Support NeoGAF

[Bo_Hazem]

Hey. Yeah vram is weird here. The game doesn’t load all textures properly if I use high or ultra vram setting in game. 10gb vram is somehow not enough.
Loading is still faster on ps5 too btw.

Thanks for your precious input, mate!

 

[hlm666]

So you skipped the 5.5-6GB VRAM? The guy is running it at low 1080p.

No I didn't, I looked at the video sitting on the main menu and looked at the process vram and system ram, 4GB of video ram was used and 6GB of system ram used. I don't think you understand what the overlay is showing you. I didn't watch any further because your comment was x amount of ram on the main menu which was out by like a factor of 4.

I just went and had a look skipped to gameplay at 3 min mark, ~7.2GB system ran and 4.2GB vram. Your comment about direct storage fucking with the pagefile/system partition is also hilariously wrong.

 

[cireza]

Insane ? This was standard on MegaDrive.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

No I didn't, I looked at the video sitting on the main menu and looked at the process vram and system ram, 4GB of video ram was used and 6GB of system ram used. I don't think you understand what the overlay is showing you. I didn't watch any further because your comment was x amount of ram on the main menu which was out by like a factor of 4.

I just went and had a look skipped to gameplay at 3 min mark, ~7.2GB system ran and 4.2GB vram. Your comment about direct storage fucking with the pagefile/system partition is also hilariously wrong.

So what is that 21-22GB virtual RAM? Enlighten me.

 

[DenchDeckard]

I'm not sure what's going on with you, mate. I've said what's needed to be said. rofif has the game on both I think and he can enlighten us with the RAM usage situation, he has 3080 and PS5. RAM's are faster than SSD's so comparing PC's with 32-48GB RAM/VRAM recommendation to 16GB PS5 is pretty wild but you are trying so hard here to avoid any kind of logic. Anyway, please stop mentioning me as I'm not interested in wasting my time any further.

So VRAM will allow PC to keep up with PS5 on all games going forward? as long as they use Direct Storage 1.1? That's good news for us all I guess, and sony development. I was worried they would have to scale back their first party IP to work on PC. which doesnt seem o be the case?

Hey. Yeah vram is weird here. The game doesn’t load all textures properly if I use high or ultra vram setting in game. 10gb vram is somehow not enough.
Loading is still faster on ps5 too btw.

What speeds your NVME, could you do a comparison of loading between the two at all mate?

Would be interesting to see a quick capture of same loading into the same area if possible? appreciate if its too much of a ball ache.

 

[Spaceman292]

This loading is much better.
I used to sleep during loading time for ESO, Skyrim and GTA5. The torture might stop now.

I'm not sure. Starfield is just around the corner

 

[SolidQ]

From reset...
SSD

HDD

 

[Guilty_AI]

So what is that 21-22GB virtual RAM? Enlighten me.

The OS is always using its allocated amount of virtual memory, for n different things. Having 21-22 GB virtual ram being used does not mean there is not sufficient memory for the game. This could be a 32gb ram machine and virtual memory usage would still be high, probably even higher if its following standard conventions.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

So VRAM will allow PC to keep up with PS5 on all games going forward? as long as they use Direct Storage 1.1? That's good news for us all I guess, and sony development. I was worried they would have to scale back their first party IP to work on PC. which doesnt seem o be the case?

I believe so. Let's not forget that PS5 is sold at $400-500 before the price bump and still became profitable since august 2021 which is insane!

 

[Buggy Loop]

Apparently the SSD + DirectStorage downclocks the CPU and has terrible frametimes, while installing the game on HDD removes nearly all frametime problems??

 

[GHG]

So VRAM will allow PC to keep up with PS5 on all games going forward? as long as they use Direct Storage 1.1?

Yes this is what became clear in the direct storage benchmark thread.

Apparently the SSD + DirectStorage downclocks the CPU and has terrible frametimes, while installing the game on HDD removes nearly all frametime problems??

What? Where's this information coming from?

 

[Buggy Loop]

What? Where's this information coming from?

From REEe

So as I wrote in my initial article ( https://www.dsogaming.com/news/forspoken-has-frame-pacing-audio-shader-compilation-stutters-issues/ ), this was the first thing I noticed, the weird frame pacing issues of the game. So I went ahead and moved the game folder from the SSD (Samsung 970 Pro Plus NvME) to me HDD. And look and behold, the game no longer downclocks the CPU and the frametime graphs are MUCH BETTER. DirectStorage is awful in this game (at least in its current implementation). I'm using Win10 BTW, so I don't know if things are better with Win11. Sure thing, the game loads really fast with DirectStorage. However, the frame pacing issues make the game completely unplayable with DirectStorage as the game never feels smooth, even when running with over 60fps. Here are two screenshots from the exact same place. The first one is with SSD and the second with HDD. The HDD runs 38fps better than the SSD.

Alex from DF is also curious about this

 

[rofif]

Hey

So VRAM will allow PC to keep up with PS5 on all games going forward? as long as they use Direct Storage 1.1? That's good news for us all I guess, and sony development. I was worried they would have to scale back their first party IP to work on PC. which doesnt seem o be the case?


What speeds your NVME, could you do a comparison of loading between the two at all mate?

Would be interesting to see a quick capture of same loading into the same area if possible? appreciate if its too much of a ball ache.

my comparison will not be the best because I only have 3.0 nvme.
If I reach the demo area in game, I can measure it anyway

 

[hlm666]

So what is that 21-22GB virtual RAM? Enlighten me.

The hell does the size of the pagefile matter? The actual game process is using 11GB total vram and ram. Windows has probably dumped some crap he had running on the desktop into the pagefile seeing it wont be needed while in the game. If they were using the pagefile because their wasn't enough ram/vram that thing would be running like shit

Introduction to the page file - Windows Client

Learn about the page files in Windows. A page file is an optional, hidden system file on a hard disk.

learn.microsoft.com

 

[Mister Wolf]

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

Them using Windows 10 is a red flag. Microsoft has stated more than once that Direct Storage will perform better on Windows 11.

 

[Kiya's Guard]

I just want to know why the physical-less steam version costs 10 bucks more than the physical ps5 disc. 80 vs 70, what the actual fuck. Wasn't squenix the first to release a game at 70?

 

[Guilty_AI]

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

interesting, i was having problems with framepacing in the demo too, will try installing it on my HDD next time.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Apparently the SSD + DirectStorage downclocks the CPU and has terrible frametimes, while installing the game on HDD removes nearly all frametime problems??

I was monitoring my CPU usage while playing (to spot shader compilation) and my cpu was always at 4.88ghz, no downclocking.

The difference in the benchmark can also simply be shader compilation; first time I ran the benchmark the fps was completely random/low, second time it was smooth/high

 

[Buggy Loop]

I was monitoring my CPU usage while playing (to spot shader compilation) and my cpu was always at 4.88ghz, no downclocking.

The difference in the benchmark can also simply be shader compilation; first time I ran the benchmark the fps was completely random/low, second time it was smooth/high

Also the demo apparently runs faster than the release, probably denuvo fucking shit up

 

[Bo_Hazem]

The hell does the size of the pagefile matter? The actual game process is using 11GB total vram and ram. Windows has probably dumped some crap he had running on the desktop into the pagefile seeing it wont be needed while in the game. If they were using the pagefile because their wasn't enough ram/vram that thing would be running like shit

Introduction to the page file - Windows Client

Learn about the page files in Windows. A page file is an optional, hidden system file on a hard disk.

learn.microsoft.com

Could you even open your eyes for once? Here is another test that specifices what exactly is happening. It's 23+GB of total RAM used for 1080p with RT, and around 25GB total RAM 4K.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

DirectMess 1.1

 

[rsouzadk]

Im running the demo on win10 on a 7960x paired with a 3080 on pcie gen3 and getting insanely fast loading times as the videos here. This direct storage tech is goodness.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Hey

my comparison will not be the best because I only have 3.0 nvme.
If I reach the demo area in game, I can measure it anyway

Ahh, don't feel the need to do it if its a pain, I was just curious.

DirectMess 1.1

Dont be mean! it's the first implementation and it seems to be loading games quicker than the god like PS5 IO so hopefully it will be ironed out

Just need to get that performance sorted, maybe thats whats affecting PS5 too?

I'm sure ALex at DF is slathering at the mouth to do a video on this.

 

[GHG]

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

Well this is why I said people should approach with caution as far as this game is concerned.

My experience with the demo wasn't bad from a performance perspective so it's odd that they are experiencing issues on the same GPU.

Also the demo apparently runs faster than the release, probably denuvo fucking shit up

Yeh either that or they changed something for the worse in the release version.

 

[Kenpachii]

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

Just lock your cpu clocks, problem solved. I had no problems with framepacing even remotely.

 

[rodrigolfp]

It's just impression or the game is already loading the map at the logos screens and main menu? Because when you click continue you are already inside the game.

 

[hlm666]

Could you even open your eyes for once? Here is another test that specifices what exactly is happening. It's 23+GB of total RAM used for 1080p with RT, and around 25GB total RAM 4K.

Nice try, go look up what per process memory does which isn't being used in that video (it was in your first video if you managed to work that out yet). I guess the good news is we don't need 21GB virtual ram anymore.

 

[winjer]

From the demo, with a 5800X3D. This CPU clocks at 4.45 GHz all core. 4.55 Ghz with one thread.
Frame times and CPU clocks are normal.

I wonder if that issue with clocks speeds and frame times, has to do with Denuvo. From what I understand, the demo doesn't use it, but the full game does.
This crap runs in the background checking data constantly, maybe even decrypting some stuff on the fly.
With Direct Storage streaming so much data, this would cause a big overhead. So we could have one thread dealing with denuvo, and the remaining threads on the CPU waiting for it to finish, thus going to lower clock speeds.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

Nice, downloading the demo right now. I hope it offloads enough work away from the cpu so that even my 12600k which doesnt meet their 60fps requirements can get to 60fps. Now i am excited for this to come to games that i actually care about beyond just their tech aspect.

The 60fps requirement is likely about the GPU at certain graphics settings. The IPC and core count on 12600k is so high it would be insane that it couldn't achieve 60fps on a title developed for the much slower Zen 2 cores on the PS5.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

Your game settings also play a role here. Overall, PS5 was overengineered to last longer through the generation. PC's when moving to PCIe 5.0 will automatically trash it or with higher hardware advantage. If you look at the graph without GPU power and probably VRAM they can't even reach the 7.3GB/s throughput of the core speed of the PCIe 4.0 NVMe m.2 SSD's. PS5 isn't as efficient as Apple's silicon that has EVERYTHING inside that massive chip minus the SSD, but closer concept of shortening the data travel length physically between GPU/CPU/shared cache/SSD/etc.

The natural evolution of consoles, and PC's, is ARM going forward.

Kek no. Arm would be a disaster unless they want to abandon backwards compatibility and AMDs power to price ratio. Not to mention MS would likely stick with x86. The true future of CPUs is RISCV. Arms days are numbered.

 

[Black_Stride]

So what is that 21-22GB virtual RAM? Enlighten me.

Apps can reserve pretty much whatever amount of virtual RAM they want it doesnt mean they are using it at all.
On my test PC on boot with a practically fresh Windows 10 install and nothing running the commit is something like 10GB.

The highlighted app is suspended, using 0MB of RAM but still has a commit of near 300MB.
The commit of an app doesnt directly tie into how much RAM it is actually using.

 

[twilo99]

How did the PC performance thread turn into a console war thread?

I think it’s because that same tech is inside the Xbox? But we are really efficient at doing that here no matter the topic so no surprise there lol

 

[twilo99]

Wait so was direct storage party of the “velocity architecture” thing on Xbox or a separate thing?

 

[yamaci17]

So this is bullshit?

it is bullshit in certain aspects. it says it requires 16 gb ram to hit 720p 30 fps very low super degraded settings
it says it needs 24 gb ram to hit 1440p 30 fps on recommended (standard most likely) settings



game perfectly functions on my 16 gigs ram budget at 1440p standard preset. so yes, it is bullshit. i also have a 2700 (lower spec than 3600 and 8700k that targets 30 FPS) and get 45+ frames CPU bound all the time

note that most 16 gb users wont be able to play this smothly. majority of them have idle ram usage nearing 8 9 gb. however; this is on THEM. my idle ram usage on 16 gb budget is around 2.5-3 GB. i have ample amounts of free ram. i dont care about others' bad usag patterns. same case for 8 gb. 8 gb is perfectly fine for both miles morales and god of war but everyone and their mother on internet forums will go on about how both games hard require 16 gb for smooth frametimes. it is nonsense spout by people that cannot get themselves to turn off their 20 tab chrome in the background.

another bullshit is miles morales. it says it only capable of running with 8 gb if you run it at 720p 30 fps with very low preset. it says it needs 16 gb for 1080p medium. here I'm running the game perfectly fine at 1440p high preset with only 8 GB RAM. bullshit? yes. explainable? also yes. they simply do not want to admit 8 gb or 16 gb is still fine for certain games. this is practically status quo. they also cover their asses since most people use bloated systems with tons of background software open in the background, tons of needlessly open launchers, resource intensive browsers with tons of tabs open, spotify open in the background just for the sake of it. you can cut these down and achieve playable framerates and frametimes even on 8 GB budget with most recent games. few are aware of this.




sorry that videos are on 30 FPS.

you will be seeing staggeringe amount of ram usage with 32 gb because even windows itself will allocate more RAM to its own operations. even a basic Calculator app will use enormously more RAM compared to what it would use on a 8 GB or 16 GB RAM system on a 32/64 GB RAM system.

This bloats RAM usage metrics and makes you think 16 GB or 8 GB would be obsolete in certain cases.

 

[Gaiff]

Wait so was direct storage party of the “velocity architecture” thing on Xbox or a separate thing?

It is part of the Velocity Architecture.

The Xbox Velocity Architecture comprises four major components: our custom NVME SSD, hardware accelerated decompression blocks, a brand new DirectStorage API layer and Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS).

 

[LiquidMetal14]

That is great to read. Whether in interested or not it's a out damn time some games start taking advantage of fast nvme storage on PC. Every game from here on out needs this implementated

 

[64bitmodels]

So this game is at low settings is already using a total of ~17GB while still on the menu, but we should ignore that and believe the digital guy. Also it's using 21-22GB of virtual memory (so a total of around ~39GB), probably that's direct storage making partition inside the harddrive which is a dangerous move that would degrade the SSD pretty quickly and might suddenly die just like Apple's trick with one finding that in less than a year he hit like 156 TBW which is nearly half the estimated lifespan of the memory. So a small advice to people to avoid putting their games on a drive that has critical data to them.

Wait.... so Directstorage actually can be dangerous to your hardware??? Why would anyone use this, then?
thinking about it, it's more likely that it's on forspoken than it is Directstorage... Denuvo being installed alongside the game doesn't help either

 

[Guilty_AI]

Wait.... so Directstorage actually can be dangerous to your hardware??? Why would anyone use this, then?

It is not. For starters directstorage doesn't even increase or decrease the number read and writes made on the SSD.
Virtual memory is controled by the OS, it'd do the same thing directstorage or not, HDD or SSD.

 

[T4keD0wN]

The 60fps requirement is likely about the GPU at certain graphics settings. The IPC and core count on 12600k is so high it would be insane that it couldn't achieve 60fps on a title developed for the much slower Zen 2 cores on the PS5.

Yeah, luckily i ended up gpu bound which i didnt expect considering the poor visuals. Great load times though.

From REEe



Alex from DF is also curious about this

This sounds bizzare if its true (i hadnt noticed any abnormal cpu behavior, but to be fair i wasnt looking out for anything), cant wait for Alex from DF to cover this game.

 

[rodrigolfp]

So what is that 21-22GB virtual RAM? Enlighten me.

Nothing related to the game, as my pagefile is set to only 200MB and doesn't change while I am running the demo.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Wait.... so Directstorage actually can be dangerous to your hardware??? Why would anyone use this, then?
thinking about it, it's more likely that it's on forspoken than it is Directstorage... Denuvo being installed alongside the game doesn't help either

Depends on how it works. If it uses virtual memory like Apple's trick when you run out of RAM this degrades your SSD quicker than you think. If that virtual memory is done by another thin it's the same result whether that's DirectStorage or another system. In short, try to have your important data on a totally other SSD/external and won't hurt if you also do double save it on another massive HDD. You can use an enclosure to save on maybe SATA SSD for main and HDD then keep one of them in a safe please. For example I have photos and content dating back to 2001, nothing classified but still amazing memories I would rather not risk.

Amazon.com: SABRENT USB 3.0 Tool Free Enclosure for 2.5” and 3.5” Internal SATA Hard Drives (EC-KSL3) : Electronics

Shop Amazon for SABRENT USB 3.0 Tool Free Enclosure for 2.5” and 3.5” Internal SATA Hard Drives (EC-KSL3) and find millions of items, delivered faster than ever.

www.amazon.com

 

[yamaci17]

Depends on how it works. If it uses virtual memory like Apple's trick when you run out of RAM this degrades your SSD quicker than you think. If that virtual memory is done by another thin it's the same result whether that's DirectStorage or another system. In short, try to have your important data on a totally other SSD/external and won't hurt if you also do double save it on another massive HDD. You can use an enclosure to save on maybe SATA SSD for main and HDD then keep one of them in a safe please. For example I have photos and content dating back to 2001, nothing classified but still amazing memories I would rather not risk.

Amazon.com: SABRENT USB 3.0 Tool Free Enclosure for 2.5” and 3.5” Internal SATA Hard Drives (EC-KSL3) : Electronics

Shop Amazon for SABRENT USB 3.0 Tool Free Enclosure for 2.5” and 3.5” Internal SATA Hard Drives (EC-KSL3) and find millions of items, delivered faster than ever.

www.amazon.com

you're exeggerating this stuff. also, xbox literally has a decent nvme ssd and writes tons of stuff to SSD everytime you use quick resume to halt games. it writes entire memory data to the ssd when you put games in quick resume. and they have a mediocre budget Western Digital SN model SSD there.

SSD TBWs are big enough nowadays. even I have a 600 TBW SSD for 3 years and I'm only at %7 wear. not to mention, decent SSDs will outlive their TBW ratings. gone are the days where ssds died left and right. and they were mostly super low budget crap sata ssds with borked up controllers.

 

[Hoddi]

There's some interesting loading behaviors in this game. It read through 65GB while standing in one spot.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

you're exeggerating this stuff. also, xbox literally has a decent nvme ssd and writes tons of stuff to SSD everytime you use quick resume to halt games. it writes entire memory data to the ssd when you put games in quick resume. and they have a mediocre budget Western Digital SN model SSD there.

SSD TBWs are big enough nowadays. even I have a 600 TBW SSD for 3 years and I'm only at %7 wear. not to mention, decent SSDs will outlive their TBW ratings. gone are the days where ssds died left and right. and they were mostly super low budget crap sata ssds with borked up controllers.

You can't be sure enough, sometimes it's not worth the risk so always backing up important data is the right thing. One guy on Apple hit around 150 TBW in less than a year due to virtual RAM when exceeding the main RAM capacity:

M1 SSD Life span scaring issue - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[64bitmodels]

One guy on Apple hit around 150 TBW in less than a year due to virtual RAM when exceeding the main RAM capacity:

if this a ram thing i guess another solution is to just splurge and get the largest kit you can find... that way the chance for RAM to be exceeded will never happen
maybe something like 32 or 64gb is good enough

 

[Bo_Hazem]

if this a ram thing i guess another solution is to just splurge and get the largest kit you can find... that way the chance for RAM to be exceeded will never happen

Yes! Also on my PC I have NVMe m.2 1TB for the system, but the important data is placed on another 2TB SATA3 SSD as cold storage. So if the main 1TB dies then no fucks given. When I move to Mac I would have 1TB internal but only use external 4TB+ SSD for the important data and double backing it up on another like 20TB HDD that would sit somewhere safe.

 

[yamaci17]

You can't be sure enough, sometimes it's not worth the risk so always backing up important data is the right thing. One guy on Apple hit around 150 TBW in less than a year due to virtual RAM when exceeding the main RAM capacity:

M1 SSD Life span scaring issue - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

lets see how this situation evolves. 150 tbw less than 1 year can indeed be dangerous. do we expect to see macbooks ssd die left and right? that would be a fun sight to see lol

 

[Bo_Hazem]

lets see how this situation evolves. 150 tbw less than 1 year can indeed be dangerous. do we expect to see macbooks ssd die left and right? that would be a fun sight to see lol

Yeah because some of them don't understand that the "Shared Memory" is both main RAM and VRAM so doing heavy work and relying on internal storage for some heavy lifting is brilliant, but that as well adds too much wear so best case scenario is sticking to 512GB/1TB and never save critical data internally and have at least 32GB of RAM for Macs.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

From reset...
SSD

HDD

HDD gets higher fps.
always suspected it.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

yamaci17 64bitmodels

Due to my PC from 2019 becoming a sloth in video editing, especially when throwing like 2-8 video clips on top of each other with H.265, 4K 4:2:2 10bit I tend to use on-the-spot rendering a lot. So far the main SSD has done 29TB out of 1,200 TBW: