SackBoy A Big Adventure: Patched PC, Steam Deck & PS5 Compared - NX Technical Review

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Octopath Traveler. to play second game without first, it is stupid.

I think that one depends on if SE end up backporting the 1st to PS4/5 in the near future, which is possible. Also not sure if the story for the sequel is going to be a direct follow-up to the first game's, or something more like FF where each new entry has an independent story not requiring you having played the previous entries to jump into.

 

[Banana]

taking into consideration the better I/O system of the PS5 that allows to make a better usage of the GPU resources to reach closer to its full potential than a PC I/O system.

I have no idea what this means, but I don't think this game is bandwidth limited if that's what you mean. You can see in the video that the 6800 is at 99% utilization.

And this is not taking into consideration possible OS/background apps in the background that may add a bigger overhead on PC.

This actually has a negligible effect on GPU. Perhaps CPU. I remember people on Neogaf saying something was wrong with this guys system.

Meaning, same game implementation and same GPU specs should perform better on PS5. So to reach the same performance on PC than in a PS5 it should be needed a GPU with higher HW specs than the one inside of PS5.

The 6800 is much more powerful than the GPU in the PS5. That's why this is impressive.

I just looked it up: PS5 has 36 RDNA2 compute units and the 6800 has 60 RDNA2 compute units. According to amazon a 6800 starts at $500, which makes it even more impressive.

 

[Yurinka]

I have no idea what this means, but I don't think this game is bandwidth limited if that's what you mean. You can see in the video that the 6800 is at 99% utilization.

I'm not talking about a game specific issue, I mean that PS5 has a in a hardware level a way to load from SSD, decompress its data and bring it to the memory, plus a specially fast access between the GPU and the memory that avoids several traditional bottlenecks that is way faster than any PC equivalent.

This means that with the same GPU, the same memory and same SSD, in PS5 can stream and replace in memory more info in a given period of time than a PC. Meaning that should be able to load more stuff on a scene, or more detailed versions of the same thing (like textures), or to have more time to do stuff with the loaded things etc. I mean, to get extra performance, to get close to achieve the full potential of that GPU, CPU, memory or SSD.

This means that in games coded in a way that takes advantage of this PS5 features, a game should perform better on PS5 than in a PC with the same/equivalent GPU, CPU, memory and SSD. Probably this is what we're seeing in this game.

 

[Banana]

I'm not talking about a game specific issue, I mean that PS5 has a in a hardware level a way to load from SSD, decompress its data and bring it to the memory, plus a specially fast access between the GPU and the memory that avoids several traditional bottlenecks that is way faster than any PC equivalent.

This means that with the same GPU, the same memory and same SSD, in PS5 can stream and replace in memory more info in a given period of time than a PC. Meaning that should be able to load more stuff on a scene, or more detailed versions of the same thing (like textures), or to have more time to do stuff with the loaded things etc. I mean, to get extra performance, to get close to achieve the full potential of that GPU, CPU, memory or SSD.

This means that in games coded in a way that takes advantage of this PS5 features, a game should perform better on PS5 than in a PC with the same/equivalent GPU, CPU, memory and SSD. Probably this is what we're seeing in this game.

Couldn't they just require 32gb of ram like retural is doing?

 

[Yurinka]

Couldn't they just require 32gb of ram like retural is doing?

To use main ram would partly help, but the main issue is the speed of loading stuff from the SSD available for the GPU. Consider that with the I/O system and integrated compression of the PS5 it can load stuff in the RAM at up to 22GB/s depending on the file type, with the ones that get better compressed.

The PC moderboards don't have that stuff of loading stuff from the SSD and uncompress it on real time with dedicated hardware while doing placing it in a way in the memory that later the GPU can access to that data faster than reading from memory using a faster way than the traditional method that PCs use.

They would need to change how the I/O part of PC motherboards are, make it a standard and also change how games are stored on SSDs. I don't see it happening, at least not in many years. What I assume they could do is to use way faster SSDs, memories and GPU to compensate it.

This is something that now is barely noticiable because PS5 still don't take full advantage of this. As of now, in most cases for PS5 this compression only makes the HDD space of the PS5 games smaller. Once devs will have their engines fully adapted to next gen taking advantage of the streaming potential then there will be a bigger difference.

 

[Bodycount611]

It's not okay to shame people who oppose these ports. These ports directly devalue our purchases on console, and in sackboy's case, the low sales volume on PC means that it hurt the developer too. They were probably mandated to deliver as well, which is a waste of time and money for everyone involved.

Look at Nixxes. These guys have delivered absolutely NOTHING of value for PS console customers. Just keeping the lights on at the studio is a waste of time.

use that money on the next marketing deal, the next exclusive, or the next hardware or accessory R&D costs.

PC gamers are not and should never be a priority for a dedicated console manufacturer. They don't have any skin in the game and have invested nothing in the grand scheme of things.

 

[KnittedKnight]

PS Loyalty program is a bunch of digital stickers - so if that doesn't fullfill your special status vis. a vis the "chads" on PC you know what you have to do when Sony eventually goes day and date on PC. These new cats are way too one dimensional - Profit is king, profit is job security, profit is social reinforcement. This shit will blow up - not on them, no matter how much one may wish it did - but more than likely on their successive replacements. It's usually how it goes when you try to fuck with market fundamentals by believing you're comfortably and untouchable at the top so you're bored to hell and start looking elsewhere and at someone else's plate, wanting a piece of it. Since you've come to a wall (console market user cap), you feel compelled to eat from those other plates... little do you entertain the idea that you can actually go down if the ground beneath your feet is softened by bending over to grab that other plate.

 

[KiryuRealty]

These ports directly devalue our purchases on console

Get a grip.

 

[Banana]

To use main ram would partly help, but the main issue is the speed of loading stuff from the SSD available for the GPU. Consider that with the I/O system and integrated compression of the PS5 it can load stuff in the RAM at up to 22GB/s depending on the file type, with the ones that get better compressed.

The PC moderboards don't have that stuff of loading stuff from the SSD and uncompress it on real time with dedicated hardware while doing placing it in a way in the memory that later the GPU can access to that data faster than reading from memory using a faster way than the traditional method that PCs use.

They would need to change how the I/O part of PC motherboards are, make it a standard and also change how games are stored on SSDs. I don't see it happening, at least not in many years. What I assume they could do is to use way faster SSDs, memories and GPU to compensate it.

This is something that now is barely noticiable because PS5 still don't take full advantage of this. As of now, in most cases for PS5 this compression only makes the HDD space of the PS5 games smaller. Once devs will have their engines fully adapted to next gen taking advantage of the streaming potential then there will be a bigger difference.

Consoles use unified memory so both cpu and gpu use the same bandwidth. System memory (ram) is always faster than any m.2 we have.

I think I'm misinterpreting your second paragraph. CPUs uncompress data and put that in memory, and then send them to the gpu to render. Consoles use an APU like a pc without a graphics card. They share the same pool of memory so it doesn't need to be sent anywhere.

I think windows and nvidia have that same technology. I remember hearing last year that directstorage has been released for devs.

But going back to the main point, none of that tech is used in this game yet the PS5 is punching above its hardware weight. Very impressive.

 

[ethomaz]

Consoles use unified memory so both cpu and gpu use the same bandwidth. System memory (ram) is always faster than any m.2 we have.

I think I'm misinterpreting your second paragraph. CPUs uncompress data and put that in memory, and then send them to the gpu to render. Consoles use an APU like a pc without a graphics card. They share the same pool of memory so it doesn't need to be sent anywhere.

I think windows and nvidia have that same technology. I remember hearing last year that directstorage has been released for devs.

But going back to the main point, none of that tech is used in this game yet the PS5 is punching above its hardware weight. Very impressive.

The unified memory of consoles helps.

On PC an asset using the new Direct Storage follow: SSD > SysRAM > CPU decompress > VRAM… even the new Direct Storage with GPU decompress will be SSD > SysRAM > VRAM > GPU Decompress… just remember that that move of data from SSD to SysRAM and SysRAM to VRAM is done by GPU.

On PS5 for example is SSD > Decompressor Unit > RAM.

There two big issues nowdays in PC:

1. There is no dedicated decompressor… DirectStorage wants to use GPU for that.
2. Any transfer of data uses CPU and needs to pass over SysRAM (there is solution yet… well seems like AMD wants to creat something to by pass SysRAM but there is nothing released yet).

The second issue doesn’t exists in a unified memory pool.

Today:

How Direct Storage with GPU decompression:

On PS5:
DMAs to transfer + Decompressor unit = Data already decompressed direct on RAM without need to use CPU or GPU.

 

[thelastword]

This is certainly not the first time PS5 has waxed the 2070 and 2080......Plus 65% in some scenes over the 2070 and of course the PS5 is capped, so it's definitely higher.......I can see that performance lead stretching much more this year as devs focus solely on PS5.

 

[Yurinka]

Consoles use unified memory so both cpu and gpu use the same bandwidth. System memory (ram) is always faster than any m.2 we have.

It isn't only that (big bandwith in case of PS5). Part of it it's how the stuff gets allocated in the memory and how later the GPU or CPU gets access to it. They do it in a special way in PS5 that is faster and avoids related bottlenecks that are present in PS4 or PC.

I think I'm misinterpreting your second paragraph. CPUs uncompress data and put that in memory, and then send them to the gpu to render. Consoles use an APU like a pc without a graphics card. They share the same pool of memory so it doesn't need to be sent anywhere.

No the CPU doesn't uncompress that data in PS5, the CPU would do it in the case of a PC. PS5 works differently. The PS5 has a special dedicated chip to uncompress the data stored in the SSD, which is stored there compressed in a revolutionary new compression system, called Kraken. When there is loaded data from the SSD to the memory, between them there's this chip that uncompress the data in real time without needing to use CPU or GPU resources to do that.

So the raw 5.5GB/s speed of the SSD gets transformed into (depending on how well the info stored in these files get compressed) an average of 11GB/s and up to 22GB/s. Other I/O optimizations as the ones I mentioned above also affect, reducing the time of loading from SSD to memory and also allowing a faster access of the CPU and GPU to the data stored in the memory.

This compression chip and the other I/O optimizations don't exist on PC, which has the bottlenecks that PS4 had. Cerny did some start tricks to avoid several traditional bottlenecks to allow way faster loading that go way beyond using a SSD instead of a HDD.

I think windows and nvidia have that same technology. I remember hearing last year that directstorage has been released for devs.

But going back to the main point, none of that tech is used in this game yet the PS5 is punching above its hardware weight. Very impressive.

No, Windows and Nvidia don't have that technology, because PC motherboards don't have these things and Windows doesn't work in that way. They can't replicate it. They'd need to change several fundamental things of the PC architecture that would break its compatibility with the rest.

 

[anonpuffs]

PC does not have the same decompression capabilities as the ps5. What they do have is called DirectStorage, which uses GPGPU to use the video card to decompress the data stream. That certainly will have an impact on performance, which is why MS has only pegged DirectStorage as increasing SSD bandwidth by 40%