Microsoft Details Its Velocity Architecture Behind the Xbox Series X:

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Jul 14, 2020.

  1. Loobyluggs

    Loobyluggs Ancient Guru

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    Oh, I totally agree that we will not know until anything launches and HH can run the numbers, because I do not trust DF or any two-bit click-baiting noob with an agenda and a diagnostic tool.

    But...the only way differing point is that I do not trust Microsoft in the slightest. They got caught out, and are back-peddling - but I think they simply took the bait from Sony.
     
  2. itpro

    itpro Maha Guru

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    ^ Go trust Sony's SSD special system that upgrades passively GPU and CPU.
     
  3. Redemption80

    Redemption80 Guest

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    True, this is just Sony trying to market something to people who don't know any better.

    Until we see real world benchmarks it's nothing more than Emotion/Cell marketing crap.
     
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  4. The Laughing Ma

    The Laughing Ma Ancient Guru

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    Unfortunately they don't have much ammo to fire at that objective.

    Or if they do they certainly aren't telling anyone.

    Games. Sony is rolling out the console exclusives and making it clear they are exclusive, they are even baiting existing PC gamers by giving them a taste of what the current gen games are like prior to make it clear their sequels are PS5 exclusives. meanwhile MS is busy telling everyone it wants to ditch exclusives. Here's a question for MS if I already own a mid range gaming PC and your games are coming to it because you don;t do console exclusives what reason do I have to buy your console? If I buy a PS5 it's because I want to play the exclusive games.

    Hardware. Sony has been rolling developers out to tell everyone how great the hardware is MS turns up to tell everyone what their hardware is and decides to boast about the factor the PS5 is getting headlines for and seems to comprehensively kill the Nextbox in.

    The console itself. Love it or hate it the PS5 at least is a talking point the Nextbox is just bland. A generic looking mini PC box. Now let me be clear that isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to integration with your other home hardware but it certainly isn't the sort of thing that gets people talking.

    The odd thing is the approach, MS is coming across as 'marketing' the Nextbox with a view to just maintaining it's current market share. Be quiet, don't throw stuff around make out your doing the right thing and hope that the established customer base will come back for the next go on the console generation merry go round. Sony on the other hand is coming across as someone who is trying to grow market share. To try and convince people who maybe haven't bought PS before that they may want to try it this time round. Target the PC hardware guys by slamming their tech and showing them something that even a top end PC will struggle to do at a fraction of the cost (be it true or not) throw the PC gamers a little glimps at one of their best current gen games Zero Horizon Dawn a few months before the new console with the sequel turns up, a sequel that will no doubt have PS5 exclusive stamped all over it. Get Epic to talk up the console and show off what it can do, love Epic or hate them you can't deny that with EGS and their actions over the last year they have been in the PC gamers eye pretty steadily.
     
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  5. Carfax

    Carfax Ancient Guru

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    Microsoft has a bigger goal. They want to sell games, because that's where the money is. They don't make any money on the consoles themselves, as they are usually subsidized and sold at a loss. Also exclusives don't sell as many copies as multiplatform games do, but they are useful for driving platform adoption. Also Microsoft has an advantage over Sony in that sense because they are working with TWO platforms and not just one. When Microsoft sells an inhouse game like Gears 5 on Windows store, they take the ENTIRE profit and don't share it with anyone. It's not a coincidence that Sony finally picked up on this and started giving the go ahead for some of their "exclusive" titles to be ported over to PC, although they won't make the profits that Microsoft does.

    It's all about the money man! The most important thing for Microsoft is to demonstrate that their console is the best console for playing games, and insofar I'd say they have a greater than 50% chance in succeeding this time around because the XSX going by the specs is a more rounded console with fewer weaknesses.

    Also, just because a game is offered on PC and the XSX, doesn't mean it's going to cut into the XSX sales. Many people are PC gamers or console gamers to the bone. We prefer our favored gaming platforms because of the overall experience and the ecosystem, and that preference is usually very strong. So even if the PC is objectively the best gaming platform, a lot of gamers get turned off by the high initial investment or the fact that you have to mess with drivers, software conflicts, settings, Windows etcetera unlike with a console where everything is simplified and easy.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
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  6. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    As I said, at launch they will as they'll be running current gen games and will have the head room to go for 60fps or higher.

    But a couple of years in and it'll revert back to mainly 30fps so they can keep the visual quality up.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
  7. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    Did you see any pop-in during the fast flying section of the UE5 demo?

    I rest my case.

    And no, the GPU doesn't render whatever is on screen, it renders whatever is in memory.

    If the data your GPU requires is not in memory because your storage can't stream it fast enough then you're GPU won't be rendering it, thus making all that GPU power redundant.

    The faster you can move data around the system the better you can utilize the hardware in that system.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
  8. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    There are no words to this post.

    PS5's SSD will translate to more then just load times.

    And computing basics have not changed for half a century because they've been using HDD for that long.
     
  9. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    Play Star Citizen on Rig A and then tell me it's better then Rig B :rolleyes:
     
  10. Fox2232

    Fox2232 Guest

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    Main issue is that it is debate because they did not really deliver anything of importance (game changing) that faster storage enables. All scenarios which are data volume related over time hint that such game would be very bloated on storage. Which is bad thing.

    I would definitely be against game that uses XX GB of assets that I am going to see in few scenes that will remain on screen for like 10 seconds each. They could as well play 5K cinematic that overlaps screen and tilt it as player moves stick on controller. Most would not even notice.

    @almighty15 : Performance Paradigm will not change with NVMe. All that faster storage does is to get assets into VRAM faster. Once they are there, They'll have to be rendered. We had this talk before with other members. PS5 does not have sufficient memory bandwidth to even render 60fps once given frame requires 7GB of data from its memory or more.

    Graphics cards in PCs "waste" a lot of VRAM by precaching resources that are not needed in given frame. But it is not such a waste, because even 2080 Ti would not deliver 60fps on 720p if you filled its VRAM completely and used every single bit to render given frame.
    Only reason why 2080 Ti can achieve high fps is that it uses only subset of data in VRAM per frame.
    And that applies for every single GPU. VRAM is plenty more than we need for given image quality, memory bandwidth is not.

    And PS5 has about equal memory bandwidth as RX 5700 (XT), but it shares that bandwidth with CPU cores = OS, Game logic.

    To put it simply, premise of PS5 is that dynamic loading of assets from storage into memory will enable them to use higher resolution assets (more GB of data) for rendering. It will not, there is hard limitation where fps goes down under acceptable level. Sure, if you are OK with 30 fps, game can use like 10~12GB of data per frame and read/write all kind of buffers. but if 60fps is target, they'll make games that use VRAM exactly same way as PC does. Half of it will be just cache and unused by currently rendered frame.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020

  11. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    1-

    So much nonsense in that particular comment.

    2 -

    And with their sub-par I/O performance expect RAM requirements on PC to increase more then they normally do at the release of another console generation.

    3 -

    Can't compare efficiencies on a how a piece of hardware performs in a PC to a console as console developers have much tighter control on things like that.

    4 -

    The UE5 demo does a good enough job of proving the first sentence incorrect.

    The second comment is also silly, you can still stream data in for a 60fps game, you will just have less to use per frame, if they can do it on current gen consoles at 60fps with HDD's then it won't be an issue on next gen hardware with SSD's.

    Adding insanely high resolution texture packs on PC games never tends to hit the GPU hard, it just uses more memory.

    Case in point Crysis 1, you put Rygels high res textures in and the frame rates will be the same, the VRAM usage on the other hand will be higher.

    So having higher resolution assets without massively impacting core GPU performance is entirely plausible.

    There's also been some developers on Twitter claim that they could get photo-realism on current hardware if they had the memory and storage for it.

    But why do people always focus on loading and graphics for an SSD when there more advantages then just that?
     
  12. itpro

    itpro Maha Guru

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    @almighty15 It's funny, you know nothing about IT and electronics in general it seems. You insist that storage speed and I/O operations can upgrade the whole system for all uses for free, passively without efforts. Classic fanboy like @Loobyluggs and others around. You believe Epic so blindly.

    Think of Skyrim fully modded. You need serious power to run all those mods, ram, gpu and cpu. SSD never gave better FPS there, only less popping up and stutters. XSX will not encounter any loading textures and stuttering like fanboys blessed by Sony/Epic hope to confuse everyone around.
     
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  13. Denial

    Denial Ancient Guru

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    Wouldn't eliminating those stutters effect the average framerate? I agree that it wouldn't make a 2080 a 2080S in performance but if you had two identical systems one with HDD one with SSD and you loaded a fully modded skyrim and the SSD did indeed remove stuttering - that the SSD system would yield higher average framerates.

    I'd like to see a benchmark in Star Citizen of SSD vs HDD. CIG has talked about how the game streaming is optimized entirely for SSDs and there are lots of anecdotal comments from users that experienced a significant jump in performance from upgrading their HDD to an SSD in that particular game.

    Part of this entire thing is that current/previous generation games aren't optimized in a way to make full use of an SSD over a HDD - but once SSD becomes the norm, newer games may significantly benefit from the increased read speed because level streaming systems, texture streaming, etc can fundamentally change to make better use of that enhanced speed. That being said I do think there is an upper limit to that benefit - there is probably a threshold of drive performance that once you cross the bottleneck switches back to the GPU because it can simply feed the GPU everything it needs in time, like @Fox2232 is saying. That's why I don't think the marginally faster performance of the PS5 is going to make a real difference over the Xbox Series X.. but I do think having an SSD in consoles is going lead to games that will run worse on HDDs.
     
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  14. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    What is funny is someone assuming someones background and knowledge because they say something that you don't like.

    And don't put words in to peoples mouths, it's not a good look.
     
  15. Loobyluggs

    Loobyluggs Ancient Guru

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    Skyrim uses a game engine modification from the nintendo gamecube. I find it funny you use that as a reference...and I think these forums could (perhaps) use less personal attacks dotchathink; but to address your point...

    I insisted nothing. I made it very clear that I do not trust Microsoft (or anyone) blindly and will always maintain that nothing is above criticism. I additionally stated it was a subjective, not based on abstraction of evidence, because that will come into the future, where HH will test the next-gen throughput properly and without agenda. THIS is the reason I come here, because HH does not have an agenda - unlike nearly every webzine out there that think and believe they can make stuff up and selectively extrapolate data and use it to further their agenda.

    If you seek more information on rendering, I can attest to the excellent dev forums for unreal engine, should you seek specific developer (non-epic games) feedback on how the current engine is performing. It's also less toxic, so mind your manners there, and leave personal attacks at the door.

    If you want some stuff to research yourself (using whatever search engine best suits you), I can recommend things like:

    Mesh instancing
    Virtual textures
    Hierarchical Level Of Detail

    As an aside, no one knows anything about what the performance numbers will ultimately mean on these new platforms, but we can say what game engine performance is leading us to, and for this, the ONLY ONES who are actually putting their neck on the line is Epic Games with UE5 - although this was NOT specifically for the PS5, just, the numbers were taken from that.

    Epic Games care about people using their engine. No one can deny that. I think the politics of this topic (very closely) are fragmenting discussions on these forums and others...and it's a shame. No one here works for Epic Games and no one here works for Sony, but going on the information MS and Sony are putting out there, and also, the lack of information Epic Games is putting out there, the PS5 is gonna to win this round.

    Hands-down.

    But I will say it again: we will not know until HH runs the numbers on/after launch...perhaps until then, we should not be treating one and another like dirt?

    Just a thought, but I do respect the comment regardless of how distasteful it was.
     
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  16. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    This isn't the best video on YouTube as his frame rate is capped, but yea....using an HDD in this game is horrendous and a perfect example on how storage can improve visual quality.

    In this case a GTX1060 with an SSD will offer a more playable and enjoyable experience at higher quality settings then using a RTX2080ti with an HDD, even though the RTX2080ti has the rendering power to handle the graphics.

    You are only as fast as your slowest part.



    In order to make the HDD as smooth as the SSD you would have to:

    1. Reduce object quality, thus reducing the amount of data required to stream.
    2. Increase RAM requirements and keep more data in memory
    3. Reduce scene complexity to reduce the amount of streaming data required.

    The last thing you want is to have wasted GPU performance because your storage can't keep up with the data streaming it requires.

    PS5 will simply be able to stream in higher quality assets before the SSD becomes the limiting factor or have a wider range of assets in a scene. Both of which increase visual quality.

    And years from now when PS5 and Series-X development has matured and PC has matched and surpassed their SSD and I/O throughout one of them will age much better then the other.

    But there's more to it then just graphics alone, PS5's SSD has other advantages.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
  17. theoneofgod

    theoneofgod Ancient Guru

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    Star Citizen is made for SSD's that's why there's an issue running it with a HDD. We will see in the future for other PC and console games, which is great. But it kinda sounds like you're saying in this analogy the Xbox SSD is equivalent to a HDD compared to the PS5 but that's simply not true.
     
  18. almighty15

    almighty15 Member

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    Then you're missing the point, I'm saying that the additional SSD head room that PS5 has (Even more so now with Oodle) could translate in to increased visuals as it has the ability to stream more data in to memory before the system starts to stutter.

    And in a few years when PC's have caught up to consoles I/O, PS5 will likely be able run at higher settings for certain things as it's SSD won't age as poorly as Series-X's will and will thus require less cut backs.
     
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  19. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    things just got spicy
     
  20. Carfax

    Carfax Ancient Guru

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    I'm not talking about pop in, I'm talking about LoD. With pop in you could be right because a game that is designed around faster storage will likely have much less, if any pop in. But LoD is something else. LoD is about performance enhancement as well and making sure that the GPU isn't being forced to render everything at maximum detail regardless of distance.

    What if the UE5 demo had been in a valley with trees and grass in the distance? So the GPU is going to render every leaf and blade of grass? That's my point.

    So you're telling me what's on the screen isn't in memory? In a well designed game, everything visible and close to the camera will always be in memory; especially for open world games.

    This was a huge problem for consoles apparently because of their slow HDD and their unified RAM, but for PCs, it's less of a problem because we have system RAM which acts like a huge cache between storage and VRAM.
     

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