Xbox Reveals Xbox Velocity Architecture That Will Greatly Improve Game Performance
Xbox has released some new information about the upcoming Xbox Series X that may seal the deal for many gamers. The new information is about the Xbox Velocity Architecture which is comprised of the Custom NVME SSD, the dedicated hardware-accelerated decompression, the DirectStorage API, and the sampler feedback streaming. IGN got to interview Jason Ronald, who really broke down what a lot of this means.
The SSD is designed to allow 40x the I/O throughput, but sets a minimum level of performance to make sure things don’t lag too much. The idea is to make sure performance is consistent and fast. They want to move assets from the SSD to memory (RAM) for the optimal performance.
The decompression is handled by the industry standard LZ decompressor as well as a proprietary algorithm all about decompressing texture data. This potentially leads to smaller download sizes, meaning your storage goes farther, and of course, smaller files means shorter download times.
This means you can possibly get to playing your new games quicker. The DirectStorage API is a new part of the DirectX family that will give developers control over how the I/O tasks are assigned and prioritized. This can be translated to virtually no load times, faster fast travel, and more. Finally, the sampler feedback streaming will help control which textures are loaded when. This helps reduce the I/O load and acts as a memory multiplier.
In the end, all of this translates to overall better game performance and more possibilities for game developers. I’m really interested to see all of this in actual hands-on experiences and not just simply the word of developers, but it is good to learn more and more about what to expect. What do you think of the new Xbox Velocity Architecture?