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Xbox Velocity Architecture: A Closer Look at the Next-Gen Tech Driving Gaming Innovation Forward on Xbox Series X - Xbox Wire

When we set out to design the Xbox Series X, we aspired to build our most powerful console ever powered by next generation innovation and delivering consistent, sustained performance never before seen in a console with no compromises. To achieve this goal, we knew we needed to analyze each...

news.xbox.com

Modern games require a significant amount of data to create the realistic worlds and universes that gamers experience. To enable the processor to work at its optimum performance, all of this data must be loaded from storage into memory. The explosion of massive, dynamic open-world environments and living, persistent worlds with increased density and variety has only increased the amount of data required. From environmental mesh data, high polygon character models, high resolution textures, animation data, audio and video source files and more all combine together to deliver the most immersive game play environment for the player.

Despite the ability for modern game engines and middleware to stream game assets into memory off of local storage, level designers are still often required to create narrow pathways, hallways, or elevators to work around the limitations of a traditional hard drive and I/O pipeline. These in-game elements are often used to mask the need to unload the prior zone’s assets from memory while loading in new assets for the next play space. As we discussed developers’ aspirations for their next generation titles and the limitations of current generation technology, this challenge would continue to increase exponentially and further constrain the ambition for truly transformative games. This feedback influenced the design and development of the Xbox Velocity Architecture.

Xbox Series X: A Closer Look at the Technology Powering the Next Generation - Xbox Wire

A few months ago, we revealed Xbox Series X, our fastest, most powerful console ever, designed for a console generation that has you, the player, at its center. When it is released this holiday season, Xbox Series X will set a new bar for performance, speed and compatibility, all while allowing...

news.xbox.com

Enter Xbox Velocity Architecture, which features tight integration between hardware and software and is a revolutionary new architecture optimized for streaming of in game assets. This will unlock new capabilities that have never been seen before in console development, allowing 100 GB of game assets to be instantly accessible by the developer. The components of the Xbox Velocity Architecture all combine to create an effective multiplier on physical memory that is, quite literally, a game changer.

I/O Throughput

2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)

Introducing the Xbox Velocity Architecture

The Xbox Velocity Architecture was designed as the ultimate solution for game asset streaming in the next generation. This radical reinvention of the traditional I/O subsystem directly influenced all aspects of the Xbox Series X design. If our custom designed processor is at the heart of the Xbox Series X, the Xbox Velocity Architecture is the soul. Through a deep integration of hardware and software innovation, the Xbox Velocity Architecture will power next-gen gaming experiences unlike anything you have seen before.

The Xbox Velocity Architecture comprises four major components: our custom NVME SSD, hardware accelerated decompression blocks, a brand new DirectStorage API layer and Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS).

Xbox Series X - Xbox Velocity Architecture Trailer

As we enter a new generation of console gaming with the Xbox Series X, hardware and software innovations enable the amazing possibilities for the future of g...

www.youtube.com

Custom NVME SSD – The foundation of the Xbox Velocity Architecture is our custom, 1TB NVME SSD, delivering 2.4 GB/s of raw I/O throughput, more than 40x the throughput of Xbox One. Traditional SSDs used in PCs often reduce performance as thermals increase or while performing drive maintenance. The custom NVME SSD in Xbox Series X is designed for consistent, sustained performance as opposed to peak performance. Developers have a guaranteed level of I/O performance at all times and they can reliably design and optimize their games removing the barriers and constraints they have to work around today. This same level of consistent, sustained performance also applies to the Seagate Expandable Storage Card ensuring you have the exact same gameplay experience regardless of where the game resides.

Hardware Accelerated Decompression – Game packages and assets are compressed to minimize download times and the amount of storage required for each individual game. With hardware accelerated support for both the industry standard LZ decompressor as well as a brand new, proprietary algorithm specifically designed for texture data named BCPack, Xbox Series X provides the best of both worlds for developers to achieve massive savings with no loss in quality or performance. As texture data comprises a significant portion of the total overall size of a game, having a purpose built algorithm optimized for texture data in addition to the general purpose LZ decompressor, both can be used in parallel to reduce the overall size of a game package. To deliver similar levels of decompression performance in software would require more than 4 Zen 2 CPU cores.

Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS) – Sampler Feedback Streaming is a brand-new innovation built on top of all the other advancements of the Xbox Velocity Architecture. Game textures are optimized at differing levels of detail and resolution, called mipmaps, and can be used during rendering based on how close or far away an object is from the player. As an object moves closer to the player, the resolution of the texture must increase to provide the crisp detail and visuals that gamers expect. However, these larger mipmaps require a significant amount of memory compared to the lower resolution mips that can be used if the object is further away in the scene. Today, developers must load an entire mip level in memory even in cases where they may only sample a very small portion of the overall texture. Through specialized hardware added to the Xbox One X, we were able to analyze texture memory usage by the GPU and we discovered that the GPU often accesses less than 1/3 of the texture data required to be loaded in memory. A single scene often includes thousands of different textures resulting in a significant loss in effective memory and I/O bandwidth utilization due to inefficient usage. With this insight, we were able to create and add new capabilities to the Xbox Series X GPU which enables it to only load the sub portions of a mip level into memory, on demand, just in time for when the GPU requires the data. This innovation results in approximately 2.5x the effective I/O throughput and memory usage above and beyond the raw hardware capabilities on average. SFS provides an effective multiplier on available system memory and I/O bandwidth, resulting in significantly more memory and I/O throughput available to make your game richer and more immersive.

Sampler Feedback Streaming(SFS) is an extension of Sampler Feedback which will be available in PC through DirectX 12U.

Sampler Feedback

Engineering specs for DirectX features.

microsoft.github.io

Coming to DirectX 12— Sampler Feedback: some useful once-hidden data, unlocked - DirectX Developer Blog

Why Feedback: A Streaming Scenario Suppose you are shading a complicated 3D scene. The camera moves swiftly throughout the scene, causing some objects to be moved into different levels of detail. Since you need to aggressively optimize for memory, you bind resources to cope with the demand for...

devblogs.microsoft.com

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The hardware implementation of SFS in Xbox Series X for feedback streaming and how Sampler Feedback differs from standard Partially Resident Textures(PRTs) is described in patent US10388058B2.

US10388058B2 - Texture residency hardware enhancements for graphics processors - Google Patents

Systems, methods, apparatuses, and software for graphics processing systems in computing environments are provided herein. In one example, a method of handling tiled resources in graphics processing environments is presented. The method includes establishing, in a graphics processing unit, a...

patents.google.com

Graphics processing units(GPUs) include various internal hardware components, such as processing stages, memory elements, and other pipelined processing elements. There are various internal stages to process graphical data into rendered images. In many GPUs, these internal stages comprise a graphics pipeline that can take representations of scenes or user interfaces and render these into images for output. Among these stages are texture mapping stages that provide graphical details, surface textures, colors, or other elements for portions of rendered images. User content that is rendered by GPUs, such as video game content, is expected to continue growing in complexity over time, but graphics hardware constraints such as bandwidth and memory capacity are not expected to grow at a similar rate.
This patent provides improved efficiency in usage of residency maps for GPUs. The layout of the residency maps here provides for viable hardware implementations, leading to faster and more efficient rendering of graphics for computing systems. Texture mapping process can be memory intensive, so Partially Resident Textures(PRTs) are used to aid in this process. PRTs partially map texture data only to portions of objects presently needed to be rendered, such as due to viewpoint characteristics of a user, obstruction by other objects, proximity to a viewer, or other factors. Mip mapping can also be included in this process to pre-compute a series or set of smaller and smaller texture representations to suit different levels of detail for the textures. This mip mapping can aid in anti-aliasing as well as provide less processor-intensive renderings.
Migrating elements of texture streaming implementations from mip-based streaming(i.e., loading entire levels of detail) to tile-based streaming and partial residency can be an effective mitigation to performance issues. Techniques using partial residency can allow content complexity to continue to grow without a corresponding increase in load times or memory footprint. Tiled resources can be improved so that these PRTs can be widely adopted while minimizing implementation difficulty and performance overhead for GPUs. These improvements include hardware residency map features and texture sample operations referred to herein as "residency samples", among other improvements.
The first enhancement includes a hardware residency map feature comprising a low-resolution residency map that is paired with a much larger PRT, and both are provided to hardware at the same time. The residency map stores the mipmap level of detail resident for each rectangular region of the texture. PRT textures are currently difficult to sample given sparse residency. Software-only residency map solutions typically perform two fetches of two different buffers in the shader, namely the residency map and the actual texture map. The primary PRT texture sample is dependent on the results of a residency map sample. These solutions are effective, but require considerable implementation changes to shader and application code, especially to perform filtering the residency map in order to mask unsightly transitions between levels of detail, and may have undesirable performance characteristics. The improvements herein can streamline the concept of a residency map and move the residency map into a hardware implementation. This is the custom hardware portion that performs feedback streaming in XSX.
A second enhancement includes an enhanced type of texture sample operation called a "residency sample”. The residency sample operates similarly to a traditional texture sampling, except the part of the texture sample that request texture data from cache/memory and filters the texture data to provide an output value is removed from the residency sample operation. The purpose of the residency sample is to generate memory addresses that reach the page table hardware in the graphics processor but do not continue on to become full memory requests. Instead, the residency of the PRT at those addresses is checked and missing pages are non-redundantly logged and requested to be filled by the OS or a delegate. This describes how Sampler Feedback is an improvement over standard PRT.

DirectStorage API – Standard File I/O APIs were developed more than 30 years ago and are virtually unchanged while storage technology has made significant advancements since then. As we analyzed game data access patterns as well as the latest hardware advancements with SSD technology, we knew we needed to advance the state of the art to put more control in the hands of developers. We added a brand new DirectStorage API to the DirectX family, providing developers with fine grain control of their I/O operations empowering them to establish multiple I/O queues, prioritization and minimizing I/O latency. These direct, low level access APIs ensure developers will be able to take full advantage of the raw I/O performance afforded by the hardware, resulting in virtually eliminating load times or fast travel systems that are just that . . . fast.

Through the massive increase in I/O throughput, hardware accelerated decompression, DirectStorage, and the significant increases in efficiency provided by Sampler Feedback Streaming, the Xbox Velocity Architecture enables the Xbox Series X to deliver effective performance well beyond the raw hardware specs, providing direct, instant, low level access to more than 100GB of game data stored on the SSD just in time for when the game requires it. These innovations will unlock new gameplay experiences and a level of depth and immersion unlike anything you have previously experienced in gaming.

Defining the Next Generation: An Xbox Series X|S Technology Glossary - Xbox Wire

[Editor’s Note: Updated on 10/21 at 11AM to ensure it is now reflective of the capabilities across both of our next-gen Xbox consoles following the unveil of Xbox Series S.] As we enter a new generation of console gaming with Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, we’ve made a number of technology...

news.xbox.com

Inside Xbox Series X: the full specs

This is it. After months of teaser trailers, blog posts and even the occasional leak, we can finally reveal firm, hard …

www.eurogamer.net

"Our second component is a high-speed hardware decompression block that can deliver over 6GB/s," reveals Andrew Goossen. "This is a dedicated silicon block that offloads decompression work from the CPU and is matched to the SSD so that decompression is never a bottleneck. The decompression hardware supports Zlib for general data and a new compression [system] called BCPack that is tailored to the GPU textures that typically comprise the vast majority of a game's package size."

Use of Machine Learning in texture compression
Patent US20200105030A1 and US20190304138A1 describes the use of machine learning in texture compression or upscaling and reducing search space for real time texture compression.

US20200105030A1 - Machine learning applied to textures compression or upscaling - Google Patents

Methods and devices for generating hardware compatible compressed textures may include accessing, at runtime of an application program, graphics hardware incompatible compressed textures in a format incompatible with a graphics processing unit (GPU). The methods and devices may include...

patents.google.com

US20190304138A1 - Reducing the search space for real time texture compression - Google Patents

Methods and devices for real time texture compression may include accessing graphics hardware incompatible compressed textures in a format incompatible with the GPU, and a metadata file associated with the graphics hardware incompatible compressed textures, wherein the metadata file includes at...

patents.google.com

Video games are experiencing problems with textures taking too much storage. Having a relatively large storage footprint effects the speed with which games can load textures. Block compression used by games at runtime to save memory, bandwidth and cache pressure have a fixed compression ratio. Other schemes present far better compression ratio but are not in a format directly usable by GPU. One method is, using a machine learning model the graphics hardware incompatible compressed textures(e.g., Machine Learning Image Compression, JPEG compression, wavelet compression etc.,) will be converted into hardware compatible compressed textures usable by GPU at runtime of the application. Another method relates to a computer readable medium storing instructions executable by a computing device, causing the computing device to access at runtime of an application, graphics hardware incompatible compressed textures in a format incompatible with GPU and using the instructions to convert them into hardware compatible compressed in run time. This will help in reducing input/output bandwidth and the actual size of game data.

Microsoft’s Game Stack chief: The next generation of games and game development

James Gwertzman, general manager of Microsoft Game Stack, gets to see how thousand of games are developed and run. He talked about the future of games.

venturebeat.com

Gwertzman: You were talking about machine learning and content generation. I think that’s going to be interesting. One of the studios inside Microsoft has been experimenting with using ML models for asset generation. It’s working scarily well. To the point where we’re looking at shipping really low-res textures and having ML models uprez the textures in real time. You can’t tell the difference between the hand-authored high-res texture and the machine-scaled-up low-res texture, to the point that you may as well ship the low-res texture and let the machine do it.
Journalist: Can you do that on the hardware without install time?
Gwertzman: Not even install time. Run time.
Journalist: To clarify, you’re talking about real time, moving around the 3D space, level of detail style?
Gwertzman: Like literally not having to ship massive 2K by 2K textures. You can ship tiny textures.
Journalist: Are you saying they’re generated on the fly as you move around the scene, or they’re generated ahead of time?
Gwertzman: The textures are being uprezzed in real time.

Microsoft & AMD Supercharge Console Gaming with the Xbox Series X

I am excited to share some of the details that Microsoft announced today on Xbox® Series X, and how it is built upon the partnership with the team at AMD. Together, we have relentlessly pushed the innovation boundaries of gaming devices for the last 15 years. Today, AMD and Microsoft are...

community.amd.com

• New gaming experiences with seamless content paging from the SSD to the GPU based on the revolutionary Xbox Velocity Architecture

Next-Generation Gaming Unveiled with Microsoft and AMD

I am a lifelong gamer, and gaming is in my heart. With more than one in three people in the world gaming, gaming has brought communities together across the world and across all cultures. It’s all about how we learn and connect with each other through play. The highly anticipated...

community.amd.com

We have focused on ensuring games don’t just look better but play better as well, driven by key, new hardware-accelerated features such as seamless content paging from the SSD to the GPU based on the revolutionary Xbox Velocity Architecture.

Xbox Series X | Xbox

Discover the fastest, most powerful Xbox ever with the Xbox Series X.

www.xbox.com

Designed for speed and performance
The Xbox Velocity Architecture unlocks new speed & performance capabilities through the groundbreaking combination of hardware, a custom 1TB SSD & CPU and deep software integration, to make for richer and more dynamic living worlds unlike anything ever seen before.

703: XSX Back Compat, Smart Delivery and The Ascent - Xbox's Major Nelson

majornelson.com

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. That's ties into something else that we've talked about you and I talked about this in the past is this Xbox velocity architecture. Explain to us what that is, because a lot of folks may not remember.
Jason Ronald:
Sure. The Xbox velocity architecture is really our way of rethinking and re-revolutionizing how an IO pipeline works. There's really four major components of the Xbox velocity architecture. At its core is our custom NVMe SSD. That really is the foundation that everything builds on top of. On top of that, we have dedicated hardware decompression blocks, so that we can stream data off the disk as fast as possible. Then we provide developers with a brand new API called direct storage, that gives them direct low level access to the hardware, so they have a lot more fine grain controls.
Then the real tech brings that all together is sampler feedback for streaming, which actually is really the ultimate solution for game asset streaming, which will really allow developers to work beyond the limitations of technology, and really have instant access to the full collection of assets of their game.

With Xbox Series X, compatibility and accessibility is just as important to Microsoft as improving graphical fidelity

Jason Ronald, the director of program management for Xbox Series X, details Microsoft's vision for the future of gaming

www.gamesradar.com

While I get the impression that Ronald would be only too happy to spend all day talking about Xbox Series X specs, he's quick to highlight the importance of the SSD – it's a "transformative" component to Microsoft's vision of the future of gaming. "The SSD is the foundation of the Xbox Velocity Architecture, which was a radical reinvention of how game asset streaming works," he says, detailing just one example of how the SSD has left an impression on the Xbox team. "And what that really does, as a game developer, [is] it removes all constraints from how you choose to build the game. No longer do you have to funnel players through individual hallways or elevators, you can kind of unshackle a game developer's creativity to create those large living open worlds that players all want to enjoy."
The Xbox Series X – so much of its toolsets and software – has been engineered around the SSD. As a result, I'm told, the solid-state drive has far-reaching implications. It will help unlock richer and more dynamic living worlds. It enables platform features such as Quick Resume, which will enable you to resume a game exactly where you left off across multiple titles. It will help power hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing, and ensure that games are able to run a 4K resolution at up to 120 frames-per-second.

Microsoft Explains The Xbox Series X's High-Speed Secret Sauce

We chat with Jason Ronald, one of the lead engineers on the Xbox Series X, about Xbox Velocity Architecture, the mixture of hardware and software that aims t...

www.youtube.com

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

youtu.be

You Are the Future of Gaming - Xbox Wire

Games are a source of joy, inspiration, and social connection. They have the power to bring us together, create empathy, and strengthen our social fabric. As we prepare for the next generation, our efforts to make gaming more inclusive, more immersive, more connected, and more social are as...

news.xbox.com

Xbox Series X also enables you to spend less time waiting and more time playing, as it virtually eliminates load times with the 40x boost in I/O throughput from last generation. With our custom next-generation SSD and Xbox Velocity Architecture, nearly every aspect of playing games is improved. Game worlds are larger, more dynamic and load in a flash, and fast travel is just that – fast. The Xbox Velocity Architecture also powers new platform capabilities like Quick Resume, which enables you to seamlessly switch between multiple titles and resume instantly from where you last left off without waiting through long loading screens. Right now, Xbox Series X is in the hands of our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams and thousands of third-party developers, empowering them to create a new generation of blockbuster games for you to enjoy.

From Hot Chips 2020

Unlocking Next Generation Experiences

What does this all mean for you as a gamer? As the industry’s most creative developers and middleware companies have begun to explore these new capabilities, we expect significant innovation throughout the next generation as this revolutionary new architecture enables entirely new scenarios never before considered possible in gaming. The Xbox Velocity Architecture provides a new level of performance and capabilities well beyond the raw specifications of the hardware itself. The Xbox Velocity Architecture fundamentally rethinks how a developer can take advantage of the hardware provided by the Xbox Series X. From entirely new rendering techniques to the virtual elimination of loading times, to larger, more dynamic living worlds where, as a gamer, you can choose how you want to explore, we can’t be more excited by the early results we are already seeing. In addition, the Xbox Velocity Architecture has opened even more opportunities and enabled new innovations at the platform level, such as Quick Resume which enables you to instantly resume where you left off across multiple games, improving the overall gaming experience for all gamers on Xbox Series X.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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Announce on Inside Xbox May 2020, this Silent Hill inspired Game will have the player seamlessly switch between 2 worlds.

Big in 2020: The Medium is channelling the spirit of Silent Hill to pull psychological horror games into the next generation

Bloober Team's Wojciech Piejko and Jacek Zieba take us inside The Medium, its ambitious horror game for Xbox Series X

www.gamesradar.com

You should think of The Medium as Bloober Team's largest and most ambitious game to date. The team isn't creating one world, but two: a version of our own, and a reflection of it in the spirit realm. You'll be able to shift seamlessly between the two in The Medium with – Bloober promises – no discernible load times or impact to game performance and graphics, thanks to the power of the Xbox Series X.

 

[sinnergy]

6 GBs max if I am correct , maybe even more with better compression.

Extra lanes for the velocity engine .

So we have 110 GB ram for games to look beter!

 

[Hosam6xavi]

Microsoft is on fire

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Yup, 4.8GB/s sounds ok, but it's COMPRESSED, with raw being 2.4GB/s only. PS5 is doing 5.5BG/s RAW, so around 11GB/s compressed. (up to 22GB/s by the way)

Still, like a minivan, you can drive it to work. That's how too much steroid hinders your agility.

 

[policestationx]

Yup, 4.8GB/s sounds ok, but it's COMPRESSED, with raw being 2.4GB/s only. PS5 is doing 5.5BG/s RAW, so around 11GB/s compressed.

Still, like a minivan, you can drive it to work. That's how too much steroids hinders your agility.

Must be hard days for you

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Must be hard days for you

Nah, having fun. Throwing banter, and taking some. All good sport. Too much spare time, no school, no work.

 

[Akuji]

100gb instantly avaiable... the pr does know no boundries. well hopefully ms has something somewhat equal to the ps5 Memory Controller and Chip.

 

[TheBreezyBB]

Microsoft will try as hard as they can to downplay the PS5 SSD!! The difference is much bigger than the TFlops difference.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

100gb instantly avaiable... the pr does know no boundries. well hopefully ms has something somewhat equal to the ps5 Memory Controller and Chip.

Each side inflating something overall, but both are great. I won't touch an XSX, but happy with what MS did with it to keep the competition intense.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Microsoft’s solution is definitely in the ”good enough” category. I think the propriety add on storage will be better for the consumer too. You will just grab one off the shelf when you go into the game shop. Sony’s you are probably going to have to hunt down one that actually meets the standard, and it will be pricey.

 

[Bernkastel]

More and even more stuffs on Xbox Series X hardware decompression by Richard Geldreich (worked at Space X, Valve and Ensemble)

PS5 And Xbox Series X SSD Difference Is a Matter of “Diminishing Returns,” Says Scorn Dev

gamingbolt.com

Peklar suggested in conclusion that as far as the difference between the SSDs that both next-gen consoles employe is concerned, it’s effectively not going to seem as big as it seems on paper right now. “As for differences between the two solutions I feel that it will end up a matter of diminishing returns,” he said.

As per a bloomberg report Xbox Series X and PS5 SSD cost the same to manufacture

Kotaku: Epic say Unreal PS5 demo is also targeting Xbox Series X

They might have used both to demonstrate we dont know as it was a leak no? What leak ? I am talking about the PS5 Spiderman SSD demo that they showed.

www.neogaf.com

Microsoft will try as hard as they can to downplay the PS5 SSD!! The difference is much bigger than the TFlops difference.

The blog posts are before Cerny's PS5 reveal. They were posted alongside XSX reveal.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Microsoft’s solution is definitely in the ”good enough” category. I think the propriety add on storage will be better for the consumer too. You will just grab one off the shelf when you go into the game shop. Sony’s you are probably going to have to hunt down one that actually meets the standard, and it will be pricey.

It can go both ways, actually. You can still buy any external type to offload older/unsued games or just delete them. Most gamers are casuals and don't buy enough games to fill the memory, so they've used the 10 games average per console to make up that.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Microsoft is on fire

Microsoft sure is . All the Xbox bashing on here and Restera have made MS into a Monster with more studios than people have had cooked dinners and a monster of a system.
I'll love it, if MS price match the PS5 too

 

[Bernkastel]

Microsoft’s solution is definitely in the ”good enough” category. I think the propriety add on storage will be better for the consumer too. You will just grab one off the shelf when you go into the game shop. Sony’s you are probably going to have to hunt down one that actually meets the standard, and it will be pricey.

Yup. A 5.5 GB/s NVMe 1 TB SSD will cost around 300 USD.

Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H - Newegg.com

Buy Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Upto 4.8 GB/s, costs 240 USD.
Many people will have to contend with the included 825 GB SSD.

I'll love it, if MS price match the PS5 too

The SSD alone may drive PS5 price to around 600 USD.

 

[Deleted member 775630]

100GB being instantly accessible says enough. Games won't be that big in the following years so Microsoft made the right call going with the 2.4-4.8GB/s SSD, instead of over-engineering it. Powerful and balanced system.

 

[sinnergy]

100GB being instantly accessible says enough. Games won't be that big in the following years so Microsoft made the right call going with the 2.4-4.8GB/s SSD, instead of over-engineering it. Powerful and balanced system.

“Less but better”

 

[Mistershine.]

I wonder what the real world effect of the sampler feedback will do? If it really does reduce ram usage by up to 3x then 4.8 GB/s to handle 1/3 of the usual asset throughput seems like a lot.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

100GB being instantly accessible says enough. Games won't be that big in the following years so Microsoft made the right call going with the 2.4-4.8GB/s SSD, instead of over-engineering it. Powerful and balanced system.

I would say both are somehow balanced, with each compensating on its weaker side. But if PS5 takes a $50 loss to push it to $400 and XSX sticks with $500 then that would be interesting.

 

[PocoJoe]

Yup. A 5.5 GB/s NVMe 1 TB SSD will cost around 300 USD.

Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H - Newegg.com

Buy Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Upto 4.8 GB/s, costs 240 USD.
Many people will have to contend with the included 825 GB SSD.

The SSD alone may drive PS5 price to around 600 USD.

It may cost 300 now to consumer, but how much does it cost to Sony? much less.

Also gens last years so there is time for prices to drop.

It wont be any different than for xbox, just walk to the gaming area of the store and pick up certified SSD. And if you want to, you can hunt one from other places. For xbox it is just the gaming branded and thats it.

But yeah good if XBOX have fast enough system too, we will see in the end of next gen that did Sonys solution gain them what they wanted

 

[Bernkastel]

.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I thought fast i/o throughput didn't matter.

That's what GAF keeps telling me.

 

[Zefros]

Microsoft’s solution is definitely in the ”good enough” category. I think the propriety add on storage will be better for the consumer too. You will just grab one off the shelf when you go into the game shop. Sony’s you are probably going to have to hunt down one that actually meets the standard, and it will be pricey.

Depends on the prices. Hope they come up with a decent price. Will get both consoles.

 

[Bernkastel]

 

[Deleted member 775630]

“Less but better”

I didn't say better, it's enough. It's more balanced. PS5 has extremes. Super fast SSD, slower GPU/CPU that can't perform at max at the same time.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I didn't say better, it's enough. It's more balanced. PS5 has extremes. Super fast SSD, slower GPU/CPU that can't perform at max at the same time.

But I thought PS5 was more balanced according to a thread I saw.

Curious why PS5's slightly-lower tflops is an "extreme" but XsX SSD performing at half the speed is "balanced".

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I didn't say better, it's enough. It's more balanced. PS5 has extremes. Super fast SSD, slower GPU/CPU that can't perform at max at the same time.

It's still unclear, and Sony to blame here. Until we see it in action, or at least know how it looks like, then we can wait for DF to do their 600x zooming.

 

[MadchesterManc]

Instantly accessible 100GB via 4.8GB/s IO. That's incredible. Almost as incredible as the Xbox Series X doing over 25TF of compute when raytracing.

 

[Deleted member 775630]

But I thought PS5 was more balanced according to a thread I saw.

Curious why PS5's slightly-lower tflops is an "extreme" but XsX SSD performing at half the speed is "balanced".

Because the XSX SSD is fast enough, 100GB is instantly accessible that's MORE than enough. The GPU and CPU are beasts that easily can process all that information. RAM is just normal, a bit better than PS5, but nothing major.

Why I'm saying that PS5 is unbalanced is because the SSD can even get more data, but their CPU/GPU isn't powerful enough to process more. You've heard what Cerny said. The CPU and GPU can't both be at full power, so one is always capped lower. That's why I said extremes. Extremely fast SSD, lesser CPU/GPU, unbalanced.

 

[OneShotThrill]

Microsoft sure is . All the Xbox bashing on here and Restera have made MS into a Monster with more studios than people have had cooked dinners and a monster of a system.
I'll love it, if MS price match the PS5 too

No..xbox one getting thrashed by the competition made them step their game up. Microsoft shouldve never softened up after the 360 launch years. We shoukd wait to see what those studios pump out before declaring anyone on fire.

 

[sinnergy]

I didn't say better, it's enough. It's more balanced. PS5 has extremes. Super fast SSD, slower GPU/CPU that can't perform at max at the same time.

Yes , I understand completely, less but better , dieter rams.

 

[Andodalf]

But I thought PS5 was more balanced according to a thread I saw.

Curious why PS5's slightly-lower tflops is an "extreme" but XsX SSD performing at half the speed is "balanced".

If one car could go 100 MPH and seated 200 people, but another car could go only 83 MPH, but seated 400, which would you prefer?

We’re seeing a storage speed increase not before seen. MS says 40x (so a 5 person car becomes 200 in this abysmal analogy), and Sony is twice that. I personally have no idea what having a 200 person car would be like, maybe it’s amazing! Maybe 400 is better. Idk, I like more than 5 people irl but probably not 200 and certainly not 400. But how fast my car can go is practically far more important, and something I’m used to. Sony is leading in something unprecedented for both, something already MASSIVELY improved for both, and something we aren’t used to benefiting from. Now if you’ll excuse me I just woke up, and that was perhaps literally the worst analogy of all time.

 

[Vasto]

XsX still has so much more that Microsoft has not even talked about yet.

Stay tuned.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

If one car could go 100 MPH and seated 200 people, but another car could go only 83 MPH, but seated 400, which would you prefer?

We’re seeing a storage speed increase not before seen. MS says 40x (so a 5 person car becomes 200 in this abysmal analogy), and Sony is twice that. I personally have no idea what having a 200 person car would be like, maybe it’s amazing! Maybe 400 is better. Idk, I like more than 5 people irl but probably not 200 and certainly not 400. But how fast my car can go is practically far more important, and something I’m used to. Sony is leading in something unprecedented for both, something already MASSIVELY improved for both, and something we aren’t used to benefiting from. Now if you’ll excuse me I just woke up, and that was perhaps literally the worst analogy of all time.

I understand the analogy, but to me the biggest unanswered question remains: how will devs leverage it?

Dev don't really leverage SSDs on PC which is why we have a bunch of armchair experts declaring "it's not that big of a deal". However, in a fixed architecture, the speed will be a core part of how devs design their games.

 

[sinnergy]

If one car could go 100 MPH and seated 200 people, but another car could go only 83 MPH, but seated 400, which would you prefer?

We’re seeing a storage speed increase not before seen. MS says 40x (so a 5 person car becomes 200 in this abysmal analogy), and Sony is twice that. I personally have no idea what having a 200 person car would be like, maybe it’s amazing! Maybe 400 is better. Idk, I like more than 5 people irl but probably not 200 and certainly not 400. But how fast my car can go is practically far more important, and something I’m used to. Sony is leading in something unprecedented for both, something already MASSIVELY improved for both, and something we aren’t used to benefiting from. Now if you’ll excuse me I just woke up, and that was perhaps literally the worst analogy of all time.

Ah here are the car analogies... I like a plane that can carry 4000 persons.

 

[twerkitout]

Microsoft’s solution is definitely in the ”good enough” category. I think the propriety add on storage will be better for the consumer too. You will just grab one off the shelf when you go into the game shop. Sony’s you are probably going to have to hunt down one that actually meets the standard, and it will be pricey.

when has proprietary memory ever been cheaper than off the shelf memory? Its very hard to find hard drives these days (amazon, new egg, best buy, etc).

 

[quest]

But I thought PS5 was more balanced according to a thread I saw.

Curious why PS5's slightly-lower tflops is an "extreme" but XsX SSD performing at half the speed is "balanced".

Because they did not blow so much of the bom on the SSD they did not have to resort to variable clocks and clocking the APU to high heaven and making it a mini nuclear reactor. Microsoft approach is much more balanced the bigger APU will be used by all multi platform games. The uber fast SSD by Sony will be wasted in those games since they will be designed around the slower PC and series x.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Because they did not blow so much of the bom on the SSD they did not have to resort to variable clocks and clocking the APU to high heaven and making it a mini nuclear reactor. Microsoft approach is much more balanced the bigger APU will be used by all multi platform games. The uber fast SSD by Sony will be wasted in those games since they will be designed around the slower PC and series x.

So XsX is more balanced because it's more balanced, but PS5 is as unbalanced as a mini nuclear reactor because it's unbalanced.

The technical explanations in threads lately is truly dizzying

 

[Flintty]

Microsoft will try as hard as they can to downplay the PS5 SSD!! The difference is much bigger than the TFlops difference.

Ok I’ll bite. Every word in Cerny’s brief was carefully chosen as part of their PR management strategy. Watch it again and you’ll hear him say:

1. Game players are here for the fantastic games
2. The feature most requested by developers was SSD (And then it’s SSD bombardment)
3. Important for us to find something other than CPU power, GPU power or amount of RAM
4. Dangerous to rely on TFLOPS as an absolute indicator of performance.
5. CU count should be avoided as well.

Now tell me who is downplaying what. And try to deny they’re not hanging everything on SSD, whilst also claiming a win with the perception amongst fanboys that Xbox has no games.

 

[OneShotThrill]

So XsX is more balanced because it's more balanced, but PS5 is as unbalanced as a mini nuclear reactor because it's unbalanced.

The technical explanations in threads lately is truly dizzying

You gotta love all these armchair game developers all of a sudden. Theyve all had dev kits for quite a while. The best part is when the games are released and theyre wrong all the amnesia starts and then theres a new goal to post about

 

[LostDonkey]

Yup. A 5.5 GB/s NVMe 1 TB SSD will cost around 300 USD.

Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H - Newegg.com

Buy Patriot Viper VP4100 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VP4100-1TBM28H with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Upto 4.8 GB/s, costs 240 USD.
Many people will have to contend with the included 825 GB SSD.

The SSD alone may drive PS5 price to around 600 USD.

Cerny said you can't just buy one off the shelf though it has to be the right height and length and the cooler has to be taken into consideration so that it fits in the system. It isn't as simple as just matching the speed and swapping it out.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

when has proprietary memory ever been cheaper than off the shelf memory? Its very hard to find hard drives these days (amazon, new egg, best buy, etc).

Because in this case we are talking about 2 quite different things.

One being a fairly standard SSD, made proprietary by way of its specific metal housing / heat sink. This has been done to ensure perfect performance across every SSD. (Performance degrades with heat)

The other requiring I believe Cerny said 7GB/s ‘off the shelf’ SSD. These are like rocking horse shit and very expensive. Better performance overall but is it worth it in the long run?

It wouldn’t surprise me if an Xbox expansion SSD is only $99. The right drive to work on the PS5 will be $200+, approaching half the cost of the console.

 

[MrA]

So probably 100 gb for os 100+ gb for this virtual ram, and games 100+ Gb, I think the 1 tb drives are going to make it difficult to have more than 4 or 5 large games installed at any time, anyone see any mention of the disk drive speeds as it seems like managing space this gen will be way worse than last

 

[Burrito Bandito]

Microsoft will try as hard as they can to downplay the PS5 SSD!! The difference is much bigger than the TFlops difference.

no its not.

 

[Mistershine.]

So probably 100 gb for os 100+ gb for this virtual ram, and games 100+ Gb, I think the 1 tb drives are going to make it difficult to have more than 4 or 5 large games installed at any time, anyone see any mention of the disk drive speeds as it seems like managing space this gen will be way worse than last

The 100gb is likely the game install, not as well as.

 

[wordslaughter]

This is interesting stuff IMO.

Both MS and Sony are clearly trying to accomplish the same kinds of results. Can't wait to fins out how they perform in practice.

Will Sony's implementation be able to distinguish itself from MS's ( and in what ways exactly ) or will they both wind up functionally the same?

 

[Hendrick's]

Microsoft will try as hard as they can to downplay the PS5 SSD!! The difference is much bigger than the TFlops difference.

Keep grasping at straws, it's all you've got, and they're paper straws.

 

[Muddy]

XsX still has so much more that Microsoft has not even talked about yet.

Stay tuned.

Barring games .

 

[T-Cake]

Can someone give me a clue as what all this compressed/non-compressed stuff means? Why wouldn't everything be compressed if it can ensure a greater I/O speed?

 

[Entroyp]

Developers got what they wanted, an SSD on both consoles.

I wonder what will be their number one request for next-next gen? AI?

 

[The_Mike]

You gotta love all these armchair game developers all of a sudden. Theyve all had dev kits for quite a while. The best part is when the games are released and theyre wrong all the amnesia starts and then theres a new goal to post about

Sounds like 2013 repeats itself with the difference of who's in the lead.