> Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games.
This is probably true for most current games, but is very much up for debate for future games[0]. If the storage speed really made no difference I doubt Sony would have bothered with the additional cost.
> Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so.
It's not mutually exclusive; I both enjoy building PCs and have limited time, thus the time has value that should be factored into the equation. The goal is to game, not build a PC.
I think Sony may have chosen these specs partially so they could get away with having less RAM. Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period.
So I'm not so optimistic that this alone will prove to be a significant differentiator. And it could easily be the case that by the time it does, PC components have pulled ahead again. It takes several years before developers have gotten really good at using a given console to its full potential.
I think the speed advantage is more due to the I/O controller that Sony's made a big deal of, where data can get to RAM or GPU without having to interrupt the CPU. Those interrupts can cause a domino effect with Windows doing god-knows what else in the background, leading to a stutter.
You're right though, PCs will get brute-force faster, while devs will squeeze more out of consoles. I just find it hard to make the case for building something right now given the apparent bang-for-the-buck of these consoles. That said, I do kinda need a new Plex server... :)
> Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period.
Completely wrong. They're using PCIe 4.0 for the onboard SSD, and PCIe 4.0 for the aftermarket SSD slot. There's no performance penalty for going with removable storage here. We're not talking about a high-speed DRAM interface where shorter traces without the insertion loss of a connector really does help reach higher clock speeds (other things being equal).
This is probably true for most current games, but is very much up for debate for future games[0]. If the storage speed really made no difference I doubt Sony would have bothered with the additional cost.
> Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so.
It's not mutually exclusive; I both enjoy building PCs and have limited time, thus the time has value that should be factored into the equation. The goal is to game, not build a PC.
[0]: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers...