| Intrinsic said: I have a theory on a possible viable storage solution. Rather than any of what most think, they could just split the storage into system storage a general storage of sorts. Right now n 250GB nvme drive cost as little as $100 on amazon. At console volumes that could be costing as little as $35 for sony/MS. Now in 2020 I believe sony and MS can get a 500GB nvme SSD in volume at around $40/$50 per drive. But there is an even cheaper way to do this, they can literally build the "nvme SSD" right onto the PCB. So the console can ship with like 500GB of nvme based built in storage and an empty mechanical HDD bay for those that want to slap in a HDD for more storage. Or just launch with the external HDD support option right out the gate and not even borther with an internal mechanical HDD bay. |
Or go with a hybrid/cached approach.
With that in mind... A 250GB NVMe drive is still more expensive at $109 AUD verses $55 AUD for a 1TB mechanical.
Console games have monolithic install sizes+OS will gobble a massive chunk of that as well.
I just don't see a 250GB, heck even 500GB NVMe drive being viable.
Consoles go for cost sensitive parts, not the latest and greatest.
| Intrinsic said: I think some of you guys as missing something on this whole split memory thing. There is a reason I mention LPDDR4 rm as opposed to just DDR4. Size. Or amount of modules needed so to speak. DDR4 while offering much higher bandwith, would require quite a good amount of ram chips flanking the CPU. I mean right now we literally need 8 ram modules to get 8GB of DDR4. So where are the GDDR6 going to go on a console sized PCB? But using LPDDR4, they can get all 8GB of it in a module just slightly bigger than one GDDR6 module. |
Have you confused GB and Gb? GigaByte and Gigabit.
There are 16Gb density DDR4 chips on the market, there are 8 bits in a byte, so that would be 2GB per chip... Meaning you only need 4x chips for 8GB, it's actually the same as Samsungs GDDR6 densities... And twice that of Microns GDDR6.
| Intrinsic said: The only issue being that it has a peak bandwith of around 32GB/s. But that will be more than enough if all it does is run the OS of the consoles and OS application outside games. |
What? You can have 512GB/s of bandwidth with DDR1 Ram, it all depends how wide you wish to take things... And the wider you go the more expensive it becomes.
| Intrinsic said: Or even more interesting, having two modules of LPDDR4 ram (which would be needed to get 16GB of LPDDR4) may also allow double the bandwith... though I am not sure this is possible with LPDDR4 |
It is possible with any RAM technology.
| Trumpstyle said: Only desktop mechanical drives can hit that speed and it's still too slow. |
False.
| Trumpstyle said: But Sony will use an laptop drive anyway if they go for a mechanical disk and the disk xbox one x has is the fastest one (1tb seagate barracuda). I'm not sure why Sony/Microsoft won't go for a desktop disk, from what I read they just causes to much vibration for consideration, but not sure if it's the truth. |
The Xbox One X does not have the fastest 2.5" mechanical disk. Because the fastest 2.5" mechanical disk is not a Seagate.
Fact is... The Xbox One X is using a crap 5400rpm drive... And that is what is really holding it back, especially in random reads and writes where latency skyrockets.
Size, heat, cost, power consumption are all considerations. - Notebook drives tend to employ various technologies to reduce vibrations and thus increase reliability as well.
| Intrinsic said: You must it sound like tehre must be 8, 12 or 16.....etc memory modules flanking an APU for it to work properly. There doesn't, if using 2GB GDDR6 modules, 18GB will simply mean 9 ram modules (1 more than the 8 in the PS4 right now) on the PCB or 10 modules for a 20GB set up. I am sure if that is their intention getting the APU and memory to play nice would be the least of their problems. |
You don't have to have a memory capacity that conforms to those numbers. But holy hell is it advised.
It does actually need to match the memory controller/ROP partitions in order to extract maximum bandwidth. - Memory transactions are actually a parallel task.
Once you start placing multiple memory chips on a crossbar/memory controller verses the other memory chips which might have exclusive use of a crossbar/memory controller, then when a memory transaction is performed on that partition, performance will tank.
We saw this with the Geforce 970 and to a lesser extent the Radeon 7970 and potentially the Xbox One X.
| haxxiy said: The average gaming PC RAM was 3 GB in 2010, 6 GB in 2014 and about 9 GB right now, according to Steam's stats. 16 GB is a huge plus over those numbers, and on all likehood will still be in 2020. |
People forget that the PC has more than one memory pool.
In 2014 I had 32GB system memory, 12GB of GDDR5 memory in total.
| Alby_da_Wolf said: Sadly true. Luckily it's quite likely that in 2020 the same money will buy more RAM and better than now, but the range of possible and viable solutions between best and worst case for memory price trend is so wide that engineers will have to settle for a total amount that won't become a bloodbath even in the worst case. If next gen will start in 2020, the definitive amount of RAM will have to be decided not later than next year, so price trend next year, and the special deals console makers will be able to strike for the supplies for the first years of production will decide this matter. |
Really depends.
Micron is talking about keeping prices high and focusing on profits, other manufacturers may follow suit.
DRAM manufacturers are likely to be hit with a stupidly massive fine and they may just pass that onto us.
Need to take a wait and see approach.
| Alby_da_Wolf said:
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Will be interesting to see if the OS/Background stuff from the Xbox/Playstation OS will use more DRAM next gen.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
