What does that even mean?
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
External HDD for Xbox One improves load times!
- Thread starter Hawk269
- Start date
What does that even mean?
Its internal HDD is no better or worse than the one found in the PS4. The Microsoft published games load incredibly slow for whatever reason and see the most benefit from external drives.
PS4 is cheaper, my point.
For a Console that is built for Media/Digital downloading you would think the internal Hard drive would be somewhere they wouldn't skimp.
- Open PS4.
- Read Model: MB86C311B.
- Lookup feature sheet: MB86C31_FS_082010.pdf.
- Read feature sheet: SATA Gen2i (3Gbps) and Gen1i (1.5Gbps) Support for ATA and ATAPI devices.
- ???
- Profit.
Other than putting in a fast 3.5" HDD that would have most likely increased the size of the console or adding an SSD that would have made it more expensive, there's not much they could have done in that front. Using a laptop drive makes more sense. Your point about the price doesn't work because it ignores the camera they were trying to push on to their customers.
You are mistaken. That's definitely not the reason.
So I did some more tests with my Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 7200 RPM on my Xbox One today and here are the results:
Dead Rising 3
Loading to start screen
Internal: 53.8 seconds
External: 42.2 seconds
Loading my savegame
Internal: 51.9 seconds
External: 34.8 seconds
Foza Motorsport 5
Loading to Press A screen
Internal: 30.1 seconds
External: 28.4 seconds
Loading main menu
Internal: 21.0 seconds
External: 13.3 seconds
Loading race Prague Full with 16 AI cars
Internal: 52.2 seconds
External: 38.5 seconds
Thief
Loading to start screen
Internal: 46.6 seconds
External 44.1 seconds
Loading savegame
Internal: 33.1 seconds
External: 27.1 seconds
So I guess you can say an external drive saves at least a few seconds in any regard, but it seems to benefit the most from loading savegames or just loading stuff to play in general. Some real time saving in Forza and Dead Rising with the external drive. Did notice I can't move my FIFA 14 to an external drive and read somewhere you can't move Skylanders either so I guess there are some restrictions in place for some games.
Dead Rising 3
Loading to start screen
Internal: 53.8 seconds
External: 42.2 seconds
Loading my savegame
Internal: 51.9 seconds
External: 34.8 seconds
Foza Motorsport 5
Loading to Press A screen
Internal: 30.1 seconds
External: 28.4 seconds
Loading main menu
Internal: 21.0 seconds
External: 13.3 seconds
Loading race Prague Full with 16 AI cars
Internal: 52.2 seconds
External: 38.5 seconds
Thief
Loading to start screen
Internal: 46.6 seconds
External 44.1 seconds
Loading savegame
Internal: 33.1 seconds
External: 27.1 seconds
So I guess you can say an external drive saves at least a few seconds in any regard, but it seems to benefit the most from loading savegames or just loading stuff to play in general. Some real time saving in Forza and Dead Rising with the external drive. Did notice I can't move my FIFA 14 to an external drive and read somewhere you can't move Skylanders either so I guess there are some restrictions in place for some games.
a Master Ninja
Member
What's the word on USB 3.0 flash drives? Even faster load times?
XtremeXpider
Member
Yes, but if you upgrade your PS4 HD you will lose the space you are replacing. With external HDD support, we are "adding" apce, not "replacing" space.
No restrictions => Just bugs in the current Beta-OS
Should be resolved until the final release.
Who the hell would pay those prices to use a flash drive?
What the hell is the bottleneck with a drive with direct connect to the system bus? I mean yes a beefed up exteranl drive can have pluses. Hey wait a minute is this over usb or esata? Sorry I donot own an X-1.
if you don't know anything about mass producing electronics maybe you'd think that. of the options available -- speed/reliability/price/size
they clearly picked reliability/price, waffled on size and speed. which is what every manufacturer does.
licktheenvelope
Member
For now. Internal is a better means of speeding up load/write times though. Glad the X1 is seeing some savings on externals, but it's not the same as internal.
I figure I saved about 3 hours just in load times on AC4 from setting up an SSHD drive when I got my PS4.
Some people don't care but over the life of a console i'll happily pay the extra to save a couple hundred hours.
MaximusPayne
Member
XtremeXpider
Member
Proof? What I've read is not so different than XBO, unless you upgrade to SSD, but you have writing limits, and dat price...
Welcome to Ryse and Forza
DJSebolski
Member
What? Who cares that it's a flash drive. It's flipping 256 gigs that you can carry in your pocket. An external SSD would cost far more than that for the same space.
The only reason I would think that that is a lot for a flash drive is if it was a normal flash drive. You know, like 32GB or whatever is the average. That would be ridiculous. But this is 256. That is a lot of space. Lots of space takes lots of money. That's actually a very fair price, especially considering you can put this in your pocket, and it's far more convenient than an external SSD, SSHD, or HDD of the same price.
I might be able to test with a small game. I just bought a 32gb drive. I have plants vs zombies which does have some long loads so I'll see if it fits on to it.
XtremeXpider
Member
statham
Member
I'm debating between the Passport ultra and Expansion too. FYI, the Expansion has a powercord.
licktheenvelope
Member
It depends on the external drive but this is an easy test. I have a seagate 3 tb external and a 3 tb internal, both at 5400 RPM with 32 mb cache (on my PC as extra drives). The read times are faster on the internal vs the external by a decent margin and the write times are much much slower on external vs internal.
You could have a 7200 RPM external (or even just a 5400 RPM with a bigger cache) and see better results than a base 5400 RPM internal.
Hell you can just do a cursory glance over the times in the PS4 video tests... here's one (stock vs SSD vs SSHD):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGjSJwlHK6M
Break-down:
Boot:
Stock: 25 seconds
SSHD: 23 seconds
SSD: 19 seconds
Game Launch (Knack):
Stock: 40 seconds
SSHD: 34 seconds
SSD: 34 seconds
Digital Game Load Save (Killzone):
Stock: 61 seconds
SSHD: 42 seconds
SSD: 39 seconds
In regards to the X1 externals people testing reporting the speed enhancements may be on 7200 external drives ... there's a few external SSDs out now but they're really expensive.
licktheenvelope
Member
That's the same drive I have in my PS4. Really nice drive. Sped up AC4 loads by 20 seconds +.
Wuthering_Heights
Banned
You're telling me that there are load times of over a minute in Ryse?
Edit: And Killzone?
I had no idea 'next gen' load times could be that bad.
Edit: And Killzone?
I had no idea 'next gen' load times could be that bad.
Yeah. I thought load times were supposed to be a lot shorter, not twice as long!
I thought I remember xboxps2 gen to PS360 gen having much shorter load times comparatively.
MaulerX
Member
How is internal better/faster? You can literally use any drive as external USB 3.0 with an enclosure.
The cheap 5400 rpm 2.5 inch Samsung laptop drive they use for the internal in the Xbox One is an issue. However, it is constantly recording gameplay which sort of makes things a bit more complicated. Having an external that is strictly for game and app storage (no game saves or DVR qualities for the external) allows the system to have access to the drive without being tied down to recording at all times on that drive as well.
At least that's what I have learned. There isn't actually a bottleneck as saturating SATA II would take some serious speed, it's more of how they're prioritizing read/write on the internal drive.
As for the PS4, it just benefits from having a faster and better drive for the internal. The stock one is cheap to minimize cost. By putting in a better drive like a SSHD, the system can do everything it needs to do, just faster.
That ram ain't gonna fill up itself. Takes some serious time to fill it.
I'm sure I'm late on this but it's the hard drive that's bottle necking the XBox One's load times.
Mechanical hard drives are not capable of putting out data fast enough to saturate, let alone exceed the speed of SATA II or USB 3.0.
Well sure, but RAM sizes increased by a fairly large amount moving from ps2 to ps3. Like 32MB to 256GB + 256GB or something like that. That's a large amount, and yet the ps3 had no trouble having much quicker load times than the ps2. I mean, just remember how long medal of honor took to load. Like three minutes I remember one time for a simple 1 on 1 split screen match. Sure, there are ps3 games that take that long, but I don't remember them being worse.
eso76
Member
You have to fill dem 8GBs!
TBH you'd only want to keep internal space for overflow looking at the load time differences!
This is great to see, hope Sony do it but then I do prefer the internal solution as its neater.
Be interested to see some comparisons of the same games on both platforms now...
I....juuuuust responded to that above your post.
JeffG
Member
I was just watching Frank Savages xbox one demonstration that was video taped at the game developers conference which happened a month (or so) ago.
In it, he mentioned how slow the drives were. Better to compress everything and get it into memory and uncompress it using cpu cycles vs reading uncompressed data.
ScepticMatt
Member
What? Modern SSDs are bottleneck by SATA III, let alone USB.
Anandtech said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8006/samsung-ssd-xp941-review-the-pcie-era-is-here
a Master Ninja
Member
Cool. Let us know how it works out.
Netherscourge
Banned
Better start saving your lunch money!!!
Won't work. 256gb minimum. A 32GB flash drive won't cut it.
Why?
Because that is the minimum requirement set by Microsoft?
256GB or larger and USB 3.0
Must not have seen that. That's bizarre and unfortunate. That means I can't even use my 240GB SSD (not that I would, since it's in my PC, but still).
Should a 256GB flash drive work? Just curious.
As long as it's 256gb or larger and USB 3.0 yes.