I think this whole issue shouldn't exist in the first place.
I do understand that full voice over and 4k ready textures comes at a price but some devs are getting lazy and some games are just ridiculous.
We're talking about handhelds like Steam Deck. Even if I plug it in as a console it won't have the juice to run at full resolution.
When I want to quickly grab an episode of a tv series to watch on my mobile I'll be super happy with 300mb 720p version. I don't need a 50gb rip in 4k in HDR with Atmos sound. Same option should be available for games.
I think many would be amazed at how the space used on a game today is broken down in space usage. Most will be along the lines of cut scenes, graphics, audio......library and librarys galore...logic code of the program that is unique to the game and finally some text file hidden away.
But talking your AAA kind of titles that seem to be the norm, not your chess games, though even then, graphics sure has gained space in those programs. Though I'm sure somebody active in the industry could paint a better picture.
Anybody active in the industry able to offer or point to better breakdown?
I had “Sargon” (chess game) on cassette tape for the Apple 2. Slow load times though it took very little memory. (The Apple 2 typically had 64kb of ram)
Unless you're suggesting that games fit into memory completely, why would you not want your storage to be as high throughput and low latency as possible even for reduced texture sizes?
Yeah, I am using my Deck with 512GB sdcard and could never tell it is actually running from sdcard. It does a lot of game updates and always finishes those in reasonable time, at least for me. That card is going strong with all the writes going on on steam deck
The Verge reports that a Chinese company called Biwin has developed the "Mini SSD," a 15 by 17 mm-thick card that supports read speeds of up to 3,700MB per second due to a two-lane PCI Express 4.0 interface.
That size obviously doesn't parse, so it's hard to tell. It's how thick, again? I guess they just mean "15x17x1 mm" but somehow edited the 1 out and ... I don't know.
I can see the needed use case for portable devices. But I also get the feeling this shrinking down of physical volume for storage that's going to be generally available for A tier games (like on a steamdeck) is a status quo setting us back to 2010 levels of actual storage available. Again! Just when normal desktop computer SSD were finally rising in actual capacity beyond 2TB. And right when SSD storage is hitting the wall with no more multi-level cell improvements available.
We already have this though. SD Express, which allows SD cards to actually protocol switch to one lane PCI-E NVME. It's been part of the spec officially since 2018, and an enhancement slightly later to add more pins to allow a second lane.
And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any real controller is going to cook.
Unfortunately the microSD form factor of SD Express does not seem to support more than one lane, due to a lack of physical pins compared to full-sized SD Express cards (which can have a third row, i.e. one extra on top of UHS-2 cards).
Despite the title of the article, this seems useful in phones or laptops to me.
Even if not user replaceable without opening the device it would make it possible to have replaceable drives at a tiny fraction of the current minimum size.
Even just for relatability compared to soldered on storage it would be a plus.
I was so amazed when I held the Microdrive harddisk in my hands for the first time. And later the first iPod that was made possible with a Microdrive. These things lead to new gadget categories, not only making existing ones better.
This is obviously the direction of persistent storage: SD meets SSD. Technological innovations are reliably predictable at this relatively high level. If you didn't see it coming, better get in quick before everyone else catches on!
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] threadI think this whole issue shouldn't exist in the first place.
I do understand that full voice over and 4k ready textures comes at a price but some devs are getting lazy and some games are just ridiculous.
We're talking about handhelds like Steam Deck. Even if I plug it in as a console it won't have the juice to run at full resolution.
When I want to quickly grab an episode of a tv series to watch on my mobile I'll be super happy with 300mb 720p version. I don't need a 50gb rip in 4k in HDR with Atmos sound. Same option should be available for games.
But talking your AAA kind of titles that seem to be the norm, not your chess games, though even then, graphics sure has gained space in those programs. Though I'm sure somebody active in the industry could paint a better picture.
Anybody active in the industry able to offer or point to better breakdown?
We had a lot of great games even when storage was spinning rust.
So this is basically a smaller NVMe SSD?
Yes, but so is microSD Express, which already has a significant shipped base of supporting devices including the Nintendo Switch 2!
And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any real controller is going to cook.
Even if not user replaceable without opening the device it would make it possible to have replaceable drives at a tiny fraction of the current minimum size.
Even just for relatability compared to soldered on storage it would be a plus.