So with the pretty insane specs and custom hardware of the Series X, I really wonder how much impact next gen will have on PC gaming, talking about next gen only games here. Couple of points:
- custom SSD with custom decompression hardware: Xbox Series X games won't run on a standard HDD, is it safe to assume future PC ports will require a NVMe SSD with atleast 2.4 GB/s? I think that will be the case indeed. However, XSX also sports features we have not seen in PC gaming yet, like hardware decompression. I wonder if PCs will be fine with PCIe 3.0 SSDs running at 2-4 GB/s or if hardware decompression may be necessary. Maybe it is possible MS or other vendors will release SSDs with similar hardware found in Xbox Velocity Engine?
- VRAM / RAM: So it seems like in best case scenario, developers will use 10 GB of extremly fast GDDR6 memory for the GPU. I wonder if future games will struggle on 6 and 8 GB VRAM cards, sure it could probably work on lower resolutions and with lower textures, but will it be enough for a stutter free experience? In addition, XSX uses a new, apparently, hardware based feature called Sampler Feedback Streaming which MS said will massively reduce VRAM consumption due to intelligent texture streaming. I have found something similar called DirectX Sampler Feedback, but I don't know if its the exact same thing and if current GPUs support it at all. If it can't be used on PC we could see an enourmous increase of VRAM usage and higher prices for new graphics cards.
- Mesh Shading. So this was a surprise for me. Mesh shading allows for significantly increased geometry detail with high framerates and low CPU usage. However, only Turing supports this and apparently, according to Star Citizen developers, it's not an easy switch between older shading methods and mesh shading. Could this mean GPUs that do not feature mesh shading will suffer in next gen games?
- CPU: so the Ryzen CPU clocks at about 3.6 GHz fixed for 7 cores and 14 threads which is very impressive indeed. Due to the high efficiency of Zen 2 and the high clock count, Intel CPUs with less than 12 Threads may not keep up with that, even if clocked higher. So will 4c/8t cpus die next generation?
BTW, I know a lot of "PC will get better parts after the consoles are released" talk will come up. Let's just say this: I think it's important to view it from a perspective of people who just upgraded their PCs. People don't have money to buy a new GPU or CPU every year.
What's your opinion? How will next gen consoles impact PC gaming?
- custom SSD with custom decompression hardware: Xbox Series X games won't run on a standard HDD, is it safe to assume future PC ports will require a NVMe SSD with atleast 2.4 GB/s? I think that will be the case indeed. However, XSX also sports features we have not seen in PC gaming yet, like hardware decompression. I wonder if PCs will be fine with PCIe 3.0 SSDs running at 2-4 GB/s or if hardware decompression may be necessary. Maybe it is possible MS or other vendors will release SSDs with similar hardware found in Xbox Velocity Engine?
- VRAM / RAM: So it seems like in best case scenario, developers will use 10 GB of extremly fast GDDR6 memory for the GPU. I wonder if future games will struggle on 6 and 8 GB VRAM cards, sure it could probably work on lower resolutions and with lower textures, but will it be enough for a stutter free experience? In addition, XSX uses a new, apparently, hardware based feature called Sampler Feedback Streaming which MS said will massively reduce VRAM consumption due to intelligent texture streaming. I have found something similar called DirectX Sampler Feedback, but I don't know if its the exact same thing and if current GPUs support it at all. If it can't be used on PC we could see an enourmous increase of VRAM usage and higher prices for new graphics cards.
- Mesh Shading. So this was a surprise for me. Mesh shading allows for significantly increased geometry detail with high framerates and low CPU usage. However, only Turing supports this and apparently, according to Star Citizen developers, it's not an easy switch between older shading methods and mesh shading. Could this mean GPUs that do not feature mesh shading will suffer in next gen games?
- CPU: so the Ryzen CPU clocks at about 3.6 GHz fixed for 7 cores and 14 threads which is very impressive indeed. Due to the high efficiency of Zen 2 and the high clock count, Intel CPUs with less than 12 Threads may not keep up with that, even if clocked higher. So will 4c/8t cpus die next generation?
BTW, I know a lot of "PC will get better parts after the consoles are released" talk will come up. Let's just say this: I think it's important to view it from a perspective of people who just upgraded their PCs. People don't have money to buy a new GPU or CPU every year.
What's your opinion? How will next gen consoles impact PC gaming?
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