Can the Slowest PS5 SSD Upgrade Run Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart?

[@WheremyPoptart]

I had actually wanted to see a video on this exact scenario . Thanks DF

[@VanSanProductions]

I already preordered on hoping it would work. Hopefully they don't stop it from working if games properly start taking advantage of the I/O speed.

[@zarakitube]

The response is yes to make things quick

[@HeroesOfFreeSpeech]

Thanks for your service to humanity

[@javedalam5549]

It was a bit more than yes

[@AndrewNiccol]

You save my time!!!!!

[@amarg1650]

Because it has nothing to do with the ssd, the scenes are so linear that the system has time to load in between. Its just a marketing trick, in fact it has been done in many systems in the past

[@Patrik1st]

@@amarg1650 says you😏

[@matuzaato]

The long transfer times when moving 100gb files makes sense, it's dramless and once you run out of whatever cache it may have, you're on your own

[@shaundavidssd]

The Dev says it CAN run on PS4!!! Take a breath

[@Jona69]

tlc drives will often write in slc mode for a a third or so of the storage.

[@followtheori]

Yeah, SLC cache is the difference here, both drive would be 1TB, I guess it would have been similar in sustained speed as well.

[@strangestecho5088]

​@@shaundavidssd A Dev, who didn't work on the game, said that similar mechanics could be implemented in a PS4 game. That's not untrue, but it's incredibly misleading to people like you. A game like that would have to be designed around the hard drive bandwidth limitations from the ground up, with many compromises in world density, level of detail, physics simulation, cutscenes being cinematic instead of real time, etc. You could not simply port Rift Apart over to PS4. The game is built in a manner where it relies on being able to pull gigabytes of data off the SDD nearly instantly. It's how they were able to make the game so quickly; There was minimal optimization required for what was the biggest bottleneck of the previous generation.

[@itsTyrion]

@@Jona69 a third? keep dreaming

[@concinnus]

I love that you can hear the disdain dripping from Rich's voice as he says aluminum.

[@LaDeXi]

Aluminum is the original name. Brits added the extra i.

[@sopcannon]

@@LaDeXi aloooominum

[@itsWelshy]

@@LaDeXi Nope. It was originally called "alumina", but the global international standard is "aluminium" so that it was more standardised with potassium etc in chemistry environments. "Aluminum" is exclusively used in NA with "Aluminium" being the "correct" use by international standards. Yanks just love changing stuff to "American english" thinking they're unique and the rest of the world is weird. Just look at the US still using imperial over metric in 2021.

[@shreder75]

Comedy gold

[@HastyElderHaman]

@@itsWelshy I have bad news for you if you're British and complaining about Americans using imperial units, as it seems like Boris Johnson is pushing imperial for weight instead of kg (or stone which is also ridiculous). So you may be able to go into your local butcher and ask for five pounds worth of whatever and they'll have to ask (wait do you mean the weight or the currency?) :).

[@DuyLeNguyen]

The slowdown in writes for the smaller drive is really of no surprise. Most modern SSDs use SLC caching to reach their advertised astronomical write speeds, and once the drive's SLC cache is completely full (typical of long duration writes, such as moving large games from one drive to another), the drive will then both have to write direct to TLC/QLC (oftentimes with the added penalty of having to also do garbage collection/cache-flushing in the background), and write speeds plummets as a result.

[@alexatkin]

I was puzzled why he thought this was unexpected. I have a Crucial P1 and it does the same, it drops right down to 50MB/s once the SLC is full causing the OS to stutter and lag. I ended up moving anything IO intensive over to a SATA SSD as that at least maintains a consistent 500MB/s from start to finish so that any IO waiting is consistent.

[@jaggsta]

SN750 SE has no DRAM cache or it would be called SN850

[@DuyLeNguyen]

@@jaggsta I'm not talking about DRAM cache. I'm talking about SLC writes (commonly referred to as 'SLC Caching') on TLC/QLC drives as a common strategy for increasing short-duration write performance. This has nothing to do with DRAM cache, which is usually utilised in SSDs to store a map of logical data on the SSD to the actual NAND cells where the corresponding bits are stored.

[@LibertyWlk]

@@DuyLeNguyen what SSD technology do you recommend that maintain full speed through the entire transfer?

[@DuyLeNguyen]

@@LibertyWlk None. All consumer drives these days are either TLC or QLC NAND. Both of those types of flash relies on SLC cache to reach their advertised speeds, and as a result both will slow down to their raw TLC/QLC write speeds once their cache exceeded. If you really want drives that can maintain their speed over a full drive write, your only option would be data centre-centric drives (and even then, a lot of them are TLC these days)

[@OrcCorp]

As always, amazing work and great content 🤝🏻

[@michaeldunn5788]

No actually this video is piss poor work the slower SSD has less SLC (or MLC or TLC) memory and that is why it takes so much longer to write data to it.

[@kostadinb]

End of a hard day at work - nothing better than some "Aluminium" and other DF goods from Rich !

[@Generalkidd]

Now I'm even more curious to see what would happen if you used a M.2 SATA to PCIe Gen4 adapter in order to trick the PS5 into accepting a SATA SSD. On a lot of unoptimized PC games, they don't really load much faster on an NVME vs SATA drive. So should be very interesting to see how a lot of PS5 and PS4 BC games run on a SATA SSD instead. But I'm not even sure if SATA to PCIe Gen 4 adapters exist yet.

[@richardfranklin6003]

This test would only matter to PS5 games. PS4 back compat games already perform almost the same between USB 3.0 SSD and internal.

[@Generalkidd]

@@richardfranklin6003 Ah yes you are absolutely right there! In that case just PS5 game performance on a SATA SSD would be interesting to see. It'd be quite a shocker if both loading and in game performance of native PS5 games is almost the same on a high end SATA SSD. So far at nearly half the speeds, there's already barely any difference.

[@51m0n397]

Check the channel UFD tech, he is doing a lot of experiments with adapters on the PS5

[@sashwatdeb4629]

The PS5 does a speed test before accepting and formatting the drive right? The maximum speed on SATA3 is 6Gb/s so I don't think it would be possible.

[@Generalkidd]

@@sashwatdeb4629 Linus Tech Tips actually did a video on that and proved that the speed test only provides a guideline. In this particular DF video, the SSD they used is way under spec too. The PS5 only actually requires a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, the speed of it doesn't actually matter. So with a SATA to PCIe Gen 4 adapter, it might actually trick the PS5 into accepting it. But as far as I know, no one has tried this yet.

[@SLE3PR]

This is the kind of delicious tech esoterica I come here for.

[@60fpspeasant84]

Bruh, i read that as "Tech Erotica", lol.

[@Pete-vz5uj]

I got some jelly beans, would you like some jelly beans?

[@samdixon3719]

ps5 is bum, xbox all day

[@ChampHello]

“why did you find this video so interesting?” me: …i don’t know

[@no_misaki]

@@samdixon3719 seethe

[@SweDownhill]

Headsup! There are two different versions of the SN850 (with and without a heatsink). I bought one without the heatsink in Sweden since it was significantly cheaper and the only one available at my local retailer. It was easy to mount a third party heatsink on it before installing it inside the PS5, just be aware of the differences.

[@GLADIATOR-ud6gw]

Makes you think back when sony said this game was not going to be possible without the PS5 SSD

[@lgmtk]

M A R K E T I N G. Anyone with half a brain and some knowledge with how SSDs work knew this was BS. IT AIN'T MAGIC lol.

[@eddi3401]

they wanted to sell you the game

[@CrimsonGear80]

Did you not hear Richard say it’s not just about the SSD itself…

[@AlphaDwg]

people keep falling for sony's marketing ploys. I knew it was bs from the get go

[@TJBrumfield]

Without a SSD and running on a HDD the game likely wouldn't have been truly possible for the quick rift loading. Can another SSD make the game work? This video doesn't truly seem to test that entirely. It just shows menu and save game loading. I'm curious if a slower SSD would have caused latency with the rifts.

[@Rocksteady72a]

I like how he casually calls all those logos and stuff nonsense 😂 100% agreed. There was a podcast where a game director said he puts it in to make the game feel more "like a game," but I'd rather just... you know, cut directly to the game?

[@paul1979uk2000]

It's like adverts, I don't have a problem seeing them once but I don't want to see them a million times, developers should give gamers the option to skip them if they want so we can get right into gaming.

[@HalfpennyTerwilliger]

@@paul1979uk2000 They're so ubiquitous I wonder if those are contractual obligations.

[@pipgoesthepossum]

@@HalfpennyTerwilliger there are, sometimes, for certain middlewares. You're required to show their logos at launch, if you used them.

[@Rocksteady72a]

@@pipgoesthepossum Then they should cram them into the splash screen, and/or play them on first bootup only.

[@pipgoesthepossum]

@@Rocksteady72a i believe some stipulate they have to run on every launch. It's a legal thing, I'm afraid. Even if the devs wanted otherwise, they often don't have a choice.

[@Xallisto1]

I think u may be forgetting during those transfer tests that one has a cache and one does not. And that is never going to be more apparent than in a straight up transfer.

[@alexatkin]

Indeed. After all, the PS5 I would expect to be testing pulling sequential data straight to RAM. This could actually confirm the huge efficiency gain you can get from a method like DirectStorage vs having to wait on the CPU to do it. In fact, it would be silly to test it using any method other than EXACTLY how a PS5 game would do it.

[@samarobbins]

I absolutely adore digital foundry. Thanks for the tests and insights I didn't know I needed

[@TechGamer-pq1gu]

Looks like that rumor that Ratchet and Clank was not really doing anything special with that SSD was true and that they were just that good at hiding the loading screens.

[@knightshifter2201]

Look here’s the thing Sony has been caught several times with every generation lying about what their systems are capable of this is no different SSD’s are a huge advantage compared to the way they used to do things but it’s not the huge significance secret sauce fanboys thought it would be.

[@longtutjenkins]

When they made these claims drives on the pcie-4 were not available on the market and the controller block the ps5 has was not yet coded to work with these drives so as much as i dislike fluff from companies, i can see past the console war fodder here. I am sure they made the game on a pc and tried with the fastest available drive to them when making the game and found its measurably quicker on the ps5. You can of course make a smaller game and have the same trick to load in asset work on any speed drive but to have the same amount of assets load at that speed is not possible without the tech inside. I do however think this will change with software implementation for the pc opening up potential for much faster asset streaming for games that are designed to use faster drives. I don't get why they don't test the part where you hit a node and basically swap worlds in an instant. Would be cool to see tests on that usage aswell.

[@jackreeves7]

Completely false, insomniac said they were just scratching the surface and they were always getting more and more from the ssd

[@thewisegamer.4626]

You do realize digital foundry is using a slower ssd not hdd stupid fanboy.

[@joshuaewalker]

@@knightshifter2201 What are you talking about? I have my house full of PS3's right now and am using their Cell architecture to simultaneously hack every government in the world.

[@thundervanbrocklin2718]

Great video! Testing with a 1TB sn750 would likely give you vastly different times due to the larger SLC cache size. From the 500GB to 1TB there is a large difference in SLC cache size (36GB for the 1TB, and less than half I believe for the 500GB). I can only imagine how little a 250GB would give you.

[@breakatmo]

In fairness for when games that really push the storage bandwidth hard do arrive, you have an obvious solution - simply use the internal SSD for those games.

[@RAVE_DAM0S]

R&C already looks so incredible. And that there is more headroom to take advantage of read speeds on the SSDs is all the more promising for the future. Nice work DF!

[@teddyholiday8038]

This is quite the spin to put on these results. Cerny lied.

[@as-dt5gp]

@@teddyholiday8038 we are investing millions in vr This will be the biggest launch lineup YOUR WEIRD UNCLE PHIL LIES

[@jukins6543]

@@teddyholiday8038 can you explained where he lied? keep in mind the time of the statements and available ssds. . .ill wait

[@teddyholiday8038]

@@jukins6543 lol stay losing, Cerny Seat Sniffer

[@weaverquest]

@@teddyholiday8038 Only if you didn't understand anything Mark Cerny talked about. The game still has super fast load speeds thanks to the custom I/O block and storage architecture optimizations Mark Cerny talked about. This test in this video just shows there is. more performance to be tapped in the future which is expected in games early in the generation.

[@monkfishy6348]

This could mean that the internal SSD is just far and away faster than necessary, for any game to meaningfully make full use out of. Even when swapping entire environments in seconds.

[@strangestecho5088]

There are diminishing returns. According to Cerny, the PS5's SSD was designed to be able to load in a high fidelity game level instantly. They expected a typical game level to require x amount of ram, and set the target there. There aren't currently any games that attempt to fully utilize that. Rift Apart gets close, but apparently not close enough where 3200mb/s can't get the job done.

[@Louback86]

Probably random read/write performance is more important to games than sequential read/write capabilities.

[@ProjectPaez]

That's correct. In fact, that is the main issue of high tech devices. If your software does not match your hardware potential, then it is a waste of resources. If games are not being fully optimized to the high speed of the internal ssd, then it is just a piece of hardware that only makes the machine more expensive without a very good reason. But let's be optimistic. We still have to see the real next gen games to see if at least Sony is going to invest in this aspect of the PS5.

[@GregHakes]

The PS5 was designed for sever years out. If they would of put slower SSD capabilities in it, it would have been outdated a lot sooner.

[@crescentmoon256]

it's bs, ps ssd is bs

[@jajonic]

Already decided on a different SSD but I do love a “what if?” Scenario. Nice job!

[@MrFlamethrower32]

I really liked Rift Apart. But the Rifts were a novelty at best. The bigger deal for me was the minimal loading screens. Imagine a game like Skyrim with no loading doors. It would be so much more immersive. If thats where games are headed. Im all for it.

[@coolcharles45]

Yeah agreed, honestly that goes for alot of tge rachet gimmicks

[@PixelShade]

Like all modern open world games with other words :) Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed, Cyberpunk, Metro Exodus etc.... The biggest issue is that Sony sold a lie with Ratchet and Clank, in reality that kind of streaming was done on PS3 already, and nothing within its gameplay really require the SSD speeds. However, the scripted scene was a good way for Sony to showcase the benefits of an incredibly fast SSD. Even though it wasn't based on a real world scenario... What an SSDs can offer is some kind of future proofing for the consoles. 16GB of combined memory is good for now, but as games become even more complex the consoles can rely on quickly streaming assets from the SSD. :) PC don't really need this since they can always power through with blazingly fast RAM. Even if a computer doesn't support directStorage it can still rely on increased RAM requirement as an incredibly quick streaming buffer (much quicker than PS5's SSD).

[@weaverquest]

I was impressed 12 years ago with 7th gen when GTA IV did not have any loading screens when going inside buildings vs San Andreas which did have loading fir ang indoor arena. The thing with Skyrim is probably more due to Bethesda's outdated engine rather than hardware.

[@romxxii]

You didn't have to imagine Skyrim with no loading doors. There was a Skyrim mod called Open Cities which did exactly that.

[@sEaNoYeAh]

So true. Good game, but the tech aspect is a marketing con. It was pretty damning when the Traveller’s Tales founder said that what Rift Apart actually does with rifts could have been done on PS3, which only sounds farfetched if you haven't played the game. It's a bit of a shame they didn't do more to capitalise on the tech and make the rifts a bigger interactive gameplay element, but I'm more disappointed that Sony willfully sold snake oil on this one.

[@theshonen8899]

I personally don't believe the minor performance improvements justifies the $100 price difference $130 1tb 750 se vs $230 850.

[@Troonielicious]

I’m buying the 1tb sn 750 tf?

[@gringeroid]

As we advance further into this generation and game devs start pushing the hardware to the limits you may feel differently

[@strangestecho5088]

Well seems like it'll work for now, but you're probably going to run into issues at some point and then blame it on the game being buggy when it just wants a drive that runs at spec.

[@jabaririchards9544]

Don’t buy it, in the future when games really start pushing the system you will have wasted your money. Literally just get the 850.

[@samtakuchiko]

How many games are utilising the speed of the ps5 system. I have it and I honestly haven't touched it in months. If I were to get an m2 drive for jt right now,I'd get the 750 and by the time games really need it, there'd be better and faster m2 drive options plus they'd be way cheaper so sensible thing here is to get the 750 if you're balling on a budget because as we saw, the most demanding game storage wise wasn't having that many issues and maybe by then we will have VRR and that means you might not even notice the small frame drops... anyway those are my two sense on this.

[@noenken]

I think a big part of the writing performance here has to do with the capacity of the drives and how multilevel NAND achieves that. Writing 100GB on a 250GB drive is a completely different thing than on a 1TB drive, even if those drives are otherwise identical.

[@jaggsta]

SN750 SE has no dram cache so that effect write speeds massive.

[@thundervanbrocklin2718]

The SLC cache size on the 250 is a fraction of a 1TB drive too.

[@mimimimeow]

I mean if I'm Insomniac, I would make sure my game works on the worst PCIe 4 SSD and avoid prolonged read/write operations. Most customers are not tech savvy enough on storage tech to figure out which are good and which are bad. It's just common sense when developing games. 3200MB/s is still a lot when you consider PS5's realtime compression I/O hardware.

[@xandersore3442]

yep. and even if it does end up being slower on more next-gen only games down the line, the differences are going to be extremely small, like single digits of seconds range. Nothing like the improvements we see comparing PS4 games running on a hard drive to the internal ssd. I'll happily pay almost half for a 2tb drive in exchange for maybe 3-5 second longer loads in the future.

[@krazyfrog]

"Most customers" aren't putting an aftermarket M.2 SSD with a heat sink inside their PS5.

[@xandersore3442]

@@krazyfrog pretty sure by "most customers" he was talking specifically about customers of extended storage for the PS5, not PS5 owners in general.

[@thatguy1w]

@@xandersore3442 believe it or not most people don't buy storage, most do with their basic console, they have their yearly sports games, their cod/battlefield and thats it, everything else gets rotated

[@xandersore3442]

@@thatguy1w when did I ever disagree with that? all I did was say that he was saying "most consumers of expandable storage" not "most consumers of PS5's".

[@kleanlins]

I think the real deal is the low level storage API, not so much the SSD speeds. Well, at least for now.

[@Skylancer727]

I question that as DX12 and Vulkan are also low level APIs. Not quite as low but still this looks way to big a gap. Some of the devs claim it's just the compression engine carrying the drive, but if it is then I'd really question why Sony used so much more money on a rarer drive type. I think what's mostly likely happening is the game actually is using background loading into ram and they are just denying it. It doesn't take nearly as much of your ram as you probably think it does.

[@flubber8]

@@Skylancer727 lol

[@flubber8]

2023 games will show the differences for both consoles.

[@bltzcstrnx]

@@Skylancer727 DX12 and Vulkan are low level graphic API, they got nothing to do with storage. Did you mean DirectStorage by mistakes? Which actually is a storage API on both Xbox Series and Windows 11.

[@Skylancer727]

@@bltzcstrnx can't remember the exact context of it at the time. But no, I know it wasn't about direct storage. That only recently came out. It's been talked about for like 2 years but no, that wasn't what I meant. I'd have to rewatch it to remember exactly what I meant but I think it had to do with data streaming. Data streaming is a requirement in most games and is controlled by the engine. The selling point Sony made with Ratchet and Clank was that it was too complicated and geometrically complex to run on a system with a slower drive. Well, this kinda shows that isn't quite right. I think the PS5 may be telling games to cull data early. This way the SSD trickles data into ram which dumps it when needed. It is the whole reason Jak and Daxter had no loading screens on PS2 for example.

[@brewski535]

The GPU and CPU are going to be constraining games way before the SSD in the PS5. It's completely overkill, I doubt we will ever have games that require such bandwidth this gen. It was obviously cheaper for Sony to put in a faster SSD than improve anything else on the console. It's a marketing tool, plain and simple.

[@MaxIronsThird]

They could've just put an SSD of similar specs to the Series X/S or much slower, and it wouldn't make any difference when playing.

[@brewski535]

@@MaxIronsThird bingo. Especially with the hardware decompression on these consoles, it's completely unnecessary.

[@ZackSNetwork]

@@brewski535 Exactly, the SSD in the PS5 is not only not as fast as they made it out to be but, also over kill. It’s all marketing at the end of the day. There are videos from Digital Foundry that prove the PS5 and Series X have rasterization performance of an RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070. While raytracing performance is on par with a RTX 2060. The CPU’s in the consoles even though they are 8 core 16 thread zen 2. They are far weaker than a Ryzen 7 3700x. Due to significantly less cache memory, much lower clock speeds, TDP and less ram for the CPU. Rumors always make the new consoles far stronger than what they appear as well as the false marketing from Sony and Microsoft every generation.

[@javedalam5549]

@David Yeah, because you know more than a multi-billion dollar company that has an obligation to its shareholders to make the cheapest consoles with the highest profit ratios..... Oh wait maybe they thought about innovative future technologies that your brain can't conceive of. People buy Playstations for the exclusives, not the hardware. They literally would have no reason to put a more expensive drive in if they didn't need to. I agree Ratchet and Clank doesn't make use of it, but you can bet your bottom dollar that future titles will. Look at God of War running on PS3. They stretched the hardware to its absolute limitations.

[@brewski535]

@@javedalam5549 nah, Sony realised they had the weaker system compared with Microsoft so they put in a faster SSD to make up for it. It's far easier to fight a hardware battle if you can say at least one component is better, even if the comparison is irrelevant.

[@dunderhead]

Fantastic testing as always. I'll be curious to see future updates with other m.2 SSD's with future titles.

[@derptyderp5287]

They should definitely come out with some tech demo's to show off the benefits of different drives... Because right now, that whole soldering the internal storage to the motherboard doesn't look great if there's 0 benefit.

[@mandoligno]

All the benefits are in the Jim Ryan pockets when the ssd dies 🌝

[@strangestecho5088]

The benefit is that it's a cost-saving measure and made it easier for Sony to design the overall system. So, basically the same reason laptop and cellphone manufacturers also do it. The Series X internal M.2 isn't intended to be user replaceable either, although it does look it might eventually be possible with third party software.

[@thewondersock3818]

"Combine it all together and screw it up!"

[@azuremateria]

Sounds counter intuitive, but ok. Guess I'll just pour water into the PS5 ...

[@8M0US]

So many people complained about the XBox expansion card's price. A 1 TB SN850 is roughly the same price and you have to work to put it in. At least my 1 TB Seagate expansion just plugged into the back and I didn't have to take my console apart.

[@SideshowBob44]

But having more choice is better in the long run.

[@8M0US]

@@SideshowBob44 In the long run? You planning on swapping out your PS5 SSD multiple times?

[@SideshowBob44]

@@8M0US Not me but new people who get a PS5 are gonna have a lot of choice and its gonna push prices down, competition is always good.

[@8M0US]

@@SideshowBob44 All I am saying is that Microsoft developed theirs to comply with their specs and made it easy. Sony did not. Is there competition in the SSD market, surely, but will all of them work in the PS5? All I know, the Seagate was easy to buy, easy to install, is as fast as what is in the XBox, and I hardly had to do a thing.

[@kevincockburn2228]

I know the ps5 solution is just. Way too hard. For Xbox users 😂

[@DaveSimonH]

For anyone interested in how moving data between PS5 drives compares to PS4, I recently upgraded my base PS4's 'extended storage' to a 4TB Seagate One Touch (price dipped about 20% in August), to test it I was tracking the transfer speeds. So I was doing a lot of copying back and forth as you can't connect both at once to upgrade drives, you have to use internal as middleman to move data between them. From my old 1TB USB HDD (stock PS4 HDD moved to an Orico enclosure) to internal (1TB SSD) then onto the 4TB, I would move data in chunks of up around 200GB and the MB/s were: 1TB USB HDD to 1TB SSD internal (Crucial MX500) - 73.63MB/s to 86.59MB/s (latter was Uncharted 4, 62.41GB in 12m18s) 1TB SSD to 4TB USB HDD - 76.02MB/s to 91.21MB/s (latter was Mass Effect LE & GT Sport, 214GB in 40m2.33s) 4TB USB HDD to 1TB SSD - 93.86MB/s to 94.15MB/s (former was Death Stranding, 47.94GB in 8m43s) I also did a quick test of load times on 'Death Stranding', comparing my original internal 1TB HDD vs internal SSD vs 4TB HDD. Unfortunately my original save was overwritten, but I re-tested SSD with new save vs 4TB USB (although all tested at game version 1.12). From game menu to in-game: 1TB HDD internal (old save) - 66.19s 1TB SSD internal (old save) - 36.81s 1TB SSD internal (new save) - 36.35s 4TB USB HDD (new save) - 62.14s While I will generally move games I'm actively playing onto the SSD, its good to know that I could play directly off the HDD and have a similar experience to a stock internal HDD.

[@IshanPOP]

Ratio

[@jairocolombo4410]

Boy... If i want read, o will take a book 😂

[@Prisoner_ksc2-303]

One thing you guys didn't mentioned (or maybe didn't thought about it) is that any 250GB drive model in general is the slowest in writing capabilities, and the SN750 SE falls into the same issue: 250GB has a 1000 MB/s writing speed, for the 500GB model is 2000 MB/s, and for the 1TB one is 2830MB/s... The SN850 you guys are using is the 1TB model, so it's technically the fastest between the other SN850 models... EDIT: the SN750 SE 250GB model is also the slowest in reading speed compared to the other two models: 3200MB/s VS 3600 MB/s (500GB/1TB)

[@themightyant.]

He mentions this around 3:02

[@Prisoner_ksc2-303]

@@themightyant. thanks for pointing out, but he mentions only reading speed, not writing

[@ishJJx3]

Very useful information, thanks for providing this study! The recommendations seem to be for the sake of future-proofing performance for PS5 exclusive developments that may eventually utilize this read speed. Since a drive like the SN 750 SE is so affordable, it seems fair to invest in one for games that may not be impacted-- which is every game at this moment. There's no telling what PlayStation Studios will bring us in the future, but for those that want to be fully prepared, it is still a smart move to purchase a drive that meets their performance recommendations. Love your content DF, I've been here for a decade now, here's to another 🎈

[@evp159]

Yea but they said ratchet and clank could only be done with the magical ssd. I'm sooo confused

[@tonyungfat]

@@evp159 yea.... I'm confused also? They lied again. I really think rnc could have been on the ps4 now....

[@strangestecho5088]

@@tonyungfat So because the game will run on a drive with 3200mb/s performance and a custom decompression chip, you are now suggesting that it will run on a 100mb/s mechanical drive and decompression from downclocked Jaguar cores. Uhuh.

[@tonyungfat]

@@strangestecho5088 hey I would rather listen to the developer who said this could be achieved on a ps4 also instead of a random KZbin like you. We clearly see that this can be achieved on slower hardware which Sony said wasn't possible.... and its keeping up with the "magical" ssd also.... I don't even notice a difference.... this could've been on Xbox with better resolution....

[@strangestecho5088]

​ @tonyungfat Oh you mean that guy who makes Lego games. Not exactly cutting edge. Also, he was speaking in very generalist terms about the gameplay concepts, not arguing that Rift Apart could be ported as is. The game would have had been built from the ground up with a PS4 version in mind, and there would have been a lot of compromises that would have made it a substantially worse game on PS5, not to mention a substantial increase in development time.

[@JFinns]

Got an SN850 to put in my PC next month for a clean Windows 11 install. Gonna be beast for gaming.

[@joshuaewalker]

My motherboard supports 2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 drives with RAID and I'm waiting on 2 2TB Samsung 980 PRO's from B&H. They were on sale for $329 each; couldn't pass it up! After tax it put the price just under 18¢ per GB. It's been 10 years since my last PC build and boy have things changed! My old desktop (which still runs great btw) was top-of-the-line at the end of 2010 but runs DDR2 RAM. DDR2! Lol

[@JFinns]

@@joshuaewalker Yea I got my 1TB SN850 on sale for $180 on amazon two weeks ago. Felt like a great deal. Just waiting to swap it in for a Win11 clean install next month.

[@DC3Refom]

I got a brand newsn850; 2tb model two months ago for £216

[@PenguinYayOne]

Oh no, I wrote a pretty long comment about the 6.5GB/s M.2 upper limit of the PS5 but KZbin ate it :( In a nutshell: The M.2 connector is not directly wired to the APU but it is connected to the custom SSD controller which communicates with the APU through 4 lanes. The SSD controller also acts as a southbridge, communicating with the Wifi/BT controller, LAN controller, and Bluray drive. So the PCI-e 4.0 x4 lanes are shared with the internal SSD, M.2 SSD and various I/O hence the limit. And the gen 4x4 connection on the PS5 probably has a theoretical limit of 7.0GB/s since Mark Cerny had a slide in his presentation mentioning this limit (even though the theoretical limit should be 7.88GB/s).

[@nathansstuff1547]

It's almost like all the talk of that game only working on PS5 was marketing talk.

[@redscorpion9325]

I figured the Game only needed SSD,I knew it never used between 5000 to 7000 SSD Speed

[@Shadowespeon17]

Will you be reviewing the Sabrent PS5 Heatsink cover when it's released next month?

[@xandersore3442]

Good to know! I'll probably pick one of these up later this year as my initial expandable storage drive, and if it becomes too slow for later games I'll just transfer it into my PC and buy a new one.

[@joshuaewalker]

Considering the cost per gigabyte for the smaller drive that would be a total waste of time, effort, and money. There's practically zero reason to buy that smaller drive other than no other drive is available and you needed it right away. The 1TB SN850 will likely be plenty of storage for the life of the PS5 and even if you did run out of storage and wanted to upgrade in the future the SN850 would actually be useful to remove from the PS5 and use in a PC.

[@xandersore3442]

@@joshuaewalker 1TB SN750 SE is $129, on sale for $100 every so often. 1TB SN850 is in the $180-200 range and other offerings cost even more. I’m on a limited budget when it comes to games and gaming hardware, and I will be for the next few years so cost per gigabyte is important to me. And the SN750 SE will still be fine for me on PC in 3-4 years because I really don’t care about the loading speed differences going from Gen 3 to Gen 4. Gen 3 speeds are perfectly fine for me on PC.

[@josho1217]

@@xandersore3442 get a job

[@xxlive4eatingxx275]

@@xandersore3442 I'm also on a limited budget and got a 500GB Samsung 980 Pro for 75€ on Amazon and bought a separate heat sink. (Has the same specs as the SN850) I don't know if you actually need the full TB, but that's also an option. You also have the full 500GB available on PS5. Together wit the internal storage that's 1.1 TB, which I find plenty for the foreseeable future.

[@danbooke2001]

@@josho1217 lmaooooo

[@soldier91]

This was a great video. it was entertaining while being informative and incredibly thorough.

[@SjoerdvanGestel]

Gamehut already explained that the reasoning given for the need of the ps5 SSD to achive rachet and clank's world were just (mostly) overblown marketing speak. This kinda proofs it.

[@reaux1560]

I thnk the use of the SSD is mainly used because the ps4 and ps5 don't have enough memory to keep game buffers loaded up.

[@nikola5413]

It is crazy how small a difference there is between loading times in video games running on a SATA SSD vs M.2 SSD, so i was pretty sure it was just marketing. They didn't invent anything new, but they were sure making it look like they were.

[@XchillX]

Could be. But i think the SSD requirements maybe are just future proof

[@635574]

Real speed tests show the internal ssd is much worse at writes than available drives. They definitely over optimized. But how about the spider man load speeds? Why doesnt everyone test them anymore?

[@HAL-9000.]

@@XchillX ding ding ding

[@drewngure]

This is exactly the video I was looking for! Very helpful channel!😊

[@ps3customgamer]

Still gutted Digital foundry didn’t do testing on the new ps5 backwards compatibility update for assassins creed odyssey

[@nobunaga8514]

The Internal SSD could be writing the share video in the background as well as some system services. It is possible that the external drive has less overhead to do in the first place.

[@Aaron-zl5gq]

All this tells me was why go through all that work hyping up and creating a over kill built in SSD when both ends of the spectrum of consumer SSDs work just fine

[@choatus]

Marketing BS and Hype sells consoles to idiots who have no clue about this stuff.

[@kevinkev1530]

Facts

[@flyderay]

marketing fluff

[@xaviermalcolm8481]

"work just fine" for now.. As was pointed out in the video, R&C is obviously not the most demanding game (in terms of IO) that *will ever* be made for the PS5. Having more is always better than having less, so it doesn't make sense to complain about the PS5 having more IO capability.

[@XchillX]

I think they are just future proof

[@MauR1CEnl]

I bought the sn850 with heatsink. And I am very happy with it. 😇😊

[@montygill2835]

Cool 😎

[@TheRedRaven_]

Should of saved up an bought a PC.

[@Snarfles_]

@@TheRedRaven_ Why?

[@joshuaewalker]

What size SN850 did you buy?

[@juliothom2408]

So, R&C DOESN'T need the "Magical" PS5 SSD to run? Really? There will be some hurt feelings over this.....

[@warhammer2162]

Hi Rich, I've just stopped patreon for a while, I'm not wealthy and realised if I make one larger payment per year to your channel I can get more access to content than regular small payments I've been making. The DF team always do great work, I'll be back. (Amended: (I'm not wealthy) replaced ( I̶'̶m̶ ̶p̶o̶o̶r̶ )). Thanks for the thoughtful offers below though not required, lol, I just shop at Lidl not M&S.

[@nickhornby704]

Drop me a PM, and I'll see if I can hook you up for a bit

[@EddiXP]

Great community here. Good on you for priorities. Commendable these days with how impulsive people are these days.

[@GoodlyPenguin]

Drop me a PM and your money, I'll see what I can do

[@joelmatchett6599]

Idk how anyone can dislike a Digital Foundry video

[@kylerclarke2689]

They do amazing work!

[@SpencersStuffTV]

I imagine Sony is recommending that speed drive for games that come out later. I doubt the current titles will be as strenuous as what we see a couple years from now

[@kanpeki3033]

They are marketing current titles as if they are only possible on those drives

[@weaverquest]

That technical director from Insomniac DF reviewed did say they still had more performance they could tap into in the future.

[@weaverquest]

@@kanpeki3033 It is the low level API and the custom I/O block of PS5 that is doing most of the magic not necessarily the raw speed of the drive itself.

[@gamegodtre141]

It won't matter..... Considering load speeds for multiplats are around a few secs longer on Xbox then ps the returns are diminished compared to a physical to ssd

[@kanpeki3033]

@@weaverquest if that were true they would have gone for a more cost effective drive. There’s no magic here

[@MOGGYANGRYgrrr]

I read somewhere that ratchet and clank dimensional jumps could even be done on the ps4 without the help of an SSD

[@robreich6881]

This whole braindead console fanboy discussion was always a lie. Even the internal storage in the PS5 is no replacement for RAM. Going from 3GB/s to 6GB/s is going to be irrelevant for a long time.

[@ryanazarko]

I put an even slower s50 lite in my ps5 that benchmarked at 2700MB/s and it's fine. multiplatform games will have to be built around XSX external storage which only has 2 pcie lanes anyway

[@flimermithrandir]

Then there is something clearly wrong with your SSD. It should be around 3800 i think. Didnt look it up. Thats a Number from my Memory. But it shoukd be around that. More than 3000 for sure.

[@jgx11]

I had s50 lite rated 2700mb per second by ps5 as well. I did some research, and found people getting above 3300mb rate by ps5. I returned mine and ordered another s50 lite. I don't know if 2700 is a normal number for this ssd.

[@griffgames9538]

*The PS5's custom I/O hardware does so much of the heavy lifting* in the storage spec. It's the key ingredient. Much like Velocity Architecture keeps the Series X/S storage system blazing along. ... and PC gamers will also need to own builds with full DirectStorage support to enjoy intense high end SSD performance in games designed for it.

[@dimitarbelchev3062]

Even without directstorage on pc loading times in AAA games is not noticeable. Probably because of the CPU and GPU. The only games that will benefit in my opinion are those pesky strategy games.

[@griffgames9538]

@@dimitarbelchev3062 Yes, but you're thinking about traditional '1-time loads' in games, save reloads, etc. Those games do not have a fast SSD + DS min spec. Those benefits are passive. The games were not designed/programmed to fully lean on superfast storage. Instead, think about future titles that feature core game design that REQUIRES a fast SSD + DirectStorage. Hard min spec. Moment-to-moment gameplay and traversal dependency. That's where we're headed. Folks need to think beyond old paradigms like 'booting the game quickly' or 'loading the map' etc. when it comes to next-gen storage capabilities. Game design itself will change.

[@javedalam5549]

@@griffgames9538 Thank you for being someone with a brain that isn't stuck in the last generation of consoles which had HDDs.

[@choatus]

@@griffgames9538 There are already games that have this on PC, full sized open worlds with no loading screens. Data is streamed in and works best if you have a fast ssd. This idea is nothing ground breaking, consoles are still behind the curve by some way.

[@griffgames9538]

@@choatus They do not impose a fast SSD + DS min spec, and thus were never designed towards that. Thus making them an old paradigm example, no matter how clever their world streaming algorithms. If you applied those same techniques but with a hard default fast SSD/IO spec, you can imagine the difference in complexity, dynamic events, you name it.

[@Rcad76]

Can confirm the 1 TB SN750 maxes out around 3400 MB/S in Crystal Disk Mark on an X570/5800X/Windows 11. At first i thought maybe the drive is just over performing and Sony's benchmark is fine. Then Remembered I have that drive in my PC so ran a test. Video was a little long winded but hey I know more now than before I watched it :)

[@cesarpelaez6326]

Could over perform becouse of the internal SSD controller shared with SSD port.

[@themightyant.]

Not a 1:1 test though. Could perform better under certain (non-PC) conditions.

[@alexatkin]

@@themightyant. Exactly. PC is using the CPU to move the data, the PS5 I'd expect to be tested using the SSD controller to move data just like a game would, straight into RAM bypassing the CPU entirely. Removing the CPU bottleneck could very well account for the performance difference here.

[@piccadillycircus9416]

This whole SSD thing Is a scam from Sony . Of course any gen4 nvme drive should work fine with Sony’s ps5 . After all those speeds are absolutely fine for top end gaming PC’s packing much more juice than ps5 and running same games as ps5 just much better . Complete scam to sell these super fast SSD’s for overpriced price .

[@tears2040]

Xbox around 2-3000 rated , any drive in the PS5 around this should be fine as well. These are still extremely fast

[@lenoirx]

Are you Sony to confirm this? Or this game's developers?

[@TaimatCR]

You should revisit this at the end of the generation when, hopefully, games take better advantage of the ssd speeds and see if there's any difference

[@knightshifter2201]

SSD’s have been in PC for a long time so probably not It’s really a bunch of Sony PR bullshit talk making it to be something it’s really not is it a hell of a lot faster than Last generation of course it is.

[@GeneralKenobi69420]

You don't need to wait years, just wait for Wu Kong (AKA the first commercial AAA game to use UE5 and Nanite). I bet the results are gonna be much more interesting

[@leekeogh7151]

@@knightshifter2201 the reason why SSDs haven't been fully utilised in games on PC is because they have to be built to run on the lowest common denominator (PS4 and Xbox One HDDs) that's why a minimum spec matters

[@Tyrantlizardking52]

SSD literally do nothing but give you much faster read and write speeds so it will only affect load times no impact at all on performance and resolution. PC has been using SSD for the past decade and have ones faster than the one the PS5 has its literally the equivalent to the “blast processing” sega used marketing for

[@batmangovno]

And what? Load a little faster? Storage isn't some kind of "power of the Cell", the only way you make it faster is by loading smaller chunks of assets.

[@shredenvain7]

Its already been stated by some Game Devs that Ratchet and Clank doesnt rely on the ssd anywhere near what insomniac says.

[@Expressionistix]

Coding Secrets explained in a video that this game could easily be achieved on a PS3. Preloading short predetermined levels that have very little open world freedom does not require a super fast SSD. Hell I played a racer game back in the 90’s that streamed the entire level off of a CD-ROM.

[@samfkt]

@@Expressionistix which game you mean? Also, there are games like Splitgate....

[@cody9883]

I really want someone to test Ratchet and Clank using a HDD just to see how it performs, I'm guessing there is enough RAM that you wouldn't see much of a change.

[@JrR07]

@@cody9883 you cant run it using an hdd, you can only store it on the hdd

[@cody9883]

@@JrR07 You cant run it because the PS5 wont allow it, not because the HDD isn't capable of running it.

[@rabihk6383]

So I think the bottle neck is cpu speed. Any PCIe 4.0 SSD should suffice for all games all of the generation. CPU speed is what matters here

[@Louback86]

and IOPS. Maybe that explains why microsoft choose to use 2 lanes pcie gen 4 ssds on xbox and have comparable performance in game.

[@mepm]

Makes you wonder if they could of just allowed Gen3 nvme drives anyway? Surely something like a 970 pro running @ 3500 would of been fast enough? I wonder how nvme external SSDs would perform as USB 3.1 Gen2 can support up to 10 Gbps?

[@sucreelbarbaro2138]

XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB Gen4 is even a better option, it costs $205, it has a heatsink already installed, it's just a plug and play option. The difference between S50 and the internal drive are around 1 to max 2 second of difference in loading times. Is the best option right now.

[@MirelRC]

I bet that even a Gen 3 would've worked pretty much the same.

[@oror3751]

I bet Sata SSD would work the same especially those with Dram(which are much better than Gen 4 QLC dramless SSD )

[@bornakovac7857]

Have you tried the 750SE on the new matrix unreal 5 tech demo?

[@flameguy21]

Wow, it's almost disappointing how little of a difference there is.

[@microgamestation]

It's a good thing that the minimum spec performs well.

[@Rocksteady72a]

Shouldn't it be a positive that the PS5 is optimized enough to not bottleneck under less-than-ideals?

[@michaelmoise2660]

@@Rocksteady72a or maybe ssd doesn't matter that much for games it's storage

[@flameguy21]

@@Rocksteady72a yeah but sometimes you just want to see things break beyond recognition

[@oror3751]

@@flameguy21 it's all about PCs then ...Consoles built for budget price,they can't afford the best tech...

[@spacemanjupiter]

lmao, can we say Killzone 2005 trailer? CELL processor? EMOTION Engine? PS2 can launch nuclear missiles? Seriously, people old enough to remember all this marketing BS were not at all fooled by the SSD hype of the PS5. Just more of the same, different generation. Nothing truly takes advantage of these crazy read/write speeds and it probably won't change much through this generation no matter what platform you are on. It's completely new to consoles and devs are just happy having average SSD speeds to play around with. I wouldn't be surprised if a lowly 500MB/s Sata SSD could do most if not all of what consoles are doing right now with their SSD's quite sufficiently. I'm lucky enough to own a PS5 and XSX. So far there isn't one that is more responsive or that does anything the other can't do regarding storage and I/O. So far they are incredibly similar in all areas (CPU, GPU, I/O). If we do eventually see a disparity between the GPUs or the I/O it won't be until later in the generation.

[@steel5897]

So once again, PS5 SSD speeds are overkill to the point you don't need the best of the best. Storage is pretty much a solved issue now. I'm just glad we're basically back to N64 load times again, after two and a half decades!

[@simonwest80]

100% - it's nice on paper, but it's gonna take close to the whole generation for devolpers to utilise the drives properly. However, it was needed so developers would use it, so sort of a necessary evil.

[@awesomeferret]

@@simonwest80 and since they don't actually have to do that to make great games, it will probably take at least an entire console generation, if not a decade or more, thus arguably defeating the purpose of it being there at all (you gotta start sometime though, I guess). Most games just have no reason to need fast storage, and that won't change in the near future, especially with indie games.

[@simonwest80]

@@awesomeferret yep and on top of that, we may not see the benefits as we look more towards cloud gaming (I honestly believe this is the last below TV Xbox), so yes we should see "better" design practices as let's be honest these drives will only get exponentially faster, to the point when in 2/3 years time we will be laughing at the "pathetic" gen 4 drives in the PS5 and Xbox.

[@awesomeferret]

@@simonwest80 2 to 3 years time? Try a decade at least, haha. It plateaued on PC almost a decade ago (remember, the average person gets no benefit at all from anything faster than a SATA SSD). And cloud gaming has a long long way to go. Pretending that it's anywhere near mainstream use is to be objectively out of touch. Besides, people like to own things, it's natural. If vinyl can outsell CDs, consoles as we know it may very well be around for a decade or more. The big exception would be the optical drive. It's very anti consumer and condescending, but it's also inevitable: I do think this may be the last console generation with optical drives.

[@simonwest80]

@@awesomeferret I'm talking cutting edge my friend, I know it takes longer for the masses, but the PS5 cutting edge drive is almost out of date and I am guessing we will comfortably seeing speeds of 10k by start of next year and 15-20 by the end, unless of course we come up against the hard stop like the CPUs, but then I'm guessing we will use the same solution - stack em!

[@willian4428]

aren't you guys going to review/analyse/compare Tales of Arise?

[@lulkLogan]

No, because that's the dumbest name for a game since Bravely Default

[@Bryan-T]

And if hey weren't denying the use of 3.0 drives, you'd see a similar story. You don't need 6000 MB speeds for a game.

[@unclesam7853]

This is still start of the generation games that come later in the gen will push the SSD to its utmost limits and will likely not run on anything slower than 5.5gb/s This is why sony is recommending an SSD as fast as the internal drive or even faster because future games will push the SSD to its limits

[@crisbernabe2866]

Keyword. Yet. Everyone knows the first 3 years of games dont really take advantage the hardware. They started their development on PS4, then ported to PS5 dev kits.

[@MisterLindsay]

Good 3.0 drives would be fine, but opening up 3.0 would include some much worse drives where you might start seeing legitimate gameplay issues.

[@unclesam7853]

@@crisbernabe2866yeah by 2023 games are gonna be made with level designs that only work on ssd's faster than the internal one People don't realise that this is just the start of the gen(compare killzone shadowfall to God of war), this game also takes full advantage of the kraken hardware decompression on ps5 which can push the speed to 17gb/s, hence this game might not work on pc ssd's let alone a PCIe gen 3 seriesX ssd

[@TurnaboutAdam]

I hope you do a follow up showing the PC version on the slowest drives possible!

[@kevinabanto]

We already have the pc version of miles morales

[@TurnaboutAdam]

@@kevinabanto doesn’t use the ps5 ssd to great effect.

[@madfinntech]

I'd want to see what happens if you fill the drive to a brim like most users would do and how it does in that situation!

[@ONESIXTHCAVE]

Considering another game designer stated that ratchet & clank could easily run on PS4 and that the SSD is not required to run the game then it’s clear the SSD that PS5 are pushing maybe isn’t the hail mary it’s supposed to be yet. Load times into games is great but while running the ssd might not be as pivotal as sony claim. Not yet anyway…

[@kevincockburn2228]

What kind of concessions do you think would be needed to run ps5 r&c on PS4? Please. Don't be ridiculous.

[@theghostofpennsylvania_11]

Just look at Rachet and Clank on PS3 then come back and compare. There is no way in hell PS3 can run Rachet and Clank Rift Apart. Even PS4 can't run it. That's why it's not cross gen🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@theghostofpennsylvania_11]

PS5's SSD speeds are just ahead of it's time. Great job Sony.

[@Whrizler68]

@@theghostofpennsylvania_11 Wake up kido 🤔

[@theghostofpennsylvania_11]

@@Whrizler68 You Xbots are still sleeping because nothing to play but Gamepass last gen games.😁🤣

[@zubochonk9205]

Seems that the earlier claims that these dimension Pockets are doable in older hardware has some water on it. Still I think the SSD is the best upgrade in these Next Gen systems as the loading times were cut significantly.

[@ErichToven]

Its definitely doable on older hardware. And without making any changes I suspect. The level begins streaming in as you approach the portal not when you enter it.

[@ErichToven]

If you walk to far away the level data then goes to a Garbage collection process.

[@zubochonk9205]

@@ErichToven yep it seems so if that's the case its like a blast processing scenario for marketing the PS5.

[@tipoomaster]

One could conceivably put a fresh drive in the PS5, run the game on it, then bring the drive back to PC to check the TBW numbers on it to see how much the game is actually writing over a certain timespan. Not perfect but could get us in the right city block.

[@titaniumweasel]

I was under the impression that the PS5's custom controller would write directly, or as directly as possible, to the memory chips on the SSD so the external drive would get the same advanced compression features as the internal drive. Could that be the cause of the disparity between the advertised write speeds of the drives and the actual performance in the PS5?

[@manuel0578]

Maybe the benchmark read speed considers the hardware decompression performance boost

[@alexatkin]

I don't think so as that's how its supposed to get 7GB/s+ from a 5GB/s SSD.

[@ltl-cx9xs]

So, this was possible on THE Xbox aferall, good to know. It uses the same flash controller even.

[@Juicersen]

A Sony developer on the MarlonGamingNation channel said this even before the consoles came out. Since Marlon is a Sony fanboy he looked visibly disappointed lmao

[@Louback86]

I suspect that IOPS is the real bottleneck when it comes to games running on these new gen 4 SSDs, not the throughput. Maybe for that reason multiplatform games load and run similar on the xbox series and the ps5, even with double the throughput that the ps5 ssd have comparing to xbox.

[@goggy8293]

This is the first game that was developed on the first PS5 devkits some 2-3 years ago. It does not use the full potential of the PS5 drive. It's no secret that 3 years ago Insomniac did not know the latest PS5 specification.

[@paulogazolla7488]

Word on the street is that the next CoD box option will come in this SSD. So we won't regret buying it.

[@lwolf1285]

I put in a T-force Carder A440 2tb. It fit with the big" heatsink and it seems to load faster then the internal, and smoother.

[@PurushaDesa]

I still wouldn’t bother. I only plan on installing an upgrade once and I might as well futureproof against games toward the middle and end of the generation genuinely pushing the console’s performance.

[@TheSergio1021]

Didnt even realize the system updated already rolled out, thanks DF!

[@goblinslayer5404]

called it before the consoles were even released, always suspected that a good gen3 drive would be enough. now i did kinda suspect that they might use gen3 drives, but they did end up using gen4 drives, but in Microsoft's case they used gen4 drives at only x2 lanes, so like WHATS THE POINT OF GOING GEN4 IF ITS GOING TO RUN AT GEN 3 X4 SPEEDS??? makes it seem like marketing bs. as for the ps5, well, they didnt really need to limit their requirements to gen 4 only, a good gen 3 drive will either be on par with the SN 750 SE or beat it (especially in transfer speeds, cz dramless). i don't actually follow up with consoles much and this is just a first look, so do correct me if im wrong about something.

[@sokol5805]

So only when you move things around you notice something. In gameplay nothing.

[@googlewolly]

No surprise. Once you're actually using any modern SSD, you get such diminishing returns to the point where there's virtually no difference. That's why people are so silly for buying overpriced NVMe SSDs for PCs, as SATA SSDs load games no slower. This is with respect to game-load times. Of course, transfering large files is the one thing that NVMe SSDs actually do excel at.

[@googlewolly]

@Ramzan How? What do smaller builds have to do with anything? NVMe SSDs have nothing to do with form factor. The form factor is m.2, and SATA SSDS also come in that.

[@EDcaseNO]

well, pcie 3 nvme is pretty much the same price as ssd, if not cheaper (eg, 1tb ssd £80, 1tb nvme £70 on amazon atm). pcie4 will come down in price over time too. games are not coded to take advantage of the fastest storage on the market. this too, will change... in the future.

[@bullet759]

That because PC SSDs are multitasking SSD they not have architecture behind them to utilize the true potential, Nvidia leadership Jansen say that they going to bring the RTX I/O to all Nvidia GPUs in the future as PS5 doing with their SSD, when PC SSD will utilize for gaming experience it will be a big difference

[@googlewolly]

@@EDcaseNO True. NVMe have come down a lot in price. Back in the day, though, people still bought them for gaming, and it was a waste of money.

[@googlewolly]

@@bullet759 Yeah, we'll see. I hope that we can see the next big leap in storage.

[@aaliguy9986]

@7:57 Cheapo! lol. I love Richard :D

[@oledevo]

I'll install the drive on my PC and see if it speeds up the video.

[@friedpuddycatgamer4682]

A good thing to remember, there isn't a game engine that takes full advantage of the full speed on the PS5. I'm not just talking SSD speeds. Nothing on any system including PC touches the PS5 I/0 System. It's just on another level.

[@coleG112]

I’ll always be reminded of the Ratchet dev who mentioned to DF that they had to rewrite the entire engine multiple times just to keep up with the performance of the storage solutions lol

[@choatus]

So when that slower nvme drive loaded the game faster than the internal drive, what lvl was that on? -42? :D wow fanboys crack me up AHAHAHAHA

[@iseptimus]

Have the 980Pro @7000MB/s. PS5 reports that it only does 5700. Which is BS. The PS5 is as accurate at testing SSD speed as it is at testing internet speed (1gbit link and PS5 only ever reports 200, Xbox reports 600 and Steam completely maxes it at over 1000Mbits).

[@cmdr101z8]

It’s pretty accurate at testing internet speed for me

[@flimermithrandir]

You can try something… Update the SSD with on an PC. I heard some Rumors that this can Fix your Speeds. And another Thing… Many Companys now do change everything from their SSD. Linus Tech Tips did test this recently. I dont know which one but he did find out… the newest one had nothing the same like the Original one. Everything Changed. DRAM. NAND. Controller. And everything worse. So i dont know. I am not saying thats or the other Thing happened to you but… It could be as well that you got scammed and Sony isnt the Issue here. Sorry.

[@MusaTheGamer]

Can you do a review of the sabrent heatsink Vs the heatsink you're using in the video?

[@ImTheHenster]

wd black or seagate only....or maybe the crucial p5 plus (cheap)

[@LucidSnapshots]

Correct me if im wrong but I dont think any games us DMA on the PS5 yet. So essentially they should be able to run on an old school 5400rpm HDD with the only impact being longer loading times. The only reason for Sony to have those minimum specs is for future use if this tech where even then due to games being developed for PC and XBOX as well they need to take into consideration the slowest PCIe 4 drives available and those would need to be able to run the game.

[@crimsondecade7420]

I think it would be useful for you to benchmark these on PC for speed comparison to the PS5 testing. Some of these NVME's may be faster then their listed speed because their perfromance decreases as they heat up so it can be faster for short periods of time until they get to temperture.

[@phil_75]

I can't believe they didn't do this!

[@mjayjoseph855]

Interesting stuff 🤔 thank you DF for y'all professional analysis.

[@rlac1000]

I missed a quick check on the drives on PCs just to make sure they actually perform like the spec. Maybe the lower end drive did actually hit 5000mbps+ on some conditions

[@Darkreaper71]

Is it possible that WD could've underrated the cheaper SSD to upsell the black SSD? So when the ps5 benchmarks it, it reads as higher than rated?

[@alexatkin]

I'd imagine they advertised its peak speed when used in a PC having the CPU move the data around. On the PS5 I'd expect it be testing using the SSD controller to move the data directly into RAM without the CPU, just like PS5 games would do. Its possible removing that bottleneck does indeed allow it to perform much faster.

[@MaxIronsThird]

The PS5's SSD just cares about reading, not writing, which makes sense. But it seems the only difference in games from Series X's SSD and PS5's SSD would be a couple of seconds loading differences and nothing actually in game, not even when streaming assets. Maybe Sony went a bit too hard on SSD.

[@tonyungfat]

Yeah thats what I was thinking. So the only spec that ps5 has thats better than the Xbox series x doesn't really matter much.......

[@choatus]

@@tonyungfat Yup

[@Jpilgrim30]

Yup. Just marketing BS and nothing more

[@cyrilA.]

R&C could also run fine on PC and Series X/S 🤷‍♂️

[@DaRkLoRd-rc5yu]

That's because developers are still treating this current gen as if they were making games for the ps4. When unreal engine 5 comes into the main stream it'll be alot easier to go crazy with asset streaming and doing more impressive stuff with dense open world environments that you can travel through at speed.

[@AKA-Latromi]

I would be interested in a video comparing the 500gb and 1 or 2TB 980 Pro drives by Samsung. It appears that the benchmark for the 250/500gb 980 Pro is over 6000 but the larger 1 and 2 TB drives rarely benchmark much over 5500. I really want to know if this is just a benchmark display bug or if those larger drives really are performing more poorly for PS5.

[@Kreeftleeft]

After updating the firmware on my 980 pro 1TB the speeds have gone up to 6600MB/s, however I saw big pop-in in cutscenes from the prologue in horizon forbidden west. Not sure if this drive is really fast enough with random read/write-ops or if it's the game itself.

[@AKA-Latromi]

@@Kreeftleeft I'd really like to know if the benchmark holds up to real world use though. After all, in this video, the PS5 benchmark shows just how unreliable it can be. I'd really like to know if I'm getting significant speed changes by updating firmware or if it's completely negligible. (I don't have a PC so in my case... I may have to go to a computer repair store for assistance.)

[@Kreeftleeft]

@@AKA-Latromi I have the same drive in my new system and it consistently reads at the same speeds as on my ps5, about 6700 MB/s and that was before the firmware upgrade. Also the iops benchmarks are just as good or better than other similarly specced 1 TB drives available atm. So I think it had something to do with the game. Other games run very well too. A decent cooler is recommended though, as m2 drives get pretty hot at these speeds.

[@adeshlad1070]

First Coding Secrets exposed Sony's SSD claims that game is not possible with PS5 ssd. And now see the game running perfectly fine on a drive that is half of recommended speed.

[@Michael019x]

Because future games will be built with those speeds in mind. Why dont people understand this? Use ur brain

[@VTorner]

@@Michael019x Use yours. You're distorting what he's saying. Sony said this specific game would be impossible without the overhyped SSD. Learn to read fanboy.

[@Michael019x]

@@VTorner i can already taste your salty tears lmfao

[@adeshlad1070]

@@Michael019x lmao, fanboys are still delusional. You still believe, Ssd is important even though we are proofs that it is not. Why don't you use your brain cells.

[@LynxofCP]

I can't help but wonder if the internal benchmark is a metric of actual read speeds, or if it's how quickly it uncompressed X gigabytes of data through the dedicated compression subsystem. Because if that yields a 200% loading time, then the numbers you saw would make sense. On the flip side, the fact that you didn't see double the SN850's numbers would potentially be worrying because that would imply that you've just seen the maximum limit of what the decompression subsystem hardware is capable of, and further improvements in NVMe storage won't yield any greater results than what we already have access to today.

[@javedalam5549]

Has the speed of this drive been tested on PC?

[@AndersHass]

Ye it would have been nice if they did a proper speed test of the SSD to clearly show the issues with Sony's (and also show that it isn't an SSD that could suddenly perform way better than advertised)

[@themightyant.]

Yes but it’s not a 1:1 test. Someone here got only 3400Mb/s on crystal mark. BUT on pc it may be slower due to SSD sharing controller, may not be the case on PS5. We just don’t know.

[@javedalam5549]

@@themightyant. Honestly, I even wonder about manufacturer set limitations, simply due to the economy of scale, and not being required to create different architectures by just capping the speed. Create one drive and cap the specs with different names, and you've got a much more proficient assembly line than making several different ones. It's possible that Sony didn't get the memo on the speed cap.

[@gssuper1438]

So as long as you're not moving games back and forth, its fine?

[@jaxsgameplayvideos]

Of course the slowest NVMe SSD is fast enough! Only some Sony hardcore fanboys believed that "Power Of The SSD" nonsense. I remember all that bull****! Games couldn't run on PC, PS4 or Xbox, because the PS5 SSD is so much faster, and GEN 3 SSDs on PC couldn't run those games, because they are too slow. "The Power of the PS5 SSD gives you more fps"! etc... 🤦🏽‍♂️ And now? PS5 games are coming on PS4. The slowest NVMe SSD is totally fine, and i bet a regular SATA SSD would still perform the same way. It's always marketing, but people believe everything these days. 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@Attbak]

Very clever move using in game fast travel to cary out the test ! And it put big smile on my face when it was pointed out , that these games not stressing the system yet ! I was thinking the same thing , just a couple seconds before , and then i heard ! Richard , you are the best sir! Keep it coming!