What's your take on the rest of his assessment?
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XBox Series S & Xbox Series X Official Specs Comparison
- Thread starter RexNovis
- Start date
Xbox one X is designed to load 4k assets, series s won't need to
I say it's doing OK since it's almost 7 years later,
as I said at the time the PS4 was released there were GPUs equivalent to its specs under $200, it was mid range, but there were things a lot faster (290x, 780), also keep in mind the S is significantly cheaper than the PS4 in 2013, and it has an actual good CPU and very fast storage, things the last gen was really bad at even for 2013.
and if you look at the Xbox One, ouch, that was a bad machine.
I never really buy the "held back" argument, because I can't think of a single gameplay thing in gaming today that wasnt already done in the PS2 gen or earlier. We just don't see these constant revolutionary changes driven by tech that people like to pretend. Instead it's just improved fidelity over the same open world games, FPS titles, MMOs, racing games, third person action games we've been playing for 20+ years. All the really innovative stuff I can think of (SotC, Journey, battle royale as a genre, Minecraft to name a few examples) has had exactly 0 to do with technical power of the device.
Series S will move the baseline up to a really solid CPU and fast SSD which is where any real potential tech-driven innovation lies this gen, so that shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, visually the DF comparisons might get ugly. But "ugly" relative to a very high bar from PS5/Series X.
That said, I do wish it had shipped at 12GB and 5TF if only to make dev's lives easier. Sounds like they cut it very close (to be charitable) on the 1440p target.
Series S will move the baseline up to a really solid CPU and fast SSD which is where any real potential tech-driven innovation lies this gen, so that shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, visually the DF comparisons might get ugly. But "ugly" relative to a very high bar from PS5/Series X.
That said, I do wish it had shipped at 12GB and 5TF if only to make dev's lives easier. Sounds like they cut it very close (to be charitable) on the 1440p target.
The truth is there will be games where resolution is essentially the only major difference, there will be games where other noticeable changes need to be made, and there will be games that look and/or run badly on the S.
Anyone who makes any sweaping claims that "it'll all be exactly the same, except at a lower resolution!" or "every game this gen will be worse because the S exists!" are, frankly, either deluded or lying.
But again, how is that different from PC games? Crysis for example in 2007 ran like shit on most PC's but most PC games in general are better optimized and target lower specs to atleast be playable on most PC's at lower settings. In the end I don't think the S is going to hamper development long term similar to the base consoels and the PS4 pro/Xbox One X didn't this generation.
If games like Witcher 3, DOOM 2016, ect. can be downscaled to the Switch then things can be downscaled to the S.
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I...don't know what any of this has to do with the post you are quoting.
RAM seems like it might be a bigger issue than the GPU.
(This is the principle engine programmer at ID)
"That id software guy"
I supposed he would have been interested to answer, but apparently he doesn't have a twitter tag.
Yikes.
I mean iD was doing feedback-based texture streaming long before SFS was a twinkle in the next-gen vernacular's eye. So I think he does know all about it.
That IO and sampler feedback etc. will help slow the decrease of streaming footprints in the face of next-gen assets is great - the rate of slowing depending very much on what different engines have already been doing here - but it's not a panacea for the problems 'that id software guy'is raising. The RAM delta, whatever effective multipliers you want to apply, remains and is still large. For some games, knocking resolution and asset detail might cover it. For others it may be more complicated.
I'm more interested in how the S willl do RT in any game that's pushing the X with regards to compute and RT. I can see games in a year or two really start to push the X and PS5 hard. So if a game is 1440/60 or maybe even 1080/60 but reconstructed higher resolution on the X and PS5 because devs are trying to squeeze everything they can out of them, really pushing the RT capabilities, what happens with the S?
The CUs can do either RT or Compute, not both concurrently. So The CUs have to do RT and Compute work.... 20 CUs vs 52 CUs is pretty big with regards to RT, especially with the RAM issues... There aren't dedicated RT cores. So if a game has 30CUs doing Compute, and 12 doing RT on the X, that goes to 16CUs doing compute and 4 doing RT in the S... Kinda seems like you'd want all 20 working on what the X has 30 dedicated to... So drop RT altogether, or you drop to 30fps to make it happen with RT even with having to shift more CUs to RT because 4 will not cut it, and lower res dramatically to make it happen with the cores left available for compute? It would end up looking like a current gen Switch port by comparison to the big systems. Not to mention the extra dev time to make it work...
The CUs can do either RT or Compute, not both concurrently. So The CUs have to do RT and Compute work.... 20 CUs vs 52 CUs is pretty big with regards to RT, especially with the RAM issues... There aren't dedicated RT cores. So if a game has 30CUs doing Compute, and 12 doing RT on the X, that goes to 16CUs doing compute and 4 doing RT in the S... Kinda seems like you'd want all 20 working on what the X has 30 dedicated to... So drop RT altogether, or you drop to 30fps to make it happen with RT even with having to shift more CUs to RT because 4 will not cut it, and lower res dramatically to make it happen with the cores left available for compute? It would end up looking like a current gen Switch port by comparison to the big systems. Not to mention the extra dev time to make it work...
Cross-gen games could be really weird. Because of the RAM limitations and the cross-gen game being unlikely to get a custom texture caching system for the XSS, those games will often end up having the One S texture packs, meaning better textures on One X than on the XSS, but with the XSS reaching stable framerates because of the far better CPU much more easily, maybe even like in the Gears 5 demo, 120Hz on XSS.
But I don't believe there will be any games under 1080p again. Ever. On the next-gen consoles. Even the indie games with custom engines that can't afford to implement complicated tech like MS's own version of DLSS or VRS or even dynamic resolution shading systems will just turn down their graphics "settings" a notch. CPU power should not be an issue any more, which was the real struggle for most indie studios I imagine (most studios. period. actually).
Quoting from the PS5 technical discussion thread:
Exploded view kinda confirms this:
Lower chassis has a raised area to bridge and conduct heat away from a single module on the back of the board.
It is clear the Series S uses the same split addressing design of all GDDR6 as the Series X, but in this case can either access 8GB striped across all chips on 4x32 bit interfaces* @56GB/s each (128-bit @ 224GB/s total), or the remaining 2GB across fewer (in this case, one*) 32-bit interface at 56GB/s.
* GDDR6 interfaces are actually dual 16-bit rather than the usual 32-bit, but that's not really relevant.
Matt is correct. Having said that I don't think we would see PS5 and Series X being the baseline, when Series S wouldn't exist for a few years, since this time the consoles are comparable to a high end pc.
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They would be the baseline for consoles and PC minimum specs are not something that is decided 7 years in advance and we'll be taken into account for during such a time. This machine is exactly that kind of a fixed anchor for this console generation and instead of having high end PC specs to last us 7 years into the future we now have this....
Im still hopeful that xsx will be the effective baseline - fast SSD, decent TFs, good cpu
- for ps5 you tweak the resolution but mostly the same
- for high end PC you're good - maybe add a decent SSD as recommended spec
- for low end pc you require the player to turn settings/framerate down to compensate for potentially lower CPU. Maybe 16GB starts to be more popular for mitigating lack of fast SSD While we wait for direct storage to save us
- for xss devs do the same as lower end PC but do the choosing for us
Don't expect any multiplatform game to take advantage of the new SSDs for gameplay purposes. They have to account for most PC players that are still playing in HDDs or slower SSDs. You'll only see better load times and that's it.
i hope/think it'll be one area that starts to push forwards on pc specs
A lot of people now have USBC cables thanks to their phones (even iPhones) coming with USBC cables at one end. It's definitely massively grown recently and for years to come would be nice to have both on the system. Certainly on the front there should be one accessible USBC like PS5 has. Keep the larger old ports for the back for stuff like external HDDs. It would just be nice to have it.
USB is the most misunderstood standard on the planet. USB-A and USB-C are actually the connector itself. USB-C tends to come with speed/power increases, but the USB-A to USB-C cable can have just as many features/speed/power as a USB-C to C cable.
Oh no. The CPU is 200 MHz slower. That will surely be the difference between games running at 120 FPS and 30 FPS.
Oh no. It has less RAM. That will surely limit the scope of next-gen games and not simply mean that it will use lower resolution textures to go with its lower rendering resolution.
Oh no. The OS portion of RAM is 56GB/s. That thing can't possibly play next-gen games and will surely hold back an entire generation as the lowest common denominator.
Why would you ruin the PS5 by releasing this hardware Microsoft?
The only thing suspect is calling it a "1440p" system when 1/3 of 4K is 1247p.
I'd much rather be using C-to-C cables than A-to-C. Ideally type-A would be getting phased out.
Oh no. It has less RAM. That will surely limit the scope of next-gen games and not simply mean that it will use lower resolution textures to go with its lower rendering resolution.
Oh no. The OS portion of RAM is 56GB/s. That thing can't possibly play next-gen games and will surely hold back an entire generation as the lowest common denominator.
Why would you ruin the PS5 by releasing this hardware Microsoft?
Nope. At 1080p you have 1/3 the power for 1/4 the resolution.
The only thing suspect is calling it a "1440p" system when 1/3 of 4K is 1247p.
It's ugly though, and inconvenient.
I'd much rather be using C-to-C cables than A-to-C. Ideally type-A would be getting phased out.
Agreed on the USB misunderstanding. That said, the USB-IF hasn't exactly helped out here. :-)
We already have The Medium listing an SSD recommendation in its minimum system requirements.
The notion that devs won't abandon HDDs in the near future is misguided.
There is no reason to believe devs won't take advantage of the NVMe SSDs. It's a new generation. Hardware requirements increase significantly.
Well, no. The S will be the new baseline for the next gen. Games will have to be made to run acceptably on that hardware.
I suppose that just like phone apps, devs can't choose to release the game just for X right?
It's less a matter of if they can than if anyone would.
Unless the S tanks no one will want to skip it.
would you agree that it will mainly be the CPU and SSD that will be critical in terms of design? Graphics should be relatively scalable so S having the same CPU is important in this discussion
I get it. Definitely not the news I wanted to hear. Well, while I expect some difficult, I hope it doesn't hold back game design too much and it turns out to be more a little headache for studios.
No, the RAM situation is a huge factor here. And the GPU is not irrelevant, though it's functions are much more scalable.
The fact that the S has an SSD and essentially the same CPU as the PS5 and the X is certainly a relief though.
The Medium recommendation doesn't even mention the minimum SSD speed or say it is required, so I'm guessing it will still be playable in older SSDs and even HDDs. I may be mistaken, of course, but I don't see any game on PC not running on a HDD in the next few years. In the future, sure, but not the near future.
Are you saying there are 5 gddr6 chips but they didn't take advantage of that 5th chip to get 160bit bus and 280GB/s because????
Clamshell mode just allows fewer controller to access more chips, so you are saying XSS SoC only has 4 controllers? How much die space does that save? lol ridiculous.
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LOL the objective for a cheaper box is to reduce chip count. If you can do it in 5, do it in 5. You don't get saving by taking two 2GB chips into four 1GB chips. In fact it will cost more.
The only reason to use more chips is if you can swap some of the chips for cheaper type like DDR4.
It's 5x2GB, 4 on the top side of the mobo, 1 on the back side, clamshell.
Yes, that means using only 4 interfaces. Assuming Series S APU is as dense as Series X (and from the measurements, sure looks like it), each 32bit PHY is about 6.75mm².
Yes, that means using only 4 interfaces. Assuming Series S APU is as dense as Series X (and from the measurements, sure looks like it), each 32bit PHY is about 6.75mm².
Yes because the two chips in clamshell behave like a single 4GB chip. If they had a 4GB chip available they'd use that instead.
Each GDDR6 controller on die has an area of 5.5 square mm.
Edit: actually probably a tiny bit low. Make it 6 square mm.
I don't game on PC but I do venture into bench mark threads on here and new GPUs always seem to grant higher frame rates. But reading this thread and others the GPU in XSS will have no bearing on frame rates/performance? I would think the only way this would be possible if the games were designed for XSS in mind thus making it the baseline for game design. Am I missing something does GPU effect performance on PC but wouldn't between XSS and XSX?