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[adamsapple]

Just so we have this clarified, this is the Series S|X SSD speed info from Eurogamer/official documentation. Not able to find a lot of info on this subject by googling myself.

Xbox Series SSD hard drive storage explained, from Storage Expansion Cards to speed and size

Everything we know about Xbox Series X and S's SSD hard drive solution - from faster loading speeds, to the launch Xbox SSD size and how Storage Expansion Cards

www.eurogamer.net

The ability for the console to access 2.4 GB/s of data per second - or 4.8GB/s uncompressed - which is around 40 times than what's possible on Xbox One currently.

 

[DenchDeckard]

I read it wrong Windows central was talking about the Samsung SSD

Best SSD expansion drives for Xbox Series X|S 2023

Expand your Xbox console with these ultra-fast SSDs.

www.windowscentral.com

I could tell it was an honest mistake. no foul my dude.

 

[Riky]

This should be a bannable offense.

Spreading FUD, yeah I'm sure others would be on the mods radar for this.

Also those people in the other thread denying that The Coalition had helped all platforms with their work, once again they look pretty stupid now it's reconfirmed.

It would be interesting to see what the minimum speed drive this could work with.

 

[onQ123]

Spreading FUD, yeah I'm sure others would be on the mods radar for this.

I'm always honest this was just a mistake & I own up to it .

 

[carloseduardocd]

Keep in mind that even at 220 MBps, this is something last gen consoles with 20 MBps HDDs could not have done. Insomniac couldnt even target the 50 MBps HDDs in every PS4 console because there was a chance people could replace them with slower 20 MBps HDDs.

But yes, 5.5 GBps seems to be overkill. PS studios better use it for some insane looking games because otherwise its just a gigantic waste of hardware that couldve been used elsewhere to beef up the GPU.

Yes, 5.5 GBps sounds a bit overkill to me.

The whole i/o system (dedicated DMA controller, coherency engines, i/o co-processors, SRAM) should be the real gain, even if we use SSDs gen3.

We should see some funny situations in the future, like external SSDs gen3 keep performance in most of the PS5 games. For me sounds ok, cheaper SSDs to buy

 

[Fredrik]

people who dismissed this demo due to only being 1080p are such clowns

Are people seriously doing that?

My reaction. I can’t go back. I’ve never cared less about resolution than right now.

This demo has literally made me go meh on everything currently released, games I previously thought looked awesome. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultra ray-traced, meh. Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, yup, meh. Forza Horizon 5, yeah that too, meh. And besides the insane visuals in the Matrix demo they also added really good car destruction with doors and hood flying open and cars being completely bent, something still missing in all AAA racing games including FH5. Simple dumb pedestrians look generations ahead of the AI characters in just released and for many GOTY Halo Infinite. Main character looks better than most AAA main characters. You have to really search to find any polygons in the world or on characters. Viewing distance is amazing. Textures are amazing. Etc.

The future is here, but still annoyingly far away since this is just a demo, and I assume it won’t ever become a full game.

Some concerns. The framerate is awful, but I expect the PC version to calm me down, not sure what will happen on consoles though. And how till Steam Deck handle this? Can Switch run UE5? Will I need to upgrade my PC sooner? Will gaming violence become too real?

 

[M1chl]

I read it wrong Windows central was talking about the Samsung SSD

Best SSD expansion drives for Xbox Series X|S 2023

Expand your Xbox console with these ultra-fast SSDs.

www.windowscentral.com

It's really fucking stupid that Google do this, I can see this issue being easily done even by me.

 

[Great Hair]

2008
<256mb vram
<256mb sysram
<25mb/s harddrive

Spoiler

2021+
<10,000mb vram
<6,000mb sysram
<10,000mb/s SSD

 

[ParaSeoul]

Haven't got around to the first video yet

 

[onQ123]

It's really fucking stupid that Google do this, I can see this issue being easily done even by me.

It was way too many factors for the confusion even when I knew the bandwidth was 2.4GB/s looking at that made me think it was read + write speeds

 

[Black_Stride]

Spreading FUD, yeah I'm sure others would be on the mods radar for this.

Also those people in the other thread denying that The Coalition had helped all platforms with their work, once again they look pretty stupid now it's reconfirmed.

It would be interesting to see what the minimum speed drive this could work with.

Yup.

People keep forgetting that The Coalitions branch of Unreal Engine has influenced the main branch of Unreal Engine.
Theres no way they would do optimization work and then Epic looks at that work and just throws it away for the PS5 version.
Beyond Epic themselves TC are king tier Unreal Engine devs especially when you consider Epic trust their work enough to integrate features into the main branch.
I wonder if Netherealm have moved to Unreal Engine 5 yet...I imagine they too have some insane tools and features for the engine.

As for slowest drive that could work with this demo.
Probably anything that can maintain ~400MB/s.

PC is unlikely to get the first section but the open world and fly mode should give us a good indication of how much data the demo actually needs.

The PS5s SSD for Unreal Engine 5 is overkill.....but not every developer is going to use Unreal Engine 5 so it may still yet show off its benefits.

 

[onQ123]

2008
<256mb vram
<256mb sysram
<25mb/s harddrive

Spoiler

2021+
<10,000mb vram
<6,000mb sysram
<10,000mb/s SSD

We never got that Getaway game

 

[Team Andromeda]

Series S is an atrocity of nature

This post in an atrocity of forums

 

[MasterCornholio]

The demo was certainly an interesting proof of concept but it really needs some tweaking. I certainly can't imagine having a good experience with a game with such an unstable framerate.

 

[Robochobo]

Windows Central numbers for a Samsung drive is the 1st thing that pop up when you search the numbers

I think the last thing you should do when trying to make an argument/point is rely on information that you need to Google in the first place. I know, plastic boxes are serious business, but at least click on the second link or something.

 

[twilo99]

is the series S holding back "next gen" yet?

 

[adamsapple]

2008
<256mb vram
<256mb sysram
<25mb/s harddrive

Spoiler

2021+
<10,000mb vram
<6,000mb sysram
<10,000mb/s SSD

You realize that The Getaway was a bullshot trailer, much like the other bullshot trailers like Motorstorm and Killzone, right ?

 

[onQ123]

I think the last thing you should do when trying to make an argument/point is rely on information that you need to Google in the first place. I know, plastic boxes are serious business, but at least click on the second link or something.

My point still stands the only thing that changed with the Google search is that I changed it from "around the same read speed" to " almost 2 times the read spread". My point is that the engine was made to run on all the consoles & PCs with different SSDs.

 

[RoadHazard]

Alex shooting down at least two common misconceptions in this video. Very good and informative content.

I don’t think we will ever see the ps5s IO get utilised properly this generation. Maybe in 3 to 4 years on an exclusive game but it just goes to show that these forward thinking engines will be so agile when it comes to disk streaming etc.

I don't know why anyone would think this demo is particularly data heavy. Everything is built from blocks (even the buildings), there are very few unique assets, and you can't move very fast through the city. The most impressive unique assets are the character models that you only see in the scripted sequence at the start.

I think 1st party exclusives will be doing very cool things within a year or two that wouldn't have been possible with a typical "slow" SSD.

 

[Robochobo]

My point still stands the only thing that changed with the Google search is that I changed it from "around the same read speed" to " almost 2 times the read spread". My point is that the engine was made to run on all the consoles & PCs with different SSDs.

I understand your point and that's fine. Just shouldn't be a good idea to voice something as fact that you'd need to Google in the first place.

 

[Lognor]

Series S is a beast

 

[vpance]

That was a pretty neat trick with tape on the M.2 drive.

So if we can achieve visuals like this with super slow SSDs, then are we already at diminishing returns with SSD speeds for visuals? I want to know what like 50MB/frame can bring vs this 10MB/frame.

 

[onQ123]

I understand your point and that's fine. Just shouldn't be a good idea to voice something as fact that you'd need to Google in the first place.

I just explained to you that the last part wasn't the point. I first typed that it was about the same then googled to see if the 2.4GB/s was the read speed but seen 1GB/s read & 1GB/s write speed & mistook that for the numbers then changed my comment to reflect that.

 

[DaGwaphics]

It's really fucking stupid that Google do this, I can see this issue being easily done even by me.

Google does this a lot. They confused me with the launch date for FH5 a ways back. Have to always question the big bolded parts with them. LOL

 

[TGO]

To be fair there *is* some mix and match of video in the opening. Morpheus is a cut out from the real movie and some of the Keanu at the start is also the real actor before it swaps to the digital one after one of the camera cuts (before the mirror scene).

Yeah I spotted that, but when Neo was sleeping at his desk?
Straight up thought it was video.

 

[Robochobo]

I just explained to you that the last part wasn't the point. I first typed that it was about the same then googled to see if the 2.4GB/s was the read speed but seen 1GB/s read & 1GB/s write speed & mistook that for the numbers then changed my comment to reflect that.

I already said I understood that, and again, I'll iterate on what I said. If you need to Google something you think is fact but you're not certain of, why say anything in the first place?

 

[Physiognomonics]

is the series S holding back "next gen" yet?

If it's the case you won't learn it in a DF article. But we know this is the actual opinion of real developers.

 

[adamsapple]

Yeah I spotted that, but when Neo was sleeping at his desk?
Straight up thought it was video.

Oh yeah, that wake up scene is probably the most convincing thing I've ever seen.

 

[Stooky]

Keep in mind that even at 220 MBps, this is something last gen consoles with 20 MBps HDDs could not have done. Insomniac couldnt even target the 50 MBps HDDs in every PS4 console because there was a chance people could replace them with slower 20 MBps HDDs.

But yes, 5.5 GBps seems to be overkill. PS studios better use it for some insane looking games because otherwise its just a gigantic waste of hardware that couldve been used elsewhere to beef up the GPU.

Thats short sighted. Keep in that mind that devs use other engines. Also think about were we might be in the next 5 years. 5.5 does not seem like overkill

 

[sinnergy]

That was a pretty neat trick with tape on the M.2 drive.

So if we can achieve visuals like this with super slow SSDs, then are we already at diminishing returns with SSD speeds for visuals? I want to know what like 50MB/frame can bring vs this 10MB/frame.

The whole architecture , cpu etc maybe ca nt even handle 50… , otherwise epic would have done it , imo .

 

[Sosokrates]

For the amount of time O onQ123 has spent discussing the specs of the consoles how on earth does he not have them memorised?

 

[reksveks]

If it's the case you won't learn it in a DF article. But we know this is the actual opinion of real developers.

Also thought 16gb of ram was holding back devs

 

[onQ123]

For the amount of time O onQ123 has spent discussing the specs of the consoles how on earth does he not have them memorised?

I have the total bandwidth memorized I checked for the read speed & the article threw me off. It happens

 

[Sosokrates]

If it's the case you won't learn it in a DF article. But we know this is the actual opinion of real developers.

Do we?
Developer comments on the S have been brief and somewhat pre mature.

 

[Great Hair]

is the series S holding back "next gen" yet?

Nope! Probably because it aint leading platform ... ayoooooo!

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Alex shooting down at least two common misconceptions in this video. Very good and informative content.

I don’t think we will ever see the ps5s IO get utilised properly this generation. Maybe in 3 to 4 years on an exclusive game but it just goes to show that these forward thinking engines will be so agile when it comes to disk streaming etc.

It was always weird with people thinking the 2020 UE5 demo or Rift Apart were "fully tapping" the PS5 I/O; if anything I doubt any game is currently even nearing a quarter of it or the Series' systems' SSD I/O potential.

Like, I'm having a very difficult timing picturing game design-wise what you'd need consistent 5.5 GB/s or even 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput on the SSD for. Racing games? We've already had visually impressive racing games hitting fast speeds without SSDs. Sonic games? Similar case there, and they tend to have a lot of unique assets along the courses. I figure those larger bandwidths could be leveraged for higher-resolution textures but the fundamental capability itself isn't unique to SSDs of those bandwidths being a requirement for them.

I can't picture any immediate benefits to super-fast SSD I/O besides seamless loading of texture data into RAM, I do think that is one area the I/O has already been showing its benefits, and making the most of otherwise limited RAM capacities. But I do think they'll be very useful for system QoL experience.

If it's the case you won't learn it in a DF article. But we know this is the actual opinion of real developers.

I guess those "actual developers" must be steaming mad with the Switch and Switch OLED, then.

 

[vpance]

The whole architecture , cpu etc maybe ca nt even handle 50… , otherwise epic would have done it , imo .

I can see that being the case if they want to make a modest target in h/w requirements, so all platforms are easy to port to.

300MB/s is a very low bar but light on CPU demands I guess. If Sony went actually went overkill for their SSD solution for this gen that would be a strange revelation.

 

[Lysandros]

Thats short sighted. Keep in that mind that devs use other engines. Also think about were we might be in the next 5 years. 5.5 does not seem like overkill

Very short sighted indeed, typical 'statu quo' mentality.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Like, I'm having a very difficult timing picturing game design-wise what you'd need consistent 5.5 GB/s or even 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput on the SSD for.

Probably no game will have such requirements, but there will be games that benefit from being able to reach those peaks in certain moments of areas of a game. Basically it’s about having even more freedom, and there’s really no point in trying to convince yourself that devs won’t use that freedom, ever. They can always use more freedom.

 

[DarkMage619]

Do we?
Developer comments on the S have been brief and somewhat pre mature.

We have not seen the limits of any of the current generation platforms yet. The full feature of the XSX|S hasn't even been used. The vast majority of comments about the XSS are like:

Series S is an atrocity of nature

So it's clear most of complaints are not really serious. This demo proves again that the XSS is more than capable of running current generation games in ways last generation's hardware could not. To think you could get hardware raytracing on a $300 box is pretty impressive.

 

[Sosokrates]

We have not seen the limits of any of the current generation platforms yet. The full feature of the XSX|S hasn't even been used. The vast majority of comments about the XSS are like:



So it's clear most of complaints are not really serious. This demo proves again that the XSS is more than capable of running current generation games in ways last generation's hardware could not. To think you could get hardware raytracing on a $300 box is pretty impressive.

I am genuinely interested to hear what devs have to say about development on the seriesS, what cutbacks need to be made, if any.
People always look at the S's RAM and think its to low, but we really dont know what can be done with 8gb combined with SSD and velocity architecture.

But UE5 being feature complete and stable on the seriesS is promising.

 

[Riky]

I am genuinely interested to hear what devs have to say about development on the seriesS, what cutbacks need to be made, if any.
People always look at the S's RAM and think its to low, but we really dont know what can be done with 8gb combined with SSD and velocity architecture.

But UE5 being feature complete and stable on the seriesS is promising.

If SFS is what Microsoft say it is then the Ram limit will be mitigated, remains to be seen but it's obviously a big focus of the VA.

 

[DaGwaphics]

So it's clear most of complaints are not really serious. This demo proves again that the XSS is more than capable of running current generation games in ways last generation's hardware could not. To think you could get hardware raytracing on a $300 box is pretty impressive.

True that. Particularly the GI, the night mode in this demo is super impressive to me.

 

[Redneckerz]

The rendering quality is just black magik considering what is going on. It might be a boring walk in Matrix Megacity, but that detail keeps you wanting for more.

It ruins your perception aswell because most actually playable games suddenly look a ton worse, lol.

Source?

Facts from his brain. But he copped for it, so..

I understand your point and that's fine. Just shouldn't be a good idea to voice something as fact that you'd need to Google in the first place.

This isn't anything new, happens for years already.

It sticks to people because it sounds plausible a lot of the time (and sometimes it is). This is well known.

 

[Elysion]

I’m wondering how this demo (and UE5 in general) would look on last gen consoles. I mean, there are mobile games on UE4, so it’s probably safe to assume that UE5 will run on low end hardware too. The polygon count in this demo for example is so ridiculously high that you could probably slash it in half without noticing too much of a difference.

 

[elliot5]

I’m wondering how this demo (and UE5 in general) would look on last gen consoles. I mean, there are mobile games on UE4, so it’s probably safe to assume that UE5 will run on low end hardware too. The polygon count in this demo for example is so ridiculously high that you could probably slash it in half without noticing too much of a difference.

It wouldn’t as it needs an SSD. You could put an Ssd in an Xbox one but that’s not the standard spec. In addition the only lighting is raytraced. The old consoles would have to run it in software and it would be absolutely dogshit like crysis remastered on One X except at even lower resolution and frame rate. I don’t really think it would be possible to any reasonable degree.

 

[staticshock]

I don't know why anyone would think this demo is particularly data heavy. Everything is built from blocks (even the buildings), there are very few unique assets, and you can't move very fast through the city. The most impressive unique assets are the character models that you only see in the scripted sequence at the start.

I think 1st party exclusives will be doing very cool things within a year or two that wouldn't have been possible with a typical "slow" SSD.

No The buildings are all modular and are made up of dozens of assets for just one building.
secondly of all, you just received facts that This matrix demo was the most data heavy out of all three.

It uses 300 mb/s
Valley of the Ancient uses 80 mb/s
Lumen in the land of nanite uses less than 80mb/s as its less nanite than Valley

People don't realize how much assets were repeated in lumen in the land of nanite. I doubt there's more than 100 unique assets.
They showed a clip of one section and one asset there were repeated like 10 times. Just rotated and angled so you woudn't notice.

 

[elliot5]

No The buildings are all modular and are made up of dozens of assets for just one building.
secondly of all, you just received facts that This matrix demo was the most data heavy out of all three.

It uses 300 mb/s
Valley of the Ancient uses 80 mb/s
Lumen in the land of nanite uses less than 80mb/s as its less nanite than Valley

People don't realize how much assets were repeated in lumen in the land of nanite. I doubt there's more than 100 unique assets.
They showed a clip of one section and one asset there were repeated like 10 times. Just rotated and angled so you woudn't notice.

I would be surprised if this demo is actually 300 MBps of read speed constantly.

as Alex mentions each frame has a 10 MB allocated heap per frame for nanite which at 30 fps means a theoretical limit of 300 MBps. But that doesn’t mean the heap is being dumped and filled to full capacity every frame.

 

[RoadHazard]

No The buildings are all modular and are made up of dozens of assets for just one building.
secondly of all, you just received facts that This matrix demo was the most data heavy out of all three.

It uses 300 mb/s
Valley of the Ancient uses 80 mb/s
Lumen in the land of nanite uses less than 80mb/s as its less nanite than Valley

People don't realize how much assets were repeated in lumen in the land of nanite. I doubt there's more than 100 unique assets.
They showed a clip of one section and one asset there were repeated like 10 times. Just rotated and angled so you woudn't notice.

That's what I meant, that they're modular and made up of shared assets, decreasing how much data needs to be loaded (vs every building being a completely unique asset).

And 300 MB/s isn't much. I mean, it's more than any last-gen game, but it's like 1/30th of what the PS5 can handle. R&C uses much more bandwidth I'm sure (not all the time necessarily, but we least in the world hopping stuff).

 

[Boglin]

It was always weird with people thinking the 2020 UE5 demo or Rift Apart were "fully tapping" the PS5 I/O; if anything I doubt any game is currently even nearing a quarter of it or the Series' systems' SSD I/O potential.

Like, I'm having a very difficult timing picturing game design-wise what you'd need consistent 5.5 GB/s or even 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput on the SSD for. Racing games? We've already had visually impressive racing games hitting fast speeds without SSDs. Sonic games? Similar case there, and they tend to have a lot of unique assets along the courses. I figure those larger bandwidths could be leveraged for higher-resolution textures but the fundamental capability itself isn't unique to SSDs of those bandwidths being a requirement for them.

I can't picture any immediate benefits to super-fast SSD I/O besides seamless loading of texture data into RAM, I do think that is one area the I/O has already been showing its benefits, and making the most of otherwise limited RAM capacities. But I do think they'll be very useful for system QoL experience.



I guess those "actual developers" must be steaming mad with the Switch and Switch OLED, then.

Why are you adding the condition of 5.5 GB/s or 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput needing to be consistent? You only need it when you need it, just like CPU and GPU power.

Lets say there's a game that allows you to summon a dragon out of thin air at the press of a button. If the game is 60fps then 5.5 GB/s of streaming throuhput allows you to load 91.6MBs the very next frame. That 91.6MB can include textures, audio, 3d meshes, animations and anything else needed for the summoned dragon.

That's 91.6MB that you no longer need to keep reserved in memory for those moments the dragon isn't summoned. If you only have a 1 GB/s SSD then the hypothetical dragon can only be 16.6MBs in size if you want it completely loaded for the next frame.

The promise of robust streaming tech is it helps you to use your memory for rendering what is actually on screen. The Xbox Series X has 9x the the Teraflops of the Xbox One and yet it only has 2x the memory. These consoles can really use any help they can get.