Dirt 5's Load Times Described As 'Blisteringly Fast' On Xbox Series X

I absolutely hated the loading times on forza. So much I gave up on it. This is welcomed.

@AJDarkstar I was hoping some of the coverage would cover more of the loading times of 360 and OG Xbox games from various drives.

From the two clips I have seen the loading times for old games are already really low and it barely seems worth getting an SSD for the majority of them.

I'm considering a tiered system: - Internal and at some stage expansion card for Series X games, external sata SSD (2tb) for xbox one and the old mechanical drive for older games that I don't play much, if at all and the loading times will be low whatever they are stored on.

@AJDarkstar Yeah I've seen it. It's funny that without velocity architecture the results are very similar to a PC and no one seemed to see that coming.

But yeah, I used that video to design my tiered system of storage for XSX.

I just wish Sony had given the same information....

I'm curious what you guys will be using for external SATA. I still have my 8TB spinners loaded with X1 bulk storage, almost maxed out, but I'd consider adding an SSD if it works out much cheaper than the nvmes.

That's pretty cool to be down to such low numbers. According to the Ori director, the big differences between PS5 and XSX will come down mostly to the PS5 having shorter load times, around half the time, and the ability to effectively get rid of loading screens entirely, making "loading" a seamless thing, while the XSX will have better 4k performance overall, and hit 4k more often. Makes sense....so the choice of "do I get game X on PS5 or on XB (if you can stomach Sony's horrible library handling and business practices to buy a multiplat there at all) comes down to "do I want to play this game without the concept of any loading at all, or do I want to play this game with pretty good loading times and better running performance/res".

@NEStalgia I would be going with the same drive that Richard Leadbetter used in the Digital Foundry video.

Because any software that isn't velocity architecture ready gets bottlenecked anyway, there is little reason to use an external NVMe drive for gaming and a sata drive is much better value in general.

This one is an internal drive but it makes no difference with SSDs you just need a decent USB 3.1 to sata cable for it: -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089R1C9HV/?coliid=IBVMAL80ECB07&colid=1F1VICJCUT7IY&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

@NEStalgia if I didn't dislike the practices of Sony I'd probably go with the shorter loading times. Well that and don't like the Sony controller.

@AJDarkstar It may still not give as much of a boost as you hope on the faster USB ports though. Unless Sony have pulled some wizardry to allow direct access to the storage - i.e. what the native setup is in PS5 and the velocity architecture is in XSX - then the external NVMe will bottleneck anyway.

I don't expect to see any real difference in the load times on back compat games on PS5 NVMe or not.

@AJDarkstar It's not just the USB port. The reason the internal drive of the XSX is no faster than than the external one with backwards compatibility is because they don't use velocity architecture which as I understand it effectively gives the GPU direct access to the SSD.

Without that direct access you get limited to not much more than the speed of a sata drive which is why you see those limits on PC too with internal NVMe drives.

This video gives a good idea of what I'm talking about: -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA&ab_channel=LinusTechTips

@Medic_Alert I was so hyped for backward compatible games and then this digital foundry video disappointed me. I'm hoping the microsoft games like sea of thieves and forza can get series updates which includes load times. Otherwise these consoles might be able to play them but I'll likely have very little interest in revisiting them.

@AJDarkstar oh I hope I'm wrong and the PS5 can provide a real difference across the board.

I think it is a really interesting piece of engineering in lots of ways and while I think MS have taken a more sensible approach to next gen I am more excited to see how good the PS5 is!

@sixrings I get that too. I think there has been a little over promising with load times probably due to marketing.

I mean quick resume is a great example. It is an OK feature and it is obviously quicker to change games but it is no where near instantaneous also if you play physical discs it doesn't work in any meaningful way at all because you still need to swap the disc.

But yes I was pretty underwhelmed too all told.

@AJDarkstar the vapour chamber and the wide open top to bottom air flow is very simple and easy in my view and I admire the simplicity in design and while I think Sony's cooling is interesting I do think it is over engineered. It is a very aggressive cooling solution and I wonder if this may have been a reaction to problems in early development or just a reaction to the Pro. For the record I'm sure it works well now.

We only have MS' numbers for reference but they are saying it cools quickly and has been tested in 'oven rooms'.

I don't have any concerns about either to be honest.

@AJDarkstar @Medic_Alert If that conversation with those 2 devs on PS that you and I have been involved in is anything to go by, yeah, Sony Still went full overkill with the cooling (not a bad thing necessarily) but much of it is based on the idea that the PS5 remains in that "overclocked" mode basically permanently and thus will throw some serious heat it needs to expel fast, but that the cooling is designed to keep it expelling that heat.

But I do think it's overengineered, and if they were going with the expense of liquid metal and an absurd amount of raw copper by weight, why didn't they just use a vapour chamber rather than trying to get an equivalent performance from raw copper? It's not a problem for users but it just makes me wonder "why?" Unless the idea was covering as much surface area as possible to get that whole IO unit under the sink. They also may simply not have been as willing to change their form factor as radically as MS did with the cube, and that was the compromise.

The conversation with those guys has been very interesting. On one hand they're very clearly grizzled old veterans in the industry, not your typical just-out-of-school with a head full of partial knowledge, so what they say should be very reliable. OTOH, they obviously are more involved in the Sony side of projects and thus can't really offer much of an insight from the MS implementer perspective of advantages on this side, so everything ends up becoming a pro for Sony.

The gist I'm overall getting is that devs looove PS5 and their SDK and the rapid memory access from the SSD. And I can see where a Sony centric project would be great with that. What I'm less sure of is how that translates from a Windows project that's already using DX12. At best, XSX just ports right over from Windows without significant effort, while PS5 will be easy to make a few adjustments and use its strengths as well. At worst PS5 is Cell reborn and nothing will use its strengths unless it's a Sony target project. And at REALLY worst, PS5 will be seen as the mass market choice and everything will be designed around its strengths so that XSX suffers in comparison and PC hardware will have to go overblown like it's running Crysis to keep up.

@AJDarkstar I'm not sure if it would cost that much less than a vapor chamber. Vapor chambers cost a lot to produce, but copper has become pretty price as a metal and is moving into semi-precious status. If that thing is really several pounds of copper per unit, I can't imagine there's a cost savings. If not a loss compared to a custom vapor chamber. It's a really, really odd choice. Or just an example of "We didn't invent it here Syndrome"

Between the OC GPU and the custom IO, I can't imagine the exhaust temps aren't somewhat exceptional. MS has said the XSX isn't much different from 1X, which is notably warm as well. But I do wonder how hot that PS5 exhaust will be. Can't be worse than my old FX series nVidia cards with the leaf blower fans. But I'm a bit worried about those things blowing at the front of my BD player and Roku

@AJDarkstar technically in a closed system, positive vs negative displacement shouldn't have a difference. At least not at the distances involved. Running a ventilation duct 2600ft is a little different with the bends, restrictions, and outlets factoring in (or requiring boosters.). But at under a foot, it really shouldn't matter at all, and probably had more to do with where space is available and shielding emi from the motor from various parts.

Do we have any kind if idea what wattage these things draw? That would mostly tell us where the thermals would be. I'm somewhat frightened to find out.

@AJDarkstar not so bad then. My threshold is the 400w+ my pcs drew.

Supposedly ps5 may run full clocks most of the time as well. Maybe more power efficient depending on what they're doing with variable clocks, but it sounds like
default is full speed, slowing only if it's more idle.

I think they did say standby consumes less power. That's part of the quick resume. It shouldn't need to keep vram active anymore since save states are written to disk.