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Xbox Series X WDSN530 has custom ASIC to support PCIe 4.0 (Tweaktown corrects PCIe 3.0 claims)

Bo_Hazem

Banned
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ethomaz

Banned
From the specification of the m.2 slot this should work. From the software-side it might not. So even if you try it you may fail ;)
But it would be interesting for sure to test it with a 2TB SSD. But how many so small 2TB SSDs are there that are that fast.
Just guessing I believe to do that to work on Series X it should break the masterkey of the console or do a heavy software engineer reverse... WD changed the ASIC controller so it should have a custom identifier that is validated by MS OS... to fake that you need to understand how MS validate it.

Of course there is a small chance there is no validation.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
So I was right 2 days ago, it's a Gen 3 x4 ssd that runs in Gen 4 x2 mode....

The end result is still the same: weak compared to PS5
So weak when you remove the hardware io from both to make it SSD vs SSD it is basically a draw or series x a head lol.
 

chonga

Member
Can someone explain why they would do this?

That is, what is the benefit of customising a stock drive (which will come with an increased cost) to yield the same outcome?

If gen 3x4 is identical in output of gen 4x2, I ask why bother? Are there other benefits or is this just for marketing it as gen 4?
 

FranXico

Member


Oh dear...

Someone should tell these well known obvious Sony shills to stop spreading FUD about the Xbox Series SSDs!

/s

In all seriousness, this is a good cost-effective alternative, which results in the same target bandwidth - and that's what matters in the end.
 
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Can someone explain why they would do this?

That is, what is the benefit of customising a stock drive (which will come with an increased cost) to yield the same outcome?

If gen 3x4 is identical in output of gen 4x2, I ask why bother? Are there other benefits or is this just for marketing it as gen 4?

Series X uses a single x4 Gen 4 controller split in two: 2 lanes for the internal SSD and 2 lanes for the external Seagate card.

That's why...
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Can someone explain why they would do this?

That is, what is the benefit of customising a stock drive (which will come with an increased cost) to yield the same outcome?

If gen 3x4 is identical in output of gen 4x2, I ask why bother? Are there other benefits or is this just for marketing it as gen 4?

Cuttings costs + blocking cheap solutions to keep it proprietary both inside and outside.
 
Can someone explain why they would do this?

That is, what is the benefit of customising a stock drive (which will come with an increased cost) to yield the same outcome?

If gen 3x4 is identical in output of gen 4x2, I ask why bother? Are there other benefits or is this just for marketing it as gen 4?
Because your SOC only has a finite number of PCIe lanes.
And if you need lanes for the expansion slot, you need double the number.

So no they can get away with 4 PCIe lanes for storage.
For the old standard they would've needed 8 PCIe lanes for storage.


The Series X SOC only has a total of 5 PCIe 4lanes.
 
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Jon Neu

Banned
Sony fans in this thread:

source.gif
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
For people who keep saying the SSD in PS5 makes a big difference in actually loading games (new ones), what's the comparison for games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla or Watch dogs?

Wait 2 more days. But for now, you can jump from menu to game in 1.3sec on Spiderman MM, and fast travel in 0.8sec in Demon's Souls. But that's not the most important thing, it's the data streaming that's very critical making the whole SSD like a DDR4 RAM (single channel).
 
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chonga

Member
Because your SOC only has a finite number of PCIe lanes.
And if you need lanes for the expansion slot, you need double the number.

So no they can get away with 4 PCIe lanes for storage.
For the old standard they would've needed 8 PCIe lanes for storage.


The Series X SOC only has a total of 5 PCIe 4lanes.
Got 3 answers but I like yours the best. Gives the fullest picture on why they'd make the decision!
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned


Oh dear...

Someone should tell these well known obvious Sony shills to stop spreading FUD about the Xbox Series SSDs!

/s

In all seriousness, this is a good cost-effective alternative, which results in the same target bandwidth - and that's what matters in the end.


Some are simple-minded and can't comprehend even elementary-level tech talk.
 

KRYPT83

Member
They know what they are doing. And now they are trying to pretend that what they said is technically right when we know that the intent was to somehow downplay the new console.

Both of the new consoles are beast. Just enjoy whatever you are going to get and let others enjoy theirs as well.
You have to understand the powah of the ssd is all they have left and there is video evidence of ps5 getting shit on, so it's on to the next made up flaw by the armchair engineers of Gaf.
 
Really? Wouldn’t that give it kind of parallelism?

efuepw6xyjjvvuwqutcidl-jpg.3029047



"According to the Hotchips information, the internal storage connects via 2x PCI-E gen 4 lanes to the rest of the system, with another 2 lanes being reserved for the user-upgradeable SSD (which of course is the external slot). There are 8 total PCIE lanes which are from the IO Hub, and of course, the other 4 are used for things such as connecting to say, USB ports and other communication too"
 

LordOfChaos

Member


Sleepy OP here, missed a lot of news. I'm confused. Since page one, we knew the external expansion card was PCI-e 4.0, and we knew that the internal card was bridging 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 from the SSD controller over to 2 lanes of PCI-e 4.0 on the host side.

Did I miss something else, what is the debunk? That post is the external expansion card?

>Instead, the drive has been outfitted with a special ASIC that enables both PCIe Gen3 x4 and Gen4 x2

We knew it had to bridge the SN530 back to two lanes of PCI-e 4.0
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Sleepy OP here, missed a lot of news. I'm confused. Since page one, we knew the external expansion card was PCI-e 4.0, and we knew that the internal card was bridging 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 from the SSD controller over to 2 lanes of PCI-e 4.0 on the host side.

Did I miss something else, what is the debunk? That post is the external expansion card?

>Instead, the drive has been outfitted with a special ASIC that enables both PCIe Gen3 x4 and Gen4 x2

We knew it had to bridge the SN530 back to two lanes of PCI-e 4.0

Only ignorance got confirmed, you did a good job there.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
MS is only targeting 2.4GB/second raw... they appear to be accomplishing this with a PCIE 4.0 controller and a Gen 3 drive "unlocked" to be faster than it's rated? Basically running a Gen 3 part at barely above Gen 3 speeds using a Gen 4 bus?

As long as they hit the sustained 2.4GB/second raw, who gives a shit how they accomplish it?
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
MS is only targeting 2.4GB/second raw... they appear to be accomplishing this with a PCIE 4.0 controller and a Gen 3 drive "unlocked" to be faster than it's rated? Basically running a Gen 3 part at barely above Gen 3 speeds using a Gen 4 bus?

As long as they hit the sustained 2.4GB/second raw, who gives a shit how they accomplish it?

Nah, my 1TB Samsung 970 Pro is 3.5GB/s, and it's PCIe 3.0:

970PRO_02_03.jpg


2x lanes of PCIe 4.0 could handle around 4GB/s:

PCIe® 4.0 offers double the bandwidth over PCIe 3.0, up to 32 GB/s on x16 slots: More bandwidth means fewer bottlenecks and components competing for speed. Better signal reliability and integrity: Improved performance and consistency.

.

You would need PCIe 4.0 interface as well for other components like GPU (RDNA2) and CPU (Zen2, version 2? As my 2700x is also Zen2). So you can't nitpick for SSD alone. So they used PCIe-3.0-based SSD via 2x lanes only. Meets their targets.
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Nah, my 1TB Samsung 970 Pro is 3.5GB/s in, and it's PCIe 3.0:

Ah gotcha; but don't those drives have trouble sustaining anywhere near those speeds?

Maybe this is the trick to get the sustained speeds MS advertises?

(questions are legit, I have no clue about this stuff lol)
 
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Leyasu

Banned
They knew the teardowns would arrive before launch. I can't see them trying to lie about something that would be found out in no time at all..
 
Nah, my 1TB Samsung 970 Pro is 3.5GB/s in, and it's PCIe 3.0:

970PRO_02_03.jpg


2x lanes of PCIe 4.0 could handle around 4GB/s:

PCIe® 4.0 offers double the bandwidth over PCIe 3.0, up to 32 GB/s on x16 slots: More bandwidth means fewer bottlenecks and components competing for speed. Better signal reliability and integrity: Improved performance and consistency.

.

You would need PCIe 4.0 interface as well for other components like GPU (RDNA2) and CPU (Zen2, version 2? As my 2700x is also Zen2). So you can't nitpick for SSD alone. So they used PCIe-3.0-based SSD via 2x only. Meets their targets.

Exactly like Cerny said back in March:

BLA7jBoXYtjsKZCEuaUJMo.jpg
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
It is vitally important to several people who "have no interest" in Xbox. I couldn't get people this focused on something they don't care about unless I paid them. :goog_unsure:
I mean.. if it's a PCIE 3.0 drive MS shouldn't say it's a PCIE 4.0 drive.

It's not important.. but it's a bit of a pattern for their marketing.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Ah gotcha; but don't those drives have trouble sustaining anywhere near those speeds?

Maybe this is the trick to get the sustained speeds MS advertises?

(questions are legit, I have no clue about this stuff lol)

Both consoles have direct cooling to keep the speeds sustained. Mine is stripped naked (and pulled off the stickers as they generate heat) and it performs good and seems to sustain speed while keeping heat below 60C under workload. They throttle at around 85C and they crash at around 110C if I'm not mistaken. You can add a heatsink to keep them cool but don't over do it as they operate perfectly around 40C and higher.

Mine is a top end NVMe m.2 SSD, so it has 8-channel vs 4-channel on xbox (12-channel on PS5 as you know), also has DRAM vs DRAM-less xbox's, and has a vastly higher lifespan expectancy which is also complemented by the inclusion of DRAM, as only the cheapest SSD's are DRAM-less.

 
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oldergamer

Member
This entire threads premise has been debunked by MS, and Seagate Western digital. What more do you need? It's a i/o and custom drive that is gen 4.

Anyone arguing about it being gen 3, is either not actually paying attention to what was already posted in the thread, or just another craig avatar trolling.
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
But we knew that it wasn't as soon as we saw the reported read speed: 2.4 GB/s

PCIE 4.0 is useless for that speed target
Yeah it never made a lot of sense in the first place.. they still made the claim lol, even at a tech conference.

Just say you are using a PCIE 4.0 bus and testing different drives to ensure the speed target or something.
 

oldergamer

Member
Nothing has been debunked: IT IS a PCIE 3 drive connected to a PCIE 4 controller....
"Today we posted up an erroneous report stating the Series X's internal SSD didn't support PCIe 4.0, Western Digital has reached out to clarify this is wrong, and the built-in Series X SSD is in fact a customized solution that supports PCIe 4.0"
 

LordOfChaos

Member
MS is only targeting 2.4GB/second raw... they appear to be accomplishing this with a PCIE 4.0 controller and a Gen 3 drive "unlocked" to be faster than it's rated? Basically running a Gen 3 part at barely above Gen 3 speeds using a Gen 4 bus?

As long as they hit the sustained 2.4GB/second raw, who gives a shit how they accomplish it?

Not faster than it's rated, 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 or 2 lanes of PCI-e 4.0 are both capable of just under 4GB/s, the drive itself reports 3.75GB/s but Microsoft claims 2.4GB/s.

My guess would be they want to ensure consistent performance between the internal drive and the external in a smaller enclosure for thermal dissipation
 
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oldergamer

Member
"customized solution that supports PCIe 4.0 "

can we stop now? I don't think they would claim its custom if there wasn't something changed.

unless people here are claiming to know more then the people that made that custom drive?
 
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"Today we posted up an erroneous report stating the Series X's internal SSD didn't support PCIe 4.0, Western Digital has reached out to clarify this is wrong, and the built-in Series X SSD is in fact a customized solution that supports PCIe 4.0"

Yes, the controller supports 2 lanes of PCIe 4.0 that is EXACTLY the same as 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0, nothing magical about that
 
What is the published speed? 2.4GB/s? If they meet that, it doesn't matter if it is 3.0 or 4.0 right? Not sure how it matters.
It doesn't, however, we also don't know how it's been customized either considering this is a similar SSD they use in their surface lineup and is only available
Is MS confused?




And no one said it's not supporting PCIe 4.0, because it needs to be slightly customized to run through 2x PCIe 4.0 lanes instead of naturally 4x lanes like all m.2 SSD's. This will ensure that you can't upgrade the internal storage cheaply as all of them are meant to run through 4x lanes.

The off the shelf one runs through 4x lanes:

  • Read speeds up to 2,400 MB/s and low power consumption leverages both the PCIe Gen3 x4 interface, as well as sophisticated NVMe power management


My Samsung 970 Pro PCIe 3.0 can work natively on PCIe 4.0 motherboards. So the only customization done here is more like "castration". Now we understand why it's using 2x lanes, which was pretty weird to read in the hot chips.

Keep that crow in the fridge in the meanwhile. :lollipop_tears_of_joy:

EDIT:

Like PCIe 3.0, PCIe 4.0 is forward and backward compatible. This means that PCIe 4.0 can be used as a direct replacement for PCIe 3.0, but it also means that if you connect a PCIe 3.0 card to the PCIe 4.0 slot, the card will perform to the PCIe 3.0 specs.


Did you move the goal posts to be right about this? Everyone was in a frenzy because it was PCIe 3 and now that it's a customized SSD that carries the model number of a PCIe 3 part, it now runs as a PCIe 4 SSD. Therefore you get 2 Lanes for the internal drive, 2 Lanes for the external drive and speed parity.

As far as replacement goes, at least you can replace it as opposed to the Sony solution which needs to be unsoldered from the board if it gets corrupt or fails at any point.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Not faster than it's rated, 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 or 2 lanes of PCI-e 4.0 are both capable of just under 4GB/s, the drive itself reports 3.75GB/s but Microsoft claims 2.4GHz.

My guess would be they want to ensure consistent performance between the internal drive and the external in a smaller enclosure for thermal dissipation

Drive max speed is 2.4GB/s:

 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Did you move the goal posts to be right about this? Everyone was in a frenzy because it was PCIe 3 and now that it's a customized SSD that carries the model number of a PCIe 3 part, it now runs as a PCIe 4 SSD. Therefore you get 2 Lanes for the internal drive, 2 Lanes for the external drive and speed parity.

As far as replacement goes, at least you can replace it as opposed to the Sony solution which needs to be unsoldered from the board if it gets corrupt or fails at any point.

Go quote all my posts here and find where I said it doesn't support PCIe 4.0? PCIe 3.0 by standard is forward compatible with PCIe 4.0.
 
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