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Xbox Velocity Architecture - 100 GB is instantly accessible by the developer through a custom hardware decompression block

Those 7 GB/s NVMe drives are not even sold in the market. They will never get as cheap as you think they will get. A 4.5 GB/s NVMe drive costs around 240 USD.
XSX expansion card contains the same drive as in the console itself, so its also being produced in mass.

Not now, but they will be available this year. They were at CES 2020
 
Yes, Microsoft is doing damage control on the " Worlds fastest, most power console."

Most powerful, not the fastest. It’s basically Superman vs. The Flash at this point. Also a good point that Digital Foundry brought up that we aren’t taking about, what would MS do if more and more developers adopt having these 7Gb/s SSDs and building games around it? Sony would be fine since the PS5 is built for it, but would MS have to possibly address it in an XSX Pro?
 

Allandor

Member
SSD only improves load times. Speed and Performance depends on RAM and CPU speed. Your SSD is not going to automatically make your game run at 120 fps. XSX also uses NVMe drives like PS5, so its not slow at loading speeds like you think.
yes, but it can help to use the RAM (keep it clean) for better things and therefore increase speed of the rest (e.g. caching of other needed stuff).
Currently SSD only reduce the normal load-times because the games are still developed for HDDs where you must get everything into packets so they can be loaded with 100MB/s into memory and decompressed there. And the packets often include things, that are currently not needed in memory, but there they are and often duplicated through other packets.

btw, as a programmer, I really hate packet distribution. Those always get lots of other stuff on the system that is duplicated or not needed at all.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Most powerful, not the fastest. It’s basically Superman vs. The Flash at this point. Also a good point that Digital Foundry brought up that we aren’t taking about, what would MS do if more and more developers adopt having these 7Gb/s SSDs and building games around it? Sony would be fine since the PS5 is built for it, but would MS have to possibly address it in an XSX Pro?
SSD only improves load times. Speed and Performance depends on RAM and CPU speed. Your SSD is not going to automatically make your game run at 120 fps. XSX also uses NVMe drives like PS5, so its not slow at loading speeds like you think.
 

Jtibh

Banned
Nah i like the 12tflop pr more than this.
I cant measure ram and ssd in real life.
I only understand teraflops.
12 to be exact.
Sony is fucked man dont you get it?
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
yes, but it can help to use the RAM (keep it clean) for better things and therefore increase speed of the rest (e.g. caching of other needed stuff).
Currently SSD only reduce the normal load-times because the games are still developed for HDDs where you must get everything into packets so they can be loaded with 100MB/s into memory and decompressed there. And the packets often include things, that are currently not needed in memory, but there they are and often duplicated through other packets.

btw, as a programmer, I really hate packet distribution. Those always get lots of other stuff on the system that is duplicated or not needed at all.
Xbox also does that
DirectStorage – DirectStorage is an all new I/O system designed specifically for gaming to unleash the full performance of the SSD and hardware decompression. It is one of the components that comprise the Xbox Velocity Architecture. Modern games perform asset streaming in the background to continuously load the next parts of the world while you play, and DirectStorage can reduce the CPU overhead for these I/O operations from multiple cores to taking just a small fraction of a single core; thereby freeing considerable CPU power for the game to spend on areas like better physics or more NPCs in a scene. This newest member of the DirectX family is being introduced with Xbox Series X and we plan to bring it to Windows as well. 4
Hardware Decompression – Hardware decompression is a dedicated hardware component introduced with Xbox Series X to allow games to consume as little space as possible on the SSD while eliminating all CPU overhead typically associated with run-time decompression. It reduces the software overhead of decompression when operating at full SSD performance from more than three CPU cores to zero – thereby freeing considerable CPU power for the game to spend on areas like better gameplay and improved framerates. Hardware decompression is one of the components of the Xbox Velocity Architecture.
 
SSD only improves load times. Speed and Performance depends on RAM and CPU speed. Your SSD is not going to automatically make your game run at 120 fps. XSX also uses NVMe drives like PS5, so its not slow at loading speeds like you think.

This is not true. Having the ability to have the I/O throughput being at the speed it’s at, it will lead to more stable frame rates while streaming in higher textures at a consistent rate. Look at what happened when players swapped from HDD to SSD for Star Citizen. One of the biggest benefits was increased and more consistent FPS. This narrative that the SSD will only be for faster loading and that’s it, is quite irksome.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
This is not true. Having the ability to have the I/O throughput being at the speed it’s at, it will lead to more stable frame rates while streaming in higher textures at a consistent rate. Look at what happened when players swapped from HDD to SSD for Star Citizen. One of the biggest benefits was increased and more consistent FPS. This narrative that the SSD will only be for faster loading and that’s it, is quite irksome.
XSX also uses high speed NVMe drives. Its not like Sony's SSDs will launch ICBMs with nuclear warheads and cure world hunger.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
I honestly don't see any difference between MS and Sony SSD solutions other than max bandwidth. They are both designed to do literally the exact same thing for game design/development. I guess all the hype PS5 SSD gets is because the bandwidth is the only number where on paper it's better than XBX...
 

Caio

Member
This Xbox Velocity Architecture is so fascinating. I still can't believe MS could put all this in a Console, the hardware is amazing, CPU, GPU at 12.155 TF Custom RDNA2 architecture + Ray Tracing, (giving XSX a "25TF" while Ray tracing according to Digital Foundry, with standard shaders running in parallele with RT), and the SSD, holy crap, Developers just must take full advantage of it. This is the most exciting generation ever, this Console is a furious beast.
 

Goliathy

Banned
look in real world the bigger gpu wins all the time.

best example rtx 2080ti vs rtx 2080 ultra
2080ti is bigger and slower
2080ultra is smaller but has 300Hz more clock speed.

the similarities to xsx and gpu and ps5 gpu are ridiculous

2080ti wins in all games in under all conditions

stop talking bullshit

wEQ7Z0x.png


CE1BT8Q.jpg


x3Rs7qQ.jpg

wtf. That’s a HUGE difference. XD
 
Most powerful, not the fastest. It’s basically Superman vs. The Flash at this point. Also a good point that Digital Foundry brought up that we aren’t taking about, what would MS do if more and more developers adopt having these 7Gb/s SSDs and building games around it? Sony would be fine since the PS5 is built for it, but would MS have to possibly address it in an XSX Pro?

They've gone 1st-party at that point (no other platform can guarantee that performance level, and likely won't in the next 7 or 8 years), so MS wouldn't/couldn't do anything at that point. The question becomes do developers want to put all their eggs in one basket. Because of the consoles, you might start seeing more games that require SSD, but they'll try to accommodate most of the existing market.
 

Goliathy

Banned
Most powerful, not the fastest. It’s basically Superman vs. The Flash at this point. Also a good point that Digital Foundry brought up that we aren’t taking about, what would MS do if more and more developers adopt having these 7Gb/s SSDs and building games around it? Sony would be fine since the PS5 is built for it, but would MS have to possibly address it in an XSX Pro?

For multiplatform Games? Never going to happen.

most PC users don’t even have SSDs. Lol
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Two parts that of course aren't the same price, whereas the Xbro fantasists are banking on SX being the same price as PS5/
That SSD will play a factor in PS5's price as much as XSX's raw specs does. There is nothing fanatic about that.
 

Allandor

Member
Xbox also does that
never said that it won't. It is just not loading-speed that you can increase with fast storage, that's my point. Your's was that you would only increase loading speed, and that only half of the truth. And yes, both consoles will profit from the fast storage.
The other thing to ask is just, can the GPU/CPU combination handle those really fast streams from the SSD in a useful manner.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
If Sony can sell the PS5 at $399, it’s going to sell hot cakes and I think Sony realizes that with the way they built PS5.
Except the uber expensive SSD and cooling system that balance out the extra apu costs Microsoft has. These are about thr same cost to make or the series x is cheaper thanks to that insane SSD driving costs up.
 
Most powerful, not the fastest. It’s basically Superman vs. The Flash at this point. Also a good point that Digital Foundry brought up that we aren’t taking about, what would MS do if more and more developers adopt having these 7Gb/s SSDs and building games around it? Sony would be fine since the PS5 is built for it, but would MS have to possibly address it in an XSX Pro?

In this analogy, Superman is the XsX right?
 

Dunnas

Member
Well yes, and no. PS5 is 3500MHz with 8/16 threads. Series X is 3600MHz with 8/16 and only goes to 3800MHz with 8/8 threads.
FYI, not that it makes any real difference, but I believe it is actually 3.66GHz with SMT based on the specs on a lot of sites (not the initial DF ones though). It seems that Microsoft is comfortable enough with rounding down for that and the TF number, so most people aren’t aware.
 
Ignoring this cherry picked screenshot(most of the time Xbox One X trumped the PS4 Pro), SSD's wont improve framerate.

This. Is. Literally. False.

TIPS & TRICKS TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE IN STAR CITIZEN
There are some basic tips you can follow to improve the framerate and stability of Star Citizen Alpha 3.4.

USE SSD HARD DRIVE
Be sure to use a fast SSD hard drive for Star Citizen (or any other fast and graphics-intensive game). This is perhaps the most important performance tip of all. A normal HDD won’t work well.
 

Tomeru

Member
I guess a pc with a 680 GTX and an SSD is also faster than one with a 2080ti and a HDD. Because as we all know, a pc’s performance has always been judged on the storage speed, and that isn’t just something that happened to change only in the last 2 days for some reason that I couldn’t possibly guess.

How about a pc with 2070 ssd and a pc with 2080 hdd?
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
A dev commented

Considering Cerny repeatedly said there are height restrictions in the bay I think it is safe to say that they do not need to add huge heat sinks on the SSD drives you buy to extend the storage.
Ease of development wise, we shall see... a memory split with a 200 GB/s difference between the pools is not much different from a split memory architecture and so far Sony’s Cerny led systems have all been easy and satisfying for devs to code for and optimise (PS Vita, PS4, PS4 Pro, and from many other random dev comments PS5 looks to have been built the same way).
 
Can we travel back in time to the PSP days when people gave Sony shit for the Memory Stick cards ;)? Or the PS Vita memory ones?

That’s a totally different thing, those were genuinely proprietary technology. These are only proprietary in that they have a specific metal casing / heat sink to guarantee performance. That’s it.

Also like I already said, they will be cheaper and more readily available than the ones suitable for the PS5. So more consumer friendly.
 
Can we travel back in time to the PSP days when people gave Sony shit for the Memory Stick cards ;)? Or the PS Vita memory ones?

Depends on how much predatory comes along with the propriety. Vita 32GB $70 VS. 32GB SD for $20 at the time. 360 500GB HDD released at $120, comparable new drive $85. There's a limit on what is acceptable and what will cause consumer outrage.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Lol this isn’t the first time MS got a pass for proprietary storage before either. Anyone remember the X360 hard drives? I do because I had several fail on my 360. 😡
There were guides online to use certain Western Digital hard drives and format them for Xbox 360. I still have that 500 GB WD5000LPVX with enclosure that I created for my Xbox 360.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
That’s a totally different thing, those were genuinely proprietary technology. These are only proprietary in that they have a specific metal casing / heat sink to guarantee performance. That’s it.

Yeah... proprietary and yet you could buy them from Sandisk as well as Sony and others. Loving this, people throwing shit at the PSP for the Memory Stick based storage and defending the SSD you can only buy from MS as more pro-consumer... :rolleyes:.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
Question is this because it is designed based off SSD. I remember seeing a video where a guy tried to play star citizen off the HDD. And it started chugging a long. So wouldn't it only affect frame rate that way? Isn't that the reason XSX and PS5 games will not play off the HDD?
Presumably yes. World of Warcraft also has that problem on PC. Loading up on SSD is quick and there's no stuttering once you're in the world. On HDD it's like your computer is going to explode for the first 10 minutes.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Yeah... proprietary and yet you could buy them from Sandisk as well as Sony and others. Loving this, people throwing shit at the PSP for the Memory Stick based storage and defending the SSD you can only buy from MS as more pro-consumer... :rolleyes:.
You buy it from Seagate, not Microsoft.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Depends on how much predatory comes along with the propriety. Vita 32GB $70 VS. 32GB SD for $20 at the time. 360 500GB HDD released at $120, comparable new drive $85. There's a limit on what is acceptable and what will cause consumer outrage.

The same shit was thrown at Sony for the PSP which used Memory Stick cards. Much cheaper, non Sony exclusive, and still gathered scorn. Xbox 360 and XSX HDD/SSD packaged in a proprietary enclosure though = pro-consumer...
 
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