3 ms·

A large part of loading delay, either initial load or between levels/areas, in some games is getting high-res textures and other bulk data from storage into the

A large part of loading delay, either initial load or between levels/areas, in some games is getting high-res textures and other bulk data from storage into the graphics memory. You might think “just cache it in RAM, my 6GB graphics card is far smaller than the 32GB sat on my motherboard”, but there are two issues there: 1. People who game alot or are just well off might have 32GB, but game publishers need to support much lower configs than that (the recommended minimum for GTA5 is 8GB and it technically supports 4, for the newer Cyperpunk 2077 those figures are still only 12GB and 8). Last time I saw Steam hardware survey results less than 50% of machines surveyed had 16GB or more RAM. 2. Even if we consider with 16GB to be the minimum for a serious gamer, you aren't going to use most of that for caching assets. Even if you could use 10GB worth, with a massively open play area¹ how easy is it to manage which 10GB of the assets do you load? Both the games I've mentioned weigh in at about 70GB. If the user skimped on RAM and GPU to get a nice large fast NVMe drive, being able to stream data as directly as possible between that drive and the graphics RAM is going to be an attractive optimisation, both from initial load and as new assets are needed mid-game. The core game engine not taking full advantage of 16 cores with of CPU when they are present[2] doesn't mean that more direct transfer of data from storage to GPU, keeping CPU use to a minimum³, can't be useful. Having spare cores lying around is nice, but someone with only 4 might not have that luxury, and even if you have some cores otherwise doing nothing that doesn't mean skipping the CPU as much as possible³ can't be noticeably better than using a fast core. Even if the CPU does still have to be involved, APIs like this could massively reduce user↔kernel transitions which can be pretty expensive. [1] this is less of an issue for games that can be easily split into more manageable chunks [2] again, think about the larger part of the market: 4 cores is still very common [3] let the game logic running on the CPU decide a transfer should happen, then have the transfer go directly over the bus instead of via the CPU and/or main memory at all

paulmd 5y ago
1. "people who are well-off might have NVMe SSDs, but most people are using much lower specs than that" 2. "even taking NVMe SSDs to be the minimum, even the people who do have them usually can't afford to allocate up to 250GB for a single game, let alone when a shitty patching system requires double that to apply a patch". it's certainly a step forward as far as loading technology, don't get me wrong, but it's not about people with low-spec systems at all, you need NVMe as a minimum ask for this, and you need quite a bit of it.
- dspillett 5y ago
  NVMe is a cheaper upgrade than others a gamer on a budget might consider, especially if building a new machine instead of prolonging the life of a new one. Many motherboards support it a little extra cost to those that don't and the drives themselves can be little or no more expensive than SATA SSD units (quick check: known name 1TB NVME unit for inside £70, few SATA units are even that cheap, similarly similar pricing between the types at the ½TB mark too). Not sure where you are getting 250GB for a single game from (~70 I mentioned, IIRC MSFS is ~130) but that supports my point more than counters it: if you might shoot through areas quickly and want high-res textures to be constantly available (a low fast tour of a significant area?) with the amount of RAM on the recommended minimum cards (4GB, minimum minimum being available in 2GB models) and the recommended minimum system RAM (16GB, required minimum being 8) then getting data from disk to the GPU as quickly as possible might be more beneficial than having more RAM for cache, or more CPU cores, etc. Yes, a well off gamer with a huge 8K screen who can afford to be scalped for a top-of-the-line GFX card is going to benefit from this, but so could many others. The performance difference between NVMe and SATA SSDs is nothing like that seen between more traditional drives and SSDs, contrary to what much breathless marketing text will exclaim, but as there isn't much of a cost difference maybe this sort of direct transfer feature will change the value for money dynamic a bit more.

paulmd 5y ago

1. "people who are well-off might have NVMe SSDs, but most people are using much lower specs than that" 2. "even taking NVMe SSDs to be the minimum, even the people who do have them usually can't afford to allocate up to 250GB for a single game, let alone when a shitty patching system requires double that to apply a patch". it's certainly a step forward as far as loading technology, don't get me wrong, but it's not about people with low-spec systems at all, you need NVMe as a minimum ask for this, and you need quite a bit of it.

dspillett 5y ago
NVMe is a cheaper upgrade than others a gamer on a budget might consider, especially if building a new machine instead of prolonging the life of a new one. Many motherboards support it a little extra cost to those that don't and the drives themselves can be little or no more expensive than SATA SSD units (quick check: known name 1TB NVME unit for inside £70, few SATA units are even that cheap, similarly similar pricing between the types at the ½TB mark too). Not sure where you are getting 250GB for a single game from (~70 I mentioned, IIRC MSFS is ~130) but that supports my point more than counters it: if you might shoot through areas quickly and want high-res textures to be constantly available (a low fast tour of a significant area?) with the amount of RAM on the recommended minimum cards (4GB, minimum minimum being available in 2GB models) and the recommended minimum system RAM (16GB, required minimum being 8) then getting data from disk to the GPU as quickly as possible might be more beneficial than having more RAM for cache, or more CPU cores, etc. Yes, a well off gamer with a huge 8K screen who can afford to be scalped for a top-of-the-line GFX card is going to benefit from this, but so could many others. The performance difference between NVMe and SATA SSDs is nothing like that seen between more traditional drives and SSDs, contrary to what much breathless marketing text will exclaim, but as there isn't much of a cost difference maybe this sort of direct transfer feature will change the value for money dynamic a bit more.