News Xbox Series X|S Supports USB 3.0 Drives 128GB and Greater

Even an SSD USB 3.0 drive should be plenty fast enough for XBSX optimizations for XB1 games if all the concern is about is storage performance. So I'm guessing the system is making a blanket assumption that all USB 3.0 storage drives are only as good as the XB1 internal drive.

The loading time chart also seems kind of superfluous and doesn't really explain why USB 3.0 storage is insufficient.
 

fball922

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Even an SSD USB 3.0 drive should be plenty fast enough for XBSX optimizations for XB1 games if all the concern is about is storage performance. So I'm guessing the system is making a blanket assumption that all USB 3.0 storage drives are only as good as the XB1 internal drive.

The loading time chart also seems kind of superfluous and doesn't really explain why USB 3.0 storage is insufficient.
My best guess is that it is something with the Velocity Architecture and how DirectStorage communicates at a lower level with the SSD that isn't (yet?) possible over USB. There are other factors at play here too, such as the fact that the USB drive could be anything, where poor performance (from random IO or throughput perspective) would be a problem. SATA in particular would be a problem as it would limit throughput to ~450-500MBps, much much slower than NVMe/PCIe 4.0. Additionally, you introduce a SATA/M.2/PCIe to USB bridge chip that will further hurt performance.
 
My best guess is that it is something with the Velocity Architecture and how DirectStorage communicates at a lower level with the SSD that isn't (yet?) possible over USB. There are other factors at play here too, such as the fact that the USB drive could be anything, where poor performance (from random IO or throughput perspective) would be a problem. SATA in particular would be a problem as it would limit throughput to ~450-500MBps, much much slower than NVMe/PCIe 4.0. Additionally, you introduce a SATA/M.2/PCIe to USB bridge chip that will further hurt performance.
I believe they only let you use external storage for XB1 games, which aren't designed around the Velocity Architecture. The only thing that would improve putting an XB1 game on an SSD meant for XBSX is just faster loading performance. If anything, it's likely a shortcoming of USB abstracting storage to the point where it just looks like a blob of storage.
 

fball922

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I believe they only let you use external storage for XB1 games, which aren't designed around the Velocity Architecture. The only thing that would improve putting an XB1 game on an SSD meant for XBSX is just faster loading performance. If anything, it's likely a shortcoming of USB abstracting storage to the point where it just looks like a blob of storage.
Yeah that's what I was getting at. The new games are designed to use DirectStorage, thus need to be on the internal drive. This guarantees to the developers that the DirectStorage API will work as expected, and guarantees the customer that they are getting the advertised speeds.
 
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samopa

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In the last paragraph :

"The Xbox Series X|S next-generation consoles will launch on November 10th, 2020. The Xbox Series X is priced at $499 and includes a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD, while the Xbox Series X is priced at $299 and includes a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD."

So there will be 2 version of XBox Series X ? One that has 1 TB drive and the other only has 512TB drive ?
 

keithdmitchell

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In the last paragraph :

"The Xbox Series X|S next-generation consoles will launch on November 10th, 2020. The Xbox Series X is priced at $499 and includes a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD, while the Xbox Series X is priced at $299 and includes a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD."

So there will be 2 version of XBox Series X ? One that has 1 TB drive and the other only has 512TB drive ?

No, there's just one version of each, that was a typo that was corrected.
 
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I already have a 1tb Crucial p5 NVME in an usb enclosure on my series x and it is fantastic for last gen games

SAta 6 is enough to get max out of usb interface though.