On the storage front the Xbox Series X can do everything the Playstation 5 can do, just twice as slow, it's still stupidly fast however.
It still has hardware compression/decompression blocks to expedite memory transactions and free the CPU up.

In saying that, there is discussion that Microsoft's compression/decompression has the edge over Kraken.

The SSD isn't a replacement for RAM, including the SSD doesn't mean you have 24GB-32GB of "equivalent Ram".

The SSD just allows for more efficient use of RAM, it's the exact same situation the Nintendo 64 found itself in with it's inclusion of a super fast Cartridge... Which meant Developers didn't have to dump everything into RAM like the PS1, they could stream directly from the cart.

The Playstation 5 certainly has the advantage in this regard... But just like flops, it's really down to the developer on whether it will actually result in anything tangible.

What I find frustrating is that users are only focusing on the SSD which ultimately... Who gives a shit? What about 99% of the hardware that makes up the rest of the console?

Heh, I figured that you would.

Now all we need is Seece and Kowenicki to come back. That would be a site.  

a) How do you know?

b) "it's still stupidly fast however." What is stupidly faster? The ssd itself is half the speed of the PS4's. No decompressor can make that go away. So in the end, picking some data of whatever kind from the ssd is faster on the PS5, all the time. Or are you once again throwing the Teraflops of the cus around in an argument about the sdd technology inveolved?

c) Yes the XSX has a hardware compander too, apparently God's gift to mankind when it comes to texture decompression. What it does to other things is anyone's guess. The big question is: What does the XSX do once the data is decompressed? In his GDC talk, Cerny spends an awful lot of time trying to explain what the problems are once you have your data decompressed. Pieces of the solution are Sony property, so not in XSX hardware. At this time, we do not know if there is additional hardware in the XSX (not unlikely as MS engineers faced the same problems as Sony so the must have had ideas, too). Anything the PS5 backend does in hardware can always be done in software should MS have chosen that path. This software requires (some of the) Zen2 cores, obviously (and you better hope there is something that avoids flooding the cpu caches with data they absolutely don't need).

d) Because we have two arguments that are consistently brought up by people who consistently show they have essentially no clue about what the real problems are.

The first argument is "The 2.23GHz is a boost clock". No it isn't. Not going any further there.

The second argument is "The ssd is only to make load times disappear". No it isn't. That is an added bonus but is way short of what the whole hardware/software chain has to do.

e) Who? I'd assume each and every of Sony's first party studios will do. Those games will look at least as good as MS showpieces.

Who will not? Small developers without the manpower. Bigger studios who don't care about the additional work required to bring their games up to Sony's in-house standards. No doubt those (mostly multiplat) games will look (a little? noticably?) better on the XSX thanks to the brute force advantage. Again there are a lot of what-ifs involved. If those developers are too careless, the PS5 will edge out because of the higher clock rates in every stage of the gpu. There simply is no telling without seeing the games.

When the ssd techology is used properly, we'll see that old game design ideas can finally be realised now (on either console). The times of brute forcing your way through a game might be over (or not, we'll see in a year or two or three).

I think many are focusing on the SSD as that's basically what Sony's build their whole console around and which they believe will be the key to the next generation. It's also something that's a bit harder to grasp than just Tflops numbers and a lot harder to sell to the public. Maybe it will all be marketing BS in the end and we'll just see a bit faster loading times.

However, you got to admit that this (still baffles me that Sony didn't show it during the GDC presentation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD3PfBEEYNE

Looks way more impressive than this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eBaPS3uj-A

It's probably all up to the 1st party developers to showcase both platforms strengths, though. So this could be pretty interesting, especially when all Series X exclusives will be cross gen for the first 2 years.

I think you are misunderstanding what I was saying.

Never said the SSD is a replacement or RAM.

I was implying, that these next-gen consoles would realistically have to stream only like 5GB -8GB of data into RAM. Nowhere near the 13.5GB of available RAM in the XSX or whatever amount f RAMis going to be available in the PS5. Add that what I have been saying since I first mentioned the PS5s SSD advantage and why I said it wouldn't really make a substantial difference.

So my example f f these were 32GB of RAMconsoles, and 300GB games that we ere talking about, then, in that case, there would be an actual increase in data requirements and the stream heap would not just be like5GB but something like 25GB. So in a hypothetical situation like that, that's when you can actually see a meaningful difference between the PS5 SSD and the XSX SSD.

Yup.. I have no idea why sony went about that deep dive thing like they did. I know it was for devs, but they should have known the world would be watching.

You shouldn't build your console with one major strength, talk about said major strength for 15min, and still have people saying they don't know what it's for lol. And that Spiderman demo would have done in 20 seconds what Cerny couldn't seem to drive home in15 mins. It would show how fast the game loads, and would show the benefits of game data asset streaming.

Yeah sure was weird. Sony is usually great at marketing but they sure dropped the ball on that presentation. Not that it was bad, but they should have lead with a more consumer friendly showing first and not blow the first impression like that. In any case I'm sure Sony know what they're doing and it can mean only 2 things.

1. They cheaped out a bit on raw specs in favor of $399 or $499 launch price compared to a $599 or higher Series X

2. Prices are roughly the same but Sony believes their SSD approach was the better option.

We will see but Series X's design seems pretty straightforward so it's hard to imagine why Sony would go for such a different design if they weren't sure it would be better or just cheaper to manufacture.

https://www.3dcenter.org/news/rohleistungsvergleich-xbox-series-x-vs-playstation-5

If only there was a way to let the player decide where his preferences are instead of confronting him with washed out pixels and shaky framerate.

Maybe I’m not seeing that chart properly but where’s the GPU? You know the biggest advantage the Series X has on PS5?