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Xbox Velocity Architecture - 100 GB is instantly accessible by the developer through a custom hardware decompression block

Matsuchezz

Member
Maybe this is a dumb question but is there even a way to ever know for sure? Can the guys at DF or any expert analysis person like @NXGamer actually measure a consoles TFLOPs in use? Or will we always just kinda be guessing.

Only Dev Kits could probably do that with some kind of debug mode. I do not think end users would ever need that, it would be fuel for console warring.
 

Three

Member
That's pure BS, nobody is trying to make any feature "seem like it's from something secret". People in an xbox thread wan to talk about something that we know nothing about. leave it at that. Also, what reaction do you expect when people quote someone connected to or works at MS, and then "others" try to call them out like it was information thy were making up.
That's not bullshit unless you wanted an echochamber of highfives. People were discussing this feature discussing what the 2x multiplier is and providing actual information. Others were discussing peoples 'motives' and saying well you're a liar because we don't know. What good is that?
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Maybe this is a dumb question but is there even a way to ever know for sure? Can the guys at DF or any expert analysis person like @NXGamer actually measure a consoles TFLOPs in use? Or will we always just kinda be guessing.


Maybe by testing RDNA 2 cards by disabling compute units and matching the frequencies of the PS5.

There's a narrative going around by the Xbox community that it's "really a 9.2TF console" and it will only reach 10.2TF sometimes.

- There won't be a difference in PS5\XSX SSD speeds
- Really a 9.2TF console
- Not a full RDNA 2

They want to make the PS5 look weak as possible in their own eyes.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Now you’re confusing memory bandwidth for I/O bandwidth. Why am I still even talking to you?

Confusing? Nope, but thanks for spotting one word typing mistake In a much longer post which again you do not address. Then again you showed you are very good at picking things out of context, so I should not be surprised ;).

Interesting though that you make a giant unsubstantiated remark trying to make it seem that the XSX SSD and the I/O stack connected to it is essentially just as a performant storage solution as PS5’s one (guess a certain demo reminded you that you cannot wave a 2x or so bandwidth advantage away as not being substantial), jumped from argument to argument to argument, and a re picking commas in other people’s posts... oh that is rich ;).
 

jimbojim

Banned
the thing is, we all know that the PS5 is 10.2 tflops at its absolute max. in the real world it will hover around 9.2, which is why it was tested at that on the github leaks. the tflop difference is actually more than 18%.

giphy.gif
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
What you just said below here is a lie:
MS stated 2x-3x (or more) multplier when transferring only part of a texture (no SF or PRT)


This is from Microsoft's official page you can read about it HERE:


Please stop the lies.

So basically you are accusing him of lying and show as evidence documentation which does not mention anything about the baseline for the 2-3x improvement metric you are claiming already takes into account PRT and show no evidence of. So you are lying or twisting articles to accuse someone else of lying? That is rich :rolleyes:.

This whole thing started because you wanted to prove the gap between the two SSD’s is non existent and claimed a 2-3x boost to I/O storage effective bandwidth and physical memory as if it meant that it would close the gap between the consoles. This got for you twisted with what SFS and SF are, how 2-3x improvements over PRT makes no sense, and are now jumping on BCPack decompression to just add more confusion to the mix.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
the thing is, we all know that the PS5 is 10.2 tflops at its absolute max. in the real world it will hover around 9.2, which is why it was tested at that on the github leaks. the tflop difference is actually more than 18%.

I don't care if these consoles have 1TF if we get games that look close to the UE5 demo.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
the thing is, we all know that the PS5 is 10.2 tflops at its absolute max. in the real world it will hover around 9.2, which is why it was tested at that on the github leaks. the tflop difference is actually more than 18%.

The only response to this would need to be: “that would be true if XSX did not have a bottleneck where the 12 TFLOPS figure is actually what they produced in synthetic benchmarks, just a theoretical peak they cannot reach in practice or even get close... it likely overs at just 8.9 TFLOPS when all it is said than done”... since we are talking nonsense and F.U.D. and take the Sony is a liar because... reasons... as a valid argument.
 
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jimbojim

Banned
What you just said below here is a lie:
MS stated 2x-3x (or more) multplier when transferring only part of a texture (no SF or PRT)


This is from Microsoft's official page you can read about it HERE:

So basically you are accusing him of lying and show as evidence documentation which does not mention anything about the baseline for the 2-3x improvement metric you are claiming already takes into account PRT and show no evidence of. So you are lying or twisting articles to accuse someone else of lying? That is rich :rolleyes:.

This whole thing started because you wanted to prove the gap between the two SSD’s is non existent and claimed a 2-3x boost to I/O storage effective bandwidth and physical memory as if it meant that it would close the gap between the consoles. This got for you twisted with what SFS and SF are, how 2-3x improvements over PRT makes no sense, and are now jumping on BCPack decompression to just add more confusion to the mix.


Yeah, at 4.8 GB/s. You can't transfer faster than that ( not counting 6 GB/s because it's theoretical max like it is 22 in PS5 ). Physically it's impossible. It is what it is. It would go faster than 4.8 if MS put the same speed in XSX as Sony did in PS5, but they didn't.
It's like the same crap when i'm trying to say : yeah, it's possible in XSX for RAM you can push data at 650GB/s through 560GB/s. No, physically, it's impossible.
 
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Deto

Banned
Maybe by testing RDNA 2 cards by disabling compute units and matching the frequencies of the PS5.

There's a narrative going around by the Xbox community that it's "really a 9.2TF console" and it will only reach 10.2TF sometimes.

- There won't be a difference in PS5\XSX SSD speeds
- Really a 9.2TF console
- Not a full RDNA 2

They want to make the PS5 look weak as possible in their own eyes.

and when the multiplatforms start to come out, the victimization and the cry of the losers will start with the new narrative: "Bankrupt Sony is paying developers for parity with the PS5 crap" just like it was in Destiny 2, which the oppressive Sony paid for xbox one X run at 30fps.
 
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rntongo

Banned
Yeah, at 4.8 GB/s. You can't transfer faster than that ( not counting 6 GB/s because it's theoretical max like it is 22 in PS5 ). Physically it's impossible. It is what it is. It would go faster than 4.8 if MS put the same speed in XSX as Sony did in PS5, but they didn't.
It's like the same crap when i'm trying to say : yeah, it's possible in XSX for RAM you can push data at 650GB/s through 560GB/s. No, physically, it's impossible.

The actual SSD speed is still 2.4GB/s you're showing you don't understand what you're saying. Compression itself is a multiplier effect. Improving texture streaming is also a different kind of multiplier effect. The SSD speed will always remain 2.4GB/s!!
 

rntongo

Banned
So basically you are accusing him of lying and show as evidence documentation which does not mention anything about the baseline for the 2-3x improvement metric you are claiming already takes into account PRT and show no evidence of. So you are lying or twisting articles to accuse someone else of lying? That is rich :rolleyes:.

This whole thing started because you wanted to prove the gap between the two SSD’s is non existent and claimed a 2-3x boost to I/O storage effective bandwidth and physical memory as if it meant that it would close the gap between the consoles. This got for you twisted with what SFS and SF are, how 2-3x improvements over PRT makes no sense, and are now jumping on BCPack decompression to just add more confusion to the mix.

I came here to describe what I'd learnt about the XSX and also to learn more from others. I've only gotten twisted information from you and lies at times. See how you're using PRT which is what the Xbox One and PS4 used in order to make a false equivalence to Sampler Feedback in DX12U and XSX. Reflect on that
 
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rntongo

Banned
the thing is, we all know that the PS5 is 10.2 tflops at its absolute max. in the real world it will hover around 9.2, which is why it was tested at that on the github leaks. the tflop difference is actually more than 18%.

From what I've read the variable clock rate in the PS5 was planned for a long time. But with the Github leak which in fact was credible and Cerny's talk, I found his explanation not clear. We still don't know what clock rate the GPU will run at for most games. We only know the 2.23GHz figure for certain games that require the extra GPU power.
 
Maybe this is a dumb question but is there even a way to ever know for sure? Can the guys at DF or any expert analysis person like @NXGamer actually measure a consoles TFLOPs in use? Or will we always just kinda be guessing.

We'll (most likely) never actually know. Richard asked Cerny directly about that and he didn't get an answer. So if they're not gonna answer it to people like Rich, they aren't gonna give the answer to us xD.

The only way to find out for sure is to either 1: wait for a PC port of a PS5 exclusive and measure that with performance analysis tools (not completely capable of giving a full picture; ports could be unoptimized, changed in various ways which changes performance metrics vs. original versions, etc), OR someone manages to hack a PS5 and develop some type of performance analysis tools to see how the system performs under intense loads.

The chances of the latter happening are extremely slim, in all honesty. Otherwise we'll probably have to rely on techies who understand enough about how these games, systems and engines work and do their best to measure what specific techniques a game is using at given moments and seeing what type of performance they are driving on the hardware overall by comparing to equivalent PC games that can serve as a benchmark for measuring.

Maybe by testing RDNA 2 cards by disabling compute units and matching the frequencies of the PS5.

There's a narrative going around by the Xbox community that it's "really a 9.2TF console" and it will only reach 10.2TF sometimes.

- There won't be a difference in PS5\XSX SSD speeds
- Really a 9.2TF console
- Not a full RDNA 2

They want to make the PS5 look weak as possible in their own eyes.

Neither system is "full RDNA2"; they won't need ALL of the RDNA2 features that will be on the PC GPUs, hence why they are custom APUs in the first place. Saying a system isn't full RDNA2 isn't inherently the same as trying to imply it's RDNA1.

The whole 9.2 TF thing, well technically speaking both the 10.275 TF of PS5 and 12.147 TF of XSX are theoretical peaks. Neither system will probably reach those numbers in most cases. If you watch NXGamer's video on GPUs he gives a (very rough and fly-by number, mind) of possible actual GPU utilization on both systems of about 67.5%. So possible maximum GPU utilization on both systems would be around 6.935 TF (PS5) and 8.199 TF (XSX). Again though, that's just his own speculation and hopefully real-world throughput on both systems reaches a much higher utilization rate (and honestly I expect them to).

As for the SSDs, well wasn't it a lot of people earlier saying the "paper specs" didn't matter in terms of stuff like the TFs once we knew both system's TFs? Why would that suddenly change with the SSDs? All we have so far are paper specs on those, and in fact we kind of know less on the SSDs than we do the GPUs! A lot of people are making assumptions that the SSD I/O paper specs are simply locked in place, but we don't even have a full picture on Velocity Architecture, as just one example.

I don't expect any SSD I/O optimizations to suddenly put XSX's setup at exactly 1:1 with PS5's (let alone beat it), but I do think the delta as indicated by the paper specs will be a lot smaller in actual practice. I've heard a few things regarding the SSDs I can't share right now, but I'd just say that XSX's SSD I/O will at least in some ways probably punch above its weight even if PS5's holds the raw advantage (since it's SSD I/O hardware setup is the beefier out of the two).
 
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rntongo

Banned
We'll (most likely) never actually know. Richard asked Cerny directly about that and he didn't get an answer. So if they're not gonna answer it to people like Rich, they aren't gonna give the answer to us xD.

The only way to find out for sure is to either 1: wait for a PC port of a PS5 exclusive and measure that with performance analysis tools (not completely capable of giving a full picture; ports could be unoptimized, changed in various ways which changes performance metrics vs. original versions, etc), OR someone manages to hack a PS5 and develop some type of performance analysis tools to see how the system performs under intense loads.

The chances of the latter happening are extremely slim, in all honesty. Otherwise we'll probably have to rely on techies who understand enough about how these games, systems and engines work and do their best to measure what specific techniques a game is using at given moments and seeing what type of performance they are driving on the hardware overall by comparing to equivalent PC games that can serve as a benchmark for measuring.

I think once the PS5 is released we can figure out what the actual clock rate is when running some games. I think for AAA games they may push it to 2.23GHz and then AA games will uses the 2GHz rate.
 

Three

Member
I came here to describe what I'd learnt about the XSX and also to learn more from others. I've only gotten twisted information from you and lies at times. See how you're using PRT which is what the Xbox One and PS4 used in order to make a false equivalence to Sampler Feedback in DX12U and XSX. Reflect on that
You didn't get twisted information. You got information you didn't accept the information then said you're a liar. If you actually wanted information you would have read the spec here and asked questions and listened to others who know it.

 
You didn't get twisted information. You got information you didn't accept the information then said you're a liar. If you actually wanted information you would have read the spec here and asked questions and listened to others who know it.


That's DX12. SFS is a DX12 Ultimate feature building on top of all that.

I'm not talking about encoding factor or Microsoft's API. I'm talking about NAND to Logical to Physical mapping and ECC overhead.

What about them? We don't know the entire setup of the SSD I/O system in the platform, so it's premature to assume how some of these work.

They are also using a DRAM-less controller so the paging table also has to reside in the NAND unless they are stored in RAM during boot up.

That's probably exactly what they are doing. Either that, or they have a chunk of SLC NAND cache on a block of NAND to store the paging table.

All these add up to reduce total bandwidth from the peak capability of the NAND modules they are using which i would wager is in excess of 3GB/s.

Wager based on what? Again, you're making assumptions based on incomplete data/information. All of the problems you are mentioning, I'm sure MS and Seagate have known of them and taken measures to mitigate their impact in the design. So I still say your overhead cost/performance hit is wildly excessive.

Hence their reported 2.4GB sustained speed that is given. Likewise I'm sure they took thermal throttle into account in their stated specs as well.

The 2.4 GB refers to the sustained speed; peaks could be a bit higher, a lot of data operations will be lower because they simply won't need to demand 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput. Thermal situations etc. are also why they gave the 2.4 GB/s sustained clock. These are also potential issues that affect PS5's SSD, and in fact we don't know what it's sustained numbers are on the SSD or if the SSD under continuous heavy loads will affect the power load of the system (in turn affecting the variable frequency rate).

They're still questions that will have to be answered in due time.

i don't find your post and rereading mine it was not well worded
But you recently underline habit of some gaffer to have double standard dealing with the unknown and i think the post i quoted was a perfect of that

Well regardless, without seeing the specific post I can't directly comment on what you're addressing in that regard.

However, whatever perception you might seem to have on my posts, I can assure you in reality that is not what I'm doing, or at least it's not my intention. When it comes to discussing console tech I tend to focus more on the system that either is the underdog in the situation or where there's (from my POV) more misinformation on, intentional or accidential.

At current, IMO it feels like the XSX is the system with more misinformation on it, and fewer people who attempt speaking out on clearing up that misinformation, compared to PS5. I do speak out against PS5 misinformation too, just not as often, because there's usually more people who will do that anyway, and a tone is set to dissuade that type of misinformation around here at the very least.

Sometimes I bring up certain Youtubers if I see them speaking their own misinformation, like Moore's Law Is Dead or the Innocenceii (I focused on a graph they had which Kazekage1981 Kazekage1981 screencapped to speak about a persuasive psychological tactic at play there from my POV). But I have no problem giving props to those who seem to keep things pretty fair and informative on top of that, like NXGamer and RedTech Gaming.

I am an optimist when it comes to the consoles and their technology, but the reason you don't see me making yet another SSD thread (for example) is because A) there's already a million of them and B) while I know the importance SSDs will play in the next-gen, they aren't miracle workers and don't replace other, arguably more critical aspects of system performance like CPU and GPU. You can look at some of my recent posts in this thread and see how there are other people speaking on unknowns regarding XSX but taking the worst-case scenario, and I ask why?

I don't take worst-case scenarios with PS5; if I speak on something PS5-related where it may seem that way, I'm just probably trying to look at a topic from a different POV that the mainstream perspective isn't maybe considering. Like take the PS5 SSD for example: if I ask about the random read on first 4 KB block isn't not because I'm trying to take a worst-case scenario. It's because I know that will be very important in deciding actual SSD performance. The same can refer to XSX SSD but at least around here the pessimist outlook in terms of SSDs are geared more towards XSX's. Like with people saying the flying segment in the UE5 demo could not be done on XSX, despite none of us knowing what the actual SSD and I/O pipeline performance for that segment of the demo was.

If I said something like "why wouldn't XSX be able to do that segment", it's because I've already looked further ahead; if one of the next-gen systems can't do even a modest-level (compared to future versions of it which I feel will happen later in the gen) streaming segment similar to the UE5 demo, that is going to hurt next-gen 3rd-party development overall, even with UE5 engine scaling in effect. It would also lower the ceiling on what PS5 could accomplish with that later throughout the generation since you would already be talking about an UE5 demo with a streaming segment tapping almost 50% of the SSD's raw bandwidth.

So I hope this clarifies a few things; I'm not trying to do double standards, I just want to cut back on misinformation and I tend to gravitate to the underdogs in that regard. Though oft-times I will also do so for the popular pick if there's a need and I feel I can contribute something of a different perspective that hasn't been vocalized yet.
 
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Three

Member
That's DX12. SFS is a DX12 Ultimate feature building on top of all that.
SFS is the same but related to streaming. If you read the spec you would see it is mentioned and discussed specifically. It is part of DX12 ultimate because if you read the spec SF is not guaranteed on all DX12 cards but has existed before XSX:

"Sampler feedback support is not required as part of a Direct3D feature level."

DX12 ultimate is just DX12 with the features that were not required as part of that feature level, doesn't mean they weren't in the spec before.
 
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SFS is the same but related to streaming. If you read the spec you would see it is mentioned and discussed specifically. It is part of DX12 ultimate because if you read the spec SF is not guaranteed on all DX12 cards but has existed before XSX:

"Sampler feedback support is not required as part of a Direct3D feature level."

DX12 ultimate is just DX12 with the features that were not required as part of that feature level, doesn't mean they weren't in the spec before.

Right but seeing as Ultimate is essentially a revision of basic 12 new features or new takes on features are virtually guaranteed to be refined. Plus MS have stated before that there's aspects to SFS that are specific to XSX.
 
Right but seeing as Ultimate is essentially a revision of basic 12 new features or new takes on features are virtually guaranteed to be refined. Plus MS have stated before that there's aspects to SFS that are specific to XSX.
Specifically the custom texture filters built into the hardware to help when texture pages aren't in memory yet. That's about it afaik. They've probably got some real nice custom filters that allow them to optimize streaming further than the could on hardware without those filters built in.

You can do the same thing on DX12U hardware.. just slightly less optimized I'm guessing.
 

Three

Member
Right but seeing as Ultimate is essentially a revision of basic 12 new features or new takes on features are virtually guaranteed to be refined. Plus MS have stated before that there's aspects to SFS that are specific to XSX.
Ultimate is not a revision. It's all the features that were not part of the feature level but supported by some DX12 GPUs now part of the DX12 Ultimate which includes everything in the spec.

There may be things in the spec that are refined but again what are you looking for? Why tie that refinement to the 2x figure?

If that spec clearly explains what SFS is, if that spec clearly states what it does and MS claim "SFS gives you 2x multiplier because you only need to load part of the texture". Why assume that this multiplier is from some unknown method or something secret that other GPUs don't have?

Why not just take it at face value and realise SFS is the method described already in the spec and offers this multiplier by loading only part of the texture like PRT+ when compared to whole texture ? Why does this stupid idea that this is some super secret sauce that offers 2x or 3x performance just for the XSX need to exist? It's a stretch based on wishful thinking.
 
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DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Neither system is "full RDNA2"; they won't need ALL of the RDNA2 features that will be on the PC GPUs, hence why they are custom APUs in the first place. Saying a system isn't full RDNA2 isn't inherently the same as trying to imply it's RDNA1.

I don't get the damage control.

You can't excuse one fan base saying their console is RDNA 2 and the other is RDNA 1.5 or RDNA 1. Fact is, both are labeled RDNA 2 and there's no excuse for them to say this other than to make the PS5 look weaker.

The whole 9.2 TF thing, well technically speaking both the 10.275 TF of PS5 and 12.147 TF of XSX are theoretical peaks. Neither system will probably reach those numbers in most cases. If you watch NXGamer's video on GPUs he gives a (very rough and fly-by number, mind) of possible actual GPU utilization on both systems of about 67.5%. So possible maximum GPU utilization on both systems would be around 6.935 TF (PS5) and 8.199 TF (XSX). Again though, that's just his own speculation and hopefully real-world throughput on both systems reaches a much higher utilization rate (and honestly I expect them to).
And that's not the point. They're saying it's not a 9.2TF console and it will reach 10.2TF "sometimes" in certain situations. Based on the numbers you just provided, the 6.9TF number would be smaller based on what they're saying and it's simply not true.

As for the SSDs, well wasn't it a lot of people earlier saying the "paper specs" didn't matter in terms of stuff like the TFs once we knew both system's TFs? Why would that suddenly change with the SSDs? All we have so far are paper specs on those, and in fact we kind of know less on the SSDs than we do the GPUs! A lot of people are making assumptions that the SSD I/O paper specs are simply locked in place, but we don't even have a full picture on Velocity Architecture, as just one example.

I don't expect any SSD I/O optimizations to suddenly put XSX's setup at exactly 1:1 with PS5's (let alone beat it), but I do think the delta as indicated by the paper specs will be a lot smaller in actual practice. I've heard a few things regarding the SSDs I can't share right now, but I'd just say that XSX's SSD I/O will at least in some ways probably punch above its weight even if PS5's holds the raw advantage (since it's SSD I/O hardware setup is the beefier out of the two).

SSD was going to be talked about regardless of the TF count. It's a major factor next gen and it's leaps faster than what's on the XsX. It's something that really separates both consoles while the TF and CPU figures are very close.
 
stepped away for a day, came back and it looks like Salt Bae came in there and sprinkled salt all over the place :messenger_tears_of_joy: hopes and dreams are being lifted in one post, then smashed to bits in the next.. over and over again. It's a bloodbath in here.
 

BrentonB

Member
From what I've read the variable clock rate in the PS5 was planned for a long time. But with the Github leak which in fact was credible and Cerny's talk, I found his explanation not clear. We still don't know what clock rate the GPU will run at for most games. We only know the 2.23GHz figure for certain games that require the extra GPU power.

Mark Cerny clarified in a Eurogamer interview that the APU is expected to run at full clock speed for the vast majority of the time. This is barring some cases that don't require the system's full power (such as backward compatibility). Developers do not need to choose CPU over GPU or vice-versa. Sony have developed the system to run at full clocks infinitely.
 
Mark Cerny clarified in a Eurogamer interview that the APU is expected to run at full clock speed for the vast majority of the time. This is barring some cases that don't require the system's full power (such as backward compatibility). Developers do not need to choose CPU over GPU or vice-versa. Sony have developed the system to run at full clocks infinitely.

Was that quote about needing to throttle back CPU to sustain max GPU clock a misprint? I forgot what dev it was, I could search the thread. That quote seemed in line with the other “power profile” comments too, I thought?
 
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quest

Not Banned from OT
Was that quote about needing to throttle back CPU to sustain max GPU clock a misprint? I forgot what dev it was, I could search the thread. That quote seemed in line with the other “power profile” comments too, I thought?
You are correct since Sony won't post facts people are free to make up their own as the truth. Like variable clock now equal fixed clock ie runs at full clock all the time lol. There is power profile in development kits since doesn't have the behavior of the retail kits and developers are clocking down the CPU.
 

rntongo

Banned
Mark Cerny clarified in a Eurogamer interview that the APU is expected to run at full clock speed for the vast majority of the time. This is barring some cases that don't require the system's full power (such as backward compatibility). Developers do not need to choose CPU over GPU or vice-versa. Sony have developed the system to run at full clocks infinitely.

But these statements don't make sense. If they run at max full clocks why the need to use amd shift to downclock one processor and transfer power to the other ? And even if there is a small percentage reduction in the clock speed what are some sample figures? For example a 10% reduction in power to the GPU results in what percentage reduction in the GPU clockspeed?(2%?5%?)
 

NullZ3r0

Banned
This post is disingenuous, The focus of PS5 SSD is not just for load times but for streaming in game Assets. Which is over 2x as fast as the XSX.
The 1.8Tflops advantage the XSX have is 18%, thats not that significant.
In other words with that Unreal Engine 5 example assuming everything else is identical with the PS5 including SSD speeds (which is not).
But hypothetically if everthing is the same except 18% Tflops. It would mean

PS5 unreal 5 demo = 1440p/30fps
XSX unreal 5 demo = ~1504p/30fps

Thats your 18% resolution difference. Not that significant.
PS fanboys made a big deal over a .5 TFLOPS difference last Gen, but for whatever reason a 2 TFLOP advantage is "insignificant". Yet with that .5 TFLOP difference manifested itself in framerate and resolution. So I suspect that a bigger gap this gen will see at least a similar difference. I think it will be greater because I'm not buying Sony's clock speed claims. If the damn thing spent "most of it's time" at 2.23 GHz then just say that's the clock speed and call it a day. PC manufacturers do that all the time. But I digress, back to storage...

There's nothing disingenuous about my post. The real world difference between Xbox Series X and PS5 storage solutions will be measured in milliseconds and not seconds. The end user won't notice the difference in game. There's nothing in that UE5 demo that couldn't be done in the Xbox Velocity Architecture. You're believing in a fantasy world where only Sony listened to developers and put significant investment in their storage solution while MS went to Best Buy and just slapped a random SSD in the box and called it a day.

Both companies focused significantly on storage and asset streaming. However, Microsoft didn't skimp on GPU to get there.
 

Redlight

Member
Mark Cerny clarified in a Eurogamer interview that the APU is expected to run at full clock speed for the vast majority of the time. This is barring some cases that don't require the system's full power (such as backward compatibility). Developers do not need to choose CPU over GPU or vice-versa. Sony have developed the system to run at full clocks infinitely.
Was this clarified later? In the Eurgamer article I read it says...

"Put simply, with race to idle out of the equation and both CPU and GPU fully used, the boost clock system should still see both components running near to or at peak frequency most of the time."

It's a potentially important distinction. I expect it to run near max virtually all of the time, however 'most of the time' could mean only 51% or more.
 

BrentonB

Member
Was that quote about needing to throttle back CPU to sustain max GPU clock a misprint? I forgot what dev it was, I could search the thread. That quote seemed in line with the other “power profile” comments too, I thought?

I think the context of that was related to using a game engine optimized for Jaguar. They had to downclock the CPU in order to make their game work with PS5. At least that's how I remember it.
 
But these statements don't make sense. If they run at max full clocks why the need to use amd shift to downclock one processor and transfer power to the other ? And even if there is a small percentage reduction in the clock speed what are some sample figures? For example a 10% reduction in power to the GPU results in what percentage reduction in the GPU clockspeed?(2%?5%?)
The only people who would know are the engineers/game devs who have had hands on with the PS5. As of right now we have a few groups of people: We have the group that is hoping, yes trust me they are hoping and praying, that PS5 cannot come anywhere close to sustaining it's peak frequencies which mean it's TF numbers are actually lower than 10, closer to 9. We have the other group that is stating that currently no GPU/CPU is ever used at 100% and that if there is any discrepancy it is minimal. This argument is happening in the same thread as the groups fighting over whether or not the SeriesX's optimizations brings it's SDD speeds closer to the PS5s.

I honestly don't know why people argue about it. Even if facts come out, they won't believe it. There's always gonna be something there that they can hold on to for hope. In the end, the games will pretty much look the same, they'll get there in their own way, but they'll get there. They just can't come to grips that each consoles has their advantages, each has their "thing" They are unwilling to give them any ground to stand on. But, could one of them pull ahead? Yea, it's possible. They both took risks by choosing the route they chose. Between the two "camps" power and graphics have always been the hill they die on, it's never really been the games.
 
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Murder187

Member
PS fanboys made a big deal over a .5 TFLOPS difference last Gen, but for whatever reason a 2 TFLOP advantage is "insignificant". Yet with that .5 TFLOP difference manifested itself in framerate and resolution. So I suspect that a bigger gap this gen will see at least a similar difference. I think it will be greater because I'm not buying Sony's clock speed claims. If the damn thing spent "most of it's time" at 2.23 GHz then just say that's the clock speed and call it a day. PC manufacturers do that all the time. But I digress, back to storage...

There's nothing disingenuous about my post. The real world difference between Xbox Series X and PS5 storage solutions will be measured in milliseconds and not seconds. The end user won't notice the difference in game. There's nothing in that UE5 demo that couldn't be done in the Xbox Velocity Architecture. You're believing in a fantasy world where only Sony listened to developers and put significant investment in their storage solution while MS went to Best Buy and just slapped a random SSD in the box and called it a day.

Both companies focused significantly on storage and asset streaming. However, Microsoft didn't skimp on GPU to get there.
Well said xbox is more powerful in so many areas if it was the other way around ps fanboys would be killing xbox they're trying to kill xbox knowing the ps is weaker
 

BrentonB

Member
But these statements don't make sense. If they run at max full clocks why the need to use amd shift to downclock one processor and transfer power to the other ? And even if there is a small percentage reduction in the clock speed what are some sample figures? For example a 10% reduction in power to the GPU results in what percentage reduction in the GPU clockspeed?(2%?5%?)

Developers do not need to use Smart Shift. It's a feature available to them.
 

rntongo

Banned
PS fanboys made a big deal over a .5 TFLOPS difference last Gen, but for whatever reason a 2 TFLOP advantage is "insignificant". Yet with that .5 TFLOP difference manifested itself in framerate and resolution. So I suspect that a bigger gap this gen will see at least a similar difference. I think it will be greater because I'm not buying Sony's clock speed claims. If the damn thing spent "most of it's time" at 2.23 GHz then just say that's the clock speed and call it a day. PC manufacturers do that all the time. But I digress, back to storage...

There's nothing disingenuous about my post. The real world difference between Xbox Series X and PS5 storage solutions will be measured in milliseconds and not seconds. The end user won't notice the difference in game. There's nothing in that UE5 demo that couldn't be done in the Xbox Velocity Architecture. You're believing in a fantasy world where only Sony listened to developers and put significant investment in their storage solution while MS went to Best Buy and just slapped a random SSD in the box and called it a day.

Both companies focused significantly on storage and asset streaming. However, Microsoft didn't skimp on GPU to get there.

The fundamental argument you posted is perfect. The fake narrative is that MSFT just slapped an SSD in the console and was like, yup that's it.
 
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BrentonB

Member
Was this clarified later? In the Eurgamer article I read it says...

"Put simply, with race to idle out of the equation and both CPU and GPU fully used, the boost clock system should still see both components running near to or at peak frequency most of the time."

It's a potentially important distinction. I expect it to run near max virtually all of the time, however 'most of the time' could mean only 51% or more.

I think we're splitting hairs here. I suppose we can Tweet Mark?
 

rntongo

Banned
Developers do not need to use Smart Shift. It's a feature available to them.
From what I heard Cerny mention is that the APU automatically transfers power based off the workload. So if it's a GPU intensive task it takes power from the CPU to the GPU and increases the GPU clock. So for example if the game is at the main menu, the GPU clock would be say 2GHz. Then once the game starts, the CPU is down-clocked and the GPU is pushed up to something between 2-2.23GHz depending on the gaming workload.
 

rntongo

Banned
Was this clarified later? In the Eurgamer article I read it says...

"Put simply, with race to idle out of the equation and both CPU and GPU fully used, the boost clock system should still see both components running near to or at peak frequency most of the time."

It's a potentially important distinction. I expect it to run near max virtually all of the time, however 'most of the time' could mean only 51% or more.

This was my issue with Cerny's presentation. In fact even Richard from DF/Eurogamer is still not sure what the clocks really are. When you say the CPU will be at 3.5GHz most of the time, then say the GPU will be at 2.23GHz most of the time, but in order for one processor to hit max clocks, the other has to be down-clocked, you're carefully wording a variation of a boost clock.
 

BrentonB

Member
From what I heard Cerny mention is that the APU automatically transfers power based off the workload. So if it's a GPU intensive task it takes power from the CPU to the GPU and increases the GPU clock. So for example if the game is at the main menu, the GPU clock would be say 2GHz. Then once the game starts, the CPU is down-clocked and the GPU is pushed up to something between 2-2.23GHz depending on the gaming workload.

In a case where a game is less dependent on CPU then the system can redirect part of the power budget to the GPU. As to what effect that has, I honestly have no idea. But that's why I don't make games.
 

BrentonB

Member
This was my issue with Cerny's presentation. In fact even Richard from DF/Eurogamer is still not sure what the clocks really are. When you say the CPU will be at 3.5GHz most of the time, then say the GPU will be at 2.23GHz most of the time, but in order for one processor to hit max clocks, the other has to be down-clocked, you're carefully wording a variation of a boost clock.

Neither has to be downclocked for the other to reach maximum clock speeds. Developers do not need to choose between the two.
 
PS fanboys made a big deal over a .5 TFLOPS difference last Gen, but for whatever reason a 2 TFLOP advantage is "insignificant". Yet with that .5 TFLOP difference manifested itself in framerate and resolution. So I suspect that a bigger gap this gen will see at least a similar difference. I think it will be greater because I'm not buying Sony's clock speed claims. If the damn thing spent "most of it's time" at 2.23 GHz then just say that's the clock speed and call it a day. PC manufacturers do that all the time. But I digress, back to storage...

There's nothing disingenuous about my post. The real world difference between Xbox Series X and PS5 storage solutions will be measured in milliseconds and not seconds. The end user won't notice the difference in game. There's nothing in that UE5 demo that couldn't be done in the Xbox Velocity Architecture. You're believing in a fantasy world where only Sony listened to developers and put significant investment in their storage solution while MS went to Best Buy and just slapped a random SSD in the box and called it a day.

Both companies focused significantly on storage and asset streaming. However, Microsoft didn't skimp on GPU to get there.
I'm not saying I agree with anything the other post is stating or anything you're saying, but you're taking .5 TF out of context. PS4/XboxOne's TF numbers are much smaller than 10 vs 12. A difference of .5 when it's 1.2 vs 1.8 is very different from a 1.8TF difference when it's 10.2 vs 12. Not saying anything else about what that 1.8TF could mean. I'm just saying that it's not the same.
 
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rntongo

Banned
Neither has to be downclocked for the other to reach maximum clock speeds. Developers do not need to choose between the two.

That's not true. Cerny's argument was that a reduction in power in one processor only brings about a smaller percentage reduction in it's clock speed. So a good example would be that if the CPU is at 3.5GHz, and the GPU needs to hit 2.23GHz, you could transfer say 10% of power from the CPU in order to hit the 2.23GHz for the GPU. But according to Cerny it would be a few percentage points so say 3% for example. But here is the other main issue, if the percentage reduction in clock speed is so small why do you need to draw power away from one processor to the other?? It would be negligible and you'd just let them run at their respective clocks all the time. So that's why his presentation of the APU wasn't adding up for me.
 
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"Converted to RDNA2" isn't a statement that make sense. RDNA2 is a framework. Not all RDNA2 chips will have the same feature set. There will be some features in PS5 that other RDNA2 chips won't have and vice versa.

The chip in the GitHub Leak wasn't RDNA2 tough since it lacked hardware based raytracing.
 

BrentonB

Member
That's not true. Cerny's argument was that a reduction in power in one processor only brings about a smaller percentage reduction in it's clock speed. So a good example would be that if the CPU is at 3.5GHz, and the GPU needs to hit 2.23GHz, you could transfer say 10% of power from the CPU in order to hit the 2.23GHz for the GPU. But according to Cerny it would be a few percentage points so say 3% for example. But here is the other main issue, if the percentage reduction in clock speed is so small why do you need to draw power away from one processor to the other?? It would be negligible and you'd just let them run at their respective clocks all the time. So that's why his presentation of the APU wasn't adding up for me.

Does it really matter though? If the games are dope, what's the difference? I'm not too fussed about the specifics, and judging by what we saw the other day the games will be just fine. I suppose the Smart Shift is there to make sure power isn't wasted if there are inefficiencies in code or optimization? It can just move the power from one side to the other so that games always perform in the best way.
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
Mark Cerny clarified in a Eurogamer interview that the APU is expected to run at full clock speed for the vast majority of the time. This is barring some cases that don't require the system's full power (such as backward compatibility). Developers do not need to choose CPU over GPU or vice-versa. Sony have developed the system to run at full clocks infinitely.
If that were true it wouldnt be variable.
 

Tripolygon

Banned
What about them? We don't know the entire setup of the SSD I/O system in the platform, so it's premature to assume how some of these work.
Literally what everyone is doing is assuming and speculating on how the system is setup. That's exactly what you are doing here as well.
It's probably 12 64 GiB (Gibibyte) modules, for 768 GiB, or 825 GB (Gigabyte). Gibibyte is about 1.074x a Gigabyte (I've seen some other conversion rates but none of them make sense considering the 825 GB Sony's given and knowing what capacities NAND modules are usually made at, unless Sony is counting some other reserved NAND in there that isn't accessed by the controller?).

If the raw sequential read speed is 5.5 GB (Gigabyte) per second, then each module has to provide around 458.3 MB (Megabyte) per second of bandwidth, assuming 5.5 GB/s refers to sustained sequential read speeds.

That's probably exactly what they are doing. Either that, or they have a chunk of SLC NAND cache on a block of NAND to store the paging table.
Also a possibility although I have never seen a setup with a mix of different Cell types like that in a consumer drive, mostly enterprise. But it is a custom SSD so that's possible since they don't want page memory to wear as fast as the others.

Wager based on what? Again, you're making assumptions based on incomplete data/information. All of the problems you are mentioning, I'm sure MS and Seagate have known of them and taken measures to mitigate their impact in the design. So I still say your overhead cost/performance hit is wildly excessive.
Again assuming is what everyone is doing. I wager based on NAND catalog available out there looking through dramexchange, mouser and digikey from trying to piece together a possible BOM for both next gen consoles. My overhead of cost/performance is not wildly excessive its based on information out there from anywhere between 6% to 12% based on the level of correction you want in your storage system. Benchmark of DRAM-less SSDs are out there and show how drastic performance falls without a DRAM. My estimation is they are using 4 256GB at ~800MT/s NAND which gives them up to 3.2GB/s of bandwidth and ultimately arriving at 2.4GB/s as the sustained bandwidth taking all system overhead into consideration. Another option is using 667MT/s NAND which puts them at 2.6GB/s but I don't believe gives enough overhead.

The 2.4 GB refers to the sustained speed; peaks could be a bit higher, a lot of data operations will be lower because they simply won't need to demand 2.4 GB/s of bandwidth throughput. Thermal situations etc. are also why they gave the 2.4 GB/s sustained clock. These are also potential issues that affect PS5's SSD, and in fact we don't know what it's sustained numbers are on the SSD or if the SSD under continuous heavy loads will affect the power load of the system (in turn affecting the variable frequency rate).
Yes and that also factors into my speculation for how Sony are achieving their sustained bandwidth as well. 12 64GB NAND at 533MT/s which puts them at 6.3GB/s and accounting for the same overhead, well except for the SRAM in their IO complex, drops their bandwidth down to 5.5GB/s.

They're still questions that will have to be answered in due time.
That much is a given and will be answered from system tear down and professional weigh in on the specs but until then we speculate.
 
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