiB/s

but remember, peak performance numbers don't really say anything in real world scenarios. basically the PS4's HDD will almost never actually perform at 125MiB/s and the PS5's SSD will almost never perform at 5.5GiB/s
without benchmarking them it is hard to tell how fast both actually are while loading actual game files. and this will also vary game by game depending on how the files are packaged

 

[Marty-McFly]

So, PS5 really has no secret sauce then?

I guess this fully answers the great power debate of this generation.

 

[MasterCornholio]

the advertised speed of the (base) PS4 HDD is 125MiB/s

but remember, peak performance numbers don't really say anything in real world scenarios. basically the PS4's HDD will almost never actually perform at 125MiB/s and the PS5's SSD will almost never perform at 5.5GiB/s
without benchmarking them it is hard to tell how fast both actually are while loading actual game files. and this will also vary game by game depending on how the files are packaged

Well isn't the same true for a 3900GB/s drive?

Basically you need a higher peak speed to achieve a higher level of performance.

Same goes for the Series consoles and NVMEs that PCs use.

 

[MasterCornholio]

So, PS5 really has no secret sauce then?

I guess this fully answers the great power debate of this generation.

Both are close and each has their own set of advantages over the other.

We basically known this since the specifications were revealed but when they were rumored the XSX was said to have a massive advantage.

Edit: The most similar thing that I've seen to secret sauce is special sauce. But when AMD said that it was probably in reference to the I/O customizations. I'm guessing they were talking about the I/O complex.

 

[Hoddi]

the advertised speed of the (base) PS4 HDD is 125MiB/s

but remember, peak performance numbers don't really say anything in real world scenarios. basically the PS4's HDD will almost never actually perform at 125MiB/s and the PS5's SSD will almost never perform at 5.5GiB/s
without benchmarking them it is hard to tell how fast both actually are while loading actual game files. and this will also vary game by game depending on how the files are packaged

I'd be surprised if you got even half of that in practice. Most last gen games only read 1-2GB from disk at boot and yet it still often took well over a minute to launch them.

People also complained about the PS3 for 'only' having a SATA1 interface. I put an SSD in my PS3 when I modded it last year and even simple file copies max out at just 12-15MB/s. I'm not sure what the cause is but I think disk encryption plays a major part.

 

[truth411]

That's good news. Means you can get a cheap SSD and it will still work fine.

Alot of you guys dont get it. The PS5 SSD/IO isn't primarily about load times, its about streaming in assets while gaming. RatchetnClank dont load assets into ram whats off screen. Doing so alows them to increase fidelity, if a drive is too slow, when you turn you will either see part of the screen blank or it will slow down how fast you can turn around till assets can be loaded in. Also we are only in the First year of the Gen, as we move forward games (especially exclusives) will push the PS5 SSD/IO hard.

 

[01011001]

Well isn't the same true for a 3900GB/s drive?

Basically you need a higher peak speed to achieve a higher level of performance.

Same goes for the Series consoles and NVMEs that PCs use.

that is the issue tho when saying that they tested a 3.9GiB/s drive, we don't actually know how fast it performs in real world tasks. we would need to know benchmark tests of the internal SSD of the PS5 and benchmark tests of the SSD they tested to determin how much of a performance difference we are even looking at here.

if the advertised speed of the internal SSD is actually WAAAY above what it actually performs like but the third party SSD uses a much closer estimate on their advertised speeds then this test isn't really saying much. basically, you can test 2 completely different 3.9GiB/s SSDs and get 2 vastly different performance metrics

 

[fersnake]

for now

 

[MasterCornholio]

that is the issue tho when saying that they tested a 3.9GiB/s drive, we don't actually know how fast it performs in real world tasks. we would need to know benchmark tests of the internal SSD of the PS5 and benchmark tests of the SSD they tested to determin how much of a performance difference we are even looking at here.

if the advertised speed of the internal SSD is actually WAAAY above what it actually performs like but the third party SSD uses a much closer estimate on their advertised speeds then this test isn't really saying much. basically, you can test 2 completely different 3.9GiB/s SSDs and get 2 vastly different performance metrics

I think it's unlikely that the PS5s soldered drive will perform worse than the slowest NVME. The only way that could happen is if the drive throttles a lot or there's a severe bottleneck in the system.

 

[Hoddi]

Well isn't the same true for a 3900GB/s drive?

Basically you need a higher peak speed to achieve a higher level of performance.

Same goes for the Series consoles and NVMEs that PCs use.

It's more that peak speeds typically refer to sequential IO and not random IO. Random IO is vastly more important when comes to streaming data in games because textures A and B are less likely to be contained within the same data blocks.

There's otherwise no general rule for comparing the two. One of my NVMe disks performs almost identically at sequential reads vs. random 64k while another of my disks loses about 25% at random 64k. Performance is still much lower at random 4k with both of them performing in the 50% range when compared with sequential reads. The point being that a 3900MB/s drive can be stronger at random IO but weaker at sequential IO. And without testing the internal PS5 SSD then there's simply no way to know.

 

[packy34]

This proves nothing though. It might not be the same story with future releases that stress the i/o even more heavily.

The key issue is that the assumed throughput must always be available or else all kinds of bugs can ensue, its a QA nightmare.

This is the same song and dance that has persisted forever in console vs PC debates. It's not significantly more difficult to test/optimize for multiple hardware configs. Decades and decades of PC games/ports prove this. And since the Xbox doesn't have a SSD that matches the PS5's in speed, you can guarantee that all multiplatform third-party titles will not even try to dev games at that spec. At the absolute worst, a couple PS5 exclusive games developed internally may possibly be affected by slower SSD speeds - if they choose not to optimize.

 

[01011001]

I think it's unlikely that the PS5s soldered drive will perform worse than the slowest NVME. The only way that could happen is if the drive throttles a lot or there's a severe bottleneck in the system.

well I don't think so either, but we don't really know how much slower it really is.

I brought this up in another thread, but that SSD that cerny proudly showed and will se for his PS5 has an advertised speed of 7GiB/s, but real world speeds are more like 4.5GiB. but there are slower drives that have way less of a percentage difference between advertised peak performance and benchmarks

 

[AGRacing]

Posts in this thread are going to age very poorly.

Ratchet does incredible things... but all we've proven today is that it's not even scratching the surface of what is possible with their storage solution. Let Insomniac develop 2 or 3 more PS5 games and then they'll be happy to tell you what the limitations of Rift Apart were... today that information isn't going to come easy.

 

[Stooky]

This is the same song and dance that has persisted forever in console vs PC debates. It's not significantly more difficult to test/optimize for multiple hardware configs. Decades and decades of PC games/ports prove this. And since the Xbox doesn't have a SSD that matches the PS5's in speed, you can guarantee that all multiplatform third-party titles will not even try to dev games at that spec. At the absolute worst, a couple PS5 exclusive games developed internally may possibly be affected by slower SSD speeds - if they choose not to optimize.

Ahhh more fud. Consoles leverage streaming more than PC because of limited ram and its fixed hardware. Some multiplat games will definitely leverage that extra bandwidth. In my opinion an example would be animation streaming from ssd which is why FIFA and NBA 2K on pc does not have the advanced animation system. For that animation system, PC has too large of a spec margin to hit in order to make it viable.

 

[packy34]

In my opinion an example would be animation streaming from ssd which is why FIFA and NBA 2K on pc does not have the advanced animation system.

As you state, this is just your opinion, and it's wrong.

There are many games on PC (and on last-gen consoles, even) that have astronomically higher fidelity + quality animations than fucking FIFA.

 

[schaft0620]

They are rolling the deice on bricking that console.

 

[Yselacrey00]

People can just transfer their games to faster drive if it needs that extra speed. Should be easy to do since everyone will have the soldered drive in their system. The same can't be said about an NVME. PS5s don't come with them.

You didn't get it. It's not about having a faster drive, it's about Sony making the devs develop games with downgraded specs. You have a 5.5 GB/s SSD but you make the devs develop to a maximum of 3.5. Whatever stuff they thought would be possible thanks to the drive now it probably won't be.

 

[Kumomeme]

i curious how things gonna play out in next few years when more demanding game released. will it be gonna be same? curious to know how much of gb/s those game like Spiderman Miles Morales and Rachet and Clank use.

i doubt devs already max out the bandwith at this beginning of generation. consoles maker designed their hardware so it would last for atleast another 5 years. now it would seems overkill but in next few years it would be outdated and slow instead. like how it always be.

 

[Gamerguy84]

Anyone, including lurkers, that buys a slow ass NVMe drive go after Verge when your system isn't working right after a year.

 

[Stooky]

As you state, this is just your opinion, and it's wrong.

There are many games on PC (and on last-gen consoles, even) that have astronomically higher fidelity + quality animations than fucking FIFA.

Abviously you know nothiing about next gen animation systems. Specifically with the advancements in motion matching which a lot of these sports games use. You don’t understand the current bottle necks with memory, drive access speed, and bandwidth that hold this tech back. Also higher joint counts in characters and blend shapes that take up memory. It’s more efficient to stream this data than to hold it all in ram. This is just animation there are other systems that can take advantage of this. Sure you can build an expensive high end pc that do it all, but thats not the majority.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Abviously you know nothing about how next gen animation systems. Specifically with the advancements in motion matching. You don’t understand the current bottle necks with memory, drive access speed, and bandwidth that hold this tech back. Also higher joint counts in characters and blend shapes that take up memory. It’s more efficient to stream this data than to hold it all in ram. Sure you can build an expensive high end pc that do it all, but thats not the majority.

This seems far fetched as far as games that would be pushing I/O; any links to devs talking about this?

 

[sankt-Antonio]

even RC works perfectly on 'slow' ssd, pretty much proves my hypothesis about the ssd i/o hype that never really was.

going from hdd to nvme is a huge jump and that's that

big numbers big multiplier, but the real bottleneck is not IO for next gen games

There has been.. two PS5 only games that somewhat push the system (R&C / DeSo). Give it time and the I/O will make more on an impact.

I just dont see Sony needlessly spending a lot of money on every PS5 if they dont think that I/O is usefull and worth its price.

 

[Arnas]

Has anyone tried gen 3 nvme drives ? i have a spare one , maybe i could use it as a cold storage for ps5 games & play backwards compatible ps4 titles .

 

[reksveks]

Has anyone tried gen 3 nvme drives ? i have a spare one , maybe i could use it as a cold storage for ps5 games & play backwards compatible ps4 titles .

It's completely blocked based on the tests we have seen on twitter.

 

[sinnergy]

Off course it does , the speed is as fast as the chain it goes through.. maybe if the decompression blocks are faster .. or the engine is programmed differently.

Also PR is a wonderful thing

 

[CuNi]

There has been.. two PS5 only games that somewhat push the system (R&C / DeSo). Give it time and the I/O will make more on an impact.

I just dont see Sony needlessly spending a lot of money on every PS5 if they dont think that I/O is usefull and worth its price.

Sony also thought the CELL CPU was a good idea for the PS3.
Just because someone says something is good/make a impact, doesn't mean the dev's share that vision.

Only time will really tell but as other posted, if it'll ever matter, it will be for PS5 games anyway, since 3rd party will always keep Xbox and the bigger developers even PC in mind.

 

[clintar]

the advertised speed of the (base) PS4 HDD is 125MiB/s

but remember, peak performance numbers don't really say anything in real world scenarios. basically the PS4's HDD will almost never actually perform at 125MiB/s and the PS5's SSD will almost never perform at 5.5GiB/s
without benchmarking them it is hard to tell how fast both actually are while loading actual game files. and this will also vary game by game depending on how the files are packaged

I don't think that's how SSD usually works. SSD is pretty consistent, except for cache buffer that can be faster than the continuous speed, then drop off after cache is used. HDDs only ever have good throughput on sequential data, but SSDs don't have heads to move, so much more consistent. My take on all this is even if these slower drives don't run the games as well as the internal, one can always just move your more important games to the internal drive and get the biggest slower NVMe you can afford as a place to move games that don't need those speeds off to, as long as Sony doesn't enforce some minimum speed on the expansion.

 

[Gameplaylover]

Only time will really tell but as other posted, if it'll ever matter, it will be for PS5 games anyway, since 3rd party will always keep Xbox and the bigger developers even PC in mind.

Sony will also release more and more games for pc not to forget the PS4 in the next few years. I doubt we will see too many games build completely around the secret sauce.