There's been quite a bit of debate over the past couple of weeks as to whether the Xbox Series S will be held back by its limitations (such as its reduced memory) compared to the Xbox Series X, but in a recent interview with IGN, Xbox director of project management Jason Ronald suggested this wouldn't be the case.
“The core capabilities are the same between the two consoles,” he told the outlet, explaining that Microsoft focused on the critically important aspects of the system in order to "unlock kind of that next level of game design" and allow developers to scale up and scale down on the visual quality as they see fit.
“The areas that usually create the biggest challenges for developers – things like CPU performance and I/O performance – those are the things that were really critically important to us to make sure that they were symmetrical across Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, because those are the areas that are really going to unlock kind of that next level of game design and that transformative gaming experience..."
Ronald explained that developers can utilise the power of the system in multiple ways, such as delivering 120 frames-per second (with potential resolution trade-offs), dropping to 1080p for better anti-aliasing or improved graphical effects, and turn ray-tracing on or off to find the best overall experience.
Interestingly, while the Series S will target a resolution of 1440p for its games, Ronald also confirmed that it can output a 4K signal, and visual decisions will be left entirely in the developers' hands.
Ultimately then, it sounds like the Xbox Series S will still be a very capable next-gen machine in its own right, and as for any memory concerns, Ronald told The Verge that the team did plenty of thorough analysis in preparation:
“We did a lot of analysis of what it would really mean to run a game at 4K with 60fps and then to scale that down to 1440p at 60fps. The reality is you don’t need as much memory bandwidth because you’re not loading the highest level MIP levels into memory. You don’t need the same amount of memory as well.”
Are you planning to get a Series S? What are your thoughts on this? Tell us below.
[source ign.com, via theverge.com]
Comments 13
@FraserG Thank you for working so hard to give us all this reliable news
@AkashTheGod99 No worries! That's what I'm here for
Jason Ronald always has great information for us. And ya gotta love that epic beard!!
I actually believe this with the series s
But I will go series x.
You got to buy the big guns.
This is really good to hear. Sounds like the Series S will be a really impressive machine. I look forward to getting it.
@TheNewButler We all say we can't argue with people who actually built the machine but we do so anyway. I still remember all the "Sony is doomed" stuff when the 10TF GPU was confirmed, as if it was PS4-territory but on PS5 their games look quite fine actually.
I think any comparison with PC space is countered with the fact that consoles are a certain and bespoke hardware and developers can optimise the games to extremes.
Time will tell.....
@TheNewButler My concern is not in resolution but in settings. So are we getting this:
SX- 2160p@60fps- Equivelant of PC (Very High) settings
SS-1440p@60fps- Equivelant of PC (Very High) settings
or this ?
SX- 2160p@60fps- Equivelant of PC (Very High) settings
SS-1440p@60fps- Equivelant of PC (High/Medium) settings
8GB is enough for gaming at 1080p and even 1440p on PC - assuming you are not also using RAM for many other background applications like System Software, Anti-virus, Malware monitoring etc.
I know the Consoles still have 'background' operations but these have their own dedicated RAM too. On the Series X, 2.5GB of the 'slower' RAM pool is dedicated to System the remaining 13.5GB is available for games.
The PS4 Pro had just 5.5GB available for games too and whilst that was a bit of a limitation when targeting 'higher' resolutions, the Series S has more RAM available just for gaming alone.
A lot of GPU's these days are targeting 1440p to 4k and 8GB is just about the minimum but you also have to consider that the RAM is NOT 8GB just for gaming but also for everything else too. 16GB is generally more than adequate and 32GB is overkill - unless of course you are also doing a lot of background work too.
Admittedly, VRAM is included in the RAM Pool on a console and most GPU's have RAM built into them too. Its a different set up of course but we will have to see how things go over the next few years.
Microsoft have built in several features into the next gen Xbox consoles that can reduce the strain on RAM too. Sampler Feedback for example can just transfer a section of a texture - not the whole texture. Only transfer the part of the texture that is visible on screen to us. Often, only a small part of the texture is visible because that part was all that was needed to fill that polygon and/or because the majority of the object is hidden behind another. What sampler feedback will do is just call the section that is visible. Another option is DirectML which can be used to take 'lower' resolution textures, therefore smaller in file size and don't require the RAM or bandwidth that higher res textures do, and upscale them - like DLSS does essentially. Playground games have demonstrated this.
Point is, what we know and understand, based on 'current gen' experience does not necessarily scale linearly to next gen hardware. Its like GPU performance does not scale linearly with each new generation. 4.2TFlops in the Pro is not 'more' capable than 4TFlops in the Series S, the Series X GPU is not 2x more powerful than the XB1X despite the numerical TF numbers indicating a 2x difference.
I know that RAM and bandwidth is somewhat linear but the way data can be compressed, other techniques to manage what Data actually needs to be transferred (don't need to transfer a 'full' texture file if less than a quarter of it is being used) and using ML Upscaling to take smaller, lower res textures and upscale them all reduces the amount of RAM required...
Brilliant article and makes perfect sense 👍🏻
Pretty much the same system it just has less teraflops and don't play games in 4K
As much as I want to hold out for the Series X, I may cave and go this route. That $300 price tag is tantalizing and makes getting in on both next-gen consoles at launch very plausible. In addition, despite preferring physical media, most of my Xbox library has shifted over to digital in large part due to Game Pass.
@TheNewButler For me personally the resolution and frame rate is not that big a deal breaker (I mean as long as we are at a stable frame rate around 30 or above 😂). But if the game is also looking less sexy and running on lower settings too it might start to look like "too much compromise" in my book.
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