Just How Big Will the SSD Be?
There has been a lot of talk recently regarding the internal specs of both the Xbox Series X and the PS5. Without question, both systems look to be a massive step forward compared to the standard Xbox One and PS4 respectively.
Toting a custom-built CPU and GPU based on AMD’s ZEN 2 CPU and Navi GPU architecture respectively, there’s ample reason to be excited. Especially when it’s partnered up with high-bandwidth DDR6 RAM and that GPU chipset is supposedly able to outperform NVIDIA’s RTX 2070 graphics cards by 10%.
However, in my opinion, the most significant improvement will come thanks to the SSD. Solid State Drives don’t have any moving parts, and are essentially flash drives but with very high capacity. They also have insanely fast read/write speeds compared to traditional hard drives.
Implementing one of these, therefore, will reduce load times significantly, especially when Microsoft claims it’ll also use a ‘new generation of SSDs’ that the company will use ‘as virtual RAM.’
The issue is, just how big is the SSD going to be? SSD prices have been on the fall for the past two years, but they can still be pretty pricey.
In this current console generation, however, it became very clear that 500GB just wasn’t enough in a time where the likes of Elder Scrolls Online, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty can all take up close or over 100GB each.
As such, we’d be hoping the Xbox Series X packs in a fairly hefty SSD under the hood. 1TB at the very least sounds about right.
Whether or not that’s something that Microsoft can viably do, taking into account the various economic factors and the goal price point they’re aiming for remains to be seen. Guess we’ll just have to wait to find out.
