Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[anexanhume]

Regarding storage, an external hard drive connected by USB to smaller internal SSD that can store 3 or 4 games makes sense to me. The internal storage can swap out games from external drive but realistically 3 or 4 games can be accessed real time. PS4 can be played from external storage but PS5 games in library have to loaded into internal SSD drive which can occur while playing some other game active in the SSD.

I don’t see any harm in it. Essentially it’s just another buffer between you needing to insert a disc or download a game to reinstall it with an intermediate amount of bandwidth comparatively. That doesn’t mean they’ll support it though. Perhaps not initially.

 

[temesgen]

I don’t see any harm in it. Essentially it’s just another buffer between you needing to insert a disc or download a game to reinstall it with an intermediate amount of bandwidth comparatively. That doesn’t mean they’ll support it though. Perhaps not initially.

If they don't support USB drive people will constantly be re-downloading excessively large files which doesn't make any sense. Even if physical games are still more popular than digital, physical games often have updates which can be quite large. I'm really not worried about the size of the drive because as a practical matter supporting an external hard drive is the only practical solution.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The just announced mobile parts have a clock of 1.45GHz, so I’d call that the min.

But if they use those clocks they can afford to go significantly wider.
The RX5500M is 4 TFLOPs at 85W, so we could assume 8 TFLOPs at ~160W (44CUs), and 10 TFLOPs with 200W (55 CU) worth of GPU+MCU.

If they don't support USB drive people will constantly be re-downloading excessively large files which doesn't make any sense.

By foregoing the presence of data that is currently repeated many times in hard drives to avoid seeking it back and forth, the games are actually expected to occupy significantly less space this gen.

 

[temesgen]

But if they use those clocks they can afford to go significantly wider.
The RX5500M is 4 TFLOPs at 85W, so we could assume 8 TFLOPs at ~160W (44CUs), and 10 TFLOPs with 200W (55 CU) worth of GPU+MCU.



By foregoing the presence of data that is currently repeated many times in hard drives to avoid seeking it back and forth, the games are actually expected to occupy significantly less space this gen.

I think the drive will be smaller too, I'd be really surprised if we get the sizes people are talking about

 

[snc]

Why are people buying into what fehu posted?

Parts of the spec are glaringly suspect.

Yep, total bs (800GB/s bandwidth) and there is discussion for few pages ;d I don't recognize this forum.

 

[McHuj]

Yep, total bs (800GB/s bandwidth) and there is discussion for few pages ;d I don't recognize this forum.

I think people are just discussing it and providing reasonable scenarios where such a BW would line up with the low TF numbers (lots of dedicated RT resources). Until the leaks and insiders get confirmed by either Sony/MS or a journalist verified document leak, it's all BS.

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

If Flute is PS5, and it all points to that being the case, bandwidth from benchmark (~530GB/s) and number of chips tell us its using 256 bit bus.

With that bus and BW I dont see how we can expect more then 9TF +RT hardware in next gen consoles. This also concerns Scarlett as snippet showed 320 bit bus and 14Gbps chips which would point at most 560GBs.

 

[anexanhume]

But if they use those clocks they can afford to go significantly wider.
The RX5500M is 4 TFLOPs at 85W, so we could assume 8 TFLOPs at ~160W (44CUs), and 10 TFLOPs with 200W (55 CU).

You’re linearly scaling memory power by doing that, which is worst case methods here. I’d instead refer to efforts to undervolt the 5700/5700XT.

 

[PSman1700]

The quoted post was commenting on power consumption and performance tiers of relative consumer cards, and that’s what my response addressed.

Ok i stand corrected

A lower performing 5700 non XT makes sense in a console, about 7TF won't be far off (RNDA TF's).

DF doesn't think consoles will match PC in RT, or anything else really. Interesting video, love DF's talk about tech.

 

[DmitryKo]

Soldering down the SSD is something MS would do.

Microsoft has historically been less lenient about allowing people to swap the mass storage, yes.

I don't think there's much to be gained by soldering the NVMe controller and the NVRAM chips to the mainboard. A standard M.2 module would greatly simplify the logistics of maintaining different SKUs and performing warranty repairs.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think there's much to be gained by soldering the NVMe controller and the NVRAM chips to the mainboard. A standard M.2 module would greatly simplify the logistics of maintaining different SKUs and performing warranty repairs.

Microsoft introduced an Rssd which is swappable in the surface pro x and surface laptop 3. IT uses a special m.2 connector. I have a feeling this will end up in the next xbox . It is basicly a slightly thicker and larger SD card. I can't go into to much detail but there is some interesting stuff they did to deal with thermals.

Both companies are going AMD which means we should get pci-e 4. You could get up to 8gigabytes per second with this and there are drives for pci-e 4 4x already hitting 5 gigabytes per second transfer rates. I am going to assume both sony and ms will have speeds around this .

 

[Gubbi]

Xbox One X launched with a 580 equivalent. So clearly a willingness to launch at $500 invalidates that as a sole solution.

The launch price of the 580 was $229. The crypto craze pushed the sales price to $500, but don't confuse sales price with cost price. The 580 was very much a mid range GPU at launch.

Cheers

 

[DmitryKo]

Microsoft introduced an Rssd which is swappable in the surface pro x and surface laptop 3. IT uses a special m.2 connector.

Surface Pro X has a standard M.2 2230 slot - though this form factor is typically used for B-key Wi-Fi cards, there are also SATA SSDs from Samsung, Toshiba, Kingston, Transcend.

But I'd guess PCIe 4.0 NVMe x4 SSDs would require a M-key 2280 module to push the bandwidth to the maximum possible 8 GByte/s.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The launch price of the 580 was $229. The crypto craze pushed the sales price to $500, but don't confuse sales price with cost price. The 580 was very much a mid range GPU at launch.

Cheers

To be pedantic, the 580 is but a slight refresh of a $229 GPU that had been launched a year before.

In normal conditions the 580 would have launched at a lower price.

 

[anexanhume]

The launch price of the 580 was $229. The crypto craze pushed the sales price to $500, but don't confuse sales price with cost price. The 580 was very much a mid range GPU at launch.

Cheers

It was the highest performing part on the market at the time for AMD (as well as high power consumption), which appeared to be the original criteria to me. Decidedly not “mid-range”.

 

[AlNom]

To be pedantic, the 580 is but a slight refresh of a $229 GPU that had been launched a year before.

I'm only guessing that 580 was referenced because 6TF (make of that what you will in terms of die size vs yields vs clocks etc).

edit: oh, I guess 480 could get to 5.8TF. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

nevermind!

It was the highest performing part on the market at the time for AMD (as well as high power consumption), which appeared to be the original criteria to me. Decidedly not “mid-range”.

Are we going by Scorpio launch? Vega64 was in August.

Well, anyways. Moving along...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I don't think there's much to be gained by soldering the NVMe controller and the NVRAM chips to the mainboard. A standard M.2 module would greatly simplify the logistics of maintaining different SKUs and performing warranty repairs.

Unless neither company is using standard NVME. It's highly likely that at least Sony are not, as NVME (at least on PC) can't come close to matching the numbers that Sony have demonstrated. Not even remotely close.

There's likely to be a lot of custom hardware, custom PCB layout, custom firmware, and a custom software stack to handle I/O.

Considering that they are not likely to be using standard NVME hardware and drives, it would be counterproductive to allow the user to change it to something less performant or potentially not even compatible with how they are doing things on the console.

Just the likely existence of custom firmware for the SSD "drive" would mean that they can't allow the user to change the drive, unless they would do like MS did with the X360...sell custom storage modules. Albeit in X360's case, it was still using standard drives for the most part.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

Unless neither company is using standard NVME. It's highly likely that at least Sony are not, as NVME (at least on PC) can't come close to matching the numbers that Sony have demonstrated. Not even remotely close.

Bandwidth-wise it can and has.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Bandwidth-wise it can and has.

Sure, but bandwidth while nice has only a small effect on overall speed of loading levels in games. NVME has over a magnitude more bandwidth than a standard mechanical HDD, but level loads rarely exceed 2x speed.

In other words, NVME doesn't come close to approaching what Sony has demonstrated. Can't comment on Microsoft as they haven't demonstrated anything yet.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Cerny also talked about their customisations needed to pull it off. I think it fairly likely we're looking at a custom solution and potentially mobo soldered, and ensuing arguments as to whether that's an 'SSD' or not given prior discussion about the ambiguities of articles.