PS5 SSD Represents 'Biggest Leap in My Career', Says The Last of Us 2 Co-Game Director

This SSD is the key. That's all developers are talking about. As the article says, Sony needs to find a way to show this off to consumers. Imagine having a version of Skyrim that's crash-proof. Truly next-gen.

Well, I’m ready to be sold on next gen. I’m ready for a full reveal which I expect around June but may come sooner due to yesterday’s bad press.

@ShogunRok Aye, it all sounds really exciting and the optimism from developers is encouraging but they need visual examples for the general consumer - like Bloodborne being instantaneous in loading and reloading after death or showing us a game we know but with the details ramped up what the new SSD can apparently stream in.

I have a feeling that Sony first party exclusive games will continue to be some of the most impressive games in the gaming industry.

@get2sammyb please covering Digital Foundry's newest Video about PS5... also you can found so many good information about PS5 and specially what Teraflops is on that!
Mark Cerny:
" 'teraflops' is defined as the computational capability of the vector ALU. That's just one part of the GPU, there are a lot of other units - and those other units all run faster when the GPU frequency is higher. At 33 per cent higher frequency, rasterisation goes 33 per cent faster, processing the command buffer goes that much faster, the L1 and L2 caches have that much higher bandwidth, and so on"

@ShogunRok Its going to take more than 2 generations of consoles later to make that game not crash on a Sony system lol

It's sounding more and more that Microsoft tried to brute force the Series X by cramming it full of top of the line hardware and Sony said, no...there's a better way...the PS5. Exciting times!

I thought sony had already given a demo of sorts showing the speed of the ssd, weren't they using spiderman as the example? I can't remember when/where I saw it though

Of course everyone is saying it, but we really just need to see the games. I remember when I first saw Killzone Shadow Fall. It blew my mind. We need an equivalent reveal for the PS5, and I personally think Horizon 2 will be a launch title, and would be an incredible display of exactly what this thing can do.

@beavis64 Oh, I'm not saying PS5 won't have games. It'll have the best games of next gen, I'm confident in that. I just wanna see them 😅😅

@beavis64 exactly. Sony needs to show games, but that same sentiment isn't directed at the competitor. Im not pressing Sony for games because mark said himself they will be shown soon enough.

the fact that the only thing devs are talking about is the ps5 SSD and no DF member even mentions the advantage of the series x TF compared to the ps5 TF proves to me that that the ps5 SSD is just more important then some extra TFs.

which makes sense since the SSD actually does more for gaming than those extra TF wich most gamers won't even notice,while with the SSD,players will actually notice it.and that is in loading times alone.

ofcourse fans of the other team love to brag about them TF's and downplaying the PS5 while ignoring the fact that the PS5 gets all the positive media attention for it's SSD while no media praises the series X TF's.

Once the marketing starts ps5 will be unstoppable, fast loading and game design thats only possible on ps5 (with 1st party games) will be the key to market ps5 to casuals gamers I think 😃

@jdv95 Yup, 1.xx more tf will only make maybe 1-3 frames persecond or 4k vs 2k which is really hard to notice unless we're zooming 200-300% on the tv screen. But 100% faster ssd will be way more noticeable compared to tf, not only for loading times, but for streaming since nearly all graphics heavy games (1st or 3rd party) are open-world games that depends on ssd speed.

So we all love Sony again, yes?

Xbox X - Brute force & power, like an elephant.
PS5 - Fast & agile, like a Gazelle.
(Switch - handheld & cuddly, like a Koala).

@beavis64 that Digital Foundry's Article about PS5 ? yes, it was soo good and had soo many information about how Cerny achive that high frequencies on GPU's CUs!

@jdv95 I see Sony's SSD implementation as an incredible win. The catch with is that only first party/exclusives will use it to the full potential. Otherwise and luckily the Series X will be the lowest standard, which is not bad compared to a PC. I think a PC will be unable to match both consoles speed like... ever (in the lifespan of the console generation). The custom bits to avoid bottlenecks and compression on both consoles will not make it's way onto PC so even having blazing fast SSDs will be not enough I guess.

System RAM usage patterns will change and more so on PS5 with such a blazing fast SDD speed. As Cerny pointed out, 16GB RAM is not a lot but now it's not even that important. Many games need to load a lot of stuff to system RAM even long before using it because access speed from HDD is so slow... I'm a developer of commercial software with some data intensive processing, and I usually have to balance what's on RAM and when to load from HDD/Sql Server and think of different strategies of data retention etc. If I could access from "disk" as fast as PS5, I could use RAM to do other things than just "store data in my fast path". Amazing things will be made on PS5 first party games, Series X is great too, anyway.

@parvaz1 Yes, anyway you could always use more CUs ; ) I guess Cerny knows why we are OK why 36.
I think one dream job for me would just be Mark's personal monkey while he designs each console... "yes, my Sir... do you want your back coffe with one or two sugars?"

@MattSilverado not just first party games.

sure only first party games will be able to use the SSD fully but third party games will also benefit from it.

we will see decreased loading times in ALL games for example.

Can someone who understands how it works explain what benefits the fast ssd will have other than faster loading. If the ssd is as good as they say would they have been better having more Ram and bigger GPU too? Or is the narrow fast GPU design better suited to faster ssd? I did watch the mark cerny presentation, but more of it went over my head and I lost concentration a few times, lol

@jdv95 yes, but as a game designer/developer, you go multiplatform you know you have to target the worst case, and that's the PC, even with a SSD cannot match Series X. And Series X cannot match PS5, so design suffers. Load times are just one "not so important" thing.

SSDs are expensive as it is so can see the this being an extremely expensive component

@TurboTom loading is the big thing for sure, not just loading screens, but loading assets as you travel in a open world game, so less pop ins and more things can be loaded in field of view quicker. Even in non open world games this is a benefit. Along with that, the ssd allows for more effecient use of the RAM. Since the ssd has no seek time and can be used to load things instantly, the games won't need to use RAM as much to load things that the game may or may not need, depending on players action.

@TurboTom I'm not an expert on these things but far as I can understand it the SSD is so fast that it can effectively be used as RAM.
In an earlier comment someone said "If I could access from "disk" as fast as PS5, I could use RAM to do other things than just "store data in my fast path".

@veryhoudini11
Thanks for the reply, sure sounds impressive tech

@YepYepYep
Sounds good, maybe it could also free up resources to the GPU and CPU and could help make it punch above its weight. To be honest I was slightly disappointed when I first heard Mark Cerny say 36 compute units in his talk, lol

@TurboTom RDNA 2 CU is not the same as CUs in previous GPUs. They are 66% larger and PlayStation is running each CU at a whopping 2.3GHz! This is the highest there is on the market right now and let me reiterate by saying: if Sony wanted to, they could have gone higher (at the cost of a more expensive power supply and cooling solution).

There is nothing to be disappointed about if you know how it works in perspective.

@Callmegil they can't go any higher because the APU is already boosted pretty much to what the thermal load will allow. 2.3GHz is the ceiling to prevent any more inconsistent in it's variable frequencies, even though Mark Cerny says games that push the PS5 will see those speeds decreases or even if the environment of the console itself is not ideal. In theory, that means boost speeds can potentially fall lower than that of the Series X. Which will still be pretty fast, but not as performant with it's Lower CU count

The reason the Series X clock speeds won't matter in conparison is because it's the bare minimum of RDNA 2 which is 56 CUs as per AMD's website. 4CUs shaved off probably for cost or because it's not essential for a console in comparableThe to a PC. At a fixed speeds however it aims to be more consistent and more efficient with wattage, thermal and performance and more CUs means it can bear a bigger load when the game calls for it.

But we'll see when we have these things in the wild. DF is gonna benchmark the hell out of these console

@Callmegil @TurboTom I'm not technically minded on these things so I found the vid interesting.
We are always talking about better graphics, sound design and gameplay but this taught me that the tech guys are equally, if not more instrumental than the artists etc. in making a great game.
They decide how the game should be ordered on the blu-ray/hdd and how the components inside the console are allocated work loads to ensure the game runs smoothly whilst minimising disk space, heat etc.
People far more knowledgeable than myself may find my understanding of the subject laughable but that's the simplistic understanding I gained from all of the technical jargon and Mark Cerny has worked very closely with developers to ensure that their job is easier.
The future looks very bright!

@TheCrustyJuggler Amen to that. Regardless of approach, both consoles will fare extremely well. Developers are really impressed with the PS5, so there's no need for the fanbase to doubt what PS5 can do.

@Jay767
As always😉.

@lacerz you are probably right, just that Sony needs to shart demonstrating the capabilities.

I think its becoming clear that sony has made a very unique and special console that cannot really be compared based on specs. Exciting to see the X and PS5 do things a bit differently.

I'm just excited that TLOU2 probably won't have a 1 minute loading screen when starting up the game, unlike the first game on PS4.