PS4 Crash Reveals PS4 HDD Details and Streaming?

[FrozenIpaq]

Within the first 10 minutes of the doors being opened at E3, a game had already crashed. That game was none other than the PS4 exclusive Knack. While being played at the Sony booth, the game crashed mid-game to reveal an interested screen which you can see above.

HDD - Usable Space Closer to 400gb

The error screen had a lot going on, including an information box that revealed the current HDD space usage.

Continue reading...

 

[BlackSheep]

is it streaming?

 

[funkyellowmonkey]

interesting article, well done!

 

[Trigun]

Closer to 400GB? That's pretty expected these days unfortunately. I'm not sure if that'd be the same with an SSD.


I'd love to stick a 2TB+ drive in there as long as speed/access time didn't decrease and increase respectively.


The input lag could probably be if it was indeed streaming from a dev-PC to the output on the console itself. Just a guess though.

And if the game runs 30FPS at retail, there will be at least some input latency of some degree.

 

[x3sphere]

Closer to 400GB? That's pretty expected these days unfortunately. I'm not sure if that'd be the same with an SSD.


I'd love to stick a 2TB+ drive in there as long as speed/access time didn't decrease and increase respectively.


The input lag could probably be if it was indeed streaming from a dev-PC to the output on the console itself. Just a guess though.

And if the game runs 30FPS at retail, there will be at least some input latency of some degree.

It does run 30 FPS and there was some slowdown here and there which contributed to the input lag. From an image quality standpoint it didn't look like it was being streamed though.

 

[Trigun]

Slowdown? Now THAT is disappointing. But considering IMO that Knack has the best IQ, texturing and AA i've seen of any PS4 game(IMO) I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I was hoping for at least a Solid stable 30FPS with no slowdown this generation.

As far as input lag, it could also be the display+Double/triple Buffered Vsync input lag+30FPS input lag. Most LCDs have 2+ frames of latency T_T and some plasma's can just as bad or worse.

I'd guess you were probably seeing 80+ms of input lag if it was noticeable. If it was streaming you may not have been able to tell due to the environment maybe. The usual thing to look for is pixellated Reds and Magenta's. When color is sub-sampled those take the biggest hit and are the first to go.

 

[a20052001]

The difference in space is due to the way hard drives are sold today. They use the measure of 500 Gigabytes the base10 definition (1GB = 1000000000 bytes) while the actual system is measuring using the base2 definition which is (1GB = 1073741824 bytes)
Computers use base2 so the difference is just the way hard drives are sold today to give them nice round and slightly larger sizes. As the hard drive gets larger the more the difference becomes and the datasheet for the PS4 notes the units and size will be less than the total space.
For SSDs even more space can be lost due to something called overprovisioning which the MFG allocated some portion of the advertised space to backup as flash memory has limited write operations relative to a magnetic disc. Some have 0%-25%+ or user configurable.
The main loss of space is going to come from the operating system install where the space is taken up by critical files to run the system. Expect microsoft's system to have a lot more space used for the dual VM OS and HyperV sub-system.

 

[FrozenIpaq]

The difference in space is due to the way hard drives are sold today. They use the measure of 500 Gigabytes the base10 definition (1GB = 1000000000 bytes) while the actual system is measuring using the base2 definition which is (1GB = 1073741824 bytes)
Computers use base2 so the difference is just the way hard drives are sold today to give them nice round and slightly larger sizes. As the hard drive gets larger the more the difference becomes and the datasheet for the PS4 notes the units and size will be less than the total space.
For SSDs even more space can be lost due to something called overprovisioning which the MFG allocated some portion of the advertised space to backup as flash memory has limited write operations relative to a magnetic disc. Some have 0%-25%+ or user configurable.
The main loss of space is going to come from the operating system install where the space is taken up by critical files to run the system. Expect microsoft's system to have a lot more space used for the dual VM OS and HyperV sub-system.

We are very well aware of this (read the article). The "story" here is the potential size of the OS - nearly 40gb on the dev unit.

 

[thethiny]

Actually, that's not USED HDD space ,it is Remaining Space. If they were streaming , they would've faced connection issues with all of the consoles streaming at once. but since the loading times were the same, it ain't streaming.

 

[x3sphere]

Actually, that's not USED HDD space ,it is Remaining Space. If they were streaming , they would've faced connection issues with all of the consoles streaming at once. but since the loading times were the same, it ain't streaming.

Yes, you're right. Fixed the wording. I don't think the Knack demo in particular was being streamed, but nonetheless it is interesting the icon showed up on this screen.

 

[TZuck]

So Knack takes up 38GB, and the OS partitions about 43GB, not surprising, it's what the PS3 did, it would take up more space for itself the bigger the HDD you put in it. For instance I have 1TB in mine but can only access 931GB

 

[slicer4ever]

So Knack takes up 38GB, and the OS partitions about 43GB, not surprising, it's what the PS3 did, it would take up more space for itself the bigger the HDD you put in it. For instance I have 1TB in mine but can only access 931GB

that's not true, the OS takes up the same amount of space. it's just that hdd advertised sizes != computer hdd sizes. (see a20052001 post for why)

so when you buy a bigger hdd, you're actually getting further away from the actual size the pc see's, which is why the gap seems to get bigger and bigger, as you buy larger and larger hdd.

 

[FrozenIpaq]

Actually, that's not USED HDD space ,it is Remaining Space. If they were streaming , they would've faced connection issues with all of the consoles streaming at once. but since the loading times were the same, it ain't streaming.

I wasn't actually referring to that - should've clarified it more. I didn't pay attention to the first number at all - just look at the second number (423). I theorized that since the since the HDD is 500gb that the usable space for the PS4 was 465gb (with nothing installed). I then subtracted 465 from the 423 number which I theorized as the total user space available after you factor in the system reserve and OS - roughly 40gb. Does that make sense?