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[NX Gamer] PS5 SSD Expansion - Beta 2.0 M2 In-Depth Technical Review

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
I think that's why there's a focus on new compression techniques from both companies. They pretty much know installs are going to get bigger but they can mitigate some of that with better compression.



I don't think these advancements are just limited to the PS5 but it can be applied to the Series consoles as well. There's no denying that these SSDs are much faster than what previous systems had. It's only logical that improvements will extend beyond just better load times. I don't believe these companies would have invested in them if they weren't worth it.
These enhancements are limited by older/slower storage solutions still being supported.

Thus far PS5 is the only platform that has some games that take advantage of it because legacy tech isn't supported in the development process.

We should see similar results with XSX/xss when MS takes the nipple out of xbo/X mouth and forces the minimum spec on PC to require a SSD.

Also...
Direct Storage should alleviate things on the PC side.
 
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These enhancements are limited by older/slower storage solutions still being supported.

Thus far PS5 is the only platform that has some games that take advantage of it because legacy tech isn't supported in the development process.

We should see similar results with XSX/xss when MS takes the nipple out of xbo/X mouth and forces the minimum spec on PC to require a SSD.

Also...
Direct Storage should alleviate things on the PC side.

Basically it. Once it becomes standard we should see better results. But at the moment HDDs are going to hold some things back.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Look at the difference last gen when we got the new consoles and we had to instal the 4k texture packs that was sometimes 20 extra gigs. If we’re talking the same asset quality as the unreal demo which was 8k that be huge on the instals don’t you think

So what's your expectation?

Last gen games were designed around hard drives that had a 100mb/s read speed and they were maxed out. The drive in the PS5 is around 55x faster. According to your logic, in order for games to max out the new I/O they will need to balloon in size by 55x?
 
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So what's your expectation?

Last gen games were designed around hard drives that had a 100mb/s read speed and they were maxed out. The drive in the PS5 is around 55x faster. According to your logic, in order for games to max out the new I/O they will need to balloon in size by 55x?
Hell GIF by Steve Harvey TV


I'm definitely not expecting games to be in the TBs of data in terms of install size.

That's just insane.
 

Md Ray

Member
That is the wrong way to look at this. A game is just a package of shaders, textures, geometry, audio, texts, code etc. Each level can reuse from the same set of package of textures, geometry, audio, texts, code, etc. Level 1 can still use same textures, geometry etc as Level 20 even though visually they might appear different. Though the storage can load 5GB/s, it will still be loading from the same package of shaders, textures, geometry, audio, texts, code etc. A storage that is capable of more throughput loads from that same package but much faster assuming there is not a bottleneck somewhere. Each second of gameplay is not loading unique data, you would just be unloading and reloading data as needed from the same pool of game package of arbitrary size.

I seriously recommend people watch this GDC talk on data management with games.


Really an awesome talk. He's genuinely funny and made it so much more enjoyable to watch while being informative.

It seems the HDD limitations were a massive struggle for Insomniac in Spider-Man, I hadn't really thought about that. Thanks for sharing.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
So what's your expectation?

Last gen games were designed around hard drives that had a 100mb/s read speed and they were maxed out. The drive in the PS5 is around 55x faster. According to your logic, in order for games to max out the new I/O they will need to balloon in size by 55x?
Its almost like some ppl just arent factoring in the positives of using an NVMe....and comparing it to when mechanical hard drives were the base line hardware.

MS and Sony both changed the file systems...ya know...to take advantage of using NVMe's....

Why do threads like this bring up old ass talking points, narratives?
 
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phil_t98

#SonyToo
So what's your expectation?

Last gen games were designed around hard drives that had a 100mb/s read speed and they were maxed out. The drive in the PS5 is around 55x faster. According to your logic, in order for games to max out the new I/O they will need to balloon in size by 55x?
So tell me how will they max out the 5.5gb speed of the drive?
 

Md Ray

Member
I thought the dev tweet that I posted a couple of posts back answered your question?
So tell me how will they max out the 5.5gb speed of the drive?
Obviously by using the highest-res possible assets to stream into the memory that can max out the 5GB/s drive.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
I thought the dev tweet that I posted a couple of posts back answered your question?

Obviously by using the highest-res possible assets to stream into the memory that can max out the 5GB/s drive.
yeah but what are you expecting that will be 5.5gig in assists?
 

Md Ray

Member
yeah but what are you expecting that will be 5.5gig in assists?
More detailed character models (in-game and cutscene)? More detailed textures? Geometry?
Like the ND dev gave an e.g. "So the ability to load in the highest resolution version of any asset just in front of you and drop it immediately as you turn around means that every tree can have 3d bark and moss and ants marching on it just when needed, without blowing up the budget.".
 
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Connxtion

Member
yeah but what are you expecting that will be 5.5gig in assists?
Textures. Always the number 1 memory hog.

Larger the texture the more ram gets eaten up.

Why MS go on about sampler feedback texture thing, why load the whole image when you only need the top right of it eg…

PS5 doesn’t have it in hardware (I think) so software or alternative method will be required, or just load the whole texture and bruforce all the way.

That’s what would max out the NVME drives in both systems. Loading big ass large massive images. (Loads of them that is)

Edit:
Should have said compression also will help, but not using compression 🤷‍♂️
 
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GHG

Gold Member
So tell me how will they max out the 5.5gb speed of the drive?

It's quite simple really, assets getting streamed in based on the viewport of the player.

Which is why the conversation around game size when talking about this is silly. A lot of assets and models in games are repeated throughout but being able to pull them in instantaneously on a frame by frame basis frees up resources elsewhere in the pipeline.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
It's quite simple really, assets getting streamed in based on the viewport of the player.

Which is why the conversation around game size when talking about this is silly. A lot of assets and models in games are repeated throughout but being able to pull them in instantaneously on a frame by frame basis frees up resources elsewhere in the pipeline.

yeah I agree but can you see game assets being 5gig on screen at any one time and if so think about game size with that. Just think about the logic of it.
 

Md Ray

Member
yeah I agree but can you see game assets being 5gig on screen at any one time and if so think about game size with that. Just think about the logic of it.
Yes, I can see it happening in Sony's first-party exclusives from the likes of Naughty Dog, InsomniacG.

That's why we have LoD systems, better compression techniques than last-gen like the kraken and whatnot. There's literally dedicated decompression hardware built into the I/O block of the main SoC just for decompressing purposes. And then there's oodle on top that handles texture compression.
 
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phil_t98

#SonyToo
Yes, I can see it happening in Sony's first-party exclusives from the likes of Naughty Dog, InsomniacG.

That's why we have LoD systems, better compression techniques than last-gen like the kraken and whatnot. There's literally dedicated decompression hardware built into the I/O block of the main SoC just for decompressing purposes. And then there's oodle on top that handles texture compression.
think about what your saying, a game will be streaming 5.5gb per second. it aint gonna happen. while it will happen loading games and levels it won't happen while playing the game, I mean think about the amount of data if a game is constantly streaming 5.5gb per second as you playing walking around.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
think about what your saying, a game will be streaming 5.5gb per second. it aint gonna happen. while it will happen loading games and levels it won't happen while playing the game, I mean think about the amount of data if a game is constantly streaming 5.5gb per second as you playing walking around.
Is it streaming that much data per second or a a lot of bit smaller data sets concurrently in an smaller interval of time? … sigh…
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Textures. Always the number 1 memory hog.

Larger the texture the more ram gets eaten up.

Why MS go on about sampler feedback texture thing, why load the whole image when you only need the top right of it eg…

PS5 doesn’t have it in hardware (I think) so software or alternative method will be required, or just load the whole texture and bruforce all the way.

That’s what would max out the NVME drives in both systems. Loading big ass large massive images. (Loads of them that is)

Edit:
Should have said compression also will help, but not using compression 🤷‍♂️
PS5 uses the old PRT / Tiles Resources feature plus whatever customisations they have in the HW (exposed in their own API so no they do not all map straight to DX API’s).
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Is it streaming that much data per second or a a lot of bit smaller data sets concurrently in an smaller interval of time? … sigh…
Yes and it it’s streaming a lot of smaller assets it won’t max out the 5.5gb is what am saying. Like I said earlier when loading games or levels the. SSD will be maxed out but in game it prob never will
 

skit_data

Member
think about what your saying, a game will be streaming 5.5gb per second. it aint gonna happen. while it will happen loading games and levels it won't happen while playing the game, I mean think about the amount of data if a game is constantly streaming 5.5gb per second as you playing walking around.
Having a lot of data streaming moving in and out of memory doesn’t necessarily mean all data is unique for every set piece. A lot of data is constantly accessed but instead of holding it constantly and allocate RAM it can be accessed on the fly. Its not like streaming a movie or piece of music, where every bit of information represents a unique point in a linear trajectory.
 

Md Ray

Member
think about what your saying, a game will be streaming 5.5gb per second. it aint gonna happen. while it will happen loading games and levels it won't happen while playing the game, I mean think about the amount of data if a game is constantly streaming 5.5gb per second as you playing walking around.
I'm honestly not sure why you think it's not possible to max out even with smaller intervals of time?

What's stopping the SSD from reaching its peak read speeds when playing the game that doesn't stop it when it's loading levels? Have you thought about what you are saying for a sec?
 
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phil_t98

#SonyToo
Having a lot of data streaming moving in and out of memory doesn’t necessarily mean all data is unique for every set piece. A lot of data is constantly accessed but instead of holding it constantly and allocate RAM it can be accessed on the fly. Its not like streaming a movie or piece of music, where every bit of information represents a unique point in a linear trajectory.
I'm honestly not sure why you think it's not possible to max out even with smaller intervals of time?

What's stopping the SSD from reaching its peak read speeds when playing the game that doesn't stop it when it's loading levels? Have you thought about what you are saying for a sec?
yes I know what I am saying and to max out the drive you would have to be constantly loading so much data at any one time. yes it will load data quick but to load 5.5 gb in a second your gonna have to throw so much data at it to do that
 
yes I know what I am saying and to max out the drive you would have to be constantly loading so much data at any one time. yes it will load data quick but to load 5.5 gb in a second your gonna have to throw so much data at it to do that

Well why do you think Sony chose that drive then?

They sacrificed the GPU to get that I/O so there must be a reason for it than just eliminating loading screens. Streaming assets was a big part of Cerny's tech talk so I assume it had something to do with that.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Well why do you think Sony chose that drive then?

They sacrificed the GPU to get that I/O so there must be a reason for it than just eliminating loading screens. Streaming assets was a big part of Cerny's tech talk so I assume it had something to do with that.
If they are streaming 1gig a second is that maxing the drive out?

I think Sony went with the drive as they said to reduce losing times, in game streaming will be faster but not gonna be maxed out as that would constantly be streaming 5.5gb per second to be maxed out. Do you honestly think they will be streaming 5.5 tv per second constantly?
 
If they are streaming 1gig a second is that maxing the drive out?

I think Sony went with the drive as they said to reduce losing times, in game streaming will be faster but not gonna be maxed out as that would constantly be streaming 5.5gb per second to be maxed out. Do you honestly think they will be streaming 5.5 tv per second constantly?

And you believe 1GB/s is the max that they would need?

What about 3GB/s?

Hopefully you understand that Cerny's talk went beyond just loading times. Asset streaming was a big part of it so it's safe to assume they also wanted a fast drive for that as well.
 
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Hoddi

Member
yes I know what I am saying and to max out the drive you would have to be constantly loading so much data at any one time. yes it will load data quick but to load 5.5 gb in a second your gonna have to throw so much data at it to do that
You shouldn't look at it in terms of seconds but milliseconds. Games won't be reading at a constant rate of 5.5GB every second but loading 92MB of data in 16.7ms is still a data rate of 5.5GB/s.

Games won't be averaging anything like 5.5GB per second. They might only average 500MB/s (for that matter) but they'll be doing so in quick bursts, say, when turning a corner and it needs 200MB of new data within a couple of frames.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Well why do you think Sony chose that drive then?

They sacrificed the GPU to get that I/O so there must be a reason for it than just eliminating loading screens. Streaming assets was a big part of Cerny's tech talk so I assume it had something to do with that.
If they are streaming 1gig a second is that maxing the drive out?

I think Sony went with the drive as they said to reduce losing times, in game streaming will be faster but not gonna be maxed out as that would constantly be streaming 5.5gb per second to be maxed out. Do you honestly think they will be streaming 5.5 tv per second constantly?
You shouldn't look at it in terms of seconds but milliseconds. Games won't be reading at a constant rate of 5.5GB every second but loading 92MB of data in 16.7ms is still a data rate of 5.5GB/s.

Games won't be averaging anything like 5.5GB per second. They might only average 500MB/s (for that matter) but they'll be doing so in quick bursts, say, when turning a corner and it needs 200MB of new data within a couple of frames.

exactly so in terms of maxing out the ssd it will as I said probably only beamed out in loading games and levels
 
You shouldn't look at it in terms of seconds but milliseconds. Games won't be reading at a constant rate of 5.5GB every second but loading 92MB of data in 16.7ms is still a data rate of 5.5GB/s.

Games won't be averaging anything like 5.5GB per second. They might only average 500MB/s (for that matter) but they'll be doing so in quick bursts, say, when turning a corner and it needs 200MB of new data within a couple of frames.

Makes sense. 5.5GB/s won't be needed constantly but it's there when developers need that additional speed. I can definitely see high amounts of data being needed at certain points. Performance issues would occur if they don't have the speed they need. Unfortunately not everyone is going use they speed though. My guess is that 1st parties are really the only ones that will use it. But multiplats would still benefit from a fast I/O.

BTW this is something that can be applied to both systems and it generally isn't limited to the PS5.
 

Tripolygon

Banned
If they are streaming 1gig a second is that maxing the drive out?

I think Sony went with the drive as they said to reduce losing times, in game streaming will be faster but not gonna be maxed out as that would constantly be streaming 5.5gb per second to be maxed out. Do you honestly think they will be streaming 5.5 tv per second constantly?


exactly so in terms of maxing out the ssd it will as I said probably only beamed out in loading games and levels
I think it has been explained to you many times in many different ways. You keep getting stuck on 5.5GB/s which is the maximum throughput of the SSD given the tier of NAND used, number of channels, number of PCIe lanes, capability of the controller. PS5 also has a RAM that is 448GB/s do you think the GPU is being loaded with 448GB of data every second? No, it does not work that way, the faster the RAM, the faster you can move data to the GPU cores which only has tiny amount of cache compared to the RAM. The RAM is not moving 448GB of data every second to the GPU and it does not mean it is not being fully taken advantage of.
 

Hoddi

Member
exactly so in terms of maxing out the ssd it will as I said probably only beamed out in loading games and levels
It depends if we're talking about seconds or milliseconds, right? 5GB/s has the exact same meaning as 5.5MB/ms but only the latter number is truly relevant for games.

Take a hypothetical 60fps game, for example. Everything needs to happen in 16.7ms but only some of that will be reads from disk. If we say it needs 27.5MB per frame then that gives us 5ms to pull that from disk at a rate of 5.5MB/ms. The disk might then idle for the remaining 11.7ms (during rendering) but it would still be 'maxed out' for those 5ms. Whether we call it 5GB/s or 5.5MB/ms doesn't actually matter.

The total 1s average would still only be 1650MB in this case. But it doesn't change that the disk was reading at full rate during those 5ms periods. Any longer than that and the game might miss its frametime budget.
 

GHG

Gold Member
yeah I agree but can you see game assets being 5gig on screen at any one time and if so think about game size with that. Just think about the logic of it.

So in games you play every frame has a bunch of unique assets that are never repeated elsewhere?
 

CuNi

Member
I think it has been explained to you many times in many different ways. You keep getting stuck on 5.5GB/s which is the maximum throughput of the SSD given the tier of NAND used, number of channels, number of PCIe lanes, capability of the controller. PS5 also has a RAM that is 448GB/s do you think the GPU is being loaded with 448GB of data every second? No, it does not work that way, the faster the RAM, the faster you can move data to the GPU cores which only has tiny amount of cache compared to the RAM. The RAM is not moving 448GB of data every second to the GPU and it does not mean it is not being fully taken advantage of.

People forget that the bandwidth, while printed and measured in GB/s etc. is not used to copy those GB/s.

VRAM that can copy 448GB/s is not put into the GPU to COPY 448GB/s, but because of the latency.
When you can copy 1GB/s, that means that for example a 100MB file needs 100ms (0.1s) , while in 448GB/s VRAM that same 100MB file barely needs 0.2ms (0.0002s).
For VRAM etc, it's all about latency, because the higher the bandwidth the lower the latency.
Same can be said for Storage, but that one is dependent on Use-Case.
Sony got the SSD for LATENCY, that's where all the idea of JIT (just in time) loading comes from. They have a drive that is fast enough to load the new required assets in a frame's time or less.
They are not aiming to CONSTANTLY load 7GB/s but have a fast enough system that, if there is a big file they need, it can be delivered fast enough without wasting frames.
With todays games either being 30 or 60 FPS (~33ms and ~16ms) and PS5 SSD being 5.5GB/s, they are able to roughly load in 90MB of compressed Data in 16ms aka 1 Frame.
 
Even Microsoft can't design hardware there's immune to throttling. Both I/Os are working as they should. It's not like either is throttling so much that it's operating way below it's peak.
No, but the hardware can have headroom to accommodate an extra drive (aka PS5) without the need to raise the fan speeds further... This is not magic, this is planning ahead.
 

Md Ray

Member
I don't know. You're probably going to see a lot of people crying about how their PS5 "broke" after they tried installing it. Like that idiot above buying thermal paste for it.
Applying thermal paste on the M.2 drive isn't going to "break" your PS5, you won't even break your SSD since thermal compounds like MX-4 are non-conductive.
 
Applying thermal paste on the M.2 drive isn't going to "break" your PS5, you won't even break your SSD since thermal compounds like MX-4 are non-conductive.

Actually im wondering if anyone is going to apply something like mayonnaise to the NVME.

new girl cooking GIF by HULU


I'm definitely going to love reading those types of stories.
 
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