Microsoft reveals crazy powerful Xbox Series X's specifications
- Thread starter WYP
- Start date
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
All well and good but they need exclusives and not ones like Ori and the Blind Forest, While good they need games on the same level as Spiderman, God of War etc...
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
If MS hope to do better than Sony next gen then they need exclusives like Sony has with Uncharted, Spiderman, God of War etc... those are what will sell these consoles especially considering the PS5 and XBSX are going to have nigh on identical specs.
ImprovizoR
Active member
It's not like the PS5 won't be powerful enough to run next-gen games. And if you add PS5 exclusives into the mix, you have to wonder what on Earth is Microsoft thinking?
WYP
News Guru
I think we already know what Microsoft was thinking. That's why they have bought so many studios over the past number of years.
Microsoft has also been working on the value side of the equation with Xbox Game Pass, something which Sony has no response to at this time.
From what I can see, Microsoft has done a lot of work on the hardware/software side that I think Sony will lack. Microsoft has clearly put a lot of effort into this system with DXR, DirectML and DirectStorage.
AlienALX
Well-known member
TBH the Xbox is a much better platform any way. Case in point when I game I game on the XB1X. I only use my PS Pro for exclusives. Not because it's less powerful, but because the front end and GUI leave a lot to be desired. I can not rely on it as a media platform as tons of TV apps and ETC simply don't exist.
That's why I have two XB1X. One here, and one at mum's which I use for everything and soon to be TV because I bought the tuner dongle.
So when considering which of the next gen I will be strongly basing it on that, rather than sheer power. PS may have exclusives but tbh I don't really play on them much. I just play stuff that is co op and etc.
As we all know around here, hardware is absolutely nothing without the software. I guess it took me 40 years of buying crap products that were amazing, yet the software was poo. It's also what every one struggles with. Every one. AMD, Nvidia, Asus, Corsair, NZXT and so on. If the software is pony your hardware won't work.
It's not all been smooth sailing on the XB1X. At one point my Scorpio bricked itself because it was on an old version of the OS that like Windows 10 can not update itself. You need to wipe the console yourself and reinstall which I couldn't be arsed to learn so I simply sent it back for repair.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
WYP please stop adding to the misconception that the GPU is 2x as powerful as One X. 12 TFLOPS is not 2x as powerful as 6 TFLOPS. These are different architectures and not comparable. We've been through this already and there has also been a few tech outlets actually explaining why this is incorrect. Especially given the AMD news on RDNA2 these architectures are quiet different.
Other than that this will be an expensive console. In regards to memory they better not reserve the slower 6GB portion for the OS. That's a big waste. They should only at max reserve 4GB. It's a console the OS shouldn't be requiring much. Gaming first!
Other than that this will be an expensive console. In regards to memory they better not reserve the slower 6GB portion for the OS. That's a big waste. They should only at max reserve 4GB. It's a console the OS shouldn't be requiring much. Gaming first!
AlienALX
Well-known member
https://youtu.be/7Fjn4GRw8qE
Only fear I really had was weird proprietary ssds and it seems I wasn't wrong.
That kinda bums, but I'll wait until I see the prices first.
Only fear I really had was weird proprietary ssds and it seems I wasn't wrong.
That kinda bums, but I'll wait until I see the prices first.
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WYP
News Guru
Tell me where I say that this Xbox Series X is "2x as powerful as One X". I have said that it offers a 2x boost in compute performance (or are you going to tell me that 12 isn't 2x higher than 6?) and then say that the new architecture gets more performance per flop.
Perhaps I need a "what is a teraflop" article to link to at times like this, but in layman's terms, it has 2x the teraflops and gets more performance out of its Teraflops. It isn't incorrect, and it is a specification that Microsoft supplied and has referenced directly on several occasions.
Microsoft has also confirmed that the 6GB of memory isn't for the OS. The design of the Xbox series X is supposed to maximise performance while limiting production costs. Developers won't see which bank of memory is used and it will act as a unified whole. I'm can't remember off the top of my head how much memory is used for the OS.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
You literally said in the article "12 TFLOPs of compute performance, 2x more than One X". Just using those in tandem will confuse people because people don't read. They can and may take it as what I said earlier. They will just compare the numbers. Most people have no idea what compute performance is. Using a theory based equation should just be avoided. You wouldn't believe the amount of people around me talking to friends about 12 TFLOPs vs 6 TFLOPS because of the original announcement.
Even still no 12 is not 2x 6. This is TFLOPs. Only relevant in the same architecture. So while you are giving the attitude, you still got it wrong. Yeah 12/2 is 6 but that's not in TFLOPs. You can still have less TFLOPs and be faster than something with more TFLOPs AND more compute performance(not that it's likely but still feasible).
As for saying it's incorrect, I didn't. I said stop using this comparison because it adds to the misconception. It just confuses people.
Even still no 12 is not 2x 6. This is TFLOPs. Only relevant in the same architecture. So while you are giving the attitude, you still got it wrong. Yeah 12/2 is 6 but that's not in TFLOPs. You can still have less TFLOPs and be faster than something with more TFLOPs AND more compute performance(not that it's likely but still feasible).
As for saying it's incorrect, I didn't. I said stop using this comparison because it adds to the misconception. It just confuses people.
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WYP
News Guru
If readers can't read the second sentence, that's their problem. Blame outlets that only look at the TFLOPS numbers and marketers, like the Xbox On YouTube Channel, that list the number and little to nothing else.
A real comparison number doesn't exist, and the next best thing is to say that the Xbox Series X offers 2x the TFLOPs and offers more performance per TFLOP. Architectural enhancements are always workload-specific, so a real "Xbox Series X is ??? times better than Xbox One X" number doesn't exist.
Can't say i'm that impressed with the memory configuration,TBH.
It's clear that they chose to compromise there in order to pay for everything else.
13.5GB isn't much for a 5-7yr generation.
Of course, we'll probably see an updated Series X in 3-4yrs or so, with more storage & hopefully more RAM.
It's clear that they chose to compromise there in order to pay for everything else.
13.5GB isn't much for a 5-7yr generation.
Of course, we'll probably see an updated Series X in 3-4yrs or so, with more storage & hopefully more RAM.
The memory config makes sense to me, this is GDDR6 and at least a portion of the memory use of a given application/game will always naturally be exclusively for the CPU, if their dynamic memory allocation layer(Or compiler but I'd assume this is all done at runtime for compatibility) can recognise a piece of data is never going to the GPU(Or depending on its data access patterns for example) it should be pretty safe to dump it in the slow section without penalties, with the rest for mixed or graphics data.
Edit: To be fair TFLOPs isn't always irrelevant across architectures, particularly if you're comparing very specific types of calculations, its "irrelevance" usually starts to come in once you're using it to measure the performance of quite abstract calculations with several ways about them. Since they have specified we're talking about 32-bit compute performance I think it's perfectly reasonable to say 2x the FLOPs is twice the performance, since it's literally doing twice the amount of calculations per second, and calculations per second is arguably the purest measurement of performance. The debate here is really whether or not doing twice the amount of calculations gets your jobs done twice as fast, and while we all know it almost always doesn't, end results aren't the only way to measure performance and never will be.
It's like comparing the mechanical power output of two cars, they might have matching power outputs but whether or not one is faster than another not only depends on how that power goes down, but you have a sea of possible real world metrics to attempt to quantify that, of course these kinds of raw performance comparisons should always be taken with due care but that's not to say they're misleading or worthless.
Edit: To be fair TFLOPs isn't always irrelevant across architectures, particularly if you're comparing very specific types of calculations, its "irrelevance" usually starts to come in once you're using it to measure the performance of quite abstract calculations with several ways about them. Since they have specified we're talking about 32-bit compute performance I think it's perfectly reasonable to say 2x the FLOPs is twice the performance, since it's literally doing twice the amount of calculations per second, and calculations per second is arguably the purest measurement of performance. The debate here is really whether or not doing twice the amount of calculations gets your jobs done twice as fast, and while we all know it almost always doesn't, end results aren't the only way to measure performance and never will be.
It's like comparing the mechanical power output of two cars, they might have matching power outputs but whether or not one is faster than another not only depends on how that power goes down, but you have a sea of possible real world metrics to attempt to quantify that, of course these kinds of raw performance comparisons should always be taken with due care but that's not to say they're misleading or worthless.
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Greenback
Active member
Think I'll hold off my excitement untill the prices for the extra SSd cartridge comes out, i have a feeling a "TB will be the same price as the console, hav to wonder why they didn't go with Type c USB, instead you can't run games off of external drives you need the cartridge I'm guessing that's where the money is going to come from
WYP
News Guru
It will support external storage via USB 3.2. Not sure what the limitations are. It will likely be limited to Xbox One and older titles (to play directly) and act as a back-up for Xbox Series X games so that they can be easily installed to the main SSDs and moved to back-up storage when necessary.
The problem is that Microsoft needs to ensure that external storage is as fast or faster than the onboard storage, as otherwise, developers won't be able to take full advantage of it. This also makes a "slot in any M.2 SSD" option problematic. TBH, this is the only way that MS could have went about this.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
It depends on MS spec for developers. If they say you need to take into account external storage acting as a common place gamers will store games on, they program with a certain threshold in mind(MS would give the floor limitations)
Assuming MS is meaning the latest 3.2 standard (3.2 gen 2 x 2) then that's 20gbps theoretical, which after taking into account encode losses would probably be around 2GBps which is not far off the internal NVMe drive. Problem is can USB drives perform at those levels for long like a normal M.2 based solution? They will be using NVMe drives internally but the connection from M.2 to USB to CPU (or the directstorage thing) could prove not as efficient as just the normal M 2 connection on the motherboard
With that said I could see the expansion slot being the only other "primary" game storage and developers just put a note saying" for best performance/experience please use only internal or expansion storage and avoid USB". I could see that 2TB of game storage is a pretty decent amount. But as games get larger then may not be in a few years
Assuming MS is meaning the latest 3.2 standard (3.2 gen 2 x 2) then that's 20gbps theoretical, which after taking into account encode losses would probably be around 2GBps which is not far off the internal NVMe drive. Problem is can USB drives perform at those levels for long like a normal M.2 based solution? They will be using NVMe drives internally but the connection from M.2 to USB to CPU (or the directstorage thing) could prove not as efficient as just the normal M 2 connection on the motherboard
With that said I could see the expansion slot being the only other "primary" game storage and developers just put a note saying" for best performance/experience please use only internal or expansion storage and avoid USB". I could see that 2TB of game storage is a pretty decent amount. But as games get larger then may not be in a few years
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AlienALX
Well-known member
It's a concern to me. Mostly because.
Which is one of the few titles I consider to be next gen. It started out at 100gb, it's had over 60gb in updates since I got it.
I've heard the XBsex can do 8k, well if it can you can expect that to be a trend.
So 1tb all of a sudden doesn't seem so big, considering you get one drive.
I know I ran mine out on the 1X and had to use an external. Then again nearly everything I have installed is enhanced, so yeah kinda fat and bloaty.
Which is one of the few titles I consider to be next gen. It started out at 100gb, it's had over 60gb in updates since I got it.
I've heard the XBsex can do 8k, well if it can you can expect that to be a trend.
So 1tb all of a sudden doesn't seem so big, considering you get one drive.
I know I ran mine out on the 1X and had to use an external. Then again nearly everything I have installed is enhanced, so yeah kinda fat and bloaty.
WYP
News Guru
It's a concern to me. Mostly because.
Which is one of the few titles I consider to be next gen. It started out at 100gb, it's had over 60gb in updates since I got it.
I've heard the XBsex can do 8k, well if it can you can expect that to be a trend.
So 1tb all of a sudden doesn't seem so big, considering you get one drive.
I know I ran mine out on the 1X and had to use an external. Then again nearly everything I have installed is enhanced, so yeah kinda fat and bloaty.
I hear that Microsoft is working to minimise the footprint of textures in next-gen games. There is a lot of talk about designing textures with AI enhancement in mind, which should drastically lower the install sizes of some games.
If NAND prices get lower in the coming years, we will hopefully see larger expansion cards for the Xbox Series X that will be relatively affordable.
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