Microsoft Xbox Series X | S OT - Power Your Dreams, update: FTC case unredacted documents leaked, including XSX mid-generation refresh, new gyro/haptic-enabled controller, and next-generation plans for 2028

[AbsolutSurgen]

Edit:  Added second video

 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 TB of NVMe is pretty nice.

[SaysWho?]

Xbox Series X Will Require Proprietary Cards to Expand Hard Drive Space

 

Quote

Microsoft realizes that 1 TB might not be enough for the life of the system, so there's a proprietary slot on the back of the system for expandable storage. This slot uses custom-built NVMe SSD cartridges, that once inserted into the system work just like the speedy internal hard drive. The cartridge design also includes the necessary heatsink to protect the NVMe SSD drive from overheating. But this means you can't just plug in any hard drive, you need one from Microsoft.

 

The 1 TB expansion unit that our friends at Digital Foundry played with was Seagate-branded. The format is meant to be portable, meaning you should be able to pick up multiple units and swap them as needed. DigitalFoundry's hardware breakdown video even shows a plastic cover for the expansion unit when it's not in the system.

 

Quote

The Xbox Series X still has support for external USB 3.2 hard drives, but that's related to Microsoft's promise that all Xbox One accessories will work on the new console. Series X owners can use external USB hard drives to store and run Xbox One and Xbox Backward Compatibility titles. You will be able to store Xbox Series X games on the drives, but you won't be able to run them without transferring the game to the internal NVMe hard drive or the custom slot drives. The 1TB expansion cards will apparently be swappable between different Xbox Series X systems, so you'll be able to copy your games over to the cards and take them to a friend's console.

 

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

Xbox Series X Will Require Proprietary Cards to Expand Hard Drive Space

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Other things that came out in the DF video:

1)  As @SaysWho? quoted, there will be 1TB expansion cards.  They are custom, so expect $$$$

2)  SeX can use XB1 controllers, and XB1 can use the SeX controllers

 

[Keyser_Soze]

I'd just use an external for storage and move things to the internal as I see fit.

[Mr.Vic20]

1Tb internal drive is more than I could have hoped for! 

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

1Tb internal drive is more than I could have hoped for! 

For me as well.  My guess is they managed to swing this by buying slower/cheaper flash memory.

[TwinIon]

2 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

Xbox Series X Will Require Proprietary Cards to Expand Hard Drive Space

 

This makes sense to me. If you want the expandable storage to be equal to the built in storage, forcing a proprietary standard is probably the price you have to pay. Otherwise you'd end up with a huge variety of speeds, and probably a lot of confusion. If you're counting on constant storage speeds for cache or streaming, this solution might be unavoidable. It's also a very real way for MS to get some additional margin for a product with historically low profits. I do expect some silly high prices though.

 

At least the 1TB of built in SSD storage is more than I expected.

[Duderino]

 

Can't say I'm surprised that Minecraft is their raytracing demo while Gears 5 relies on UE4's screen space global illumination instead of DXR.  The cost of Raytracing BVH trees would be significantly less expensive in a game like Minecraft.

 

In case you are not following, BVH trees are used to reduce the number of points each cast ray needs to test against.  In the case of Minecraft, the world geometry is practically one big BVH tree already, simplifying computation and memory costs.

 

In other words, keep your Raytracing expectations in check.

[TwinIon]

4 minutes ago, Duderino said:

 

Can't say I'm surprised that Minecraft is their raytracing demo while Gears 5 relies on UE4's screen space global illumination instead of DXR.  The cost of Raytracing BVH trees would be significantly less expensive in a game like Minecraft.

 

In case you are not following, BVH trees are used to reduce the number of points each cast ray needs to test against.  In the case of Minecraft, the world geometry is practically one big BVH tree already, simplifying computation and memory costs.

 

In other words, keep your Raytracing expectations in check.

While I'm not getting my expectations too high, they did say that the Gears 5 port was only two weeks worth of work and that they hadn't implemented ray tracing in the way they would expect new games to, so I don't think it's the benchmark we should expect.

[Reputator]

8 minutes ago, Duderino said:

 

Can't say I'm surprised that Minecraft is their raytracing demo while Gears 5 relies on UE4's screen space global illumination instead of DXR.  The cost of Raytracing BVH trees would be significantly less expensive in a game like Minecraft.

 

In case you are not following, BVH trees are used to reduce the number of points each cast ray needs to test against.  In the case of Minecraft, the world geometry is practically one big BVH tree already, simplifying computation and memory costs.

 

In other words, keep your Raytracing expectations in check.

 

This is especially true since early estimates based on the information gathered from Microsoft put the RT accelerating performance of AMD's RDNA2 at a significant disadvantage to NVIDIA's, which are already well below the threshold needed to run at 4k with good performance.

[Dodger]

Still saying Holiday 2020 right? So no delay for Corona Virus. 

[SaysWho?]

3 minutes ago, Dodger said:

Still saying Holiday 2020 right? So no delay for Corona Virus. 

 

Not yet, but I imagine the situation is fluid and that consideration continues to be on the table based on reporting so far.

[Duderino]

2 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

While I'm not getting my expectations too high, they did say that the Gears 5 port was only two weeks worth of work and that they hadn't implemented ray tracing in the way they would expect new games to, so I don't think it's the benchmark we should expect.

I don't doubt games this gen will get there, but unfortunately Minecraft is not indicative of the challenges other games will have with incorporating raytracing.

[Brian]

Let me preorder 

[crispy4000]

No dedicated RT cores.  AMD is instead trying to improve the efficiency of what’s already there at handling RT.  No big surprises there.

 

We still need metrics to know the performance hit.  But there’s little doubt that Nvidia will stay on top.
 

The big thing for PC gamers will be the need to upgrade SSD’s... eventually.

[TomCat]

6 hours ago, Duderino said:

 

Can't say I'm surprised that Minecraft is their raytracing demo while Gears 5 relies on UE4's screen space global illumination instead of DXR.  The cost of Raytracing BVH trees would be significantly less expensive in a game like Minecraft.

 

In case you are not following, BVH trees are used to reduce the number of points each cast ray needs to test against.  In the case of Minecraft, the world geometry is practically one big BVH tree already, simplifying computation and memory costs.

 

In other words, keep your Raytracing expectations in check.

Why do you guys keeps saying no ray tracing cores. they have dedicated silicon to specifically handle ray tracing functions.

 

 

Microsoft Technical Fellow and Xbox System Architect Andrew Goossen added the following. When using ray tracing the system can effectively tap over 25Tflops of performance.

Without hardware acceleration, this work would have been done in the shaders, but would have consumed over 13tflops alone. for the xbox series x, this work is offloaded onto dedicated hardware and the shader can continue to run in parallel with full performance. In other words Series X can effectively tap the equivalent of well over 25tflops of performance while ray tracing

[JPDunks4]

11 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I'd just use an external for storage and move things to the internal as I see fit.

Exactly, I have like 20tb work of external memory hooked up right now to my Xbox One X.  I will just move the games im currenlty playing to the internal, and store games I'm not playing on the external.  Which is basically what I do right now with my external SSD vs regular HDDs.

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

Why do you guys keeps saying no ray tracing cores. they have dedicated silicon to specifically handle ray tracing functions.

 

 

Microsoft Technical Fellow and Xbox System Architect Andrew Goossen added the following. When using ray tracing the system can effectively tap over 25Tflops of performance.

Without hardware acceleration, this work would have been done in the shaders, but would have consumed over 13tflops alone. for the xbox series x, this work is offloaded onto dedicated hardware and the shader can continue to run in parallel with full performance. In other words Series X can effectively tap the equivalent of well over 25tflops of performance while ray tracing

From the same Digital Foundry/Eurogamer article:

 

Quote

The RDNA 2 architecture used in Series X does not have tensor core equivalents, but Microsoft and AMD have come up with a novel, efficient solution based on the standard shader cores.

It’s as it says.  They’re developing new hardware processes to improve RT performance of standard cores, but it isn’t interchangeable with Nvidia’s method with tensor cores.

 

Its two different approaches to hardware-accelerated RT.  We got clarification of that today.  Performance comparisons will come later.

[TomCat]

53 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

From the same Digital Foundry/Eurogamer article:

 

It’s as it says.  They’re developing new hardware processes to improve RT performance of standard cores, but it isn’t interchangeable with Nvidia’s method with tensor cores.

 

Its two different approaches to hardware-accelerated RT.  We got clarification of that today.  Performance comparisons will come later.

which is exactly what i've been saying MS came up with a better way to get the job done. I mean they wrote the api that raytracing runs on.  cant believe yall scoffing at the power of this thing.  It ran Gears of war 5 on all ultra pc settings at 4k 100fps  and that was non optimized.  and it will do BVH just just havent shown it off yet. this is just getting started  they will be releasing tons more in the coming weeks

[cusideabelincoln]

Most surprising is the clockspeeds.  They are basically delivering full desktop PC all-core clockspeeds, and the GPU clockspeed is higher than the 5700 XT's base clocks.  Quite impressive.

 

Aside from that, I love the demonstration of the load times and quick resume features. 

 

I hope the PS5 basically copies most of those features.

[Duderino]

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

which is exactly what i've been saying MS came up with a better way to get the job done. I mean they wrote the api that raytracing runs on.  cant believe yall scoffing at the power of this thing.  It ran Gears of war 5 on all ultra pc settings at 4k 100fps  and that was non optimized.  and it will do BVH just just havent shown it off yet. this is just getting started  they will be releasing tons more in the coming weeks

They have shown it off with Minecraft, a raytracing best case scenario.

 

We haven’t seen evidence yet that MS + AMD have built a better raytracing solution.  We know how their approach differs now, but are lacking adequate examples.

[atom631]

I just hope this thing fits into my entertainment console. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[number305]

1 hour ago, atom631 said:

I just hope this thing fits into my entertainment console. 

Well... Go measure :

 it measures 301mm tall and 151 mm in depth and width

[crispy4000]

8 hours ago, TomCat said:

which is exactly what i've been saying MS came up with a better way to get the job done. I mean they wrote the api that raytracing runs on.  cant believe yall scoffing at the power of this thing.  It ran Gears of war 5 on all ultra pc settings at 4k 100fps  and that was non optimized.  and it will do BVH just just havent shown it off yet. this is just getting started  they will be releasing tons more in the coming weeks

You initially said they would be including RT cores. Gears 5 isn’t getting RT as far as we know, so I’m not sure why you think that’s relevant.

 

Also, technically we don’t know if it’s better way to get the job done.  There’s a lot of variables there, but until we get direct performance and price point comparisons, it’s impossible to know which GPU manufacturer has the more apt approach.

 

I think the best that can be assumed is that AMD’s approach is more symbiotic with gains in traditional rasterization, for games that forgo RT.

[crispy4000]

On 2/25/2020 at 9:22 PM, TomCat said:

also whats making the RT cores affordable for MS is the 7+ nanometer manufacturing.  

 

On 2/25/2020 at 8:21 PM, TomCat said:

It will perform better then raytracing on the 2080.

 

For the record, these were the most outlandish claims you made.  We now know the first was wrong.

[AbsolutSurgen]

11 hours ago, TomCat said:

Why do you guys keeps saying no ray tracing cores. they have dedicated silicon to specifically handle ray tracing functions.

 

 

Microsoft Technical Fellow and Xbox System Architect Andrew Goossen added the following. When using ray tracing the system can effectively tap over 25Tflops of performance.

Without hardware acceleration, this work would have been done in the shaders, but would have consumed over 13tflops alone. for the xbox series x, this work is offloaded onto dedicated hardware and the shader can continue to run in parallel with full performance. In other words Series X can effectively tap the equivalent of well over 25tflops of performance while ray tracing

When using Ray Tracing/DLSS an RTX-2080 has ~150 Tflops of performance  (~10 from the shaders, ~60 from the RTX cores, ~80 from the tensor cores).  As DF recommends, "my expectations are tempered" when it comes to SeX ray-tracing performance.

7 hours ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Most surprising is the clockspeeds.  They are basically delivering full desktop PC all-core clockspeeds, and the GPU clockspeed is higher than the 5700 XT's base clocks.  Quite impressive.

Assuming most developers continue to target 30fps, it certainly will make it harder for the master race to hit 60fps.  This could drive a new movement for PC gamers to invest in high-end CPUs again.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[TwinIon]

Do we have a sense of where the Series X falls on the spectrum of "basically just a PC" to "cell processor insanity?"

 

[crispy4000]

 

Port of the raytracing PC demo.  Runs at 1080p, performance bobs between 30fps and 60fps with DF eyeballing it.  That's not too bad on the surface.  We know the 2080TI was getting 60fps average at 1080p on an older build a few months back.

 

The demo has likely been updated in the time since, on both PC and (subsequently) the ported Series X version.  Nvidia said that with further optimizations a 2060 would be able to run it at 60fps/1080p.  Which might still be overly optimistic.  But if true, would peg Series X RT performance closer to a 2060.

What can be said conclusively as of now... it wouldn't beat out a 2080 TI with RT.  DF's doing their own speculative video on the RT capabilities of the Series X soon.

[crispy4000]

24 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Do we have a sense of where the Series X falls on the spectrum of "basically just a PC" to "cell processor insanity?"

We know this won't be one of those generations where the consoles will nudge ahead of PC.  At least with the GPU and CPU.  Verdict may still be out on the SSD and its optimizations.

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

Do we have a sense of where the Series X falls on the spectrum of "basically just a PC" to "cell processor insanity?"

 

It is essentially a PC with a Zen 2 8-core processor, the equivalent of AMD's next-gen mid-level GPU, and a slow 1TB NVME SSD.  However, it should cost substantially less than a similarly equipped PC.

 

PC Gamer was reporting that the Direct X benefits (faster decompression of assets, Ray Tracing, etc.) would be available on PC through that version of Direct X.

 

However, if you want to spend the $$$, enthusiast PC hardware purchased at the same time should be able to handily outperform it.

[Duderino]

Keep in mind that NVME drive should punch above it’s weight with the DirectStorage decompression:

Quote

“DirectStorage can reduce the CPU overhead for these I/O operations from multiple cores to taking just a small fraction of a single core; thereby freeing considerable CPU power for the game to spend on areas like better physics or more NPCs in a scene,” Microsoft adds.

...This increased efficiency translates into two to three times improvement on the effective amount of physical memory, and two to three times more I/O bandwidth, Goossen said.

When this tech eventually arrives on PC it will surpass the Series X, but the console will be competitive with today’s SSD speeds.