PS5 Games' Loading Speed Will Be 100 Times Faster Than PS4

During Sony's Road to PS5 presentation we were given a sneak preview of what to expect when the world is graced with the next generation of gaming.

PlayStation's lead system architect Mark Cerny announced that the switch to solid-state drives (SSDs) will, among other things, eliminate the long game installs and loading speeds that still exist on the PS4.

At the moment when a PS4 game downloads a patch onto the hard disk drive (HDD), there will be a complete new file created - if this doesn't happen, the game will add a new seek and performance problems will arise later on.

Now Cerny has revealed: "With an SSD though, no seeks. So no need to make brand-new files with the changes incorporated. Which means no installs as you know them today." So, what he's trying to say is 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' load times could be our new thing.

One thing that didn't come out of Sony's presentation was a first-look at the console itself - which many people were hoping for. There were also no details on launch titles or exclusives to speak of.

It was more of an under the hood talk through. Below you'll find all the key specs, straight from the horse's mouth. And by horse, I mean Sony.

• CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency)
• GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2
• Memory/Interface: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit
• Internal Storage: Custom 825GB SSD
• IO Throughput: 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
• Expandable Storage: NVMe SSD Slot
• External Storage: USB HDD Support
• Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive

It's a lot to take in, we get it. But Sony certainly aren't messing around here.

Touching, once again on the loading times, Cerny went on: "As game creators, we go from trying to distract the player from how long fast travel is taking - like those Spider-Man subway rides - to being so blindingly fast that we might even have to slow that transition down.

Cerny also stressed that the PS5 aims to be as developer-friendly as possible. Acknowledging that the PlayStation 3 was something of a nightmare to develop for in the beginning, he revealed that the latest hardware shouldn't be too difficult for developers that have gotten comfortable with creating games for the PlayStation 4.

Now to go and lie down in a dark room and take all that in...

Topics: GAMING, Entertainment, sony, PlayStation

Rebecca Shepherd

I'm Becky - a journalist at LADbible. I graduated with a First Class BA in Journalism before going on to cover criminal court cases, medical tribunals and breaking news for the national media - which inevitably and eventually became as glum as it sounds. Can often be found rocking a bag for life - which I made a 'thing' way before Rihanna. You can contact me at [email protected]

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