stusser
2651
The XSX has 6GB of slower RAM, that’s all dedicated to the OS?
I wasn’t talking about the XSX. No idea why they split its memmory.
stusser
2653
No, the XSX is 10/6 fast/slow, the XSS is 8/2.
The 6GB slow is for Mixer integration.
I’d also hardly call the 6GB chunk “slow”. Its still overkill for the OS and game code.
Enidigm
2656
That article is from September.
I do expect the S to be something of a tech nerd miss, as it’s unlikely to make sense to most current gamers; current one X or PS4 Pro owners will likely not see $300 worth of performance benefit, and One S gamers won’t be able to take their back catalog of disk based games. It makes sense on the shelf of a Best Buy though… well, it will make sense next year anyway.
I think the hand-wringing about the Series S is for the nerds as @Enidigm notes. I will get a Series X as my primary living room console, but I could definitely see picking up a Series S for my secondary TV…much in the way I moved my Xbox One Elite to the secondary room once I picked up a One X. For those consumers that will be picking up a Series S as their primary machine for a variety of reasons it will run games just fine, they will look amazing, and they won’t notice the extra 10-20 seconds of loading time since there won’t be a comparison. Devs will complain and grumble, but ultimately they will do their job and make games run just fine on the Series S. Hey devs, sorry not everyone is running 64 GB of Ram and an RTX 3090!
The OS is responsible for providing many services to game code. It’s not something you can just write off as not impactful if the performance is stunted.
Enidigm
2659
I mean all it is is an updated last gen console that almost compels you to use gamepass. That either makes sense to your needs, or it doesn’t. I can construct the hypothetical gamers for whom this makes sense. However when the reviewing community picks it up i think the shine is going to come off it and there’s going to be a lot of hand wringing about who, exactly, it is meant for.
It’s a lot like the Surface Duo… only in reverse. It’s going to sell a bunch of them, probably because the majority of console buyers aren’t going to be tech nerds. But the tech nerd world is mightily connected today thanks to YouTube and Twitch, and is arguably larger than ever. There’s a reason you don’t see them flooding the influencer wavelengths like the Series X.
stusser
2660
That’s why I put it in quotes.
My guess is the faster RAM will be used for the GPU and the slower for OS and game code. But that’s just a guess, MS may have unified it, or there may be a very small performance hit to treating it as unified or using the fast RAM for game code in conjunction with the slower pool.
Or it may be a sizable hit, and those devs quoted in the article were skirting breaking their NDAs.
The “slow” 2GB in the series S is actually still faster than the DDR4 ram in most PC’s so I guess they are “stunting” performance too.
Then again this console was clearly not designed by a bunch of highly qualified engineers who spent years on these systems. They just threw some specs out and called it a day.
They know what they’re doing allot more than hot take twitter posters.
stusser
2662
That isn’t really true. GDDR is simply different than DDR. It’s optimized for bandwidth, moving massive amounts of data around as quickly as possible. DDR is optimized for latency, for interactive activity. They’re better at different things. There’s a reason why computers don’t use GDDR for their main memory.
They know what their doing Stusser. A hell of allot more than you or I do.
stusser
2664
“Highly qualified teams of engineers spending years” make huge mistakes all the time. The PS3 cell for example, or the X360 eDRAM. Some bets don’t work out, and some are bad ideas in the first place.
We don’t know whether the XS split memory architecture will ultimately hurt it in the marketplace, but we do know devs don’t like it.
No we don’t. We have a few hot takes from some devs I doubt have even used the system. DF did and interview with the lead tech director on Dirt 5 and he had positive comments on the Series S.
stusser
2666
I was talking about the split memory architecture in general; that hurts the XSX also. I agree the negative feedback linked earlier is probably premature, but they have a point; XS games may well be built to fit in 2GB of main memory.
Ultimately though, this is about games. Nothing matters like GPU performance. Everything else you can work around somehow. And the XSX has a vastly more powerful GPU than the PS5.
Microsoft can explain to S purchasers about their offering and how to manage the memory problem, good luck to them. I stand by my advice.
Did Sony explain to purchasers about their PS3 cell architecture problem?
No. Because they didnt ship a PS3 “S” with 6 gig less memory than a full PS3.
But you can go ahead and buy an S. I aint stopping you. I hope it works out for you.
Thanks!
I expect games will run just fine.
