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[hyperbertha]

How is it not relevant lol.

The cpu and gpu litteral dictate how sophisticated graphics will be.

All assets needed to be rendered from memory. There's no point to all the compute power in the world if those assets can't be in memory.

 

[Sosokrates]

On the contrary here; I'd say their GPGPU calculations actually pushed their PS4 titles to do things you couldn't do on XBO without scaling back on graphical fidelity. The main issue (if you can call it that) for PS4 was that the graphical bar also got raised a ton, leaving less actual GPU budget for GPGPU compute tasks.

I mean, look at a game like Days Gone. Graphically less impressive than something like, say, GOW4 or Horizon, but the sheer scale of zombies in that game (combined with the level of detail at that scale), that's something GPGPU compute was HEAVILY utilized for I'd assume (such as handling the physics calculations of the zombies as they collide and interact with each other and the environment), among other things in that game. People are overstating aspects of the SSDs but we shouldn't undersell GPGPU compute either. In fact, it's the more interesting of the two things for me when it comes to next-gen and how that can influence game design decisions.

Comparing exclusives is pointless because they cant be compared...

 

[Sosokrates]

All assets needed to be rendered from memory. There's no point to all the compute power in the world if those assets can't be in memory.

And those no point in having to many assets if the cpu can draw them and the gpu cant render them.

 

[hyperbertha]

And those no point in having to many assets if the cpu can draw them and the gpu cant render them.

So good thing they can in the case of both consoles.

 

[onQ123]

You're literally wrong. If a PS5 and XSX game go for visual/graphical parity in terms of most effects and especially framerate, and native texture resolution, that leaves the XSX with a 1.87 - 2 TF GPU advantage for GPGPU compute tasks ON TOP of all of that. That's up to 2 TF extra for physics, AI, game logic, etc. and that's not even accounting for things like DLSS and using ML for texture resolution upscaling that XSX has (and PS5 will most likely have, at least in its own implementations).

Also if you take, say, Moore's Law's video speculating XSX was designed with both gaming and server markets in mind, it might have additional compute tasks customized to it PS5 could be lacking, which would push its advantage for such tasks that much more. I don't see how this is up for contention, when we can basically agree that PS5 will have the raw SSD speed (and very likely SSD bandwidth) advantage and that's not even accounting for its optimizations there. XSX SSD will have lots of optimizations too but there's only so much the the SSD delta that will cover and PS5 should still have a notable SSD advantage all around.

XSX's GPGPU advantage is pretty much its version of PS5's SSD advantage, but it might actually be larger than that when you consider the advantages GPGPU compute brings to game design. Yes quicker loading times and potentially higher-quality assets will be more immediately noticeable (and are easily marketable), but if we're talking about next-gen game design influenced by substantive techniques and technologies, GPGPU has a lot more genuine potential to bring compared to the SSD advantages. That's just the reality of the matter.



Yeah, no kidding xD. It's getting ridiculous at this point. It's almost seemingly taboo to bring up GPGPU compute programming at all even if the PS4 leveraged that very thing for a lot of its 1st-party output. It's considered downright blasphemous by some to even imply it will have a bigger effect on game design than the SSDs, but that's the truth. The SSDs will be easier to leverage by comparison, however.

Xbox SX will have the compute advantage but PS5 will also have GPU advantages that come from having a higher clock rate so it's not a case of Xbox SX having the 1.87TF left over when games are equal. That would only be the case if the game is compute bond.

 

[Jigga117]

How is this relevant?

Are you serious???

 

[hyperbertha]

Are you serious???

Its not relevant to this discussion. Both consoles have Cpus and Gpus. You weren't aware?

 

[CJY]

For reference, this is the game that Coreteks mentions as being a likely PS5 exclusive:




The game was announced in 2019, note however that most people are impressed by how it looks. That should get you all more excited about the Xbox considering it's taking that kind of approach of unprecedented visuals vs. PS5's unprecedented SSD speeds. That doesn't mean the game doesn't look fun. However, Microsoft's first-party studios will bring out games that look equal or better with the Series X's power.

As for the rest of Coretek's video, he downplays the Xbox's advantage in power a lot throughout the video for Sony's SSD. With the shrinking first-party games that come out each generation, I believe it remains to be seen as to what advantage third-party games will have for the PS5 apart from faster load times.

"Here's a trailer for an awesome looking exclusive PS4 game..."

"And that's why you should all be excited about Xbox..."

I've heard everything now.

 

[SirTerry-T]

I think we can safely assume PS5 will sell more globally because of PS being the bigger brand but besides that, if they see some features in the PS5 architecture that makes their game possible, they might not want to port it to other consoles

The majority of game development starts with a pc version. It would take something pretty special (or costly) for a 3rd party Dev studio to not want to release their title to as many customers as possible. Unless the xsx really does sink, I just don't see this happening, outside of exclusivety deals, etc.
What we also need to remember is that all these amazing looking assets that we will get because of the SSD will have to be costed out and created, which means spiralling budgets.
That's why these discussion subjects do my head in, these people are missing those important details...all the talk about game changing assets, big and better games...all that talk means jack shit if the dev studios cannot afford the longer dev cycles and costs those bigger, better looking games would demand, especially 3rd party studios.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Comparing exclusives is pointless because they cant be compared...

I wasn't comparing exclusives however. Just illustrating how GPGPU compute was leveraged in some PS4 titles and its benefits, and part of that was helped by PS4 having more headroom (physically larger GPU) over XBO.

In that department the roles have reversed this gen; XSX has a raw GPGPU compute advantage over PS5.

Xbox SX will have the compute advantage but PS5 will also have GPU advantages that come from having a higher clock rate so it's not a case of Xbox SX having the 1.87TF left over when games are equal. That would only be the case if the game is compute bond.

Yes PS5 will have certain GPU advantages, so there are some areas in terms of graphics where it may have some noticeable advantages for sure.

But it all comes down to what devs want to prioritize. You could get XSX versions of games that might be more graphically impressive in some areas relative PS5 and in other areas, less graphically impressive, but they could have a lot more headroom for GPGPU compute tasks that can affect gameplay a lot more than just prettier graphics will.

You seem to be talking about rendering directly from the SSD to GPU.
this post has so many inacurracies.

Well you've done literally nothing to try indicating where I've assumed wrongly, so something tells me I'm at least mostly on the mark.

If your point is that the data off SSD has to go through the CPU first anyway, then that kind of kills the merit of using the SSDs as a memory-mapped v-cache. The whole point of that setup is to provide direct raw access to that partition of memory by the GPU with as little processing by the CPU as possible, otherwise data off the SSD has to go into RAM first anyhow.

Are these systems using a setup at least partially in line with AMD's SSG line, or aren't they? If they aren't then a lot of this SSD talk will end up coming off as a marketing stunt. Or have you maybe thought I was talking about rendering off SSD as if it was actually plausible? No, I only made that example to show how it would create problems in the pipeline due to what needs realtime rendering necessitates and how the speed, bandwidth and nature of memory technology of the SSDs can't fulfill that type of stuff.

 

[Sosokrates]

So good thing they can in the case of both consoles.

Yes but both will have a limit.

 

[hyperbertha]

The majority of game development starts with a pc version. It would take something pretty special (or costly) for a 3rd party Dev studio to not want to release their title to as many customers as possible. Unless the xsx really does sink, I just don't see this happening, outside of exclusivety deals, etc.
What we also need to remember is that all these amazing looking assets that we will get because of the SSD will have to be costed out and created, which means spiralling budgets.
That's why these discussion subjects do my head in, these people are missing those important details...all the talk about game changing assets, big and better games...all that talk means jack shit if the dev studios cannot afford the longer dev cycles and costs those bigger, better looking games would demand, especially 3rd party studios.

Most assets are already created with a highir quality and then downscaled for games. Look at how assets look in cutscenes vs ingame for a quick example. Also , third party devs can leverage PS5 SSD fully. They just have to downscale assets or optimize streaming differently when porting to other platforms.

 

[Sosokrates]

I wasn't comparing exclusives however. Just illustrating how GPGPU compute was leveraged in some PS4 titles and its benefits, and part of that was helped by PS4 having more headroom (physically larger GPU) over XBO.

In that department the roles have reversed this gen; XSX has a raw GPGPU compute advantage over PS5.



Yes PS5 will have certain GPU advantages, so there are some areas in terms of graphics where it may have some noticeable advantages for sure.

But it all comes down to what devs want to prioritize. You could get XSX versions of games that might be more graphically impressive in some areas relative PS5 and in other areas, less graphically impressive, but they could have a lot more headroom for GPGPU compute tasks that can affect gameplay a lot more than just prettier graphics will.

Is this your speculation or you have proof they did this? Because judging 1st and 3rd party games on the x1 ps4 exclusives did nothing technically more sophisticated.

 

[onQ123]

I wasn't comparing exclusives however. Just illustrating how GPGPU compute was leveraged in some PS4 titles and its benefits, and part of that was helped by PS4 having more headroom (physically larger GPU) over XBO.

In that department the roles have reversed this gen; XSX has a raw GPGPU compute advantage over PS5.



Yes PS5 will have certain GPU advantages, so there are some areas in terms of graphics where it may have some noticeable advantages for sure.

But it all comes down to what devs want to prioritize. You could get XSX versions of games that might be more graphically impressive in some areas relative PS5 and in other areas, less graphically impressive, but they could have a lot more headroom for GPGPU compute tasks that can affect gameplay a lot more than just prettier graphics will.

Correct Compute will be useful with ML which is a wildcard because someone could come up with something amazing that only need 8-bit precision.

The same stuff I tried to tell people about earlier but they thought I was only saying it because PS4 Pro supported double rate FP16

 

[hyperbertha]

I wasn't comparing exclusives however. Just illustrating how GPGPU compute was leveraged in some PS4 titles and its benefits, and part of that was helped by PS4 having more headroom (physically larger GPU) over XBO.

In that department the roles have reversed this gen; XSX has a raw GPGPU compute advantage over PS5.



Yes PS5 will have certain GPU advantages, so there are some areas in terms of graphics where it may have some noticeable advantages for sure.

But it all comes down to what devs want to prioritize. You could get XSX versions of games that might be more graphically impressive in some areas relative PS5 and in other areas, less graphically impressive, but they could have a lot more headroom for GPGPU compute tasks that can affect gameplay a lot more than just prettier graphics will.



Well you've done literally nothing to try indicating where I've assumed wrongly, so something tells me I'm at least mostly on the mark.

If your point is that the data off SSD has to go through the CPU first anyway, then that kind of kills the merit of using the SSDs as a memory-mapped v-cache. The whole point of that setup is to provide direct raw access to that partition of memory by the GPU with as little processing by the CPU as possible, otherwise data off the SSD has to go into RAM first anyhow.

Are these systems using a setup at least partially in line with AMD's SSG line, or aren't they? If they aren't then a lot of this SSD talk will end up coming off as a marketing stunt. Or have you maybe thought I was talking about rendering off SSD as if it was actually plausible? No, I only made that example to show how it would create problems in the pipeline due to what needs realtime rendering necessitates and how the speed, bandwidth and nature of memory technology of the SSDs can't fulfill that type of stuff.

Yea this is what I misunderstood. You can't render assets directly from SSD. But it can be done from memory.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Is this your speculation or you have proof they did this? Because judging 1st and 3rd party games on the x1 ps4 exclusives did nothing technically more sophisticated.

I mean, it's a built-in benefit PS4 has thanks to additional CUs and larger GPU. The GDDR5 memory also helped in that regard. I'd have to crib developer interviews from goodness-knows-where to put quotes to this.

Conceptually, however, it is pretty much a given it was utilized. There are reasons why PS4 and XBO games punched above their weight when it came to optimizations. With those garbage Jaguar cores, how else were devs to run advanced physics tasks (among other things) while maintaining playable framerates? The answer is GPGPU programming.

It was beneficial for consoles last gen and it will be beneficial for consoles this upcoming gen, too.

Correct Compute will be useful with ML which is a wildcard because someone could come up with something amazing that only need 8-bit precision.

The same stuff I tried to tell people about earlier but they thought I was only saying it because PS4 Pro supported double rate FP16

Fair enough. I think GPGPU can have other advantages besides that and we've probably already seen them used in very selective software and instances, but the issue will be if they can be easily leveraged.

Tools, development methodologies and more have to tend to its utilization potential and that's an area where both MS and Sony can possibly innovate. It's just that down to sheer hardware specs, MS is in a better position to leverage those while keeping most visual parity with PS5 (if that's what they wanted to do, mind you).

Yea this is what I misunderstood. You can't render assets directly from SSD. But it can be done from memory.

Fair enough. I was definitely not trying to imply anything that would see the SSDs being literally used like RAM

 

[Insane Metal]

Huh.

I really enjoy Coreteks, will watch this.

 

[Insane Metal]

What I heard so far: XSX probably does have an advantage in RT but apparently RT will be very limited on those machines. Multiplat games will probably be identical or very difficul to tell them apart.

 

[hyperbertha]

Fair enough. I was definitely not trying to imply anything that would see the SSDs being literally used like RAM

But the PS5 is mainly going to use it to stream into VRAM. This is why devs say its going to result in higher visual quality, including polycount, and number of assets possible on screen. Texture streaming is just a very small part of the equation.

 

[truth411]

It's already been proven these cases come down to unoptimized ports or poor use of the additional hardware. For example if the RE3 Remake demo on XSX used the same quality texture assets as PS4 Pro's the framerate would be noticeably beyond PS4 Pro's on the X.

In the end it all comes down optimization (or lack thereof) for those use-cases, same will be the case between PS5 and XSX. The only question would be if Sony are enforcing a parity clause with 3rd-parties or not. Those sort of things aren't illegal but they're grimy AF. And it's happened before, either with Sony or Microsoft or both.



More efficient how? XSX will always guarantee 560 GB/s bandwidth for the GPU. Meanwhile, PS5 is probably looking at most at 10 - 11 GB of physical memory on PS5 for the GPU assets if you pare its memory partitions equivalent to XSX's setup and taking a memory management/allocation approach MS is doing on an assumptive use-case with Sony (who may not be using a setup like MS's where non-graphics critical code is put to the "lower" 1 GB bound of 2 GB modules, i.e they could be using whole 2 GB modules for OS and CPU data, which actually further restricts the GPU's memory bandwidth in that case).

The SSD in both systems is being overhyped: they will bring much faster load times and help with texture streaming, but that only applies for static texture data ONLY, and only for things that don't need bit or byte-level modifies (especially if that means constant writes to the SSD memory-mapped v-cache partition). The use of the SSD for significantly changing game design approaches will be pretty limited compared to GPGPU compute, which XSX has an advantage in due to 16 additional CUs and (possibly) more GPU cache (if its clocks are slower).

And it's foolish to think trends from one gen will automatically carry over to the next. To date the most impressive next-gen footage I've seen from either system are Hellblade 2 and especially Project MARA, both of which are XSX titles. MARA in particular because of the RT and that, given its scope, it'll probably look about as good (if not as good or even better) as that in the finished product. As well, if stories like Jason's Naughty Dog article are anything to go by, combined with several key WWS employees going to MS studios, there may be workplace cultures at WWS that could impact game output quality going forward if they aren't addressed. I'm actually pretty surprised at the number of people Sony decided not to retain in terms of talent in their WWS divisions. A bit unexpected on that note.

Also before anyone brings up the idea of the OS compressing and consolidating itself to the SSD to free of RAM space, just keep in mind this is something both systems can do and is still limited by the fact the vast majority of OS code will not be able to run off the SSD anyway due to the speeds being too slow and NAND functioning on a page/block level for reads and writes, respectively (as well as lacking true random access), all are things OSes need in real runtime environments.

Alot of info here thats not quite correct. But only thing ill point out is that Hell Blade 2 footage was largely fake or Misleading is a better way of putting it. I think Digital Foundry did a video on it.
Also the SSD is not overblown. Anywho....

 

[geordiemp]

Go read explanations on Beyond 3d or resera, you are miles off.

Also Ps5 has 448 for all the RAM....so your stuff on that is hilarious read ..

Fun times.

 

[Hobbygaming]

The majority of game development starts with a pc version. It would take something pretty special (or costly) for a 3rd party Dev studio to not want to release their title to as many customers as possible. Unless the xsx really does sink, I just don't see this happening, outside of exclusivety deals, etc.
What we also need to remember is that all these amazing looking assets that we will get because of the SSD will have to be costed out and created, which means spiralling budgets.
That's why these discussion subjects do my head in, these people are missing those important details...all the talk about game changing assets, big and better games...all that talk means jack shit if the dev studios cannot afford the longer dev cycles and costs those bigger, better looking games would demand, especially 3rd party studios.

Sony has already stated they're putting even more money and time into their AAA games this upcoming console cycle, that's their strategy to improve but yeah it is riskier for 3rd party

 

[truth411]

But the PS5 is mainly going to use it to stream into VRAM. This is why devs say its going to result in higher visual quality, including polycount, and number of assets possible on screen. Texture streaming is just a very small part of the equation.

Yep. This is partly what I think he's missing. All he can see is "15% more TFlops!!! Nothing else matters!!!"

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

But the PS5 is mainly going to use it to stream into VRAM. This is why devs say its going to result in higher visual quality, including polycount, and number of assets possible on screen. Texture streaming is just a very small part of the equation.

Well, firstly, these are mainly Sony devs saying these things. And maybe the occasional Jonathan Blow type, who have their own clear biases at this point, for whatever reason (even if it means jeopardizing business relationships with a platform holder). You won't be getting comparative statements (even comparative-by-omission) by 3rd-parties as a whole because they need to keep good terms with the platform holders as a whole.

If the PS5 is streaming SSD data into VRAM, that is virtually no different than any current SSD setup on other devices. In those setups the SSD data has to be moved into RAM before it can be operated on. The only difference here in your stated case is that the RAM is "VRAM", as in GDDR6, but that still somewhat technically holds true to what I just said. That's why I mentioned AMD's SSG cards in particular; it is the more potent use of memory-mapped v-cache NAND by far.

And as well, these aren't techniques exclusive to PS5, but it may be able to better leverage a lot of them thanks to the faster SSD as a whole.

Alot of info here thats not quite correct. But only thing ill point out is that Hell Blade 2 footage was largely fake or Misleading is a better way of putting it. I think Digital Foundry did a video on it.
Also the SSD is not overblown. Anywho....

Well if you have the means to "correct" anything I've stated then feel free to do so. But I'm thinking you do not possess those means at this time. Anyhow, I'm obviously aware the Hellblade 2 footage was not real-time, but it is in-engine. Same way...Uncharted 4's trailer was...CG in-engine ...

And I think we can agree the final version of UC4 came pretty dang close to that trailer. I give NT the benefit of the doubt and say HB2's final in-game results will match up pretty closely to that reveal trailer. Seems fair to me.

Go read explanations on Beyond 3d or resera, you are miles off.

Also Ps5 has 448 for all the RAM....so your stuff on that is hilarious read ..

Fun times.

I've already read them, buddy. Where do you think I got the Ariel iGPU profile testlist idea from when it came to the Oberon revisions?

Anyway if you can't explain in your words why I'm "off", then you probably shouldn't be telling me about other locations I've already visited and taken into consideration. And you don't seem to be considering RAM use-cases at all, that's why I mentioned the physical RAM amounts alongside the bandwidth those as a total give. You get 448 GB/s on all eight modules since each module is 56 GB/s in total bandwidth and speed.

I mean, it's all literally right there in my reply to you. But agree to disagree if you wish.

Yep. This is partly what I think he's missing. All he can see is "15% more TFlops!!! Nothing else matters!!!"

Don't lump me in with those sorts. I was literally posting in the Next-Gen speculation thread for a LONG time how everyone obsessing over TFs were looking at the consoles wrong.

Now that one system has an objective lower amount compared to the other, suddenly a lot of people who were buying into ridiculous TF numbers and claims as rumors are conveniently on the "TFs aren't the only thing of importance" train now. But it took until that presentation for them to switch up. Myself and quite a few others were trying to stress the importance of things besides TFs for a while way before that PS5 presentation.

And now you have a lot of the same people who conveniently changed narrative only a week or so ago, hyping up the SSDs beyond reason and doing as much to downplay any GPU advantages for XSX as possible. Going from one extreme to the other, rather than attempting a balanced and nuanced take on the systems.

But hey, people are allowed to do as they wish, as long as it doesn't come down to malicious concern-trolling, console flamewar bait or personal threats and insults. We can agree to disagree but if my outcomes in opinion from speculation don't align with your own, it is what it is.

 

[hyperbertha]

If the PS5 is streaming SSD data into VRAM, that is virtually no different than any current SSD setup on other devices. In those setups the SSD data has to be moved into RAM before it can be operated on. The only difference here in your stated case is that the RAM is "VRAM", as in GDDR6, but that still somewhat technically holds true to what I just said. That's why I mentioned AMD's SSG cards in particular; it is the more potent use of memory-mapped v-cache NAND by far.

Yes much of the benefits will also be present on Xbox. But by other devices, if you mean PC, yes its true that PC games can load data faster into the RAM if an SSD is present, but PC games are still designed to stream only at a rate of 50MB/s, with the exception of star citizen, which is why if you play star citizen with an HDD you encounter serious stuttering issues.

 

[truth411]

Well, firstly, these are mainly Sony devs saying these things. And maybe the occasional Jonathan Blow type, who have their own clear biases at this point, for whatever reason (even if it means jeopardizing business relationships with a platform holder). You won't be getting comparative statements (even comparative-by-omission) by 3rd-parties as a whole because they need to keep good terms with the platform holders as a whole.

If the PS5 is streaming SSD data into VRAM, that is virtually no different than any current SSD setup on other devices. In those setups the SSD data has to be moved into RAM before it can be operated on. The only difference here in your stated case is that the RAM is "VRAM", as in GDDR6, but that still somewhat technically holds true to what I just said. That's why I mentioned AMD's SSG cards in particular; it is the more potent use of memory-mapped v-cache NAND by far.

And as well, these aren't techniques exclusive to PS5, but it may be able to better leverage a lot of them thanks to the faster SSD as a whole.



Well if you have the means to "correct" anything I've stated then feel free to do so. But I'm thinking you do not possess those means at this time. Anyhow, I'm obviously aware the Hellblade 2 footage was not real-time, but it is in-engine. Same way...Uncharted 4's trailer was...CG in-engine ...

And I think we can agree the final version of UC4 came pretty dang close to that trailer. I give NT the benefit of the doubt and say HB2's final in-game results will match up pretty closely to that reveal trailer. Seems fair to me.


I've already read them, buddy. Where do you think I got the Ariel iGPU profile testlist idea from when it came to the Oberon revisions?

Anyway if you can't explain in your words why I'm "off", then you probably shouldn't be telling me about other locations I've already visited and taken into consideration. And you don't seem to be considering RAM use-cases at all, that's why I mentioned the physical RAM amounts alongside the bandwidth those as a total give. You get 448 GB/s on all eight modules since each module is 56 GB/s in total bandwidth and speed.

I mean, it's all literally right there in my reply to you. But agree to disagree if you wish.



Don't lump me in with those sorts. I was literally posting in the Next-Gen speculation thread for a LONG time how everyone obsessing over TFs were looking at the consoles wrong.

Now that one system has an objective lower amount compared to the other, suddenly a lot of people who were buying into ridiculous TF numbers and claims as rumors are conveniently on the "TFs aren't the only thing of importance" train now. But it took until that presentation for them to switch up. Myself and quite a few others were trying to stress the importance of things besides TFs for a while way before that PS5 presentation.

And now you have a lot of the same people who conveniently changed narrative only a week or so ago, hyping up the SSDs beyond reason and doing as much to downplay any GPU advantages for XSX as possible. Going from one extreme to the other, rather than attempting a balanced and nuanced take on the systems.

But hey, people are allowed to do as they wish, as long as it doesn't come down to malicious concern-trolling, console flamewar bait or personal threats and insults. We can agree to disagree but if my outcomes in opinion from speculation don't align with your own, it is what it is.

So in other words its PS5 exclusives that will take advantage of it not really 3rd party like I said. Glad we are in agreement.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Yes much of the benefits will also be present on Xbox. But by other devices, if you mean PC, yes its true that PC games can load data faster into the RAM if an SSD is present, but PC games are still designed to stream only at a rate of 50MB/s, with the exception of star citizen, which is why if you play star citizen with an HDD you encounter serious stuttering issues.

True, the design nature of PCs aiming mainly at HDD speeds doesn't escape. But that's also partly because of the consoles, which shipped with slow HDDs themselves.

The consoles are going to move that baseline up considerably and that will help with PC game development particularly for the games aiming only at PC releases (at least initially).

So in other words its PS5 exclusives that will take advantage of it not really 3rd party like I said. Glad we are in agreement.

Yes, Sony devs and PS5 exclusives will use those SSD features most prominently. Just like how XSX 1st-party will utilize the additional GPU headroom for GPGPU programming tasks most prominently. But that wasn't what my reply was actually addressing.

It was just addressing the developers that are making some of these recent comments that have been quoted. That's it. So I don't know why you chose to focus on a very obvious conclusion that's partially related but not the crux of the point that was being discussed.

 

[hyperbertha]

So in other words its PS5 exclusives that will take advantage of it not really 3rd party like I said. Glad we are in agreement.

Tbh I can see third parties taking advantage of it too provided they are willing to mandate nvmes as a minimum requirement for their games on PC. They just either need to downscale the assets being streamed when it comes to other systems (downgrading 5GB to 2.5 GB), or optimize streaming so that streamed assets get more time before they need to be rendered in game (i.e. change 5 Gb every second to 5 GB every 2 or 3 seconds). This kind of optimization doesn't seem all that hard.

 

[sdrawkcab]

It's 10.3tflops, so it might go down to 10.2 in very rare circumstances, as he mentioned a 'couple percent drop' in frequency. Or 10.1.

What brand of glue are you guys sniffing?

Why don't you PS5 fans DEMAND that Cerny tell you the baseclock speed; he never has. All you guys are arguing is the boosted clock (which he claims is sustainable most of the time), but have zero clue what the true, STABLE clock speed is.

And from what I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), for the GPU to run at its peak freq, the CPU has to throttle down to the lowest clock speed. So, what Cerny is saying is, because there's an SSD roughly twice as fast, but with slower RAM, slower CPU (even when in boost) and less TF, they have a more powerful machine? Give me a break. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out (and I'm an CompTIA A+ certified technician - I know more than a thing or two about these things).

Yall are drinking that juice, hard and fast.

What's sad about all of this is, the fact (and I could be wrong; am I?) that for the GPU to perform optimally, the CPU has to throttle down, it means that even if the GPU is running at its highest clock speeds (or near it) consistently, it means the CPU will be running at its lowest clock speed consistently, which is just terrible, terrible design.

 

[mitchman]

The random read speeds is what REALLY counts and will be similar between XSX and PS5..You will only hit that sequential speed advantage when initially loading the entire game into memory.

This is not a PC type SSD solution, so you cannot use traditional PC metrics on the performance. Even if that was the case, a custom filesystem and packaging can easily overcome this. Watch the Cerny talk, he addresses this point.

 

[The Mad Draklor]

What brand of glue are you guys sniffing?

Why don't you PS5 fans DEMAND that Cerny tell you the baseclock speed; he never has. All you guys are arguing is the boosted clock (which he claims is sustainable most of the time), but have zero clue what the true, STABLE clock speed is.

And from what I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), for the GPU to run at its peak freq, the CPU has to throttle down to the lowest clock speed. So, what Cerny is saying is, because there's an SSD roughly twice as fast, but with slower RAM, slower CPU (even when in boost) and less TF, they have a more powerful machine? Give me a break. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out (and I'm an CompTIA A+ certified technician - I know more than a thing or two about these things).

Yall are drinking that juice, hard and fast.

What's sad about all of this is, the fact (and I could be wrong; am I?) that for the GPU to perform optimally, the CPU has to throttle down, it means that even if the GPU is running at its highest clock speeds (or near it) consistently, it means the CPU will be running at its lowest clock speed consistently, which is just terrible, terrible design.

Uh... no. The PS5 has a known fixed power draw which makes heat production way more predictable than the XSX's solution where the frequency is fixed and the power draw is variable. The variability in heat that Sony has to put into account is ambient temperature. Power is determined by workload. As long a developers don't place workloads that puts the PS5 beyond its capabilities, the heat production is predictable. At the worst case scenario, the GPU can be downclocked by 2% to reduce power by 10%.

Not to mention, a lot of CPU related tasks will be put towards the I/O complex. Kraken decompression, the direct memory access controller, and modified CU for audio (as powerful as 8 PS4 Jaguar cores) help the Zen 2 cores do other tasks.

 

[mitchman]

Cerny is a Sony employee that tries to oversell his console. Basically a PR spokeperson with the credentials of having techincal knowledge, but still a guy trying to sell you something using some embellished and questionable claims and promises.

Cerny is not a Sony employee, he's an external consultant.

 

[mitchman]

That Lisa Su worked on the Cell and Xbox has 3 DMA channels on its SSD are pieces of info I never heard before.

3 PCIe 4.0 lanes, surely?

 

[Sosokrates]

I mean, it's a built-in benefit PS4 has thanks to additional CUs and larger GPU. The GDDR5 memory also helped in that regard. I'd have to crib developer interviews from goodness-knows-where to put quotes to this.

Conceptually, however, it is pretty much a given it was utilized. There are reasons why PS4 and XBO games punched above their weight when it came to optimizations. With those garbage Jaguar cores, how else were devs to run advanced physics tasks (among other things) while maintaining playable framerates? The answer is GPGPU programming.

It was beneficial for consoles last gen and it will be beneficial for consoles this upcoming gen, too.



Fair enough. I think GPGPU can have other advantages besides that and we've probably already seen them used in very selective software and instances, but the issue will be if they can be easily leveraged.

Tools, development methodologies and more have to tend to its utilization potential and that's an area where both MS and Sony can possibly innovate. It's just that down to sheer hardware specs, MS is in a better position to leverage those while keeping most visual parity with PS5 (if that's what they wanted to do, mind you).



Fair enough. I was definitely not trying to imply anything that would see the SSDs being literally used like RAM

Im not disputing that the ps4 was not more powerful, im saying these more long term customisations sony does dont amount to anything.
I think its a nice thing to include these custom things which may unlock further performance but i also think they are a bit of a gimmick because they are rarely utilised.

 

[Stuart360]

Urgh its going to be a LONG wait until we get those DF Face Offs to finally put an end to this stupidity.

 

[Woffls]

I love it when people produce technical articles based on fully disclosed specs and architectural detail oh wait.

 

[urmie]

Urgh its going to be a LONG wait until we get those DF Face Offs to finally put an end to this stupidity.

You can enjoy somewhat of a DF show on ReeeeeeEra, because Alex Battaglia from Digital Foundry has been laying the smackdown with facts. Those guys don't stand a chance.

NX Gamer: PS5 Full Spec Analysis | A new generation is Born

It depends on the resolution you're playing at. A 25% gap between a 2080 and a 2080 Ti at 1080p/1440p becomes a larger 35% gap at 4K. I also think it's wrong to consider anything below a 2080 (or at least above a 2070 super) to compare PS5 performance. RDNA2 adds quite a lot and a 400MHz bump is...

www.resetera.com

 

[Entroyp]

3 PCIe 4.0 lanes, surely?

Absolutely. Wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

 

[V4skunk]

The major flaw in the "ps5 ssd will change game design" narrative is that while it maybe be possible to stream assets directly from the ssd, those assets are going to be limited to things like textures, but improving textures alone is going to hit a brick wall, its lighting, effects and polycount which make the bulk of computer graphics and its the CPU and GPU power which determine how good these things are.
For example if the PS4 had a the same ram + ssd setup as the ps5, loading times would be eradicated, textures would be far better but, the lighting, effects + polycount would still be the same.
Which is why cernys presentation on the ssd streaming section was misleading.

Streaming in assets like more textures and unique objects is game changing. It should allow open world games to look much less repetitive looking.

 

[Self High Five]

I really hope PS5 is more like 9.2tf so I can feel better about my future Xbox Series X purchase.

Lol at "10.2tf for the Michael Bay moments." Even Timdog is not warrior enough to make up stupid shit like that on Twitter

 

[mitchman]

Read the reply above your quote here. Helps put this a lot more into perspective. Again, people are overstating what the SSDs will bring (some are even thinking that only the PS5's SSD will be doing these things going by how they phrase it).

From the available information, only the PS5 will be doing DMA directly into textures with targetted invalidation of the GPU cache. Anyone that has done any high performance disk io that needs to touch the CPU will realize how massive of an advantage for performance this is. Cutting the CPU completely out of the loop, and hence eliminating such a big bottleneck, might lead to much higher performance increases than the 2x raw speed might lead you to believe. For gaming _experience_, this might mean much more than 16% difference in GPU performance.
I think this specialized hardware and software combo is what makes many devs so excited. From the way Cerny explained it, it will be very simple to use, so I expect most devs will use it and not just first party devs.

 

[gspat]

I haven't had time to keep up with this crap...

Can someone point me to a reliable source about Sony having heating issues?

Not a GAF post or opinion, but an actual hands on technical article?

I can't find one?

 

[prinz_valium]

All assets needed to be rendered from memory. There's no point to all the compute power in the world if those assets can't be in memory.

Exactly and Series X has a lot faster memory.

I haven't had time to keep up with this crap...

Can someone point me to a reliable source about Sony having heating issues?

Not a GAF post or opinion, but an actual hands on technical article?

I can't find one?

There is non. Just educated guesses because we know how an RX 5700 performs and the Ps5 GPU is very similar to that.
But the Ps5 cooling solution is not known. The power consumption is not known.
We'll find out.

 

[hyperbertha]

From the available information, only the PS5 will be doing DMA directly into textures with targetted invalidation of the GPU cache. Anyone that has done any high performance disk io that needs to touch the CPU will realize how massive of an advantage for performance this is. Cutting the CPU completely out of the loop, and hence eliminating such a big bottleneck, might lead to much higher performance increases than the 2x raw speed might lead you to believe. For gaming _experience_, this might mean much more than 16% difference in GPU performance.
I think this specialized hardware and software combo is what makes many devs so excited. From the way Cerny explained it, it will be very simple to use, so I expect most devs will use it and not just first party devs.

Do you mean the GPU cache scrubber that was shown? Also since you seem to know much, how much more teraflops help with increasing polycount?

 

[hyperbertha]

Exactly and Series X has a lot faster memory.

No it doesn't. What I meant was PS5 has far more available memory for streamed data, and far more speed at which data is being streamed into memory. Xbox's extra memory bandwidth is not really relevant here.

 

[prinz_valium]

No it doesn't. What I meant was PS5 has far more available memory for streamed data, and far more speed at which data is being streamed into memory. Xbox's extra memory bandwidth is not really relevant here.

Sure, but that is not that relevant to graphic fidelity like memory bandwidth. You talked about rendering. That's the GPU and memory bandwidth.
Not asset streaming to the memory from the Drive

 

[mitchman]

Do you mean the GPU cache scrubber that was shown? Also since you seem to know much, how much more teraflops help with increasing polycount?

Yes, I mean the GPU cache scrubbers in what I wrote. As for 12 tf vs 10.2 tf and a higher clock speed, and how much 16% theoretical performance increase will matter, we will just have to see. There might be unannounced additional differences that might make up some of the difference, it's just too early to say. I think the gaming experiences will be more influenced by SSD speeds than 16% difference in GPU performance for the majority of gamers, though.

 

[CJY]

I haven't had time to keep up with this crap...

Can someone point me to a reliable source about Sony having heating issues?

Not a GAF post or opinion, but an actual hands on technical article?

I can't find one?

I actually think all evidence suggests PS5 won't have any heating issues, but nothing is concrete yet.

 

[CJY]

Exactly and Series X has a lot faster memory.


There is non. Just educated guesses because we know how an RX 5700 performs and the Ps5 GPU is very similar to that.
But the Ps5 cooling solution is not known. The power consumption is not known.
We'll find out.

That faster memory is far offset by PS5's faster GPU clock though and XSX needs a wider bus to fill those CUs. Considering those CUs, XSX bus actually needs to be wider if it wanted to match what PS5's got.

 

[Bryank75]

Variable frequency precisely means that is NOT capped, therefore it isn't always 10 teraflops.

You think Xbox is going to be using all 12 tflops all the time? Particularly for games like Bleeding Edge....