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The PlayStation 5 GPU Will Be Supported By Better Hardware Solutions, In Depth Analysis Suggests

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Some of the conjecture is based on how computing works. I'd LOVE to hear MS themselves explain it though.

The thing is though even if the 10gb can be accessed @560gb and 224gb/s for the remaining 3.5gb it will still perform better then sonys 13 - 14gb @ 448gb/s.

The ram is split, and its the video ram which requires and benifits from higher speeds.

45b0871338605098.jpg
 

Justin9mm

Member
Whatever argument people pose, it's fact that a lot of people already invested in PS4 and the library of games especially digital this generation and will be playable on PS5, the jump ship to Xbox is a lot more difficult then jumping ship the generation before when so many people jumped from 360 to PS4. So this will be an advantage to Sony already unless they really fuck something up! Majority of casual console gamers in the world are not active game forum members and don't give a fuck about what we are all arguing about! It's easy to think that everyone out there follows this stuff but they don't.
 

Three

Member
Then explain to me what this means;

The SX has 2.5 GB reserved for system functions and we don't know how much the PS5 reserves for that similar functionality but it doesn't matter - the Xbox SX either has only 7.5 GB of interleaved memory operating at 560 GB/s for game utilisation before it has to start "lowering" the effective bandwidth of the memory below that of the PS5...
It means 'interleaved memory' meaning that is what it will have access to at the peak speed. Interleaved means you get roughly half the memory at full speed.
 

Ascend

Member
It means 'interleaved memory' meaning that is what it will have access to at the peak speed. Interleaved means you get roughly half the memory at full speed.
Just leaving this here...


There is nothing refraining MS from interleaving only on the 6GB slow memory pool for the OS functions. There is zero reason to run OS functions on the fast 10GB.
 

LordKasual

Banned
The thing is though even if the 10gb can be accessed @560gb and 224gb/s for the remaining 3.5gb it will still perform better then sonys 13 - 14gb @ 448gb/s.

The ram is split, and its the video ram which requires and benifits from higher speeds.

This is assuming that you're running something that isn't using ALL of the ram, at which point Sony's ram outperforms. Sony's system is likely much better/faster at refreshing its ram since that's what its specifically designed for, without taxing the CPU.

It's likely that PS5 won't actually need to split its ram, especially if they're really targeting what they said in the presentation, "loading data as fast as it takes a player to turn".

And if that's the case sony's ram will still outperform the SX.

ps5-slides-06-640x360.png



If we're to take this at face value? And the system can completely refresh 16Gb in ONE second?

There's no reason for PS5 to ever split its ram for anything.

Just leaving this here...


There is nothing refraining MS from interleaving only on the 6GB slow memory pool for the OS functions. There is zero reason to run OS functions on the fast 10GB.

I'm almost positive that they only intend for the 10gb to be used for games, the OS will never touch the fast ram.



The console that needed a last minute overclock and is incapable of keeping itself cooled/powered at it's nominal clock speeds is in no way, shape or form a better engineered console.

Guys, did we watch the same presentation?

How the hell do people think anything shown in the PS5's architecture could possibly be "last minute"? And "last minute overclock" just shows that you don't actually understand how the system works, as usual.
 
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Three

Member
Lol. So much damage control.

Last gen 'games journalist' shills laughed at the thought of Microsoft having secret sauce.

Now, on their knees, they greedily gobble down all the sauce Sony spurts forth and then regurgitate it for the fanatically faithful's eager consumption and clicks.
What's crazy about this post is that 'game journalists' created the idea of 'secret sauce' for MS.
 
How the hell do people think anything shown in the PS5's architecture could possibly be "last minute"? And "last minute overclock" just shows that you don't actually understand how the system works, as usual.

I’ve watched it three times.

It’s clear to me that they bumped the clocks and slappes together this variable frequency nonsense when they realized the power gap would have been 3tf, 12 vs 9 looks way worse on paper than 12.1 vs 10.28.
 

SatansReverence

Hipster Princess
Guys, did we watch the same presentation?

How the hell do people think anything shown in the PS5's architecture could possibly be "last minute"? And "last minute overclock" just shows that you don't actually understand how the system works, as usual.

1. Leaks

2. The simple fact that console has not been engineered to cool itself under the nominal clocks.

If the PS5 was intended to be run at 2.2/3.5ghz from day 1, the cooling and power delivery solutions would have also been designed to keep it cooled/powered at those clocks. Sony straight up admitted that they've failed to do that, why? Because they needed to boost the clocks massively so they weren't advertising a single digit console against a double digit console.

It is an objectively worse engineered console.

All these hilarious claims of "no bottlenecks" in the PS5 and they've got one of the most amateur bottlenecks in existence.
 

LordKasual

Banned
I’ve watched it three times.

It’s clear to me that they bumped the clocks and slappes together this variable frequency nonsense when they realized the power gap would have been 3tf, 12 vs 9 looks way worse on paper than 12.1 vs 10.28.

1) "variable frequency nonsense" = tried, tested, proven effective in modern PC GPUs.

2) if it works, it's probably more cost-effective than just throwing more units into the system.

3) The PS5 seems to be following a really consistent throughline. This might have been in response to XSX but it absolutely wasn't "last minute", that's literally impossible.

1. Leaks

2. The simple fact that console has not been engineered to cool itself under the nominal clocks.

If the PS5 was intended to be run at 2.2/3.5ghz from day 1, the cooling and power delivery solutions would have also been designed to keep it cooled/powered at those clocks. Sony straight up admitted that they've failed to do that, why? Because they needed to boost the clocks massively so they weren't advertising a single digit console against a double digit console.

It is an objectively worse engineered console.

All these hilarious claims of "no bottlenecks" in the PS5 and they've got one of the most amateur bottlenecks in existence.

What do you mean "not engineered to cool itself", EVERYTHING about the PS5's system has to be specifically engineered to accommodate the other.

This literally would not work without a very deliberately engineered cooling system, these frequencies would make VERY short work of the chips they're using if allowed to overheat.

again, this notion is complete nonsense.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
My take is (in a nutshell):

Both consoles made unacceptable sacrifices. I don't like XSX RAM splicing at all and I don't like PS5's cpu->gpu splitting power either.

In the grand scheme of things, I see the XSX being the lead platform for all multiplatform games. I don't see 3rd party devs trying to optimize the PS5's I/O advantage and then making a mess trying to port for XSX/PC platforms. Not going to happen, so if the PS5's I/O has to behave conventionally, then it will suffer in terms of performance and/or 3d features.

I see the PS5's I/O and bandwidth strengths being used with 1st party exclusives only.

Think about it: I love the consistent bandwidth of 448G/s for all memory but I also like the fixed 12TFLOPS of the XSX. Why didn't they just use tried-n-true hardware? Both companies definitely had different priorities that might end up hurting them both.
 
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sircaw

Banned
The console that needed a last minute overclock and is incapable of keeping itself cooled/powered at it's nominal clock speeds is in no way, shape or form a better engineered console.

No amount of secret sauce dGpuSSD bullshit is going to change that.

They don't just flick the switch at the last minute and say "Hey lets throw abit more overclocking at something"
These devices are precision made with years of research and engineering.

I am sorry but your thought process is fucking ridiculous.
 
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They don't just flick the switch at the last minute and say "Hey lets through abit more overclocking at something"
These devices are precision made with years of research and engineering.

I am sorry but your thought process is fucking ridiculous.

Weren’t clock frequencies changed last minute this gen? I could be misremembering something

I would think it’s much easier to tweak clock speeds than actually change any of the hardware
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
This is assuming that you're running something that isn't using ALL of the ram, at which point Sony's ram outperforms. Sony's system is likely much better/faster at refreshing its ram since that's what its specifically designed for, without taxing the CPU.

It's likely that PS5 won't actually need to split its ram, especially if they're really targeting what they said in the presentation, "loading data as fast as it takes a player to turn".

And if that's the case sony's ram will still outperform the SX.

ps5-slides-06-640x360.png



If we're to take this at face value? And the system can completely refresh 16Gb in ONE second?

There's no reason for PS5 to ever split its ram for anything.



I'm almost positive that they only intend for the 10gb to be used for games, the OS will never touch the fast ram.





Guys, did we watch the same presentation?

How the hell do people think anything shown in the PS5's architecture could possibly be "last minute"? And "last minute overclock" just shows that you don't actually understand how the system works, as usual.

All the ram will be used, unless its a less demanding game.
And as shown in the pie chart the ram is split for different things.

Bottom line is ms could of done sonys setup, it would of been cheaper, but they did what they did because there more powerful GPU requires more ram bandwidth.

Look at pc gpus, an increase in bandwidth will always increase the performance, which is the case here.
While ms and sony have done some cool customisations it does not mean lower bandwidth will suddenly perform better then higher bandwidth.
 

LordKasual

Banned
All the ram will be used, unless its a less demanding game.
And as shown in the pie chart the ram is split for different things.

Bottom line is ms could of done sonys setup, it would of been cheaper, but they did what they did because there more powerful GPU requires more ram bandwidth.

Look at pc gpus, an increase in bandwidth will always increase the performance, which is the case here.
While ms and sony have done some cool customisations it does not mean lower bandwidth will suddenly perform better then higher bandwidth.

oh nobody ever said it's going to outperform the XSX. But it will still be faster.

Overall, PS5's 16gbs are faster than XSXs 10+6. PS5 also has higher clock speeds on its GPU, though i dont know how that correlates.

XSX will still have higher performance overall though


neither of them will be bottlenecked by memory. But PS5 might allow some neat tricks in 1st party titles.


Again....the biggest difference in these consoles will come down to 1st party titles and have nothing to do with the vast majority of games, where nobody will be able to tell the goddamn difference.
 
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3WplAT5.png



Data fill rates for the entire memory configuration of each console; the PS5 unsurprisingly outperforms the SX... *I used the "bonus" 20% figure for the SX's BCPack compression algorithm.

Meanwhile, the SX can move up to 4.8 GB/s of compressed data from the SSD and the decompression chip can decompress up to 6 GB/s of compressed data. However, Microsoft also have a specific decompression algorithm for texture data* called BCPack (an evolution of BCn formats) which can potentially add another 20% compression on top of that achieved by the PS5's Kraken algorithm (which this engineer estimates at a 20-30% compression factor). However, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison because this in on uncompressed data, whereas the PS5 should be using a form of RDO which the same specialist reckons will bridge the gap in compression of texture data when combined with Kraken. So, in the name of fairness and lack of information, I'm going to leave only the confirmed stats from the hardware manufacturers and not speculate about further potential compression advantages.

Regarding XSX SSD compressed data, why you wrote Min. speed 6 GB/s for compressed data, instead of 4.8 GB/s? Why are you trying to mitigate XSX SSD speed compared to PS5 SSD with some imaginary bonus? If MS guy with that tweets in Gamingbolt article didn't even mentioned nor implied to some 20% bonus, why you did it on your own? With BCPack XSX SSD compressed speed is 4.8 GB/s. That's OFFICIAL.
Max. theoretical speed is 6 GB/s, NOT 7.2. ( you used some 8 frickin YEARS OLD article for "bonus" of 20% LOL ).
Maybe i should use some 4 years old article about Kraken which says how it's faster than Zlib and add some bonus speed for PS5. Regarding those tweets from MS guy about BCPack compression technique, 4.8 GB/s is included in that.

BCPack is a texture compression format. It does not make the I/O any faster than it is, it makes texture compression better so you can fit more texture per second through the I/O when compressed, the I/O speed does not change. The 6GB/s theoretical max does not change, what you can fit through it changes when you have a good compression ratio.

And BCPack is totally taken into consideration by that MS guy in Gamingbolt article when giving the theoretical max throughput otherwise the number would be higher. That is why they said 4.8GB compressed even though the I/O has a max theoretical of 6GB/s.

The 4.8GB/s is WITH BCPack already, and it's a 100% increase over the 2.4GB/s raw speed. PS5 only gets a 64% increase from 5.5GB/s to 9GB/s.
That's how BCPack compression technique is better than Kraken.

Cheers!
 
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SatansReverence

Hipster Princess
1) "variable frequency nonsense" = tried, tested, proven effective in modern PC GPUs.

2) if it works, it's probably more cost-effective than just throwing more units into the system.

3) The PS5 seems to be following a really consistent throughline. This might have been in response to XSX but it absolutely wasn't "last minute", that's literally impossible.



What do you mean "not engineered to cool itself", EVERYTHING about the PS5's system has to be specifically engineered to accommodate the other.

This literally would not work without a very deliberately engineered cooling system, these frequencies would make VERY short work of the chips they're using if allowed to overheat.

again, this notion is complete nonsense.

Then why is it incapable of running both the CPU and GPU at their nominal clocks? A problem that has never been a thing for any previous console?

They don't just flick the switch at the last minute and say "Hey lets throw abit more overclocking at something"
These devices are precision made with years of research and engineering.

I am sorry but your thought process is fucking ridiculous.

Microsoft just flicked a switch with the XBone.
 
My take is (in a nutshell):

Both consoles made unacceptable sacrifices. I don't like XSX RAM splicing at all and I don't like PS5's cpu->gpu splitting power either.

In the grand scheme of things, I see the XSX being the lead platform for all multiplatform games. I don't see 3rd party devs trying to optimize the PS5's I/O advantage and then making a mess trying to port for XSX/PC platforms. Not going to happen, so if the PS5's I/O has to behave conventionally, then it will suffer in terms of performance and/or 3d features.

I see the PS5's I/O and bandwidth strengths being used with 1st party exclusives only.

Think about it: I love the consistent bandwidth of 448G/s for all memory but I also like the fixed 12TFLOPS of the XSX. Why didn't they just use tried-n-true hardware? Both companies definitely had different priorities that might end up hurting them both.

Why can’t more people be logical and calmly analytical like this. This pretty much exactly describes how people should see things although I think saying ‘unacceptable sacrifices’ is being a bit harsh. I think more I would say they’re ‘interesting and perhaps strange engineering decisions’.

Third party games are likely to frequently perform better on XSX and may just edge out the looks as well with some potential higher end ray tracing use. However, in my opinion Sony’s first party devs are putting out the best games on the market at the moment and that’s who I truly care about and I cannot wait to see what they come up with using the PS5 data bandwidth strengths.

Despite all of these things the overall difference in power between the consoles may just be so small this gen as to not make much of a difference. This is the first gen of consoles where when compared to current PC HW I see the consoles being able to do things that PC lowest common denominator won’t and we may see some PC ports minimum specs requiring PCI-E S4 SSD’s and that’s crazy and incredible and should be exciting for all gamers.

All of that said though Nvidia has their next card to release around or before the next consoles and if they really push the RT cores and also add the ML cores it could make a significant differences in the PC space and put them ahead in certain areas once again.

New console gens are exciting to watch as a gamer and I can’t wait to see what devs can do with the new hardware especially Sony first party. All of these threads trying to convince people the ps5 is more powerful are amusing as are the defensive comments from clear Xbox fans. Make no mistake these console wars make for a very interesting diversion during the current global pandemic climate.

Anyone who thinks the casual gamer (I would guess 80% of the millions of game buyers) cares of even understands what a TF is are kidding themselves. The consoles will sell on the games people want to play pure and simple. Sony have been swinging heavy all through this gen and are capping things off incredibly with TLOU2, FF7Remake and GoT and that Playstation hype will be driven by this. Most Playstation players will be intending a PS5 upgrade if or when they can get games.

Maybe. Maybe there will be some people buying an Xbox because it is ‘the most powerful console’ but it will be a small lot. I mean I don’t believe that MS lost the sales war to PS4 because the XB1 was less powerful than the PS4 it was all about the exclusive games that are available to Sony owners while Xbox has very few system seller exclusives and I feel many Xbox owners are dual console owners who want the best performance per game.

In my case I’ll be upgrading to PS5 right away just for the load time savings on PS4 games even if there isn’t any PS5 exclusive that tickles my fancy available upon release. For some reason I think Horizon 2 could be ready for launch however unlikely that might seem being 3 years for development but it could happen. Really we don’t know anything about the games yet so who can really say.

Then when there are games available on both that could be showing better performance on the XSX and the game pass library is showing the goods I may pick up an XSX also. I have a feeling this is a very likely circumstance for most people coming from owning end enjoying their PS4.
 
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MHubert

Member
Ok, who here was the one that added 560+336 = 896Gb/s?
These guys for instance.
Why would they dedicate a portion of the fast pool to the OS? Makes more sense to use the slower pool for OS reserve
If it has to say that only 7.5GB of fast RAM is left because of OS functions, the whole article loses credibility, because it makes it quite clear that whoever wrote it has no idea what he's talking about.
 

Dural

Member
It probably will, and be even funnier when games run just as well on the supposedly weaker one...

Efficient in performance is different to efficient eletrical power from wall. We will see.

Muh terrafloppies.

There's absolutely nothing efficient being done with the PS5, it's all a bunch of nonsense. This is like someone arguing the 2080 Super is the more efficient design vs the 2080ti because the 2080 Super pushes clock speed. This higher clock speed vs lower CU nonsense on a GPU needs to stop, the workloads on a GPU are highly parallel in nature. We aren't talking CPU workloads that benefit from higher single threaded performance (and even then today most things have been made multi threaded).


They don't just flick the switch at the last minute and say "Hey lets throw abit more overclocking at something"
These devices are precision made with years of research and engineering.

I am sorry but your thought process is fucking ridiculous.

It's the only thing they could change, it would take a year+ to reengineer with more CUs. When they found out the specs of the XsX they obviously did whatever they could to push over 2ghz. We had Sony fanboys claiming 2ghz couldn't be done on a console GPU because of heat and power requirements to discredit the GitHub leak. 2.2ghz is ridiculous and the thing will probably only ever run at it a fraction of the time. MS did the same damn thing with the CPU in the XO and you're claiming it can't be done. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
oh nobody ever said it's going to outperform the XSX. But it will still be faster.

Overall, PS5's 16gbs are faster than XSXs 10+6. PS5 also has higher clock speeds on its GPU, though i dont know how that correlates.

XSX will still have higher performance overall though


neither of them will be bottlenecked by memory. But PS5 might allow some neat tricks in 1st party titles.


Again....the biggest difference in these consoles will come down to 1st party titles and have nothing to do with the vast majority of games, where nobody will be able to tell the goddamn difference.

How can the xsx outperform the ps5 but the ps5 be faster?

We dont even know if this article is true, I doubt it is. If 16gb @ 448gb/s is superior ms would of gone for it.

Also regarding the PS5s higher clocks it has negligible performance increase over lower clocks but higher cus.

As seen here

 
Oh God more of these posts trying to explain away waker hardware. Just deal with it.
Why every topic that comes up people like you always drop by with 'THE HARDWARE IS WEAKER, JUST DEAL WITH IT' lines? Everyone and their dog knows PS5 is the weaker system so why the need to constantly remind people? Are you guys getting paid to always do this? Fucking hell.

Did it ever occur to you that other people here enjoy discussing the differences between these machines and the other functions that make up their design in the hardware space?

Should we not discuss the unique aspects of each machine and how they benefit gaming development?

If you have nothing constructive to, please feel free to steer well clear of the thread.
 
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Ascend

Member
These guys for instance.
I never said that you can add the two bandwidths, nor am I stupid enough to believe that. It's actually insulting that you quoted me on something like that.
Adding the two bandwidths is stupid. It doesn't work like that. At most, you could arguably do a weighted average of them, which is not representative either, but it's better than adding them.
 

Ascend

Member
I'm almost positive that they only intend for the 10gb to be used for games, the OS will never touch the fast ram.
Then how does that equate 7.5GB? Are we saying that only now we're going to use interleaving? Because even on PCs right now, with all its inefficiencies, 4K rarely goes over 6GB of total RAM usage. By this logic, only something over 3GB is available on a 6GB graphics card.

It all sounds like a bunch of stretches to downplay the strengths of the XSX and make the PS5 sound better than it really is.

Why have you left a Wikipedia page instead of making a point? He actually is referring to the fast modules.
There is still no explanation why the OS using 2.5 GB leaves 7.5GB of fast modules available. Because that is how it is written in the article.
 

MHubert

Member
I’ve watched it three times.

It’s clear to me that they bumped the clocks and slappes together this variable frequency nonsense when they realized the power gap would have been 3tf, 12 vs 9 looks way worse on paper than 12.1 vs 10.28.
It looks like the console has been designed around the variable frequency. If the bigger GPU in XSX is such a problem for sony, why didn't they just just include a bigger in PS5 themselves? They have access to the same hardware from AMD.
I never said that you can add the two bandwidths, nor am I stupid enough to believe that. It's actually insulting that you quoted me on something like that.
Adding the two bandwidths is stupid. It doesn't work like that. At most, you could arguably do a weighted average of them, which is not representative either, but it's better than adding them.
Unless i'm misunderstanding what you write, you seem to imply that the OS will be able to use a slower pool of RAM, while the GPU is simultaniously having access to 10GB at max speed.
No where in the article was implied the OS runs on the slow pool, It doesn’t make sense.
Exactly.
 
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DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Also regarding the PS5s higher clocks it has negligible performance increase over lower clocks but higher cus.

As seen here



This is not the right comparison to make.

The RX 5700 is 7.9 TF, so you have to compare one card at stock clock vs the other with less CUs but high frequency that will result in 7.9 TF
 

Deto

Banned
The console that needed a last minute overclock and is incapable of keeping itself cooled/powered at it's nominal clock speeds is in no way, shape or form a better engineered console.

No amount of secret sauce dGpuSSD bullshit is going to change that.


Do you already have the PS5 blueprint there?
 

Deto

Banned
1. Leaks

2. The simple fact that console has not been engineered to cool itself under the nominal clocks.

If the PS5 was intended to be run at 2.2/3.5ghz from day 1, the cooling and power delivery solutions would have also been designed to keep it cooled/powered at those clocks. Sony straight up admitted that they've failed to do that, why? Because they needed to boost the clocks massively so they weren't advertising a single digit console against a double digit console.

It is an objectively worse engineered console.

All these hilarious claims of "no bottlenecks" in the PS5 and they've got one of the most amateur bottlenecks in existence.

It is not a presidential election, you cannot change reality by writing on the internet.

"Github hurrr durrr"

So the SX is overclocked at the last minute from 1.6ghz to 1.8ghz according to github.
 

Vroadstar

Member
I’ve watched it three times.

It’s clear to me
that they bumped the clocks and slappes together this variable frequency nonsense when they realized the power gap would have been 3tf, 12 vs 9 looks way worse on paper than 12.1 vs 10.28.

Wow, didn't know watching Mark Cerny's deep dive 3x will suddenly turn you into a system architect, imagine that.
 
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Wow, didn't know watching Mark Cerny's deep dive 3x will suddenly turn you into a system architect, imagine that.
It's clear their system started out weaker than it is but to mitigate it they had to do all of this weird shit with shifting frequencies, parsed resources and ridiculous clock speeds.

It doesn't make any rational sense to force developers into a moving target environment on a fixed platform unless the basis for that decision was made by force.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
It looks like the console has been designed around the variable frequency. If the bigger GPU in XSX is such a problem for sony, why didn't they just just include a bigger in PS5 themselves? They have access to the same hardware from AMD.

Which is why the PS5 is so interesting.
Mark Cerny is an actual genius so I'm interested to see if he has come up with something no-one else has thought of before.

“As a child, I was very advanced academically,” he noted. “I was taking college courses at 13, graduated high school at 15, started college at 16.”

 

Roronoa Zoro

Gold Member
I think they'll be really close in real world performance. PS5 will probably be smaller and louder and I would think less expensive
 
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