1947

They should be absolutely identical other than the resolution. Same image quality and framerate. Anything other than that is a failure.

1080p is one quarter the resolution of 4k, so that really shouldn’t be an issue.

1948

That’s what i was thinking, but i wasnt sure since we see a difference with the current generation between the high end and normal models.

If the XSS can truly do exactly the same performance as the XSX at 1080p, then that will be an impressive deal for most people.

1949

There will have to be cuts to asset quality based on the difference in RAM amounts alone. How visible that will be at 1080p is an open question. It’s also an open question how viable any Ray Tracing effects will be with the cut in GPU power.

1950

Not at all, the XSS has 10GB RAM and the XSS has 16GB. Again 1080p is one quarter the number of pixels of 4k. Over half the memory, quarter the pixels.

1951

The required memory difference for just various frame/rendering buffers between 4K and 1080p is much smaller than the total memory differences between the two machines. Just dropping the rendering resolution will not save enough RAM to fit in the Series S’s reduced capacity.

1952

Memory won’t be a constraint, particularly with the new hardware texture decompression stuff.

I really think the XSS will live up to Microsoft’s billing-- the XSX, just at 1080p.

1953

The Series X has the same texture compression technologies. That doesn’t solve the capacity difference for the Series S.

1954

At a minimum (fps caps not withstanding) XSX should have higher framerate than XSS if both are played at 1080p, which I think is the general gist some people are trying to get at.

1955

We know how much VRAM games consume at 1080p and 4k. This is not some mystery.

And sure that’s possible, even likely. The XSS needs to play games at 1080p comparably to the XSX at 4k. That’s how I would measure its success.

1956

I know, which is why you can deduce they will also need to reduce asset quality/size to fit in the Series S’s 10GBs compared to the Series X’s 16GB.

1957

Stusser and I have been back and forth on this already, but I’m as confident that you will see a difference in some games as stusser is that you won’t. Developers will end up with games that will struggle to hit native 4k and 30 fps on the XSX, that’s just how it works. You design for the thresholds audiences will accept, and you can still get away with a mostly 30fps game, so there are still going to be games that try to push the capabilities of the hardware and compromise on frame rate and resolution for gains elsewhere even on the XSX.

And I think when you get games that the XSX struggles to run at Stusser’s Standards For Excellence, they’re definitely going to be further compromised on the XSS.

There we go, now anyone who wants to come back to this thread in the future and tell someone “I told you so!” will definitely have at least one of us to taunt!

1958

Sure, but if the XSS can already push 60fps, it doesn’t really matter.

This may definitely be the case, but Stusser is right that when you are reducing the resolution down from 4k to 1080p, it really is a massive reduction in the processing power required to do it.

I honestly don’t really know what kind of performance difference we’ll see. If they do pull off the “Xsx, just at 1080p” it will really be a huge success.

1959

And I should clarify that I agree, if that actually happens, it will be awesome.

1960

Another way to look at it is…

If the XSX is just an XSS at 4k, it’ll be a massive failure. 3x the GPU power and every screenshot/advert is going to look identical because the average consumer isn’t going to be seeing native resolution screenshots/advertising. And everything is going to look inferior to the PS5 version because its baseline isn’t a 1080p 4 teraflop console. That is going to be a tough sell.

1961

Nah, i don’t think that’s correct.

Although looking at some of this stuff, it looks like the series X is targeting 8k?

Ok, so I’m hopelessly out of touch because i didn’t even realize 8k was a thing.

Seriously here, why is 8k a thing? Unless you’re tv is like a million inches, i feel like you couldn’t even see the resolution difference. Does anyone here have an 8k tv?

But if the Xsx is really targeting 8k, then the Xss should be able to do 1080p pretty easy.

1962

8K is not a thing. It’s a dumb marketing bullet point.

1963

The retail boxes.

1964

Oh for sure, I didn’t mean to say every game will run perfectly on the XSS, particularly if they struggle on the XSX! My point was that the XSS will run games at 1080p similarly to how the XSX runs them at 4k. Poorly optimized games that run like crap on the XSX will run poorly on the XSS also.

1965

But there actually are TV’s that run that resolution currently, much to my amazement. So you’re talking 16 times the resolution of 1080p.

I still don’t really understand why someone would need that kind of resolution in their living room.

1966

That’s pretty much what they said about the 8k RTX demonstration https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/01/nvidias-rtx-3090-demo-emphasizes-the-absurdity-of-8k-gaming/

But to get that reaction, the event had those influencers sitting just feet away from an 80-inch 8K LG OLED. And it takes something that extreme to get even the minimal benefits of that resolution. Even at 80 inches, you’d have to sit within 3 feet of the panel to notice a difference in pixel density between 4K and 8K.