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Xbox Series X WDSN530 has custom ASIC to support PCIe 4.0 (Tweaktown corrects PCIe 3.0 claims)

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
I'm not butt hurt you're a fanboy and need to be called out I want to see results that you keep banging on about new games next gen games loading better and looking far better on series X compared to ps5 like how you're comments read not BC games using PS4 pro profiles shit ... You conveniently leave out the word BC in you're comments and comparisons because you know it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things .

I state a fact that you perceive as a slight to your plastic box of choice and I'm the fanboy. I'm not banging on about anything, I stated a fact and its just one some fan boys just don't want to accept.

I know the truth is inconvenient at time.
 

onQ123

Member
was my original statement incorrect? Are there not games that load faster on the Xbox series x?

You said it load games faster than a PS5 you didn't say some games you said it as if Xbox Series X load games faster than PS5.

You're taking data about old games & using it to paint a picture as if Xbox Series X load games faster than PS5.


As of right now PS5 games look better than anything running on Xbox Series X what if someone was to take that data & say PS5 is more powerful than Xbox Series X?
 

Hezekiah

Banned
MS went cheap on the SSD. I wonder why the external card is $200+?
Strange that some were saying that MS were ready and happy to take a big hit on hardware because of the $1.5 trillion they have in their vault.

I guess MS executives are a bit more clued-up than some of the more excitable posters on GAF.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
You said it load games faster than a PS5 you didn't say some games you said it as if Xbox Series X load games faster than PS5.

You're taking data about old games & using it to paint a picture as if Xbox Series X load games faster than PS5.


As of right now PS5 games look better than anything running on Xbox Series X what if someone was to take that data & say PS5 is more powerful than Xbox Series X?

I didn't say all games either. You made a false assumption and tired to put that on me.
 
I state a fact that you perceive as a slight to your plastic box of choice and I'm the fanboy. I'm not banging on about anything, I stated a fact and its just one some fan boys just don't want to accept.

I know the truth is inconvenient at time.

I'm no fanboy I don't have the post history of one either
I just can't stand fanboy waffle .
 

onQ123

Member
Xbox Series S, he just did the teardown on Series S, here is the pics:


EmVx5HqXEAAOjj5


EmVx5YvWMAAbvSa


Series S SSD can be upgraded on the cheap side
 

Allandor

Member
It is a custom ssd. E.g. that can mean firmware changes.
PCIe gen3 x4 has the same bandwidth as PCIe gen 4 x2. I really don't see why the controller chip shouldn't be capable to receive and send the data that normally comes via 4 lanes can now be send/received via 2 lanes. If the controller-chip is compatible for the bandwidth, it should be possible.
After all, it is a custom SSD. That can mean, custom chips, overclocking, firmware, ... .whatever.

After all, the SSD is only connected via 2 lanes. So they couldn't reach the max speed (that developers rely on) if it would have been an gen3 interface. I must just say, MS should know what they are doing.

The good news, the controller chip is still on the SSD card, which means if future SSDs get bigger and cheaper, there is no reason why a 4tb ssd shouldn't just work (like some rumors that that the max memory would be 2tb). The bad news is, the SSD is not that custom as expected. The controller chip on the SSD makes it much more expensive. But the main price problem is, that it is just one memory chip on the small card. That makes the SSD really expensive.
 

FrankWza

Member
I'm not flaunting anything. I made a factual statement and the same trolls come in quoting me all butt hurt. No matter what ifs and buts you bring up doesn't change the factual statement I made. Live with it and move on.

This is the equivalent of having 30 seconds to punch a professional boxer while his hands are tied behind his back. Then after 30 seconds he can punch back.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Okay, then let me alleviate yours and the usual suspects non-concern. If the argument is that MS is falsely calling this drive NVME, then why does both the article cited and WD own website also call it NVME?


iXuHYHv.png

Who said that? You can have NVMe drives, afaik, on any generation of PCI-e.

Of course it's NVMe. They just said it was a PCI-e 4.0 drive earlier, when it turns out they're using 4 lanes of a PCI-e 3.0 to signal to two lanes of PCI-e 4.0 from the host. Same speed they claimed, just not a 4.0 drive, that's all.

This grew quite a bit but I didn't see anyone saying it wasn't NVMe.
 
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thelastword

Banned
I got a free 20GB drive from MSFT after forced installs started, had to fill somekind of online form to get it. (If my memory serves me right.)
20 GB was on the low side. 60Gb already filled pretty fast as it was....The crazy thing is at that time, I was already rocking a 500Gb - 1TB on my PS3.....
 
Well this is a thread about nothing.
MS has an SSD that delivers a constant speed of 2.4gbs. It won't go under it.
This is what it is.
What matters is the performance.
And again, we will soon see how that plays out.
From a BC point of view, XSX is faster, now let's see how multi plats fare.
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
The good news, the controller chip is still on the SSD card, which means if future SSDs get bigger and cheaper, there is no reason why a 4tb ssd shouldn't just work (like some rumors that that the max memory would be 2tb). The bad news is, the SSD is not that custom as expected. The controller chip on the SSD makes it much more expensive. But the main price problem is, that it is just one memory chip on the small card. That makes the SSD really expensive.

Even if there was an SSD that was bigger and cheaper I have to wonder if Microsoft would allow it to be changed. They've always made it difficult to swap hard drives with off the shelf parts.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
This is the equivalent of having 30 seconds to punch a professional boxer while his hands are tied behind his back. Then after 30 seconds he can punch back.

How is that equivalent?


here is an example of something equivalent

Xbox Series X has a Graphic advantage over the PS5. Give examples of games native 4k on ps5 but upscaled on Xbox one X (instead of vise versa like it is now).

you learn something every day, glad I could help.
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Ok, cool. it's hitting the minimum spec and that not including the Direct Storage API.

Overall, it looks 100% off the shelf so far. For comparison, PS5's SSD is soldered to the motherboard on both sides, fully customized:

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h53m33s380.png


vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h53m21s829.png


You flip the motherboard and there are the rest:

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h52m56s619.png


All directly and individually cooled from both sides via the big heatsink.

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h56m08s572.png


Going back to the first photo, there is a Samsung DDR4 DRAM:

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 2nd-generation of 10-nanometer class* (1y-nm), 8-gigabit (Gb) DDR4 DRAM. For use in a wide range of next-generation computing systems, the new 8Gb DDR4 features the highest performance and energy efficiency for an 8Gb DRAM chip, as well as the smallest dimensions.

1st-2nd-Gen-10nm-DRAM_main_1.jpg


 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Not out of the box

8K upscaling and 8K media like Japanese 8K streaming services:

Japanese telco NTT Docomo has announced plans to launch an 8K VR event streaming service available via 5G in March. The new service will offer pay-per-view access to sports events, theatre and music productions, enabling users of 5G smartphones and VR headsets to watch by choosing their own camera angle in real time.

.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
So, when some time down the road they change to a 4.0 it will be faster still? I'm sure I'm wrong in my misunderstanding of this though.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
So, when some time down the road they change to a 4.0 it will be faster still? I'm sure I'm wrong in my misunderstanding of this though.

So, 2 lanes of 4.0 equal 4 lanes of 3.0 in speed. What they're doing here is communicating with a PCI-e 3.0 drive sending 4 lanes, with a host receiving 2 lanes of 4.0.

A 4.0 drive with 2 lanes would be the same max speed (though it should be over 3GB/s, Microsoft probably quotes 2.4GB/s to match a constant speed between the two possible drives, the smaller expansion card probably has less thermal dissipation to deal with). I'm not sure how many platform lanes they're using in there, but a "regular" 4.0 drive with 4 lanes would be capable of just over 7GB/s.

So depends. Just using the same number of lanes as the host for a 4.0 drive wouldn't be faster, but if they have the regular full 4 lanes for an SSD to spare, they could double the max speed.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Who said that? You can have NVMe drives, afaik, on any generation of PCI-e.

Of course it's NVMe. They just said it was a PCI-e 4.0 drive earlier, when it turns out they're using 4 lanes of a PCI-e 3.0 to signal to two lanes of PCI-e 4.0 from the host. Same speed they claimed, just not a 4.0 drive, that's all.

This grew quite a bit but I didn't see anyone saying it wasn't NVMe.
Ah my fault. So it's a last gen SSD. Must be why it loads last gen games faster than the PS5.
 
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Dr Bass

Member
Another false assumption on your part, do you need the list of games that load faster on XSX vs PS5 or can we just let it go already?

I don't think we've actually seen an XSX game in the wild yet right? Just Xbox One games running on XSX. Not the same thing.

Again BC games just do not count. They will run in a BC mode, not designed for the new architecture of the systems.
 
I don't think we've actually seen an XSX game in the wild yet right? Just Xbox One games running on XSX. Not the same thing.

Again BC games just do not count. They will run in a BC mode, not designed for the new architecture of the systems.
That doesn't matter, them being coded around the storage or not is not of relevance.

What you see without coding is exactly what you see on PC, the raw sustained loading capability of the drive itself. Microsoft's drive appears to have better sustained metrics than Sony's.

Sony's may peak higher in random read/write but its sustained operation is inferior.
 
That doesn't matter, them being coded around the storage or not is not of relevance.

What you see without coding is exactly what you see on PC, the raw sustained loading capability of the drive itself. Microsoft's drive appears to have better sustained metrics than Sony's.

Sony's may peak higher in random read/write but its sustained operation is inferior.

Anything to back that up?
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
The loading times, they're purely a metric of sustained speed of the drives.

This isn't some kind of mystery.
Sustained speed of the drive is only one metric of loading times. There's also the memory controller, bandwidth of the bus, decompression, CPU speed....

There's more complexity than just how fast the drive can be read.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
The loading times, they're purely a metric of sustained speed of the drives.

This isn't some kind of mystery.

Do you not think it's an interesting pattern at all that native PS5 games, with up to twice the RAM to fill up, are loading faster than 8th gen games in BC?

It seems like the SSD is nerfed in BC mode, and we have seen in many cases that Microsoft's APIs are more portable so they can be looser in releasing performance in BC mode (they actually use hypervisors extensively), way too early to call this one.
 

Dnice123

Member
Overall, it looks 100% off the shelf so far. For comparison, PS5's SSD is soldered to the motherboard on both sides, fully customized:

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h53m33s380.png


vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h53m21s829.png


You flip the motherboard and there are the rest:

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h52m56s619.png


All directly and individually cooled from both sides via the big heatsink.

vlcsnap-2020-10-07-16h56m08s572.png


Going back to the first photo, there is a Samsung DDR4 DRAM:

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 2nd-generation of 10-nanometer class* (1y-nm), 8-gigabit (Gb) DDR4 DRAM. For use in a wide range of next-generation computing systems, the new 8Gb DDR4 features the highest performance and energy efficiency for an 8Gb DRAM chip, as well as the smallest dimensions.

1st-2nd-Gen-10nm-DRAM_main_1.jpg


All that just makes me wonder how Series X/S could be faster loading anything. BC games, optimized games, boot up all should be faster on PS5 judging by the effort Sony has put into their custom SSD solution.
 

Dr Bass

Member
That doesn't matter, them being coded around the storage or not is not of relevance.

What you see without coding is exactly what you see on PC, the raw sustained loading capability of the drive itself. Microsoft's drive appears to have better sustained metrics than Sony's.

Sony's may peak higher in random read/write but its sustained operation is inferior.

yeah this doesn't make any sense.

Again look at the new games. It's loading newer, more demanding, actual "next gen" games much faster than older games. There is a reason for this. Using BC games as evidence of anything is just incorrect.

I do think it's kinda funny you said "what you see without coding is the actual speed" more or less. So if "coding" speeds this up dramatically with actual new games what is that evidence of .... cheating? How can using the actual correct methods to utilize the available hardware via code be anything less than "how it is"?

Again, when XSX has an actual next gen game available, compare that with what we are seeing with next gen PS5 games.
 
The loading times, they're purely a metric of sustained speed of the drives.

This isn't some kind of mystery.

Load times are just an example of the end result of various working gears, from the SSD hardware, to the I/O, to any and all layers in between that can bottleneck in a way or another the final output, including the software layers themselves etc.

So with the obvious out of the way.... highlighting the fact that load times are not a comprehensive descriptor of "sustained" read/write speeds of particular SSD hardware (meaning you're wrong and have nothing to base it on)... we can move on to the topic you wish to really engage in which is games load times. And I'm guessing games load times because you haven't even specified what load times you're referring to. Then again I understand that a good troll game requires vagueness to avoid pigeon holing yourself into a bad argument - so I don't blame you.

So I ask here... what/which load times?

He doesn’t. He’s been running with this lie longer than the whole Series S doesn’t exist thing. It’s unfortunate but he only has a few more days to run with this false narrative before it’s all over.

I don't think he has any and neither do the others. I just ignore the other trolls cause I'm not going to argue with clear bait with each one but I do entertain a few from time to time... such as in this case.
 
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yeah this doesn't make any sense.

Again look at the new games. It's loading newer, more demanding, actual "next gen" games much faster than older games. There is a reason for this. Using BC games as evidence of anything is just incorrect.

I do think it's kinda funny you said "what you see without coding is the actual speed" more or less. So if "coding" speeds this up dramatically with actual new games what is that evidence of .... cheating? How can using the actual correct methods to utilize the available hardware via code be anything less than "how it is"?

Again, when XSX has an actual next gen game available, compare that with what we are seeing with next gen PS5 games.
It makes perfect sense, you not understanding it is neither here nor there.

None of the architecture, additional hardware and decompression methods for the I/O and so on and so forth are being utilized. It's merely loading the games based upon the raw speed of the drives themselves. For elongated loading tasks, file transfers, long winded writing operations etc, an SSD will fall to its sustained read/write capability.

Microsoft's setup is designed around sustained operation, Sony has not talked about the sustained capability of their drive. They've merely discussed its top end peak figures which are not a good indicator of average operation. They've been silent about their sustained metrics, not one mention of them, ever.

What you're seeing is the identical scenario to slapping an SSD in your PC. The games aren't coded for them, there's no special decompression or intermediary hardware for extenuating I/O transfers of data. They rest on the laurels of their capabilities as hardware and hardware alone. Microsoft put in a drive with better sustained capabilities, this isn't some mystery. There's not a case to solve here, it is what it is.
 
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NullZ3r0

Banned
Those are final retail units, and such parts aren't assembled overnight. If it was 1-2 years ago, then probably.



EmVx5HqXEAAOjj5


The internal SSD of XSS seems to be similar to the external but halved?

EmVx5YvWMAAbvSa


EmVx5rXXIAIxaOr


EmVx6BxWEAE1VDn


MS hasn't been clear with its teardowns, this guy is doing some good work here.

You guys are really pulling at straws here. Jesus. It's obvious that the SSDs aren't the same between the X and the S because they're different sizes. However, the performance is the same.

Very few of a device model have the exact same storage in them. They have whatever is available in the supply chain at the time. If MS relied on one vendor for things like NAND chips, they'd never launch a machine in any significant quantity.

Much ado about nothing.
 
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Dr Bass

Member
It makes perfect sense, you not understanding it is neither here nor there.

None of the architecture, additional hardware and decompression methods for the I/O and so on and so forth are being utilized. It's merely loading the games based upon the raw speed of the drives themselves. For elongated loading tasks, file transfers, long winded writing operations etc, an SSD will fall to its sustained read/write capability.

Microsoft's setup is designed around sustained operation, Sony has not talked about the sustained capability of their drive. They've merely discussed its top end peak figures which are not a good indicator of average operation. They've been silent about their sustained metrics, not one mention of them, ever.

What you're seeing is the identical scenario to slapping an SSD in your PC. The games aren't coded for them, there's no special decompression or intermediary hardware for extenuating I/O transfers of data. They rest on the laurels of their capabilities as hardware and hardware alone. Microsoft put in a drive with better sustained capabilities, this isn't some mystery. There's not a case to solve here, it is what it is.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Also for the record I'm a software engineer with a "decent amount" of experience. I'll leave it at that. Telling me that I don't understand it when you're blathering away is hilarious.

I stuck up for you once because you took your lumps like a man when people were dog piling on you. I'm a little disappointed you don't seem to have learned from that experience.

Again, you don't know how the system works at all, and you're making things up. There is a lot more to it than what you are stating here.

To repeat, look how fast PS5 native software loads more demanding games. This constant reliance on BC mode results is idiotic.
 
You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Also for the record I'm a software engineer with a "decent amount" of experience. I'll leave it at that. Telling me that I don't understand it when you're blathering away is hilarious.

I stuck up for you once because you took your lumps like a man when people were dog piling on you. I'm a little disappointed you don't seem to have learned from that experience.

Again, you don't know how the system works at all, and you're making things up. There is a lot more to it than what you are stating here.

To repeat, look how fast PS5 native software loads more demanding games. This constant reliance on BC mode results is idiotic.
You literally made a post saying nothing and then threw out that you're a software engineer to somehow validate the nothingness.

Buh bye.
 

longdi

Banned
I cant believe this is a 7 page topic?
Wtf were you all expecting? SS/SX has SSD that works as what MS promised. What is the issue here with WD & Phison being their suppliers? :messenger_downcast_sweat:
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
All that just makes me wonder how Series X/S could be faster loading anything. BC games, optimized games, boot up all should be faster on PS5 judging by the effort Sony has put into their custom SSD solution.

BC mode is variable so far, and next gen is what really matters. Like FF15 is 30 sec on PS5 vs XSX's 45sec, and so on. It's inconsistent so we need to wait for optimized games and next gen version. Spiderman MM loads in 1.3sec from the menu for example.





You see inconsistent results.
 
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