F
Foamy
Unconfirmed Member
Pretty cool. I'll plug my 2TB hard drive in, transfer Modern Warfare and Destiny 2 to the internal for "optimal performance" and play everything else off the external.
I think Microsoft will give some specifications for licensed 3rd party to create enclosure for the Xbox Series X hard drive to create the expansion card. People dissing it for price and playing console wars didnt realize one important aspect - Microsoft is not selling the expansion card, Seagate is. If theres one thing they learned from Xbox One its that, 3rd parties can make cheaper and better accessories than Microsoft, which is why they advertise PDP Talon Remote Xbox Remote and stopped manufacturing there own official one. Part of the expansion card is the XSX internal storage which is produced in large quantities and bought cheaply to keep XSX price reasonable. As, the price of manufacturing XSX will go down, so will the expansion card, contrary to what GAF thinks.I completely forgot that Microsoft was a bit cheeky in the wording for their partnership with Seagate. Saying that they're the exclusive partner "at launch". Seems to suggest they're open to other manufacturers making expansion cards down the line.
You can only play Xbox One(and backwards compatible) games of your 2 TB hard drive. You need the expansion card to play XSX games.Pretty cool. I'll plug my 2TB hard drive in, transfer Modern Warfare and Destiny 2 to the internal for "optimal performance" and play everything else off the external.
Given how vital the SSDs are to these systems, and how overpriced SSDs can be in general, a consistently priced (assuming it’s a reasonable price) and compatibility assured XsX drive makes me feel a little better than uncertainty around PS5 compatible drives (price wise, availability wise, dimension wise, spec wise).
Microsoft considers it official though, you wont find that exact drive anywhere else. Unlike Western Digital, if you open a Seagate external drive you will find an internal hard drive from another vendor like Samsung etc, they only design the enclosure. In this case, Microsoft has designed the internal drive(the same mass produced XSX internal drive, so its cheap) and Seagate designed the enclosure as specified by Microsoft.
What MS are doing around launch will not necessarily be ongoing forever.MS' solution is stuck to a single size and manufacturer, so albeit easier to use there will be only one price, and most probably expensive.
With such fierce competition on price, I doubt MS would make it expensive on purpose.
Take the 4TB Seagate Xbox One HDD. Currently it costs 119 USD on Amazon, while the STGX4000400 costs 98 USD. But the Xbox One drive(140 MB/s) is also slightly faster than STGX4000400(120 MB/s). This is not the kind of price difference some posts here are projecting.
On the other hand XSX Memory card contains the same mass produced Series X internal drive unlike the Xbox One HDD. I dont see any significant price difference. It also seems like MS wants the XSX memory card to be adopted by majority of Xbox users.
You know they are competing with PS5 for price ? Do you think they will let it be expensive then PS5 certified drives ?If this card doesn't work with anything else, due to ther form factor or memory interface, then you can't really make the comparison you did. Because there are other options in the scenario you mentioned, namely the Seagate hdd being cheaper, thats because there is competition and since there is competition microsoft had to keep the pricing reasonable. No competition, and they can charge out the ass for this.
You know they are competing with PS5 for price ? Do you think they will let it be expensive then PS5 certified drives ?
You know I am replying to a post talking about how Microsoft will just overcharge out of the ass because it can. But if you are here to talk about economicsIt could happen, economies of scale will start working against them more and more as time goes on. Consumers are subsiding the main console costs with the peripheral, understandable and not uncommon.
Sure Sony having a much higher base target for SSD speed (luckily building in the HW to make it easy to exploit too) is going to give them grief near launch (despite being able to use external drives as backup and for PS4 titles).
It is interesting how the tune of proprietary HW changes based on the band singing it .
As for PS5, theres just too much assumption going on, like the PS5 spec rumours. The Sony certified 7 GB/s(way more than 5.5 GB/s if you hate this term) NVMe drives will not become mainstream within a few years or even the whole PS5 gen. There is a small market for people who actually upgrade their Playstation harddrives. Prices dont just go down like that. Anything below Sony certified NVMe drive speed becoming cheap does not help PS5 in any way.I think Microsoft will give some specifications for licensed 3rd party to create enclosure for the Xbox Series X hard drive to create the expansion card. People dissing it for price and playing console wars didnt realize one important aspect - Microsoft is not selling the expansion card, Seagate is. If theres one thing they learned from Xbox One its that, 3rd parties can make cheaper and better accessories than Microsoft, which is why they advertise PDP Talon Remote Xbox Remote and stopped manufacturing there own official one. Part of the expansion card is the XSX internal storage which is produced in large quantities and bought cheaply to keep XSX price reasonable. As, the price of manufacturing XSX will go down, so will the expansion card, contrary to what GAF thinks.I completely forgot that Microsoft was a bit cheeky in the wording for their partnership with Seagate. Saying that they're the exclusive partner "at launch". Seems to suggest they're open to other manufacturers making expansion cards down the line.
Can you link me to where they said "at launch" ?I completely forgot that Microsoft was a bit cheeky in the wording for their partnership with Seagate. Saying that they're the exclusive partner "at launch". Seems to suggest they're open to other manufacturers making expansion cards down the line.
You know I am replying to a post talking about how Microsoft will just overcharge out of the ass because it can. But if you are here to talk about economics
As for PS5, theres just too much assumption going on, like the PS5 spec rumours. The Sony certified 7 GB/s(way more than 5.5 GB/s if you hate this term) NVMe drives will not become mainstream within a few years or even the whole PS5 gen. There is a small market for people who actually upgrade their Playstation harddrives. Prices dont just go down like that. Anything below Sony certified NVMe drive speed becoming does not help PS5 in any way.
You are peddling the same argument over and over hoping repeating it may make it true. The fact you keep going on about the 7 GB/s certified drive claims shows you are interested in setting up a narrative for others to read more than stating facts.
It is not the cost influenced by PS5 alone... it is the cost of flash chips themselves, the cost of manufacturer building more and more capacity, the desire in both data centres, workstations, gaming PC’s, and more of extra storage and speed increases. Would not be surprised to see investment in better controllers than the base NVMe specs that allow the over head to be reduced further than the “small” overhead current drives see and future SSD drives that easily go way past 6 GB/s (I think the overhead for drives that lack the full 6 priority levels arbitration may probably mean something like 5.7-6 GB/s required).
Also, funny how the market for people adding storage for their consoles is small (debatable) and yet the cost of fast SSD drives is a problem worth being concerned about. By getting a far slower drive they would have had less (temporary) headaches allowing people to add their own drive for extra storage for PS5 games, but would the console be better for it? I do not think so.
Te market for work stations may as well just decide to go up to 3 GB/s, wont help PS5 in any way. Majority of steam users have a weaker PC than Xbox One X. 6+ GB/s NVMe's are a luxury. Thats like saying iPhone will get cheaper if more people buy it.It is not the cost influenced by PS5 alone... it is the cost of flash chips themselves, the cost of manufacturer building more and more capacity, the desire in both data centres, workstations, gaming PC’s, and more of extra storage and speed increases. Would not be surprised to see investment in better controllers than the base NVMe specs that allow the over head to be reduced further than the “small” overhead current drives see and future SSD drives that easily go way past 6 GB/s (I think the overhead for drives that lack the full 6 priority levels arbitration may probably mean something like 5.7-6 GB/s required).
How many people decided to upgrade the PS4 internal SSD rather than just get an external one ? Expendable storage needs to be convenient, otherwise it will always be a niche.Also, funny how the market for people adding storage for their consoles is small (debatable) and yet the cost of fast SSD drives is a problem worth being concerned about. By getting a far slower drive they would have had less (temporary) headaches allowing people to add their own drive for extra storage for PS5 games, but would the console be better for it? I do not think so.
Te market for work stations may as well just decide to go up to 3 GB/s, wont help PS5 in any way. Majority of steam users have a weaker PC than Xbox One X. 6+ GB/s NVMe's are a luxury. Thats like saying iPhone will get cheaper if more people buy it.
Expendable storage needs to be convenient, otherwise it will always be a niche.
Can you link me to where they said "at launch" ?
Seagate will be the exclusive launch partner for these expansion cards, too. “At launch, the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X will be the only Expansion Card available,” reveals a Microsoft spokesperson to The Verge.
You know they are competing with PS5 for price ? Do you think they will let it be expensive then PS5 certified drives ?
It could happen, economies of scale will start working against them more and more as time goes on. Consumers are subsiding the main console costs with the peripheral, understandable and not uncommon.
Sure Sony having a much higher base target for SSD speed (luckily building in the HW to make it easy to exploit too) is going to give them grief near launch (despite being able to use external drives as backup and for PS4 titles).
It is interesting how the tune of proprietary HW changes based on the band singing it .
Almost stripped my ps3 drive bay screw when changing.It is really really easy to upgrade.
Tell me an open memory card like format for SSDs then.Proprietary shit, honestly i thought we were past that.
You are peddling the same argument over and over hoping repeating it may make it true. The fact you keep going on about the 7 GB/s certified drive claims shows you are interested in setting up a narrative for others to read more than stating facts.
It is not the cost influenced by PS5 alone... it is the cost of flash chips themselves, the cost of manufacturer building more and more capacity, the desire in both data centres, workstations, gaming PC’s, and more of extra storage and speed increases. Would not be surprised to see investment in better controllers than the base NVMe specs that allow the over head to be reduced further than the “small” overhead current drives see and future SSD drives that easily go way past 6 GB/s (I think the overhead for drives that lack the full 6 priority levels arbitration may probably mean something like 5.7-6 GB/s required).
Price of Flash itself will go down, price of off the shelves mass produced SSD’s will go down, but the price of the external SSD custom packaged benefits only partially from the reduction in cost of the rest of the supply chain.
Not that one will stop the dreams... like carts on Switch that would bring the cost of games down because they take less space in cargos and Nintendo would subsidise them .
Also, funny how the market for people adding storage for their consoles is small (debatable) and yet the cost of fast SSD drives is a problem worth being concerned about. By getting a far slower drive they would have had less (temporary) headaches allowing people to add their own drive for extra storage for PS5 games, but would the console be better for it? I do not think so.
Proprietary shit, honestly i thought we were past that.
Actually i doubt fast nvme drives will come fast and cheap, due to your stated desires.
Because moving from raid hdd to an average ssd is fast enough. What data centres and workstations want is more reliable drives. PS5 approach is an outlier, which is fine if you stay within #psecosystem.
Just read up Anandtech enterprise ssd page, you see where the sequential r/w numbers stand and required.
Enterprise SSDs - Latest Articles and Reviews on AnandTech
Here are AnandTech’s latest articles filed under Enterprise SSDswww.anandtech.com
The consoles themselves are proprietary hardware to begin with. But hey, you can always build yourself a PC.
Tell me an open memory card like format for SSDs then.
Big tower? Slot for an NVMe caddy, trivial to install... MS to sell the caddy and making it plug and play, problem solved... but then they do not get to make a nice markup off their customers as they actually cheer for paying extra.
we know how sony handled the thing.That is a fair comment, hopefully the next time Sony inevitably uses a proprietary standard the crowd cheering this proprietary memory card will also cheer Sony’s solution .
Literally the second link in the page you selected:https://www.anandtech.com/show/15537/kioxia-releases-first-pcie-40-ssds-cm6-cd6
6.2-6.9 GB/s reads
Data Centers and workstations want both reliability, storage (related to the former, and viceversa), and speed.
If MS had not announced their cards and Sony had announced theirs they would have been dragged through the coals and mocked and there would have been tons of concern, but shoe on the other foot and here we go: “it is for ease of use”, “you need proprietary cards because of the drive is so fast (not true, 2.4 GB/s is not far from what SSD’s in the market can deliver now)“, “it is pro consumer because... reasons”.
With a console shell that big and the supposedly infinite MS pockets all available for Xbox: why not give users also the ability to use an off the shelf NVMe drive and insert it too? Why not have support for a solution that allowed you to use your own fast enough external NVMe drive in an enclosure?
I think you will find out both MS and Sony are quoting read speeds in their specs as they are not designing server grade HW that needs almost symmetric read and write speeds.What about the writes, which are only 4gbs?
Why do you keep assuming fair gamers will call out Sony if they use proprietary storage for PS5? As many have said here, times are different. A standard nvme portable storage makes most sense for now and at least a 3 years time frame.
It is all about actively considering the situation and not just keeping to old ways. I think thats why you see Series X doing well in terms of hardware design wins.
I'm curious about this as well. Is this an add-on that plugs into a separate bay and give you additional storage on top of the 825GB in the system, or are they having you swap the drives? I originally envisioned storage that was soldered onto the motherboard, then a separate bay maybe on the bottom that you'd install the expanded storage into.Was it ever explained how a replacement/additional SSD would work on the PS5? Would you need to open the case to change it, or is there a port in the back?
Replacing the internal SSD with a larger drive
The internal SSD can be replaced with a bigger hard drive with an off-the-shelf drive - meaning NVMe PC drives will work on your console.
However, it's not as straightforward as picking a larger sized hard drive and expecting the same benefits as what comes with the PS5, as many SSDs on the market today don't have the same bandwidth specifications.
Again, Digital Foundry explains the technical reasons behind this in closer detail, but the long and short of it is - though today's SSDs will physically fit, they won't get as much out of the PS5's dedicated hardware in the same way.
Saturated PCIe 4.0 hard drive on paper looks to offer a similar solution to the PS5's offering - but don't expect them easily at launch, and for Sony to certify them first.
However, Sony will be validating hard drives which do offer similar or improved speed capabilities as its own proprietary drives over time - but this might not be possible at launch.
To quote Digital Foundry's Rich Leadbetter: "In the short term at least, the advice is simple: don't buy an NVMe drive without Sony validation if you plan to use it in PlayStation 5. Also remember that extreme bandwidth PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives are likely to be very expensive - in the short term, at least.
"This is cutting-edge technology, after all. Obviously though, the outlook should improve significantly as the next generation progresses - and prices do tend to drop significantly over time."
So - though you're likely stuck with your 825GB of super fast storage at launch, the good news is the industry will catch up to offer suitable replacements which can replace your internal PS5 drive.
It's better than Sony's solution. Internal SSD only supports 800gb that will be lower when you install the Operation System. These Certified SSD will be more expensive than PS5 and it'll probably won't be available within 2 years.
Microsoft Memory card solution is more friendly consumer, take the card out and play on your friends console. It'll be cheap since its the same card Xbox Series X is using.
This is making it sound like you don't retain the 825GB storage with the installation of the new drive. I'm confused and in disbelief over this. That would mean that only 2TB are suitable upgrade, that won't come cheap and you'd be losing the original storage? Perhaps someone can offer clarity on this issue?
For all we know Sony I designing similar custom NVMe drives that are easy to insert in and out of the console, support 5.5 GB/s and the 6 priority levels, and are just the internal m2 drives repackaged for real... It will be fun to read the “concern” around it if / when they will announce it.
Sony will be certifying individual M.2 SSDs for the PS5, which uses the new PCI Express 4.0 standard. Cerny said that it’s “likely” that certifications will begin arriving “a bit past” the console’s launch this fall.
I hope that's the case. Like I was saying, I envisioned it as an add-on to the existing storage. It's fine if it sees it as 2 drives, but it needs to be like the XSX where you have the original drive with the new storage space on top of it. So you'd have 1TB+1TB on XSX, and 825GB+1TB on PS5. It was just weird how Eurogamer was describing it.
Are you referring to the "Road to PS5" deepdive video? I'll check it out again and see if I can find any more info.
I think you will find out both MS and Sony are quoting read speeds in their specs as they are not designing server grade HW that needs almost symmetric read and write speeds.
I believe what changed is who is doing the proprietary solution... for 3 out of 4 generations (Xbox One initially had no external disk expansion, then added USB storage support, props).
With that said, I believe you may be genuine about assessing the situation and proprietary vs off the shelves solution, just that I disagree on the cost : benefits analysis and I would have expected MS to allow you to expand or replace the internal storage with an off the shelves NVMe drive.
They are not taking a yet to be released NVMe drive with custom specs (6 priority QoS levels instead of 2), but a fast yet regular 2.4 GB/s SSD drive so less excuses for not allowing customers to get a cheaper off the shelves solution.
“Fair gamers” may or may not call Sony out and I think times are different and the same at the same time , but the reaction from one side of the hardcore fan base...
But i dont think Sony or MS quote read/write. Just i/o throughput. Would it make more sense to assume symmetric numbers?
What changed about proprietary storage is that we are back to portable sizes. And it happened that nvme is still 'new' expensive tech. In this regards, Series X is a way smarter solution. When Xbox OG introduced hdd, every PC have a hdd already.
Rewatching Cerny’s interview it looks like you are adding onto it and connecting to the same bus (the internal one is likely soldered onto the motherboard), but they were not clear about which one is active at any one time, but this could be handled smartly and automagically by the system for you (as far as you are concerned it may appear as a single giant drive, but with limitations as a 1 GB game could not be split into two 512 MB slices for each of the two drives).
I doubt they both are though and you may have to switch between both, similar to the situation on PS3 and PS4, but as I was saying they can be made look like a single logical volume.
The advantages would be:
- Being able to switch between the two discs means that you are easily getting to near 2 TB of effective storage without having to fork out for a 2 TB drive
- It is possible the OS partition needs only to be on the internal drive and upon boot up the user added SSD can then be used as the OS is loaded in memory (and maybe part of it in a temporary location of the new SSD)
The PS5 will have an NVMe slot, but drive compatibility will be paramount.
*edit* I'm going through the video and PS5 definitely has a separate bay for the add-on drives. Eurogamer had no reason to use the word "replace" in their article multiple times. Just cause confusion.Yeah that is the video. Worth watching to see someone speaking technically and competently for almost 54 minutes straight without almost any pause as if it were a single smooth act.
This is more clear cut that there's a bay and you add storage in addition to the SSD.having said that expandability of our
SSD is going to be quite important
flash is costly and you may very well
want to add storage to whatever we put
in the console now the kind of storage
you need depends on how you're going to
use it if you have an extensive
PlayStation 4 library and you'd like to
take advantage of backwards
compatibility to play those games on
PlayStation 5 then a large external hard
drive is ideal you can leave your games
on the hard drive and play them directly
from there thus saving the pricier SSD
storage for your PlayStation 5 titles or
you can copy your active PlayStation 4
titles to the SSD if your purpose in
adding more storage is to play
playstation 5 titles though ideally you
would add to your SSD storage we will be
supporting certain m2 SSDs these are
internal drives that you can get on the
open market and install in a bay in the
playstation 5 as for which ones we
support and when I'll get to that in a
moment they connect through the custom
io unit just like our SSD does so they
can take full advantage of the
decompression io coprocessors and all
...
having said that we are comparing
apples and oranges though because that
commercial m2 Drive will have its own
architecture its own flash controller
and so on for example the nvme
specification lays out a priority scheme
for requests that the m2 drives can use
and that scheme is pretty nice but it
only has two true priority levels our
drive supports six we can hook up a
drive with only two priority levels
definitely but our custom IO unit has to
arbitrate the extra priorities rather
than the m2 drives flash controller and
so the m2 drive needs a little extra
speed to take care of issues arising
from the different approach that
Commercial Drive also needs to
physically fit inside of the bay we
created in PlayStation 5 for m2 drives
unlike internal hard drives there's
unfortunately no standard for the height
of an m2 Drive and some m2 drives have
giant heat sinks in fact some of them
even have their own fans right now we're
getting in to drive samples and
benchmarking them in various ways