News PS5 SSD Performance May be More Forgiving Than Expected

[Admin]

Users can swap the PS5's internal SSD for another solution, and it seems that overall gaming performance doesn't care about how fast that SSD actually is. However, game transfers appear to be sensitive to SSD quality.

PS5 SSD Performance May be More Forgiving Than Expected : Read more

 

[VforV]

Well, it seems that for gaming purposes only, choosing a PS5-compatible SSD is easy: just go with the best price/performance option you have at the time

It's all great and dandy until people buy these out of spec cheaper SSDs that work NOW, with the games that PS5 has NOW, only to find out 1 or 2 years from now, that those newer games push the PS5 SSD+IO even more and that their aftermarket SDD fails miserably to work with them...

Let's see how many get fooled by this erroneous messaging and live up to regret their decision.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The poster child for this "you need a super fast SSD!", Ratchet and Clank, didn't seem to actually need it anyway. That's not to say that this whole SSD thing was a gimmick, but I reckon most first-year and maybe second-year titles won't actually be designed around the PS5 or XBSX first.

 

[helper800]

It's all great and dandy until people buy these out of spec cheaper SSDs that work NOW, with the games that PS5 has NOW, only to find out 1 or 2 years from now, that those newer games push the PS5 SSD+IO even more and that their aftermarket SDD fails miserably to work with them...

Let's see how many get fooled by this erroneous messaging and live up to regret their decision.

I'm no oracle, however, I doubt there will exist a game that uses a storage subsystem more than Ratchet and Clank even into the future on the PS5. Even if that does happen you can always get another faster drive and sell the old one or reuse it in a PC. Flash storage in the NVMe variety will, in my opinion, always be needed and welcomed in excess.

 

[Soaptrail]

It's all great and dandy until people buy these out of spec cheaper SSDs that work NOW, with the games that PS5 has NOW, only to find out 1 or 2 years from now, that those newer games push the PS5 SSD+IO even more and that their aftermarket SDD fails miserably to work with them...

Let's see how many get fooled by this erroneous messaging and live up to regret their decision.

Even if that were to happen it still is better than running out of storage for those people who cannot afford the top of the line SSD's.

 

[salgado18]

I'm no oracle, however, I doubt there will exist a game that uses a storage subsystem more than Ratchet and Clank even into the future on the PS5. Even if that does happen you can always get another faster drive and sell the old one or reuse it in a PC. Flash storage in the NVMe variety will, in my opinion, always be needed and welcomed in excess.

A fast point-to-point race (like a rally game), where the scenes are loaded in real time from disk. No reused assets, all fresh, new and detailed. You would need a drive not only fast, but with sustainable performance.

There may never be a game that pushes it hard, but it still is a technical possibility.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Besides that, I suspect game developers won't even design around an NVMe SSD for a long time anyway unless they're doing a console exclusive. While higher range laptops are finally getting there in using a relatively spacious NVMe SSD, I don't really think the same could be said about a given desktop. At best I would only expect SATA SSD levels of performance.

Well, give it a few more years and maybe we'll have something that actually requires an NVMe SSD. As in, it literally requires more than 500MB/sec reads constantly.

 

[helper800]

A fast point-to-point race (like a rally game), where the scenes are loaded in real time from disk. No reused assets, all fresh, new and detailed. You would need a drive not only fast, but with sustainable performance.

There may never be a game that pushes it hard, but it still is a technical possibility.

Yeah, I was not trying to discount the technical possibilities of making a game that requires more from a storage device than Ratchet and Clank, but rather that the odds someone is going to do so are very low. Improbable != Impossible.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

can it take a Crucial P5 Plus? because that's what I would put in it

I have several Crucial P5 nvme in usb enclosure. use two of them as external SSD game storage for my consoles and they are perfect

 

[VforV]

I guess you all forgot about the PS5 + UE5 show Lumen and Land of Nanite, that's exactly the kind of scenario where the SSD+IO is used even more than R&C RA, especially the last section of high speed flying and streaming of high rez assets (billions of polys), but not only.

Of course I'm talking about 1st party exclusives here when I say, there will be games on PS5 that push the SSD+IO to it's limit, this is PS5 we're talking about here. This is what they do, like they amazed us with those games on PS4 era, the best of Sony studios will do it again with PS5, it's just a matter of time... and the SSD+IO will be part of that.

If you thought R&C RA or HFW or GoW2 is all they can do, you're naive, this gen is only getting started and we all know based on the past that the best of them come after the 2nd half of the console generation. The minimum official specs of that SDD will come into play then.

But hey let's bury our head into sand and not look into the future at all, because ignorance is a bliss.

I remain by my 1st statement: this article and others and YT videos are spreading ill advised buying recommendations regarding SSDs for PS5.

 

[helper800]

I guess you all forgot about the PS5 + UE5 show Lumen and Land of Nanite, that's exactly the kind of scenario where the SSD+IO is used even more than R&C RA, especially the last section of high speed flying and streaming of high rez assets (billions of polys), but not only.

Of course I'm talking about 1st party exclusives here when I say, there will be games on PS5 that push the SSD+IO to it's limit, this is PS5 we're talking about here. This is what they do, like they amazed us with those games on PS4 era, the best of Sony studios will do it again with PS5, it's just a matter of time... and the SSD+IO will be part of that.

If you thought R&C RA or HFW or GoW2 is all they can do, you're naive, this gen is only getting started and we all know based on the past that the best of them come after the 2nd half of the console generation. The minimum official specs of that SDD will come into play then.

But hey let's bury our head into sand and not look into the future at all, because ignorance is a bliss.

I remain by my 1st statement: this article and others and YT videos are spreading ill advised buying recommendations regarding SSDs for PS5.

You do not understand how this hardware is actually utilized by the games being played on them. This is not bad advice just because you disagree with it. I want to know how you are so qualified to say this article is wrong.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

I was surprised by how much the write performance varied between the internal PS5 SSD and the SN850 (PS5 int SSD basically equals the SN750). That time difference when they copied the Ghost of Tsushima install files was pretty big! But you don't do complete game transfers everyday, of course.

I guess above all else, you want good read performance. 5,000 MB/s seems to be the mark to reach.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

And this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. This is not 1994, consoles are not dumb optical disk readers and require disk swapping, like PCs they load a large amount of content and then continue to load assets which will be needed in the future in the background or at designed loading points, they don't need to have 7000MB/s of speed unless for some reason you find a couple of seconds of loading time abhorrent on a machine which is already running games as low as 30fps.

Plus it makes zero sense as a publisher to design a game which would require that maximum possible speed, because when the cheaper consoles or, in this case, third party expansion slot upgrade options, are released, it'd cost you potentially millions of dollars in lost sales.

 

[VforV]

You do not understand how this hardware is actually utilized by the games being played on them. This is not bad advice just because you disagree with it. I want to know how you are so qualified to say this article is wrong.

I don't need to be qualified myself when those that are actually qualified, devs for PS5 games said they are not using the SSD to it's fullest and that newer games will push it close to its max potential.
You can clearly see that these games we have now work with about 60% speed of what the drive is capable of...

You also don't need to be a rocket scientist to ad 1+1 and get 2. From 60% to 100%, even if they will leave that last upper 10% unused for the sake of redundancy, then it's a gap from 60% to 90% speed... that's a lot of speed and any of these under-spec drives will fail in that area.

So yeah, I'm saying it: it's ill advised.

And this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. This is not 1994, consoles are not dumb optical disk readers and require disk swapping, like PCs they load a large amount of content and then continue to load assets which will be needed in the future in the background or at designed loading points, they don't need to have 7000MB/s of speed unless for some reason you find a couple of seconds of loading time abhorrent on a machine which is already running games as low as 30fps.

Plus it makes zero sense as a publisher to design a game which would require that maximum possible speed, because when the cheaper consoles or, in this case, third party expansion slot upgrade options, are released, it'd cost you potentially millions of dollars in lost sales.

Yes, they don't need 7000MB/s speed, but they do need:

Sequential read speed

5,500MB/s or faster is recommended

Which is the minimum spec that Sony recommends. If the minimum were lower it would have been specified that.

What other reason can possible be for Sony to specify that 5500MB/s is the minimum speed, other than the fact that the SDD now is not used to the max of it's ability and newer games will use it more and more?

That's when the 5500MB/s minimum speed comes into play, later, not now at the beginning of the console generation when devs are still learning and finding new things on how to squeeze more performance out of the PS5, including the SDD+IO systems.

 

[helper800]

I don't need to be qualified myself when those that are actually qualified, devs for PS5 games said they are not using the SSD to it's fullest and that newer games will push it close to its max potential.
You can clearly see that these games we have now work with about 60% speed of what the drive is capable of...

You also don't need to be a rocket scientist to ad 1+1 and get 2. From 60% to 100%, even if they will leave that last upper 10% unused for the sake of redundancy, then it's a gap from 60% to 90% speed... that's a lot of speed and any of these under-spec drives will fail in that area.

So yeah, I'm saying it: it's ill advised.

So people who can do 1 + 1 = 2 are qualified in the sense that they have gone to school for a minimum amount of time which is the qualification; schooling for x amount of time. Just because a game has minimum hardware requirements does not mean computers below it cannot deliver an experience worthy of playing it. People Give arbitrary minimums all the time, and Sony is no exception. You are speculating and publicly giving contrarian advice compared to people that are much more qualified than you.

 

[hotaru251]

It's all great and dandy until people buy these out of spec cheaper SSDs that work NOW, with the games that PS5 has NOW, only to find out 1 or 2 years from now, that those newer games push the PS5 SSD+IO even more and that their aftermarket SDD fails miserably to work with them...

Let's see how many get fooled by this erroneous messaging and live up to regret their decision.

not many?

data storage loading speed isnt gonna advance to point this matters within the lifespan of the PS5.

By point that would matter you'd likely be suffering graphical limitations (as hitting gpu harder is easier improvement than makign ur game load slower)

also...funny thing is you can buy a cheap drive today and IF it miraculously does become an issue....upgrade to a new 1 later. No downside to buyign a cheaper one now if u dont mind a slower boot by 7sec.

 

[VforV]

So people who can do 1 + 1 = 2 are qualified in the sense that they have gone to school for a minimum amount of time which is the qualification; schooling for x amount of time. Just because a game has minimum hardware requirements does not mean computers below it cannot deliver an experience worthy of playing it. People Give arbitrary minimums all the time, and Sony is no exception. You are speculating and publicly giving contrarian advice compared to people that are much more qualified than you.

The PS5 devs are more qualified than me, you or DF. So your beef is with them?

Yet, you insist on me, personally. Interesting...

Do you understand that I didn't make the minimum specs and I did not say the SSD+IO is not fully utilized yet, but the PS5 devs did? And the fact that the PS5 SSD is only used about half it's speed now (you can do the math too).

Add all this into the equation: minimum specs are 5500MB/s, 3200MB/s is much slower, there is much room to get faster and use more speed, devs said it's not fully used and future games will use more = and you get the logical conclusion based on facts (not speculation as you lie above) what I said, what the devs said. That's the 1+1=2 part. It's a figure of speech...

But a specimen like you is too special to understand that...

No downside to buyign a cheaper one now if u dont mind a slower boot by 7sec.

Actually the downside is not everyone wants to buy 2 SDDs, not everyone is interested to selling the obsolete SDD when it doesn't work anymore, not everyone has a PC and a PS5 to use that obsolete SDD when it doesn't work anymore... etc.

Plenty of negative reasons and downsides.

People think that everyone on this planet is plagued by the non-stop consumerism syndrome, well not all are...

 

[helper800]

The PS5 devs are more qualified than me, you or DF. So your beef is with them?

Yet, you insist on me, personally. Interesting...

Do you understand that I didn't make the minimum specs and I did not say the SSD+IO is not fully utilized yet, but the PS5 devs did? And the fact that the PS5 SSD is only used about half it's speed now (you can do the math too).

Add all this into the equation: minimum specs are 5500MB/s, 3200MB/s is much slower, there is much room to get faster and use more speed, devs said it's not fully used and future games will use more = and you get the logical conclusion based on facts (not speculation as you lie above) what I said, what the devs said. That's the 1+1=2 part. It's a figure of speech...

But a specimen like you is too special to understand that...

I have no "beef" with you at all. I am trying to limit the spread of false information about the topic at hand. I am also trying to explain to you that Sony has no idea how developers are going to develop for their console. I would argue that they do not even know how their own devs are going to develop for their future games. None of this is even getting into how exactly these games are being read from the storage devices in the games that use them more than others. In conventional gaming on a PC, for instance, higher sequential read speeds are less useful when comparing different drives because the number of read operations per second (IOPS) is the bottleneck rather than the amount of megabytes per second they can read (throughput speed). What this means is that 2 different storage drives may be rated for different throughput speeds 3200 vs 5500 but the amount of IOPS they have is the same or similar enough to not matter. We are also not even going into cache size, including the speed of that storage devices cache either or that it depends on how the game was programed and in what game engine the game was programed in. There are many factors that go into how a game is read from a storage device. The major takeaway is that IOPS (more specifically 4k random read IOPS) are almost universally more important than transfer speeds for any game.

 

[hotaru251]

Actually the downside is not everyone wants to buy 2 SDDs, not everyone is interested to selling the obsolete SDD when it doesn't work anymore, not everyone has a PC and a PS5 to use that obsolete SDD when it doesn't work anymore... etc.

fun fact: you can convert m.2 ssd's into usb flash drives if you wanted. (which you can connect to basically any device to use as external storage (i.e. phone for photo/movie storage etc.)

again. legit no reason to not do so in the here and now. By time you'd need a betetr one...the prices would also be lower.

your entire reason is "if" there comes a time they arent good enough....and again thats unlikely to happen on the console's lifetime.


you'd make a more compelling argument if you tried to mention the drives cache size being smaller on smaller drives. (as when cache fills up performance is hit hard)

 

[dalek1234]

I didn't need an article to tell me that SSD speed doesn't affect FPS, just load times.

Sony effed up by sourcing a slower GPU from AMD than Microsoft did. Sony was concerned that AMD's GPU architecture would continue to have parts of the GPU sit idle intermittently. The one way to elevate that was to go for a faster-clocked GPU. Microsoft, on the other hand, placed their bet on the fact that this 'architectural deficiency' will be resolved by the time AMD's GPU made it into the consoles. This deficiency, was, in fact, resolved. MS went for the larger, but slower-clocked GPU. Sony went for the smaller GPU, but running at higher clocks. The result is that current Xbox has better performing GPU than PS5, and it probably runs cooler too. A disaster for Sony's marketing department. To spin this whole story, Sony focused on the fact that they have a faster SSD than MS, and the BS'ed us about the benefits it will bring, and BS'ed some more about it's small capacity, that it won't matter because with these 'great SSD' speeds will translate to smaller game sizes because of faster asset load times. I didn't buy into this crap, and at the end, it turns out that the game install sizes actually go bigger not smaller. Sonny effed up badly, put a fast SSD inside the console so they could claim a marketing win, at least on SSD aspect, but fast SSD meant a small SSD, because they needed to keep the console cost down.

This is why I will not buy a PS5, until they have a refresh a few years from now. By then, all the current PS5 titles will be in the bargain bin too. Until then, PS4 it is.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Yeah Sony gimped the PS five compared to the Microsoft console. They probably did it so they could actually turn a profit on hardware sales

The series X is just fine. It runs very cool even when running very demanding games I’ve never hear it. Silent as the grave

 

[VforV]

Yeah Sony gimped the PS five compared to the Microsoft console.

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