Sony has enabled (Beta) the expansion slot for your PS5 Storage - PCIe Gen4x4

[Pitboy64]

Summary

Not sure if someone else posted this ... I tried scrolling
Soo ... who wants to drop an PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe ... 4TB into their Playstation?
Discuss

 

Quotes

Quote

Interface: PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 NVMe SSD

Capacity: 250GB – 4TB

Cooling structure: Requires effective heat dissipation / cooling structure / heatsink. Single-sided format, or double-sided format.

Sequential read speed: 5,500MB/s or faster is recommended

Module width: 22mm width (25mm width is not supported)

Form Factor: M.2 type 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110.
Socket type: Socket 3 (Key M)

Total size including cooling structure:
In millimeters: smaller than 110mm (L) x 25mm (W) x 11.25mm (H).
In inches: smaller than 4.33in (L) x 0.984 in (W) x 0.442in (H).

SEE: Sony link for full details.

 

My thoughts

As more NVMe SSD's come out, it looks like choices will eventually improve. 
I STRONGLY recommend looking into which to buy and (more important) which NOT to buy right now.

 

 

Sources

Sony 
https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/

Good article and attached video on which NVMe SSD's that will perform the best.
https://nascompares.com/2021/07/29/the-best-ssd-for-upgrading-your-ps5-storage-get-it-right-first-time/

[8tg]

I feel like it’s more of a marketing thing now, they probably could’ve done it with the PS4 ages ago, at least M.2 SATA but nvme was doable.

For games and stuff it’s not going to result in much of a difference over an m.2 sata ssd or just a decent regular sata ssd

[WhitetailAni]

I wonder how many people are going to try and stuff an M.2 to PCIe x16 slot adapter in there and try to run an RTX 3090 and fail?

[Pitboy64]

2 minutes ago, 8tg said:

I feel like it’s more of a marketing thing now, they probably could’ve done it with the PS4 ages ago, at least M.2 SATA but nvme was doable.

For games and stuff it’s not going to result in much of a difference over an m.2 sata ssd or just a decent regular sata ssd

Sonys announcement specifically says "M.2 SATA SSDs aren’t supported."
May not necessarily mean they will not work tho ...
I'm sure someone will test that at some point.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I wonder how many people are going to try and stuff an M.2 to PCIe x16 slot adapter in there and try to run an RTX 3090 and fail?

I expect a Dawid Does Tech Stuff video on this. (The guy who put a RTX 3080 ti in a conventional PCI slot)

[Salv8 (sam)]

3 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I wonder how many people are going to try and stuff an M.2 to PCIe x16 slot adapter in there and try to run an RTX 3090 and fail?

probably the same people who think console's aren't pc's.

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, Atridad said:

Wouldn't performance of GPU direct storage rely on a gen 4 SDD. I could only imagine the nightmare for Sony if people put slower drives in there and start asking "why game no wurk good?!?!?!".

Possibly. No matter what happens though, I will be testing my SX8200 Pro in my PS5. I'll just need to set my RAID 0 array up again, and move the games that really need an SSD to my 1TB P1 (no way is that ever going to be OK to use - unless the console benchmarks SSD and allocates it as PS4 games only).

[StDragon]

49 minutes ago, Pitboy64 said:

Sonys announcement specifically says "M.2 SATA SSDs aren’t supported."
May not necessarily mean they will not work tho ...
I'm sure someone will test that at some point.

SATA3 caps out at 600MB/s, so that's a no-go right there for streaming textures direct to the GPU as quick as possible.

[WkdPaul]

17 hours ago, 8tg said:

I feel like it’s more of a marketing thing now, they probably could’ve done it with the PS4 ages ago, at least M.2 SATA but nvme was doable.

For games and stuff it’s not going to result in much of a difference over an m.2 sata ssd or just a decent regular sata ssd

You've obviously never seen a PS5 in action. nvme storage and how Sony implemented it makes a HUGE difference in loading time. Even PS4 games running in PS5 compatibility mode benefit from it. On some games, 15-20 seconds loading screens don't even show up anymore. (though it is of note that even M.2 SSDs with speeds of 5500MB/s are slower than what Sony implemented on the PS5).

[Gohardgrandpa]

Can't wait to see the compatible drives selling out everywhere and being scalped

[DildorTheDecent]

Surprisingly based considering it's Sony.

[Pitboy64]

Feels weird, they actually screenshot my post here on Techlinked / Technews / Quickbits.
Musta liked how I formatted it.

 

[Bombastinator]

On 7/29/2021 at 4:46 PM, FakeKGB said:

I wonder how many people are going to try and stuff an M.2 to PCIe x16 slot adapter in there and try to run an RTX 3090 and fail?

Now I feel guilty for laughing at that.  

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, comander said:

Sony is using the drive in lieu of adding in more system RAM.

 

The way things are set up is that instead of pushing the most used blocks into RAM, there is a bias towards mainly placing SMALL blocks into RAM and streaming large blocks from the SSD where the SSD is fast enough to not hold the system back. 

 

This is actually somewhat sensible. RAM is great for doing lots of small operations very very quickly. NAND is relatively strong (for its price) at doing sequential operations on large blocks of data. If the SSD is fast enough to handle things that previously NEEDED to be in memory for a smooth experience, then you don't need as much RAM and you can instead focus on having faster RAM, faster SSDs and more SSD capacity. The only real downside is you'd need more CPU power... but Sony added in a co-processor JUST for data streaming. 

 

-----

 

If you're playing old PS4 games that aren't architected around the same assumptions as PS5 games, there's almost no point. If you're playing newer titles, it HELPS to have an nvme drive that can handle more IOPS and has a faster overall throughput. 

Sounds like the much anticipated change from sata to nvme is starting to actually move then.

[StDragon]

17 hours ago, comander said:

In a lot of cases, it's a chicken or the egg problem. 

ALL of the pieces need to be in place (hardware, firmware, OS, software, etc.). 

I'm curious to know if, and what, cross platform title would be released for both PS5 and PC that leverage streaming textures. The PS5 does its own thing, and for PC we have Direct Storage. Between the two different implementations, interesting to know from a developers perspective if there's much code needing to be changed between the two platforms. Or, if they just modify to the API and call it a day.

[Bombastinator]

I’ve been suggesting to people that if given the choice between a sata and m.2 drive for gaming they work off of price pick a single large sata drive unless an m.2 has better price/performance simply because a large sata can be easily retained as a storage when conversion is needed and m.2 drives are continuing to get bigger/faster/cheaper so holding out as long as possible on choosing a m.2 drive could result in a faster drive for less money.  Beating the consoles seems to be the only required maximum for gaming though as devs can’t make games that won’t work well on consoles because that market would get cut off.  I haven’t heard of that maximum being defined though.  Does this define that maximum?

Edited August 2, 2021 by Bombastinator

[porina]

19 hours ago, comander said:

In a lot of cases, it's a chicken or the egg problem. 

ALL of the pieces need to be in place (hardware, firmware, OS, software, etc.). 

One more problem on the PC side: enough of the user base has to have all that for it to be widely used. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. For a long time yet, game devs will not lock out the majority of people who will not have a new enough system to support it. Maybe it could be used in some kind of ultra-textures mode and the masses keep something closer to what we already have.

 

19 hours ago, comander said:

The hard part is essentially handling instances where the CPU (or an OS/file system that requires 10x the work) ends up being the bottleneck. For trying to do one small thing VERY fast, this is often the case. For desktop PCs I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years there's dedicated hardware for doing IO a bit better. 

I see you have Optane listed in your sig, and that is a use case where the CPU can be limiting. 4k-q1 random reads vary by a not insignificant amount with CPU clocks, tested when I got a 900p some years back. Having said that, I never tested flash similarly, but would assume it is slow enough (for many small transfers) it wont show it.

 

10 minutes ago, comander said:

These days the price is more or less identical between SATA and nvme. 

Hard to make direct comparisons given that SATA is performance capped, but from a capacity perspective NVMe has been competitive for a while. The only sticking point I see with NVMe is that PCIe 4.0 drives are still at a premium over 3.0, with the cheaper 4.0 drives hardly any faster than the 3.0 ones.

 

Quick look at one UK supplier for cheapest 2TB SSD in each type:

2.5" SATA: £174

M.2 SATA: £182

NVMe 3.0: £200

NVMe 4.0: £240, +50% or so if you want one that approaches the 4.0 sequential limit.

 

Ok, there is a bit more of a difference than I thought right now, again pricing from one major supplier so it can and will vary over time.

 

10 minutes ago, comander said:

I'm usually not one to suggest future proofing but of it's an extra 2% on cost to get a modest performance boost and access to direct storage... Go for it. 

Did I do it wrong spending 2x on a 980 Pro for my latest gaming build?  Still cheaper than the 280GB Optane in my old system.

[porina]

48 minutes ago, comander said:

CPUs are DEFINTIELY the storage bottleneck in a lot of instances - especially if you have a bunch of data already cached in RAM. There's no lack of benchmarks showing that the fast SSD vs the slow SSD have basically the same load time. 

Isn't it conventional wisdom that games are still designed around the assumption they will be run off HDs? Using CPU intensive compression reduces loading time if getting it off the media is limiting. With a SSD that assumption is no longer true. Can game devs pack data format in more CPU friendly ways?

 

We kinda see that now comparing the PS4 and PS5. The PS4, even if you add a SSD it hardly changes loading times as it switched over to being CPU limited. With the PS5's revised system loading speed is a big focus, and I think it was claimed in two games that spring to mind the PS5 version was sold on faster loading amongst other things. The two games were FFXIV and Genshin Impact. It probably applies to more, but I know those two have native clients on both now.

 

Quote

I'm currently of the mind that until directstorage is a thing (maybe an extra dedicated drive or at least partition for non OS/programs?), the "ideal" set up for enthusiasts is 1-2TB nvme SSD + 118GB optane drive (they had been like $80 USD for a while) as cache + primocache/intel RST/storeMI2.

I wasn't serious questioning if I should have got the 980 Pro. I know I'm as ready as I'll ever be for directstorage implementations that may or may not happen in the lifespan of that system. I could have delayed it until it was a thing, but part of my goal is to keep things simple. One SSD. No more, no less.

 

IMO with a more budget mind I'd just go for a mid range NVMe 3.0 SSD as a single tier store assuming a mid range gaming setup with no other special requirements. This is what I have in my gaming laptop. Because it has a Zen 3 CPU it doesn't support 4.0 so that wasn't an option anyway. As much as I like the technology of Optane, marketing it as cache in the consumer space wasn't its real use case. It's just cost, complexity and risk that I don't think is worth it. Unless you're still on HD as bulk storage tier, where anything is a big improvement.

[AnonymousGuy]

On 8/2/2021 at 10:24 AM, comander said:

 

CPUs are DEFINTIELY the storage bottleneck in a lot of instances - especially if you have a bunch of data already cached in RAM. There's no lack of benchmarks showing that the fast SSD vs the slow SSD have basically the same load time. 

 

 

I thought it's the OS that is the limitation right now where it's around how it schedules IO operations?

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

I thought it's the OS that is the limitation right now where it's around how it schedules IO operations?

Also @comander

 

This is where direct memory access helps out a lot, this applies to more than just system memory btw. When you can do direct memory and I/O operations without having to go through full CPU, kernel and filesystem stacks you get massive performance increases. Similar is used in 25Gb/100Gb/400Gb etc networking, such network speeds are not possible if CPU processing were required so we have things like RDMA.