We still don’t know the full specifications, or the design, or the price, but some are able to find very juicy data with a simple filtered detail. This time the intention is to know how fast the Xbox Series X will be in terms of reading and writing on disk, something that they seem to have found thanks to a Linkedin profile.
PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 3.0
It all starts with the profile of a former employee of Phison Electronics , a company responsible for manufacturing memory controllers for next-generation SSDs. In the list of experience of this former employee, we can find that he was responsible for designing the PS5019-E19, two PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe units that it indicates, has been installed on the Xbox Scarlett.
Knowing those references, the curious have been able to find out that it is a unit designed to connect to PCIe 4.0 interfaces, however, by not using DRAM, it shows that it is based on a PCIe 3.0 controller, so the performance would not exceed the bandwidth that we can find today in some market units.
This Confirm that Xbox Series X is using NVme Gen4. 7.5GB / s👀 SSD pic.twitter.com/XLmNNeomLL
– Postradamus (@PostUp_bbb) January 21, 2020
The end result would be a unit capable of reading at 3,400 MB / s and 3,000 MB / s, a performance similar to SSD discs that we can currently buy in stores and nothing especially surprising for what a new generation device could generate. Does this mean that the Xbox Series X will carry an old SSD? It doesn’t have to. On the one hand, the prototype could carry PCIe 3.0 drives, but Microsoft could change them in the final model for more modern PCIe 4.0 versions.
#Xbox #XboxSeriesX pic.twitter.com/BI7arBTKcN
– Doug – XBOX SERIES X (@Doug_DragoX) January 24, 2020
On the other hand, the strategy of using PCIe 3.0 memories could serve to reduce costs, and knowing that the hardware is prepared for PCIe 4.0, they could leave the door open for a possible update with better memories. Do you remember the rumors of a cheaper and a more powerful console? Well, that.
What speed difference would exist between a PS5 and an Xbox Series X?
This is where the thing gets interesting, since the latest information in this regard suggests that Sony will include in its PS5 a Samsung PCIe 4.0 SSD, something similar (if not the same) to the Samsung 980 Pro SSD presented at CES, the which offers nothing more and nothing less than twice the performance of the previously named Phison controller.
This would mean that, for example, the loading times of PS5 would be twice as fast as those of Xbox Series X, a quality that Sony has been highlighting since it started talking about its next generation, and that it would be one of the most Highlights of the console.
What do you prefer? Load speed or graphic processing speed? According to rumors and leaks, the TFLOPS war on both consoles places the Xbox Series X in the 12 TFLOPS , while PS5 will stay at 9.2 TFLOPS . Given that both use the same AMD architecture, it seems that we will have a very interesting generation differentiated by two very marked styles. We want them now!
