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

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Not sure if you genuinely care but since the SN530 is an off the shelf drive you can go take a look at it’s sustained performance

https://www.notebookcheck.net/WDC-PC-SN530-SDBPNPZ-1T00-SSD-Benchmarks.476624.0.html

Summary - it never gets above 2Gb/s in sequential read tests.

Actually there’s even a handy user manual for it

https://downloads.sandisk.com/downloads/um/pcsn530-pm.pdf

Its an average off the shelf (non-customised) drive all in all - there’s a picture and pin out of the SSD in the document and it’s identical to the pics from the tear down.

There’s a 400TBW life warranty. Over 5 years that would be writing 200gb per day. That’s the WD warranty though - not sure what MS will offer - but at least it’s easy to replace if desired.

Curious if we’ll ever get this kind of info from the PS5 since that is a custom solution unavailable in any off the shelf configuration.

It is conceivable that with the changes they have applied to both the storage API’s (Direct Storage) as well as other changes in the I/O pipeline (BCPack is likely not the only HW enhancement they added) they can best those benchmarks but I wonder if the peak speed is also higher in the MS drive or if 2.4 GB/s is the theoretical max for the drive they shipped.
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
Pcie 3.0? So you mean sony took pcie 4.0 for nothing and its hiperultra ssd is slower than the one from xsx? :D
fuckyeahdemen-tia.gif
 

Connxtion

Member
MVG just done his video on the XSS. It’s using a WD NVME from the looks of it and his was supplied by MS for reviewing. So it’s looking like pre production units use WD, and retail use a different type with a different controller.

5-B984-F0-B-E45-A-4901-81-BE-765-A7-C687505.png
 
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The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
I don't need to check because you're missing my point.

Xbox fans are having a "it doesn't matter" approach. My POINT is that they're accepting it, but if this happened to PS5, they would be all over it.

This statement can truly be used describing all Fanboys. That's everything they live for. Measuring small peepees

Check df comparison. Xsx ssd is winning. Ps5 will only get use of it with new games it seems.

This doesn't make any sense. If xbox series X is faster because the games aren't coded for ssd discs, then why shouldn't xbox series still be faster cus it also has an ssd? It makes no sense.

This was BS from Cerny since day one, and it got all fanboys hyped and blindly trust their messiah.

0ed.jpg
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats


End of fucking discussion. Lol @ those latching onto BS. Especially when it wouldn't even matter for performance.



yeah it didnt make sense. its beating the ps5 in BC loading. just raw speed without using software trickery shouldn't do that unless they both where gen 4
 
Nice choice. Shows how good their optimizations in software are with games like Valhalla hitting 5-10 second load times on the system, which aren't that far off from games like Miles Morales on cold boot (7 seconds).

At first I worried PCIe 3.0 meant 8b/10b encoding but apparently they made the switch to 128b/130b encoding before PCIe 4.0. So in performant terms when it comes to most things regarding overhead, the two are virtually identical. 3.0's limit is that each lane is rated for 1 GB/s rather than 2 GB/s.

So facilitating the internal drive and external expansion card the Series systems should have a controller with 4x 4.0 links, at the very least.

Last gen games in BC mode. You've seen native PS5's games bonkers insane load times, right? And those are loading up to twice as much RAM as the 8th gen, yet load faster than 8th gen titles. Kinda obvious what's happening.

The PS5's BC mode seems likely to be nerfing its SSD to ensure compatibility, where we've long observed Microsoft's API is more portable.

This is not what's happening with BC games. BC games on both systems are barely leveraging the full SSD I/O stack on either. The reason Series X BC games are loading faster on average is because a lot of that is CPU-bound, and it can disable SMT mode to clock the CPU even faster, so most games benefit from that. There's no "nerfing" going on with either; it's not like the SSDs start at full power and scale down, don't assume variable frequency settings suddenly apply to how SSDs operate.

One of the things I've seen a few folks trying to say is that PS5 is disabling half its GPU to run BC games and that is a reason the load times are slower. This is not true, because the PS5 only disables half of the CUs for native PS4 BC, as that system had 18 CUs and 32 ROPs. The PS4 had 36 CUs and 64 ROPs, so in terms of physical operation the PS5's full GPU is enabled on those games when it comes to BC. Some have tried saying the GPU is stressed when running these games and so variable frequency kicks in meaning less CPU power meaning less CPU muscle to help with load times. Again, this is false; these are games designed for a 4.2 TF GCN-based GPU architecture, they aren't going to be stressing the PS5 anywhere near a capacity to require the GPU to take power budget from the CPU.

When it comes to next-gen games we already have some results and the solutions seem like they might perform closer than first thought. Miles Morales has a 7-second cold boot on PS5, while AC Valhalla has a 10-second cold boot on Series X (Tom Philips said 5, but he might be cutting out logo transitions or whatever the same way some do with Miles Morales to state the 4-second cold boot number). Yes they're two different games, but they're both open-world and at least relatively visually intensive.

The truth is even with next-gen games, after the decompression blocks do their work the CPU still has to process and sort out the data once it's in RAM, it's not exactly a "free lunch" in that aspect.

The actual SSD itself isn't. That's the problem.

How is it a problem? PCIe 3.0 supports same 128b/130b encoding scheme as PCIe 4.0. PCIe 4.0's main advantages are slightly less power draw and double the bandwidth support per TX/RX lane. Also keep in mind 3.0 also has an updated 3.1, but you wouldn't see drive or controller manufacturers labeling their products with a stepping update.

You guys are acting like this is some PCIe 2.0, or even SCSI style interconnect. Melodramatic simply because there's a 3.0 at the end rather than a 4.0.

Maybe this explains using only 2x PCIe 4.0 lanes instead of full 4x lanes? As 2x lanes max out at 3.5GB/s = 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes?

Two lanes max out at 3.938 GB/s, not 3.5 GB/s. Overhead for PCIe 3.0 on four lanes is nowhere near 500 MB since they use 128b/130b encoding scheme, same as PCIe 4.0.
 
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Thirty7ven

Banned
Nice choice. Shows how good their optimizations in software are with games like Valhalla hitting 5-10 second load times on the system, which aren't that far off from games like Miles Morales on cold boot (7 seconds).

Spreading some BS. God, some of you are so tiring.



17 seconds to load a save on Series X.

Miles Morales loads a save in 1.6 seconds and fast travels in 2 seconds.
 
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Connxtion

Member
Spreading some BS. God, some of you are so tiring.



17 seconds to load a save on Series X.

Miles Morales loads a save in 1.6 seconds and fast travels in 2 seconds.

Would it not be better to compare the same game doing the same thing on XSX and PS5?

Also for all we know SM only loads what’s seen and streams in the blocks round about it. (Ie, only a fraction of what’s required) as it uses the similar type of system MW uses for drawing detail round the player.
 

Schmick

Member
Spreading some BS. God, some of you are so tiring.



17 seconds to load a save on Series X.

Miles Morales loads a save in 1.6 seconds and fast travels in 2 seconds.

Wow..... 17 seconds is impressive

But why arent we seeing PS5 running Valhalla? Whats the hold up? is it still loading?
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Would it not be better to compare the same game doing the same thing on XSX and PS5?

Also for all we know SM only loads what’s seen and streams in the blocks round about it. (Ie, only a fraction of what’s required) as it uses the similar type of system MW uses for drawing detail round the player.

Greetings to Scotland! Second, what's MW?
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
This doesn't make any sense. If xbox series X is faster because the games aren't coded for ssd discs, then why shouldn't xbox series still be faster cus it also has an ssd? It makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense if the loading is not bottlenecked by the SSD. It's not just copying a file, raw IO. But if loading AC Unity is your benchmark of next gen HW, then enjoy your dream "win".
 

Dodkrake

Banned
So, per https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/console/xbox-series-x-faq

Xbox Series X features a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 NVME SSD, with 802GB of user storage. As is typical with consoles, we’ve reserved space for system files and dedicated a portion for Quick Resume, a new technology made possible by our Xbox Velocity Architecture.

Obligatory Screenshot

5mXVZcE.png


So effectively, MS is lying, correct? So, Xbox Series X buyers should be complaining that they are being sold tech that is actually not in the console, correct? Nah, all good, Microsoft can't do any bad.

tumblr_ozna6tmuPq1vg1enro1_400.gifv
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Guess MW is Modern Warfare?

Well, his guess is nice, but Insomniac engines (Ratchet and Spiderman) seem to have implemented Sony Atom View atom/polygon streaming, UE5 is trying to implement that now as Nanite but it's been there since 2017 by Atom View. This could explain the insane amount of details and the insane RT draw distance with traffic/pedestrian density.
 

Connxtion

Member
Well, his guess is nice, but Insomniac engines (Ratchet and Spiderman) seem to have implemented Sony Atom View atom/polygon streaming, UE5 is trying to implement that now as Nanite but it's been there since 2017 by Atom View. This could explain the insane amount of details and the insane RT draw distance with traffic/pedestrian density.
Yeah was modern warfare. From the talk/slides they done about Spider man they talked about streaming in chunks round the player. MW does the same thing, for the warzone mode (all they showed) so I just made the assumption that’s how it can load super fast as it doesn’t need to load in 16GB worth of assets.
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Yeah was modern warfare. From the talk/slides they done about Spider man they talked about streaming in chunks round the player. MW does the same thing, for the warzone mode (all they showed) so I just made the assumption that’s how it can load super fast as it doesn’t need to load in 16GB worth of assets.

Yes, that can be true as well, and I'm assuming polygon streaming as well. That's why there is zero pop-in per asset/model and game being extremely sharp and detailed yet only 50GB in size for that big map.
 
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Spreading some BS. God, some of you are so tiring.



17 seconds to load a save on Series X.

Miles Morales loads a save in 1.6 seconds and fast travels in 2 seconds.

An exclusive game vs 3rd party? How about you see how it loads on PS5 first. I know we are not expecting 3rd party to leverage all the features of the console on either system.
 

GHG

Gold Member
An exclusive game vs 3rd party? How about you see how it loads on PS5 first. I know we are not expecting 3rd party to leverage all the features of the console on either system.

That's not the person who originally brought the comparison into play.
 

DrAspirino

Banned
I'm wondering if one could just buy a housing and put the OEM part in it, the pinout is probably proprietary but in the end it's probably just carrying PCI-e, so such dummy adaptors do exist.
You can bet the chinese will create an adaptor for it. They have made adaptors for regular nvme ssds to work on macs, so this would be a piece of cake for them.

in fact, I’m counting on that.
 

Dolomite

Member
Seagate don't make the internal SSD, they make the external.
...you realize that MS contracted out Seagate to develop these drives for Hotswaps right? Parity is paramount, there's no gen 3 internal Gen4 external trickery from MS. It's looking desperate at this point Gaf
 
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