Not at all. The XSS should be targeting “whatever the XSX does, but at 1080p”. So if the XSX is locked 30fps at dynamic 4k, as many games no doubt will be, it’s fine for the XSS to do the same at 1080p.
This is why I never trust Canadians.
Well that’s what I meant… in this case, AC’s targeting 60 on the XSX, so that’s what I meant when I said that the XSS should also be targeting 60, not 30.
Is this stuff with it targeting 30 at 1080p? Or is the XSS trying to do some resolution higher than that?
Yes, we’re in agreement there then. From the DF video, they enabled a bunch of video quality settings and decided to lock to 30fps. But if it runs at 60fps 1080p but looks worse than the XSX, that’s a failure for the XSS too, either way. The XSS needs to run everything exactly like the XSX just at a lower res to be a success in my eyes, for whatever that’s worth (which ain’t much).
Like i said a while ago here the XSS should have been a 7 tflop console. I know, i know, tflops don’t matter… unless, in this case, they clearly do. Though, by it’s design, i imagine the engineering would have ended up with a very different design, probably 20-40% larger than now, to handle the additional heat.
They were too focused on making a last-gen performance with modern features rather than a “second tier” next gen console. I think they completely succeeded in their engineering goal - making a next-gen Xbox One S - it’s just that they had the wrong goal. They should have back calculated 1440p / 60 fps and designed from that target. The current XSS should probably be $250, though objectively without any other games it would still be a great deal vs. any gaming PC, $300 is too high for it’s price/performance to the XSX and PS5. It will probably settled down to $250 by next Christmas and $200 a couple years from now.
I do still really like and enjoy the one i have, and it’s a cool form factor and totally silent, and kind of appeals to my SFF PC fetish… but that’s kind of justifying it backwards.
Annoyingly I can’t seem to force it to stick to 1080P, at least not with the current default Xbox video output settings. If i set the resolution manually to 1080P i lose HDR… for some reason. Only if i set the res manually to 4K OR if i check “use 4K anyway even if you didn’t select it” is HDR turned on again. I’d like to force it to try to run at 1080P just to see if there were any performance upgrades. Sadly i think devs took MS at their word at will try to aim at 1440P for a while here as the target resolution.
Well yeah, they matter. It’s just a measure of processing speed. People will say, correctly, that it doesn’t tell the whole story. But it’s not just some mumbo-jumbo terminology.
My impression was that the XSS was basically just a 1080p version of the XSS, but it seems like that’s not the case.
I ended up getting an XSX because I figured who knows, maybe I’d care about 4k… and also, because it wasn’t like there were a ton of options in terms of buying the consoles anyway. I was lucky to get anything.
Maybe i’m reading smoke wisps from my imagination but i kind of wonder if they aren’t going to relegate the XSS to something like a 3rd tier product next year and release a “budget” XSX at that 1440p/120fps target at around $350 or something, maybe without a disk drive. Paint it some other color to tell them apart. $500/$350/$250. At this point, releasing different SKUs probably isn’t going to be as big of an issue, since we’re rapidly approaching PC like variety anyway.
I absolutely would have preferred to buy an XSX that had no disc drive.
I think Phil Spencer did an interview where he said cost reductions wouldn’t occur, as the underlying silicon cost was not dropping as it used to.
The processor won’t be cheap to shrink down. But SSD storage costs keep dropping, so that will almost certainly expand. The original 360 came with either no hard drive, or a 20GB hard drive. By the end of the 360 generation, it came with a 500GB hard drive.
Yes, like Alistair said, it was in this interview with Xbox architect Andrew Goossen.
Here’s the relevant bits.
“Series S has been very impactful for us. As we design our new consoles for the new generation, we’re very much looking forward through the generation to be thinking ahead - like, how does this work? - and that’s why we got to two consoles at the same time,” Goossen continued. “We are facing a big change in how consoles are designed. I believe when we first started building the original Xbox 360 - the smallest one without the HDD - that cost us about $460. By the end of the generation it cost us around $120 - and that cost reduction path was driven principally by silicon cost reduction.”
To put that into perspective, Xbox 360 launched with individual CPU and GPUs, both fabricated at 90nm. By the generation’s end, those two components had been combined into a single chip, delivering a significant cost reduction in its own right, and they were also delivered using a much smaller process (possibly as low as 32nm on the final model). Between launch and the end of the 360’s lifecycle, the machine had actually transitioned through several fabrication nodes. Its successor - Xbox One - saw its processor revised just once, down from 28nm to 16nm FinFET. Cost reduction opportunities were thin on the ground for this generation and will be even more constricted going forward.
“Moore’s Law is certainly not dead! Moore’s Law is continuing and we have a good path to 5nm and 3nm, and those are going to bring improved performance and good power,” enthuses Goossen. “What they’re not bringing any more is a good cost reduction cost per transistor - and so this has foundational impacts to console development, because now we’ll get cost reductions, but they’re slowing down and it won’t be nearly the magnitudes that we’ve seen before.”
The fact is that future nodes like 5nm and 3nm do deliver advantages then - and PC processors and GPUs along with smartphones can still benefit from those. But typically, consoles stick to the same performance profile across the generation. Goossen is essentially suggesting that leveraging these nodes for cheaper consoles may not be an option, which poses a difficult problem for the Xbox team going into the future with the intention of delivering even more powerful hardware. Processor performance is tied closely to transistor count - but if the cost per transistor is not reducing, a new chip with more logic will cost a lot more to make, even if it’s actually smaller than today’s processors. For the new consoles, a smaller, slimmer machine is a possibility - but the actual cost of making it won’t change that much.
It wasn’t Phill Spencer, but Xbox system architect Andrew Goossen:
“Moore’s Law is certainly not dead! Moore’s Law is continuing and we have a good path to 5nm and 3nm, and those are going to bring improved performance and good power,” enthuses Goossen. “What they’re not bringing any more is a good cost reduction cost per transistor - and so this has foundational impacts to console development, because now we’ll get cost reductions, but they’re slowing down and it won’t be nearly the magnitudes that we’ve seen before.”
The fact is that future nodes like 5nm and 3nm do deliver advantages then - and PC processors and GPUs along with smartphones can still benefit from those. But typically, consoles stick to the same performance profile across the generation. Goossen is essentially suggesting that leveraging these nodes for cheaper consoles may not be an option, which poses a difficult problem for the Xbox team going into the future with the intention of delivering even more powerful hardware. Processor performance is tied closely to transistor count - but if the cost per transistor is not reducing, a new chip with more logic will cost a lot more to make, even if it’s actually smaller than today’s processors. For the new consoles, a smaller, slimmer machine is a possibility - but the actual cost of making it won’t change that much.
Edit: What @Rock8man said. :)
I’d be shocked if more terraflops would help. I’d be willing to put money down on the lower RAM amount has more effect on it. I’d also bet that the RAM is the main reason XSS can’t do X1X enhancements.
That sounds like an EDID issue with your TV. Less technical version: most likely the TV isn’t telling the Xbox it supports 1080p with HDR.
For possible confirmation you can check RTings.com for your TV under “Supported Resolutions”. They don’t usually mention HDR specifically for each resolution, but may have a note about it.
It seems like going down to 3nm, while not making the chip itself cheaper, would make the chip itself more efficient and cooler, allowing for a cheaper overall system design.
Yes, that is correct. But 3nm is a way off, the next step is 5nm. Basically Apple will get there first because they’re TSMC’s biggest customer, then everybody else follows. Consoles get top priority, then AMD CPUs and GPUs, then pretty much everybody else who wants in TSMC’s foundries.
When Apple went from 7nm to 5nm, AMD basically ate up a bunch of TSMC’s 7nm capacity that opened up.
Yes, but it seems they allocated the vast majority of it to consoles for at least the past 6 months.
I got my Series X today, finally! It will fit in my entertainment center! I posted a bunch of bullshit about how it wouldn’t but I popped out the draw and moved a shelf and squeezed it in, then replaced everything!
I wonder if the PS5 will fit? It’s really long.