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[DF] Can the Slowest PS5 SSD Upgrade Run Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart?

NickFire

Member
Personally, I think anyone buying a compatible SSD will be fine. If the 5.5gb/s was that important, they wouldnt let people install slower SSDs. They'd just make it mandatory 5.5 or more. And wouldnt say "recommended 5.5"

I see this example like PC games min and reco specs. But in this case, the min and reco specs lead the same quality and performance.
I just don't believe Sony has anything tangible to gain by recommending something that will be superfluous over the entire generation. Admittedly, I don't have any real experience with PC gaming, maybe 5-10 hours total in my lifetime (excluding thingss like solitaire, etc.), so maybe I'm a little overly risk averse on going below spec.
 
That's not the point. The point is that Sony couldve gone with a cheaper and slower SSD to reduce costs or maybe apply those cost savings into a more powerful GPU or a bigger SSD.

Because right now, it's a waste of money. They have essentially spent extra money on something that will not be utilized by 99% of devs. And the 1% who are utilizing it, are not even close to maxing it out as this Ratchet test shows.

99% of the devs are going to fully max out the 10 tflops GPU. It's not that hard. You push resolution and pixels and some GPU heavy RT effects and you hit the GPU bottleneck. No one at the moment seems to be maxing out this SSD. I/O seems to be more than capable on its own. What Cerny has done is deliver a weaker console at the expense of this fancy SSD that no one seems to give a shit about at the moment. Literally one studio has taken advantage of it, and they are 2.2 GBps away from maxing it out. The rest of their own studios are busy doing cross gen games.

Maybe in 2 years when Spiderman comes out and does something fancy with the PS5 SSD speeds of 5.5 GBps we can say that it was a good choice to prioritize SSD speeds over SSD size and faster GPU. But if we have to wait 3 years to see what this fancy SSD can do then maybe they shouldve stuck in their mid gen console instead.

It's too early gen to have this conclusion.

Let's go back to 1995 and first Saturn and PS1 games using 15~30MB in CD space. It sounded a waste of 700MB. But we know how it ended.

I don't disagree, but i want to wait more to see how this "massive streaming-asset capacity" will perform in practice.
 
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Just like that the comment section of the video is already full of clueless people making fun of PS5's I/O-SSD tech and Cerny. Mission accomplished i guess. If i were Cerny i would post an a mini article explaining the reasons. But knowing that Sony don't seem to care about its hardware reputation to the slightest degree this gen, i see this possiblity as low.

Exbosers expend more time playing the PS5 specifications than their own games.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I’ve said from the start, ratchet and crank is more coding than hardware.. you can easily see where the tricks and loading are hidden.

Probably for most games, we will likely see PS5 games come to PC one day. It will be interesting to see what the ssd requirements are.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
No, dude. lol.

EDk80g6.gif
Does that look like a on rails part where he is jumping through multiple rifts? I have the game. in the cases like above there are not multiple rifts and one area could easily be preloaded in ram. On the on rails parts they preload each as they go. It’s not instant loading. That has always been BS.

on you tube there is an old traveler tales programmer who has done crazy things on old consoles... he explained it better than I can.
 
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DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Does that look like a on rails part where he is jumping through multiple rifts? I have the game. in the cases like above there are not multiple rifts and one area could easily be preloaded in ram. On the on rails parts they preload each as they go. It’s not instant loading. That has always been BS.

on you tube there is an old traveler takes programmer who has done crazy things on old consoles he explained it better than I can.
You said they were using tricks and I mentioned a specific level and now you're going back to the rails section.

I also watched the YouTuber and do you realize he doesn't mention the part that I just showed you? It's obvious why.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
It's too early gen to have this conclusion.

Let's go back to 1995 and first Saturn and PS1 games using 15~30MB in CD space. It sounded a waste of 700MB. But we know how it ended.

I don't disagree, but i want to wait more to see how this "massive streaming-asset capacity" will perform in practice.
Big difference is a game CD with 700mb is controlled by the game studios and whomever presses the disks at the factory. They are all 700 mb capacity. So every game and every gamer buying that disk has the same standards and capacity.

Sony allowing gamers to install working SSDs on their own that can be anywhere from 3.2 gb/s to whatever the top end PC SSD is (maybe 8 or 9 gb/s?) doesnt make sense if Sony is big about compatibility and not wasting gamer's time installing a bad SSD.

They'd set it as 5.5 gb/s minimum to cover all bases now and future.

It's like Xbox and PS systems requiring external HDDs to be USB 3.0. They dont say "recommended 3.0" where an old USB 2.0 can still work for crappy games. They hard cut it at 3.0 because they know all games now and later will work at that speed.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Don't know or care, but you said about the cost of SSD, how much did it cost and how much did you want it to cost?
I thought the chips they use were cheap, is that not the case?
Why would a faster SSD be cheaper?

You can look at the open market. Slower SSDs are cheaper than bigger SSDs. This is true for PCIE Gen 3 SSDs that top out at 3.5 GBps and sell for half the price of their Gen 4 versions. I just replaced a $100 980 with a $200 980 Pro. 3.5 GBps vs 7 GBps. Sure Sony isnt paying a $100 markup but they are definitely paying more than MS is paying for their 2.4 GBps SSD.

You can look at the Microsoft console. $500 just like the PS5. The difference between the two consoles is a bigger GPU and faster SSD. MS chose to go with a slower SSD put the savings towards a bigger GPU silicon. Sony went the opposite way. They must have thought that the 5.5 GBps SSD would be crucial to give them a performance advantage or design advantage, but clearly we have not seen that advantage yet. unless you count loadings an advantage but I highly doubt anyone would give up 18% better performance for some faster loading.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Read the article...

It is "basically" the same if you ignore the ocasional "split-second performance dips" and slower loading times.

I was surprised that the internal SSD seems to run R&C better than the high-end SN850.
Amazing, innit. :messenger_weary::messenger_ok:
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I dont know what capacities the WD750 has, but I'd say the biggest drawback to it is DF's card was only 250gb. If someone is going to install additional HDD or SSD space, paying $56 or $58 UK pounds (whatever he said) for 256gb seems like a waste of time unless all you crave is enough storage to add 3 decent sized games or one giant COD. Might as well add 1tb minimum if anyone is upgrading.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Glad my 2 TB Gen3 SSD, which is faster than the slowest Gen4 drives, is enough for the only game so far to really take advantage of the new SSDs, bodes well for PC gamers like me :lollipop_smiling_face_eyes:
Except you can't install your gen 3 SSD in the PS5.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Why would a faster SSD be cheaper?

You can look at the open market. Slower SSDs are cheaper than bigger SSDs. This is true for PCIE Gen 3 SSDs that top out at 3.5 GBps and sell for half the price of their Gen 4 versions. I just replaced a $100 980 with a $200 980 Pro. 3.5 GBps vs 7 GBps. Sure Sony isnt paying a $100 markup but they are definitely paying more than MS is paying for their 2.4 GBps SSD.

You can look at the Microsoft console. $500 just like the PS5. The difference between the two consoles is a bigger GPU and faster SSD. MS chose to go with a slower SSD put the savings towards a bigger GPU silicon. Sony went the opposite way. They must have thought that the 5.5 GBps SSD would be crucial to give them a performance advantage or design advantage, but clearly we have not seen that advantage yet. unless you count loadings an advantage but I highly doubt anyone would give up 18% better performance for some faster loading.
They aren't using a standard SSD inside like MicroSoft are, they have the chips soldered to the motherboard, and those chips, as far as I remember, were "cheap".
 

aclar00

Member
Im no expert but doesnt the compression/decompression, priority channels and what not play a role in the overall performance of any drive placed into the PS5.

Undoubtedly R&C isnt using the full potential of the driver, but id image if the data streaming was 7GB/s raw, then the compression would be what, half that with Kraken or whatever? Thus requiring less raw SSD speed?

Putting R&C onto a PC without I/O complex would undoubtedly take SSD speed faster than what it actually required on PS5 no?
 
Big difference is a game CD with 700mb is controlled by the game studios and whomever presses the disks at the factory. They are all 700 mb capacity. So every game and every gamer buying that disk has the same standards and capacity.

Sony allowing gamers to install working SSDs on their own that can be anywhere from 3.2 gb/s to whatever the top end PC SSD is (maybe 8 or 9 gb/s?) doesnt make sense if Sony is big about compatibility and not wasting gamer's time installing a bad SSD.

They'd set it as 5.5 gb/s minimum to cover all bases now and future.

It's like Xbox and PS systems requiring external HDDs to be USB 3.0. They dont say "recommended 3.0" where an old USB 2.0 can still work for crappy games. They hard cut it at 3.0 because they know all games now and later will work at that speed.
I respect your point, but i prefer this way, i.e., you can install any pcie gen4 ssd into the PS5, and follow the spec recommendations.

The other options are: block slower ssds by firmware. This alternative could have even more confusions, because some people would buy worst SSDs quality, having 5.5GB/s on paper and much less than it on practice. And then, the PS5 will block this specific SSD starting the confusion. Or Sony would approve only a small list of SSDs, which is bad too, because some good new SSDs would not be on the list.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
You said they were using tricks and I mentioned a specific level and now you're going back to the rails section.

I also watched the YouTuber and do you realize he doesn't mention the part that I just showed you? It's obvious why.
???I specifically mentioned the speedy on rails parts and you said " no dude" and showed that image above. then turn around and say im going back to the on rails part I specifically mentioned in my other post? 🤷‍♂️



Anyway yes, they are using tricks, they have enough space to preload at least one area.

on the NON ON RAILS rifts where you only go through one rift at a time that rift area is already preloaded in memory when you get to it. Fast loading from using a SSD for sure... but IT IS NOT INSTANT LOADING.

On the on rails parts they can preload one at a time and use an animated texture during the transition to mask any inconsistencies ( probably from the speed of movement) .... IT IS NOT INSTANT LOADING.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Im no expert but doesnt the compression/decompression, priority channels and what not play a role in the overall performance of any drive placed into the PS5.

Undoubtedly R&C isnt using the full potential of the driver, but id image if the data streaming was 7GB/s raw, then the compression would be what, half that with Kraken or whatever? Thus requiring less raw SSD speed?

Putting R&C onto a PC without I/O complex would undoubtedly take SSD speed faster than what it actually required on PS5 no?

DF mentions this in the video, but it seems like a lot of people in this thread didn't hear that part.

Mark Cerny said the PS5 SSD can transfer up to 21GB/s if the data is compressed very well, but as of right now we can only assume is transferring at double the speed of the slowest gen SSD.
 

Andodalf

Banned
Im no expert but doesnt the compression/decompression, priority channels and what not play a role in the overall performance of any drive placed into the PS5.

Undoubtedly R&C isnt using the full potential of the driver, but id image if the data streaming was 7GB/s raw, then the compression would be what, half that with Kraken or whatever? Thus requiring less raw SSD speed?

Putting R&C onto a PC without I/O complex would undoubtedly take SSD speed faster than what it actually required on PS5 no?
Sure, but I/O improvements are coming to PC. Why wouldn't they? It's not magic.
 

reksveks

Member
I dont know what capacities the WD750 has, but I'd say the biggest drawback to it is DF's card was only 250gb. If someone is going to install additional HDD or SSD space, paying $56 or $58 UK pounds (whatever he said) for 256gb seems like a waste of time unless all you crave is enough storage to add 3 decent sized games or one giant COD. Might as well add 1tb minimum if anyone is upgrading.
It was chosen specifically cause the 250gb one was the slowest one in the range. The others are faster but not significantly so.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
They aren't using a standard SSD inside like MicroSoft are, they have the chips soldered to the motherboard, and those chips, as far as I remember, were "cheap".
Doesnt matter. They would be even more cheap if they were slower.

Why do you think they went with 448 GBps of RAM bandwidth and not 560 GBps of RAM bandwidth? They are also on the motherboard and are the same number of chips. They went with slower chips because they are cheaper.

They shouldve gone with faster RAM and a bigger GPU instead of a faster SSD. It would show up in a 100% of the games immediately. Right now we find ourselves with a $500 console that is going below 1080p in Metro Exodus on high load, 1080p in Doom RT when DRS kicks in, and in games without DRS like in Hitman is forced to sit at 1800p while the $500 XSX gets 44% more pixels thanks to its paltry 18% increase in tflops and 25% increase in RAM bandwidth.

I like Cernys decision to go with faster clocks on the GPU. You saw me defend it in the other thread just yesterday. But this is not a good decision. The decision to go all in on SSD while neglecting the GPU and RAM Bandwidth has already resulted in inferior performance in several games, and will continue going forward. All for what? Who is utilizing the SSD to 5.5 GBps? What games did you see at the PS5 conference last week that even came close to pushing the SSD? If Sony's own devs wont do it, why would third party devs?

The I/O in the SOC was fine. Thats where most of the innovation is. Thats Sonys secret sauce. 5.5 GBps is just overkill and the worst part is that it came at the expense of ram bandwidth and a more powerful GPU. If Sony's $500 console had a 560 GBps bandwidth and 12 tflops along with a 5.5 GBps SSD then we could say that the SSD was not expense because it did not hold back other specs.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
???I specifically mentioned the speedy on rails parts and you said " no dude" and showed that image above. then turn around and say im going back to the on rails part I specifically mentioned in my other post? 🤷‍♂️



Anyway yes, they are using tricks, they have enough space to preload at least one area.

on the NON ON RAILS rifts where you only go through one rift at a time that rift area is already preloaded in memory when you get to it. Fast loading from using a SSD for sure... but IT IS NOT INSTANT LOADING.

On the on rails parts they can preload one at a time and use an animated texture during the transition to mask any inconsistencies ( probably from the speed of movement) .... IT IS NOT INSTANT LOADING.

Pay attention.

I’ve said from the start, ratchet and crank is more coding than hardware.. you can easily see where the tricks and loading are hidden.
There are no hiding loading screens other than a white flash in Blizar Prime.

You FIRST mentioned tricks made by developers.

I then countered that by mentioning Blizar Prime.

I can clearly see the change from animated texture to real 3D in the speedy on rails rifts

You decided to mention rails AFTER brought up Blizar Prime.
 

3liteDragon

Member
Mark Cerny said the PS5 SSD can transfer up to 21GB/s if the data is compressed very well, but as of right now we can only assume is transferring at double the speed of the slowest gen SSD.
The SSD itself is 5.5GB/s only before it sends the uncompressed data over to the I/O unit on the APU, then it gets decompressed by the Kraken decoder (8-9GB/s, can go up to 22GB/s MAX depending on how well the data is compressed).
 
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JLB

Banned
Jesus, why theres some much drama about fucking ssd speeds around gaf for so long? Completely disconnected with the discussion but whats going on? Its a gen-z fetish or some sort of thing?
 
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kyliethicc

Member
I suspect Sony have told their developers to hold back from using the PS5's I/O to the max in order to make PC ports easier.

Any M.2 SSD that can be used inside the PS5 to run these games can also be used in a PC when the games get ported later. Sony will probably recommend a similar 5.5 GB/s read Gen4 SSD for their PC ports, but as we can see, slower Gen4 drives can still run the games on PS5 thanks to the PS5 SoC's custom I/O unit. Getting that game to run on a PC tho, which will not have that dedicated I/O hardware, will be the real interesting test.
 
By the way, some background info Direct Storage coupled with RTX3090 (sorry I don't do pleb GPUs) is a real deal, but PS5 ASIC is still faster.
And yes I am dev. And yes NDA.

But brighter future ahead.

Maybe future GPUs will include ASIC for decompression as well. It wouldn't be ideal for the decompression to steal away compute from the gpu.

Direct Storage still engage the CPU for the check-in and moving of data and other stuff, so in terms of latency PS5's solution will simply be faster.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
If you’re expecting a game to take full advantage of the hardware in the first year of a console’s lifetime, you’re an idiot. There has never been a game in the first year of a console’s generation that looks and runs better than the games at the end of the generation.

Rogue Leader came pretty close... But yeah, in general that's very true of course.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
The SSD itself is 5.5GB/s only before it sends the uncompressed data over to the I/O unit on the APU, then it gets decompressed by the Kraken decoder (8-9GB/s, can go up to 22GB/s MAX depending on how well the data is compressed).
Yes, at the very least, you're getting two times the speed on the SSD. But then again, there are still loading screens being hidden and it's probably still loading data slower than two times the writing speed.
 

sncvsrtoip

Member
That's not the point. The point is that Sony couldve gone with a cheaper and slower SSD to reduce costs or maybe apply those cost savings into a more powerful GPU or a bigger SSD.

Because right now, it's a waste of money. They have essentially spent extra money on something that will not be utilized by 99% of devs. And the 1% who are utilizing it, are not even close to maxing it out as this Ratchet test shows.

99% of the devs are going to fully max out the 10 tflops GPU. It's not that hard. You push resolution and pixels and some GPU heavy RT effects and you hit the GPU bottleneck. No one at the moment seems to be maxing out this SSD. I/O seems to be more than capable on its own. What Cerny has done is deliver a weaker console at the expense of this fancy SSD that no one seems to give a shit about at the moment. Literally one studio has taken advantage of it, and they are 2.2 GBps away from maxing it out. The rest of their own studios are busy doing cross gen games.

Maybe in 2 years when Spiderman comes out and does something fancy with the PS5 SSD speeds of 5.5 GBps we can say that it was a good choice to prioritize SSD speeds over SSD size and faster GPU. But if we have to wait 3 years to see what this fancy SSD can do then maybe they shouldve stuck in their mid gen console instead.
understand you but in the end what difference would it make if they put slower ssd but 20% faster gpu, from benchmark I've seen not so big ;)
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Pay attention.




You FIRST mentioned tricks made by developers.

I then countered that by mentioning Blizar Prime.



You decided to mention rails AFTER brought up Blizar Prime.
I will keep this simple...... Blizar Prime is a TRICK! it is already in memory
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
100%

Wasted effort on the IO complex now that games keep being designed taking mechanical drives into account.
It's absolutely insane that almost 2.5 years after Cerny revealed all the possibilites of the new SSD in the wired article and another 1.5 years after he made us contemplate mass suicide at the Road to PS5 conference, not a single game seems to be utilizing the fancy I/O and his expensive 5.5 GBps SSD to its limit.

All those fancy demos of Spiderman's fast traversal through Manhattan, those block diagrams showing how game design will change forever, and how we will truly revolutionize gaming has simply not come to pass in the almost 3 years since the PS5 reveal and 1 year since launch. We cant even hope to look ahead because they have shown nothing that seems to be taking advantage of this I/O and SSD combo.

It's extremely disappointing and a gigantic waste of resources. Just make a simple tflops heavy console next time, Cerny. No one gives two shits about your damn SSD dream.
 

FranXico

Member
It's absolutely insane that almost 2.5 years after Cerny revealed all the possibilites of the new SSD in the wired article and another 1.5 years after he made us contemplate mass suicide at the Road to PS5 conference, not a single game seems to be utilizing the fancy I/O and his expensive 5.5 GBps SSD to its limit.

All those fancy demos of Spiderman's fast traversal through Manhattan, those block diagrams showing how game design will change forever, and how we will truly revolutionize gaming has simply not come to pass in the almost 3 years since the PS5 reveal and 1 year since launch. We cant even hope to look ahead because they have shown nothing that seems to be taking advantage of this I/O and SSD combo.

It's extremely disappointing and a gigantic waste of resources. Just make a simple tflops heavy console next time, Cerny. No one gives two shits about your damn SSD dream.
It's not just the SSD. And it's not "Cerny's dream", it was requested by developers.

The internal SSD is not even that expensive, they took affordable flash chips and parallelized them to max out the read speed. Hence the discrepancy with the write speed.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Maybe future GPUs will include ASIC for decompression as well. It wouldn't be ideal for the decompression to steal away compute from the gpu.

Direct Storage still engage the CPU for the check-in and moving of data and other stuff, so in terms of latency PS5's solution will simply be faster.
Yeah but that would undermine what type of data it can crunch and I can't really see whole industry using one type of texture/data packaging, etc. It won't matter as long as providers of those packaging tools will be able to create decompressor which would run on CUDA/OpenCL, etc. Then you can do some global purpose units to decompress stuff. You know on PC it's not good to further consolidate what you can use and what you can't. Thus ASIC like it's in PS5, I can't really see that happened.

On console, it's easy, you are bound to SDK provided anyway.
 

NickFire

Member
It's absolutely insane that almost 2.5 years after Cerny revealed all the possibilites of the new SSD in the wired article and another 1.5 years after he made us contemplate mass suicide at the Road to PS5 conference, not a single game seems to be utilizing the fancy I/O and his expensive 5.5 GBps SSD to its limit.

All those fancy demos of Spiderman's fast traversal through Manhattan, those block diagrams showing how game design will change forever, and how we will truly revolutionize gaming has simply not come to pass in the almost 3 years since the PS5 reveal and 1 year since launch. We cant even hope to look ahead because they have shown nothing that seems to be taking advantage of this I/O and SSD combo.

It's extremely disappointing and a gigantic waste of resources. Just make a simple tflops heavy console next time, Cerny. No one gives two shits about your damn SSD dream.
It feels like you are blaming Sony's SSDs for both Covid shit and the entire industry's decision to keep selling games on last gen hardware.
 

scydrex

Member
It's absolutely insane that almost 2.5 years after Cerny revealed all the possibilites of the new SSD in the wired article and another 1.5 years after he made us contemplate mass suicide at the Road to PS5 conference, not a single game seems to be utilizing the fancy I/O and his expensive 5.5 GBps SSD to its limit.

All those fancy demos of Spiderman's fast traversal through Manhattan, those block diagrams showing how game design will change forever, and how we will truly revolutionize gaming has simply not come to pass in the almost 3 years since the PS5 reveal and 1 year since launch. We cant even hope to look ahead because they have shown nothing that seems to be taking advantage of this I/O and SSD combo.

It's extremely disappointing and a gigantic waste of resources. Just make a simple tflops heavy console next time, Cerny. No one gives two shits about your damn SSD dream.

In the first year of the console you wanted that?
So you are saying that in the life of the PS5 there will be no game that will utilize the I/O and SSD combo?
 

kyliethicc

Member
100%

Wasted effort on the IO complex now that games keep being designed taking mechanical drives into account.
I doubt they will take hard drives into account for PS5 only games. For cross gen games, definitely.

But for any PS5 only games ported to PC, I guarantee they will require an SSD.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Both levels are in memory?

Where's your proof?
oh boy..

You dont need the whole level in memory. just that area.

anyway .. how about 25+ years as software developer plus this guy who has had over 40 in the gaming industry working on big titles.





Now where is your proof it does that is not from Sony PR vids? .. I too can play that stupid game of prove it..
 
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