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[killatopak]

I know some people dismiss Matt for being in Resetera but since he is a vetted third party developer there and here in Neogaf, in the past, I figure his opinions should at least be worth discussing.

Similarly here and in era, there is a thread about the EPIC interview about them rewriting parts of the engine specifically for the PS5.

What is presented here is some back and forth between some members and Matt about the topic.

There is nothing “PR” about the PS5 IO solution.

It’s really, really fucking fast.

No one is saying it isn't, or calling that PR. The notion that the kinds of things shown on the UE demo are ONLY possible on UE5, or possible elsewhere only with very significant downgrades, which is something Epic never said, is fueled by the fact that Epic PR focuses solely on how the PS5 runs these technologies and doesn't talk about any other hardware beyond "yeah it runs" despite the engine being multiplatform.

The PS5 I/O architecture is significantly better than anything mainstream today and this is not up to opinion.

It is a fact, but nobody knows what that difference is going to look like on their screens when leveraging the same I/O-intensive technology scaled to the competition's I/O architecture. And those who say the difference is going to be large (or small) are doing so without actually having any reason to do so. It might turn out to be true, but speaking about the makers of the only such technology we've seen so far, they haven't actually said ANYTHING about that.

I’m saying it.

It’s so strange to see gamers downplaying technology that will help make games better. That this tech exists is an objective good, there is no downside, only upside. There is no other consumer solution that compares to this setup, and we should want companies to push the boundaries of technology for our benefit.

It's your opinion that I'm downplaying this technology. What I'm actually saying is "wait until you see it in action". Or rather, wait until you see it in action and compared to other similar technologies that aren't quite as good.

You better believe I hope the difference is large.

By see it in action I mean as a finished product in consumers' hands, of course.

What's "so strange" is that a message as inoccuous as that elicits responses that boil down to "why would you say it sucks?" or "it's embarrassing and you don't know anything about development".

I have see it in action, first hand.

Even if you as a consumer don’t consciously realize all the ways it will improve games on many levels, the difference for devs is striking.

Feel free to say whatever, then. My message was not directed at you.

As for the second point, I'm not sure consumers are going to take this into account when making purchasing decisions if they don't see large differences on their end, whether or not they should.

...so what? We’re talking about tech here, our appreciation of it shouldn’t be affected by the less informed’s lack there of.

If you've seen a large difference for developers between the PS5 I/O arch. and the XSX's (or are a developer with access to both), you can have this appreciation.

The rest can only speculate on it, especially based on messages from developers that (rightfully) praise the PS5 architecture while making no comparison to either currently available high end NVMe SSDs on PC or the XSX's architecture.

There is no comparison.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the SX’s IO or the speed you can get on a PC, and moving to any SSD based solution as a baseline is an incredible upgrade over the past that all games and gamers will benefit from.

But the PS5’s IO is on another level. It does basically everything significantly faster than any competition in the consumer space. It is easily and by far the largest difference between the two next gen consoles.

Well yes, we know it's twice as fast in bandwidth and possibly even faster in latency. That's significantly faster. Never denied that.

Since you're sharing what you've seen, and thank you very much by the way, this is the burning question I've yet to see addressed:
Have you seen work from major developers working on major SX titles? If so does the significant I/O advantage of the PS5 translate to a significantly better end-result in either visuals or game design when compared to SX/current high end PC NVMe?

I have a ton of good to say about the SX. It’s an fantastic box that I’m incredibly excited for, and it has a power advantage over the PS5 in many ways. It is also capable of doing things the PS5 can’t or can’t do as well.

They are both great machines and can both be appreciated.

As I have said before, I expect the difference in third party titles to be modest, as they can’t be designed around a faster solution. Maybe the PS5’s IO advantages will be as noticeable as the SX’s TF advantages in those titles.

You don't expect games to be able to easily scale in order to also take full (or at least decent) advantage of the PS5 I/O even in multiplats? Epic made it sound like, at least on Unreal, this can be achieved with relative ease.

No, as I said I think that will lead to benefits for PS5 games, but game design won’t be different.

But you expect PS5-only games to have fundamental, easily noticeable design advances that are not possible in any way, even scaled down, on competing systems? (Well, maybe on future high end PCs, but disregard that).

Because that's legitimately new information and it's something I've been wanting to hear.

Thank you Matt for the feedback. As always your posts are very helpful.

Matt as a PC gamer I wonder if you believe that PC storage hardware in the future will follow the PlayStation 5 route (hardware customization's to resolve all the bottlenecks) or probably will have to get there again with brute force (really, really fast NVMe SSD)?

Personally I don't have any faith that API solutions like DirectStorage will have any significant affect and specific hardware customization's are not an easy option for an open platform (PC).

DirectStorage is great for what it is, but yeah, I expect brute force speed to be the biggest factor here.

The SX more conventional than the PS5, and therefore less novel to talk about. It’s still a stronger system in many ways.

When asked if the PS5 is easier to develop more than the XSX

They are both great to develop for.

When asked if the difference in CPU is noticeable.

It’s very slight.

Matt I hope you can answer this question, and that it's not too direct.
Based on what you've seen from the XSX and PS5 lineup - which one has had the most 'impressive' looking game so far?

Obviously visuals are more than just about specs, but I'm just trying to get a read on how I should direct my hype while I wait for these reveals.

They both are monsters that put out beautiful games.

Be excited.

isn't this comparable to x360 vs ps3 situation ?

Not really. Both are wonderful with specific advantages each. That couldn’t be said then.

I see similarity that x360 had gpu advantage but ps3 exotic cpu that shined mostly in 1st party titles

You had to work hard with PS3 CPU to get the most out of it.

The PS5’s IO is just there.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

I don’t know who Matt is, or his history here or there or as a dev. Papa is the only Matt I know.

Looks like he says:

*Both great to develop for
*PS5 I/O really is crazy fast
*Everyone be excited

Good enough for me

 

[JLMC469]

Basically what we have known. Both have their advantages.

PS5 faster/Series X stronger.

 

[Entroyp]

Why is it so difficult for some to admit Sony did a fantastic job with the ssd subsystem?

 

[Business]

All due respect to Matt but I have no clue who he is. OP you could have introduced him a bit better than just Matt.

 

[jts]

Basically what we have known. Both have their advantages.

PS5 faster/Series X stronger.

But stronger means faster in computational terms. FLOPS is a measure of speed, it’s operations per second.

 

[Senua]

All due respect to Matt but I have no clue who he is. OP you could have introduced him a bit better than just Matt.

 

[Deleted member 775630]

I see he ignored the most important question of all, which would clear up a lot of FUD.

But you expect PS5-only games to have fundamental, easily noticeable design advances that are not possible in any way, even scaled down, on competing systems? (Well, maybe on future high end PCs, but disregard that).

Because that's legitimately new information and it's something I've been wanting to hear.

 

[JLMC469]

Why is it so difficult for some to admit Sony did a fantastic job with the ssd subsystem?

If people have been paying attention, seen the presentations and read the articles, each company has been focused on these particular features:

SONY: SSD, ease of development and audio.
Microsoft: power (high fps, RT, etc.) and compatibility.

 

[onQ123]

People downplaying PS5 I/O bandwidth fail to realize that 16GB of RAM is a small upgrade from last Gen & the SSD is going to be it's life line

The trips to the SSD is going to be frequent & nothing like before when you load a level into RAM then play the level. Next Gen consoles will be moving data from the SSD on a frame by frame bases. Sony made sure to get a higher bandwidth than what was on the market before PCIe 4.0 so...

www.neogaf.com

 

[killatopak]

All due respect to Matt but I have no clue who he is. OP you could have introduced him a bit better than just Matt.

To be quite honest I know him as much as you do.

As far as I know, he’s been here in Neogaf long before the exodus and his opinion on things are highly regarded even before I joined GAF which was like 2013. I just know that when he says things, you listen.

I just know he’s a third party dev and that’s it. Pretty enigmatic guy but understandable if he doesn’t want anyone to trace him or the company he works for,

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

People downplaying PS5 I/O bandwidth fail to realize that 16GB of RAM is a small upgrade from last Gen & the SSD is going to be it's life line

The trips to the SSD is going to be frequent & nothing like before when you load a level into RAM then play the level. Next Gen consoles will be moving data from the SSD on a frame by frame bases. Sony made sure to get a higher bandwidth than what was on the market before PCIe 4.0 so...

www.neogaf.com

Why do you keep reposting this?

 

[killatopak]

I see he ignored the most important question of all, which would clear up a lot of FUD.

I think he did? He says it’s as noticeable as you noticing the TF advantage of the XSX like res or fps.

but he classified the differences as modest.

 

[Insane Metal]

I don’t know who Matt is, or his history here or there or as a dev. Papa is the only Matt I know.

Looks like he says:

*Both great to develop for
*PS5 I/O really is crazy fast
*Everyone be excited

Good enough for me

He was here before the apocalypse happened and he posted stuff pretty spot on about PS4 x X1.

 

[CurtBizzy]

Matt said:
DirectStorage is great for what it is, but yeah, I expect brute force speed to be the biggest factor here.

The SX more conventional than the PS5, and therefore less novel to talk about. It’s still a stronger system in many ways.

I wish he would of gave examples

 

[Trueblakjedi]

Nice synopsis. I think as PC gets faster PCIE solutions deployed, the benefits of XVA components such as Direct Storage will come to fruition.

A pc ssd solution running at or near the stated PCIE 4 spec capability at 4 lanes or above would definitely blow the console solutions away.

It would be great to see a PC SSD running full tilt PCIE spec comparison to PS5 in 2021.

 

[GHG]

I need this. Where did you find it? Please don't tell me its just a meme and not a product.

 

[eastwood333]

I see he ignored the most important question of all, which would clear up a lot of FUD.

Totally agree.

What many of us want to know is what kind of tangible difference can the PS5 SSD provide over XSX SSD in terms of graphics

I don't see there being some revolution in game design that's enabled by a 5gb/s SSD that isn't possible on a 2.4 gb/s SSD

But he is right that both will have advantages in certain areas. Personally, i'm not that bothered about audio features.

 

[Trueblakjedi]

Matt said:
DirectStorage is great for what it is, but yeah, I expect brute force speed to be the biggest factor here.

The SX more conventional than the PS5, and therefore less novel to talk about. It’s still a stronger system in many ways.

I wish he would of gave examples

There are quite a few people who have said this same exact thing that got shouted down LOL.

Whaddya gonna do *shrug*

 

[Thugnificient]

Lol if the last few months have taught me anything it's that none of these "insiders" know jack. They make up a bunch of bullshit from "sources" and pretend they're legitimate. So many were exposed during the PS5/XSX reveals.

 

[Hobbygaming]

It makes sense why we're hearing more about the PS5, it's because the architecture is more unconventional and this excites developers

Both consoles will be beasts like everyone in the know is saying

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

Why is it so difficult for some to admit Sony did a fantastic job with the ssd subsystem?

True, I get you, but it’s the same reason why the opposite end won’t admit the XsX’s SSD is still pretty fast.

I’ve seen Vawn straight up call it “weak,” which is ridiculous IMO. PS5’s SSD and I/O are clearly the superior between the two but that doesn’t make the slower solution bad or “weak.” One is just ridiculously fast/engineered.

 

[Eliciel]

By the end of the day we all just want to play the damn games on the freaking console. Yeah, okay, it's all great power, stronger, faster, taller or greater! It's about time we just get some presentation dates dude.

Edit: I don't know who Matt is, which makes it even worse reading that chunk of information..! I would like to be like Matt and know shit, but I don't know shit. All I know is that I will shit myself if I don't get a freaking release date for the presentation soon.

Edit2: We will soon need to create another thread about AUDIO!!! we haven't talked about the AUDIO in a while...!!

Edit3: and don't forget about the unified RAM Pool!!!111

 

[onQ123]

I see he ignored the most important question of all, which would clear up a lot of FUD.

That's not something that he can answer because devs can find away to do anything as long as they have compute they can code & do just about anything. just cut a few corners & you wouldn't notice much of a difference.

 

[LeVictorien]

Well this looks like what we have on paper... PS5 SSD is very fast and allows things that will be difficult to replicate on XSX. While XSX is just stronger and can do things PS5 will struggle doing. Can't wait to see both in action. Right now I'm pumped to see both next Horizon games (HZD and FH).

 

[Trueblakjedi]

If people have been paying attention, seen the presentations and read the articles, each company has been focused of these particular features:

SONY: SSD, ease of development and audio.
Microsoft: power and compatibility.

It would be interesting to know the specifications of the XSX audio solution. Is it another tensilica solution?

We know that the PS5 audio chip has 100GFLOPs of audio generation capability that could consume 20GBps of i/O alone.

 

[onQ123]

Why do you keep reposting this?

Because I'm a troll who was making up stuff now why do you keep mentioning my name & following me around when I'm not thinking about you?

 

[geordiemp]

Matt said:
DirectStorage is great for what it is, but yeah, I expect brute force speed to be the biggest factor here.

The SX more conventional than the PS5, and therefore less novel to talk about. It’s still a stronger system in many ways.

I wish he would of gave examples

Its not too hard to figure out

Ps5 games will stream high quality assets and models will be more detailed.

XSX will have better ray tracing, slight TF advantage.

Some 3rd parties wont bother much, samey

MS first party will push ray tracing and go for frame rate

Sony first party will push high details and more photorealistic

No console is da best, depends what the task is ....and first parties will use features which benefit the hardware...and 3rd parties will make games..

All opinion IMO

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Nobody has denied the PS5 SSD is fast. What has been contested is that it’s not the be all end all component for drawing graphics on screen. Which is what some loonies have been pushing ever since Kleegamefan and chums turned out to be duds!

 

[Little Chicken]

What many of us want to know is what kind of tangible difference can the PS5 SSD provide over XSX SSD in terms of graphics

It won't.

 

[GHG]

By the end of the day we all just want to play the damn games on the freaking console. Yeah, okay, it's all great power, stronger, faster, taller or greater! It's about time we just get some presentation dates dude.

Edit: I don't know who Matt is, which makes it even worse reading that chunk of information..! I would like to be like Matt and know shit, but I don't know shit. All I know is that I will shit myself if I don't get a freaking release date for the presentation soon.

Edit2: We will soon need to create another thread about AUDIO!!! we haven't talked about the AUDIO in a while...!!

Edit3: and don't forget about the unified RAM Pool!!!111

We had one on audio just the other day. Some nonsense about the audio processor being able to be leveraged for graphics.

Don't worry, I'm sure the unified ram pool is in the works.

 

[Entroyp]

True, I get you, but it’s the same reason why the opposite end won’t admit the XsX’s SSD is still pretty fast.

I’ve seen Vawn straight up call it “weak,” which is ridiculous IMO. PS5’s SSD and I/O are clearly the superior between the two but that doesn’t make the slower solution bad or “weak.” One is just ridiculously fast/engineered.

I agree.. and that’s something I’ve said multiple time in the past, everything inside the XsX is exceptionally well put together.

But, I wouldn’t say Sony’s SSD subsystem is Sony’s tv tv tv tv moment like some people here. That’s silly.

 

[Senua]

I need this. Where did you find it? Please don't tell me its just a meme and not a product.

https://www.amara.com/products/i-m-mat-doormat

bit pricey but hey, some things are priceless

 

[GHG]

It won't.

I have another question regarding to future, what year does little chicken grow up and become big chicken?

I'm kinda hungry.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Seems reasonable enough to me. His point about 3rd-parties not being able to leverage the PS5 I/O is a bit odd though considering Epic seems to have made UE5 scalable in tapping into hardware features of the systems presumed in ways to offload manual coding for such by devs as much as possible.

So would that not mean if devs are using the engine (and vast majority will), they can simply tap into PS5's I/O benefits rather easily? And same for any of XSX's hardware benefits exposed through the engine?

 

[Nikana]

Its almost like if you know anything about computers and hardware you could of figured it out.

I think where things are getting our of hand is that the SSD is somehow going to make things change gaming development form the ground up and that the PS5 because its faster in the I/O range it will somehow do things only possible on PS5. Like new genres and mechanics are going to happen because of the SSD and they will only exist on PS5 When in reality the SSD doesn't magically design things. It still has to be leveraged by a smart designer. If the XSX didn't have an SSD, or lets see even a basic SSD that's only capable of 500/mb reads, then yeah maybe you could make that argument. But XSX does have an SSD and a good one at that.

XSX still has the advantage in GPU, CPU and Bandwidth meaning its likely going to have the better third party looking games. And unless something changes in the Microsoft first party front Sony's teams will continue to leverage the power and build their engines to take full advantage to the metal.

 

[Trueblakjedi]

Its not too hard to figure out

Ps5 games will stream high quality assets and models will be more detailed.

XSX will have better ray tracing, slight TF advantage.

Some 3rd parties wont bother much, samey

MS first party will push ray tracing and go for frame rate

Sony first party will push high details and more photorealistic

No console is da best, depends what the task is ....and first parties will use features which benefit the hardware...and 3rd parties will make games..

Why do you believe that textures and details would be higher due to the SSD speed. A scene is composed textures at certain LODs.

I cant see why the LOD or texture quality would vary at all between the two systems.

Very interesting take.

 

[killatopak]

Seems reasonable enough to me. His point about 3rd-parties not being able to leverage the PS5 I/O is a bit odd though considering Epic seems to have made UE5 scalable in tapping into hardware features of the systems presumed in ways to offload manual coding for such by devs as much as possible.

So would that not mean if devs are using the engine (and vast majority will), they can simply tap into PS5's I/O benefits rather easily? And same for any of XSX's hardware benefits exposed through the engine?

Probably because not everyone will be using Unreal. Some will use Cryengine, Unity or their own in house solution like Frostbite etc.

While it’s reasonable to think that Unreal leverages the I/O speed of a system, other engines may focus more on things that XSX is a lot stronger on like Raytracing for instance.

 

[Trueblakjedi]

According to Cerny and others, devs don't have to do anything in order to leverage the I/O throughput of PS5.

It just works.

 

[MasterCornholio]

According to Cerny and others, devs don't have to do anything in order to leverage the I/O throughput of PS5.

It just works.

Gives me alot of hope for multiplat titles on the system.

 

[killatopak]

Why do you believe that textures and details would be higher due to the SSD speed. A scene is composed textures at certain LODs.

I cant see why the LOD or texture quality would vary at all between the two systems.

Very interesting take.

iirc UE5 did something different for texture loading wherein the number of polygon per pixel is determined by the I/O speed. It’s not definite proof that it will work on every game made but it’s what we’re given as an example as of now.

 

[geordiemp]

Why do you believe that textures and details would be higher due to the SSD speed. A scene is composed textures at certain LODs.

I cant see why the LOD or texture quality would vary at all between the two systems.

Very interesting take.

There was no LODs on the UE5 demo, just asset size, but thats that technology, we dont know what Decima and others will do with super streaming tech and use global illunation and thats it.

Just the way I see it. Ps5 games will push like that UE5 demo, especially FIRST party but also UE5 games can do it without effort by looks of it.

XSX will push 60 / 120 FPS in some cases for simpler 2d and isometric / top down stuff and AAA will push ray tracing further than global illumination as it can, and will be better in that domain by 15./18 % or however it falls

3rd pary wont bother much lol

 

[LeVictorien]

Seems reasonable enough to me. His point about 3rd-parties not being able to leverage the PS5 I/O is a bit odd though considering Epic seems to have made UE5 scalable in tapping into hardware features of the systems presumed in ways to offload manual coding for such by devs as much as possible.

So would that not mean if devs are using the engine (and vast majority will), they can simply tap into PS5's I/O benefits rather easily? And same for any of XSX's hardware benefits exposed through the engine?

Most third party games are not taking advantage of specific consoles hardware if it requires more work from them to make said game work on other systems. They make a game and port it to consoles and that's it. When the game says they used specific console hardware advantage you know it's a marketing thing plain and simple.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Most third party games are not taking advantage of specific consoles hardware if it requires more work from them to make said game work on other systems

I mean if it's automatic then developers won't hesitate to use as long as the game still runs on other platforms. Which is what Sonys I/O sounds to me.

 

[Trueblakjedi]

There was no LODs on the UE5 demo, just asset size, but thats that technology, we dont know what Decima and others will do with super streaming tech.

Just the way I see it. Ps5 games will push like that UE5 demo, especially third party but also UE5 games can do it without effort by looks of it.

XSX will push 60 / 120 FPS in some cases for simpler 2d and isometric / top down stuff and ray tracing, and will be better in that domain by 15./18 % or however it falls

But LOD is based on distance to the frustum. So I can see model detail in terms of triangles drawn being static (mesh shaders help here) but the LOD is always being adjusted.

I think what you are saying is that the PS5 SSD is so fast that texture fetchs are relatively instant. LOD checkins are meaningless in that case.

Is that right?

 

[killatopak]

According to Cerny and others, devs don't have to do anything in order to leverage the I/O throughput of PS5.

It just works.

It just works but you need a task that will make the difference noticeable.

like having a 100km/hr car and a 200km/hr competing in a 10 meter race. You wouldn’t notice it but the difference is definitely there. You need a bigger task to show the difference or in this case a longer distance.

It’s up to devs to make the task big enough to be noticeable. Just like how the UE5 engine’s new features heavily hinges on I/O speed, we’ll definitely notice it.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Probably because not everyone will be using Unreal. Some will use Cryengine, Unity or their own in house solution like Frostbite etc.

While it’s reasonable to think that Unreal leverages the I/O speed of a system, other engines may focus more on things that XSX is a lot stronger on like Raytracing for instance.

Good point. UE seems to be the most popular among 3rd parties at least going by this gen, however, and Epic (at least this is the impression I get) are tailoring aspects of UE5 to take advantages of hardware benefits for not just PS5 but XSX as well. Otherwise I don't see why MS would have so many 1st-parties leveraging use of the engine.

But yeah, I do see the realistic possibility that other engines that tailor more of a focus on a given platform will be able to better leverage certain hardware advantages therein. For sake of engine competition I hope they also see notable levels of usage among third parties next-gen.

Most third party games are not taking advantage of specific consoles hardware if it requires more work from them to make said game work on other systems. They make a game and port it to consoles and that's it. When the game says they used specific console hardware advantage you know it's a marketing thing plain and simple.

That's true of how it's traditionally been, but this would also mean that both systems will have features not notably leveraged by 3rd parties. So I could see some people going "YEAH! Welp, 90% of games won't even be using that super-SSD!!", but they don't realize all things being fair, other people can easily say "YEAH! Welp, 90% of games won't even be using that advanced RT/etc.!!", since that would require at least as much targeted development by 3rd-parties to leverage.

So the engines streamlining that as much as possible for 3rd-parties would be a boon not only for 3rd-parties in general, but in ensuring 3rd parties can compete even moreso with 1st-party in visual fidelity quality etc. (provided the budgets are there), which raises the quality across the board and is a net win for all gamers.

 

[Trueblakjedi]

PS5 = Ultra
3080Ti / 1GBs SSD PC = Medium
XSX = Low

I think this is what we will see going forward

Ultra medium low.... whats the second part? Detail?

 

[Entroyp]

PS5 = Ultra
3080Ti / 1GBs SSD PC = Medium
XSX = Low

I think this is what we will see going forward

Is this a joke?

 

[geordiemp]

But LOD is based on distance to the frustum. So I can see model detail in terms of triangles drawn being static (mesh shaders help here) but the LOD is always being adjusted.

I think what you are saying is that the PS5 SSD is so fast that texture fetchs are relatively instant. LOD checkins are meaningless in that case.

Is that right?

If its using LODs then yes thats one way, that UE5 demo had no LODs, so its exciting to see what the difference in engines are this next gen. God knows what Sony have cooked up, as Ps5 is not a normal console.