Personal computing discussed

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Glorious
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Re: Xbox series X

Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:24 pm

Igor_Kavinski wrote:
Yeah, I'm hoping that Sony will allow to replace the SSD. Not sure about Microsoft. But I have my doubts about Sony too. If the SSD is using some special sauce, then an off the shelf NVMe SSD might not work. My worst fear would be having to pay double for a Sony branded SSD or worse, having to send the console in for repairs. That could get very expensive.


Sony has made a point of having user-replaceable drives ever since they had them.

It's been trivial for both the Ps3 and Ps4 and they're well aware of how that differentiates them.

Not to say it influenced me, but years ago I raged about Microsoft's abuse of their HD policy for the 360.

I never got a Xbox One, I got a Ps4.
 
Waco
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:34 pm

Igor_Kavinski wrote:
Waco wrote:
Even QLC will outlast almost all consumer workloads. It's not even an issue with TLC.


Gamers stress their hardware a bit more than the typical consumer. Also, most popular games receive gigabytes of updates on a regular basis.

It's a console with software defined storage - it will write optimally to the drives. Only someone actually trying to abuse the storage would have any issues with long-term durability.

Look, I get that you're worried, but this is not exactly new or undefined territory here. Large streaming writes are ideal for Flash, and even if you had 50+ GB of updates every month for 6 years...you'd be using up about 3-4% of the durability of the Flash even if it's the worst QLC you can get today. Even with a dumb software / controller algorithm.

It literally isn't an issue.
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Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:28 am

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/ ... expansion/

This is quite the blow and exactly what I was afraid of. Unless Sony follows suit, Microsoft may have put another nail in its coffin, not unlike the "Online Only" fiasco of Xbox One. People DO NOT want to pay extra for a proprietary card, especially since 1TB that Microsoft will include is going to hold barely 7 or 8 AAA next gen titles. The alternative will be the cumbersome and time consuming shuttling of huge 100GB+ games between the SSD and backup drive which will lead to excessive writing on the SSD.
 
Waco
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 10:02 am

Igor_Kavinski wrote:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/xbox-series-x-uses-proprietary-nvme-cards-for-storage-expansion/

This is quite the blow and exactly what I was afraid of. Unless Sony follows suit, Microsoft may have put another nail in its coffin, not unlike the "Online Only" fiasco of Xbox One. People DO NOT want to pay extra for a proprietary card, especially since 1TB that Microsoft will include is going to hold barely 7 or 8 AAA next gen titles. The alternative will be the cumbersome and time consuming shuttling of huge 100GB+ games between the SSD and backup drive which will lead to excessive writing on the SSD.

It's not unusual at all, and regardless, they can't price gouge too badly because everyone and their mother is familiar with SSD prices these days.

I still don't understand people worried about "excessive writing to SSDs". It's not an issue for 99.999999999% of people. Even if you shuffled the entire SSD worth of contents back and forth once a week you won't even come close to burning it out in 5 years (and that's assuming they use the cheapest TLC/QLC they can find).
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:59 pm

Waco wrote:
I still don't understand people worried about "excessive writing to SSDs". It's not an issue for 99.999999999% of people. Even if you shuffled the entire SSD worth of contents back and forth once a week you won't even come close to burning it out in 5 years (and that's assuming they use the cheapest TLC/QLC they can find).


Maybe. I just hope they include an easy way to check the health of the SSD, or at the very least, warn the user if remaining life counter drops below 5%. I installed MySQL database as part of a firewall monitoring application on a 750GB MX300 SSD and in less than a month, three percent of the SSD life vanished. Granted, databases shouldn't be installed on consumer SSDs and their firmware is probably not designed to sustain the typical write hammering of a database engine but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Now with this proprietary format, I can't just attach the SSD to a PC and look at its S.M.A.R.T. values, assuming they even put S.M.A.R.T. support in there.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:11 pm

I have NEVER had an SSD wear out. Ever. Even a fairly heavily used SSD will be more reliable than a typical HDD. Unless you've got some bizarre corner use case, or are worried about archival data retention characteristics of a drive that will be powered off for long periods, you're worrying about ghosts.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:19 pm

I had a Corsair Force GT SSD that spontaneously bricked itself. Once I was finally able to convince Corsair support to issue an RMA (after many hours on the phone, e-mails, etc.) they took months to return a replacement SSD to me - which was obviously previously used and arrived defective. They never honored the RMA for that one.
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Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:22 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I have NEVER had an SSD wear out. Ever.


Me neither. So far. But then I use only two SSDs and one of them is in my desktop that I use every 6 months or so (life's busy!). I have a Vertex 30GB from 10 years ago that I switched out of my then-laptop when the life remaining counter reached 5%. I connected it a few days just to see if it retained any data or if I could write to it. From what I could tell, other than some minor file system errors that were fixed by chkdsk, most of the data seemed to be fine (it was just a Windows installation). I wrote a few GBs to it, though it was painfully slow. But the fact that some errors developed due to being powered off for more than 7 years confirms that SSDs shouldn't be used for long term cold storage of important data.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:26 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
I had a Corsair Force GT SSD that spontaneously bricked itself. Once I was finally able to convince Corsair support to issue an RMA (after many hours on the phone, e-mails, etc.) they took months to return a replacement SSD to me - which was obviously previously used and arrived defective. They never honored the RMA for that one.


I still have a Corsair Force 60GB SSD that came back from death after I let it be connected to my PC for several hours. Connected it a few days ago just to check how it was doing. Wouldn't appear in Windows using the external SATA to USB adapter. On the third try, it came up and worked normally. Data was still there and from what I could tell, intact.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:28 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Unless you've got some bizarre corner use case, or are worried about archival data retention characteristics of a drive that will be powered off for long periods, you're worrying about ghosts.


Microsoft is literally telling developers to use the SSD as RAM. That's going to be much more write intensive than typical consumer use.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 4:40 pm

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2020/03 ... cal-specs/

Sony went with a somewhat slower but cooler running design that they will probably be able to sell for less than the XbSX. It seems Microsoft is targeting the PC gaming crowd who also own an Xbox or want to move to consoles to save money on hardware upgrades for the long term. Sony is counting on its huge customer base to remain loyal.

Certified PCIe 4.0 SSDs for upgrading: https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/18/21185 ... x-series-x

https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/18/21185 ... x-series-x

By making the SSD blazingly fast, Sony has maximized the PS5 CPU/GPU's utilization while XbSX's faster GPU will be waiting on its slower SSD for data loads. Probably will have an impact on streaming open world games. So far looks like another generational win for Sony.
 
Waco
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Re: Xbox series X

Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:49 pm

Igor_Kavinski wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Unless you've got some bizarre corner use case, or are worried about archival data retention characteristics of a drive that will be powered off for long periods, you're worrying about ghosts.


Microsoft is literally telling developers to use the SSD as RAM. That's going to be much more write intensive than typical consumer use.

No, they aren't, don't buy into the marketing. Further, it's likely dedicated as SLC, so its endurance is effectively infinite for storage cases.
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Xbox series X

Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:56 pm

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2020/04 ... station-5/

Woah. Super fast SSD, 3D audio and now a haptic feedback controller? Sony sure is giving gamers a lot of reasons to choose the PS5 over the XbSX.
 
robew
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Re: Xbox series X

Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:33 pm

The only problem I have with the Xbox series (one and serie X) are the excluded. I have a gaming PC and for me, no point in having an xbox. By cons, the PS4 and its excluded, even if it is less powerful, suits me much more.

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