PS5’s SSD Is A Nice Tool, But Abundant Graphics Memory Is More Useful during development

Developers in the industry have been excited to get their hands on next generation consoles, understandably enough, and the potential of the more powerful processors being used by the PS5 and the Xbox Scarlett, and more importantly, their inclusion of SSDs, are things that a lot of studios are doubtless very keenly looking forward to working with.

[Eonjay]

“Having fast disk access will be a nice tool to have during development, but at this time we really don’t depend on the disk all that much since we can keep so much in graphics memory,” the developer told GamingBolt in an interview. “But I’m sure the added performance of load times will be appreciated by end users.”

Your completely misquoted a dev from your own interview in your title and story.
How?

[Neonridr]

how? he's saying that while SSD speeds are nice they don't rely on those disk speeds as much because they utilize graphics memory more. Which is exactly what that title says.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

Title comes off as saying that the devs would rather have more graphics memory than SSD.
While the quote comes off as saying that while SSDs are cool too have, they don't change much on our end since we keep so much in graphics memory anyway, but the end users will appreciate the quicker load times that come with them.

[Neonridr]

@Outside_ofthe_Box - fair enough.. obvoiusly it's up for a little interpretation.

[rainslacker]

And its thinking of game development in the traditional sense, instead of seeing the ssd as a viable high speed virtual memory to allow for things that havent been done before. Abundant memory can always be used, but the biggest reasons more memory is required is because transfer speeds arent sufficient to swap memory to make it useful for more elaborate graphics memory pools

[Neonridr]

@rainslacker - true, but GPU's nowadays have an abundant amount of video ram which is why devs use them. My 1080ti has 11GB of GDDR5 RAM (newer cards use GDDR6). Tons can be stored in there, so having an SSD to load files seems sort of redundant. Obviously with next gen we may see devs really start to tap into SSD speeds but we will have to see if these SSD transfer speeds can trump the speeds from accessing the GPU which is usually part of a SoC design allowing for extremely fast speeds.

[dumahim]

Because GamingBolt. Just stop giving them clicks.

[Muzikguy]

It's gamingbolt that's how. Gaming journalistic garbage.

[NecrumOddBoy]

Devs speak about nextgen but Gamingbolt misquoted it to cast this as negative directed at Sony. Typical Gamingbolt trash.

[DaDrunkenJester]

It's not a negative towards just Sony. MS had made SSD their main feature during their reveal as well.

[killswitch80]

Water is wet

[devind]

Are you lying?

[sagapo]

Are you sure? How do you make dry ice then?

[RizBiz]

By not using water.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Look how smart I am everyone

[CorndogBurglar]

All ice is dry assuming it hasn't started melting and isn't put in any liquid.

[OneEyedSteve]

Change the o & t to u & l and put sh*t on the end and its a perfect name for you.

[OB1Biker]

Gamngbolt is a nice tool, but...

[Cobra951]

A fast-enough SSD can be treated as memory, at least in part. I'm not sure what the criticism is here. More memory, more storage, and faster storage are all essential for taking performance to the next level.

[rainslacker]

There's a technique called page swapping which allows for large or small amounts of memory to be quickly changed to a completely different set of memory. The speed of current hard drives that most games use is nowhere near the speed that memory can function, so page swapping parts of memory in this way isnt practical. But, being able to do it at a much faster speed that ssd allows is a game changer. The only downside is that it does require more memory management, but when you start getting used to it, it works wonders. As of now, since a swap needs an equivalent amount of memory, its pointless, since you can just fill new parts of memory with the new data, and retain the old.

[DVAcme]

Exactly. It also allows easier refreshment of assets during gameplay, which is especially welcome with open world games. Anyone who's played heavily-modded Fallout 4 or Skyrim on an HDD and an SSD can attest that is a huge improvement.

[Einhander1971]

Faster access from the drive can only be better all round for the systems performance.

[nismo370]

Says dev = loooool!!
gamingbolt....

[Segata]

Who keeps submitting PS4 news in Xbox and Switch sections?

[tombfan]

SSD isn't just a new toy, it's literally a bottleneck that was happening in the gen, if the Hard Drives aren't fast enough to stream data to the GDDR, Processor and Graphics card, then we have stutters and popping... SSD is a MUST this new gen, besides it'll make the consoles fast as hell!!!

[frostypants]

"A developer says" - Gamingbolt.

They've mastered the art of astroturfing their crap to the top, I'll give them that.