500GB + External drive vs 1TB Xbox One?

[monkeyboy311]

I am shopping for a Xbox One. I've read several comments on other forums that its better to buy a 500GB and an external USB 3 drive vs paying more for the 1TB Xbox One. The reasons are lower cost and the external drive via USB 3 is faster than the internal hard drive. Is it really better using an external drive? Seems like the internal drive would be faster, plus less resource intensive. USB is CPU dependent, correct?

I'm hoping the more technical community we have here can shed some light on this.

TIA

 

[cmdrdredd]

It works, as for being better I've heard it's faster but cannot measure it.

 

[Anteaus]

Like the PS4, the XB1 only has SATA II for internal use. SATA II is limited to 3Gb/s where USB 3.0 is limited to 5Gb/s. It might sound contradictory to prefer an external versus internal drive, but in this case you actually do get better performance...as long as you are using a USB 3.0 drive!

Here are some links

http://gearnuke.com/xbox-one-external-hdd-load-times-comparison-show-close-50-improvement/#

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/05...storage-can-improve-loading-times-with-games/

 

[Lil Frier]

It's probably not a majorly noticeable time difference, IMO. You could also consider the 1 TB SSHD in the Elite bundle for $500, if you're that into it. Me, I'd go with the 1-TB model and not worry about having a cleared-up spot for the external and knocking it over. However, if you're one to take games with you a lot, an external might be perfect.

Of course, you can also attach an external to the 1-TB model, if it really comes to it. I'm down to about 15 GB free on my 500-GB model, after installing the Siege and NFS betas, which obviously won't hang around on my console too long (Siege ends Sunday, NFS ends Monday). I could also stand to purge Advanced Warfare from my drive, but I'm a packrat. If you're on a data cap or hate having to long-term delete things, I'd just start with the 1-TB console and add an external drive later.

 

[Danno21]

IGN did benchmarks with external drives a while ago here: IGN.

I have a 3TB Western Digital external on my Xbox One and noticed Forza loads a little faster than before. Not to mention, going from 500GB to 3.5TB is pretty nice!

 

[TeknoBug]

A 7200rpm external HDD will be a fair bit faster than the internal drive with that XB1.

The PS4 has the same thing on the internal, a SSD would just be a waste in there as it isn't any faster than a 7200rpm drive due to the SATA limitation.

 

[smackababy]

What 7200 rpm drive saturates sata 2?

 

[cmdrdredd]

My 500GB drive is full and my external is a 500GB which is half full (ripped from ps4 when I upgraded to 1TB)

 

[Fulle]

SATA II caps out at 300MB/s, but and most SSDs have speeds rated over that, so there's the assumption that the big bottleneck is the controller, but it's actually CPU speed.

When playing on a PC, if my CPU is maxed to 100%, the HDD performance plummet. I've seen less than 80MB/s under these conditions sometimes.

So basically, if you're loading a map on your PS4 or XBO, and it takes 50 seconds on a HDD, and 45 seconds on a SSD, it's not because of SATA II, its mostly because of the stupid Jaguar cores. If that wasn't the case, upgrading to a SSD from a regular HDD would be what? A jump from like 100-160MB/s read speeds to 250-300MB/s read speed. Still twice as fast.... but you don't get twice the half the load times, because the bottleneck is actually the CPU.

Given that CPU bottleneck, SATA III wouldn't help much with the XBO and PS4 performance.

 

[monkeyboy311]

SATA II caps out at 300MB/s, but and most SSDs have speeds rated over that, so there's the assumption that the big bottleneck is the controller, but it's actually CPU speed.

When playing on a PC, if my CPU is maxed to 100%, the HDD performance plummet. I've seen less than 80MB/s under these conditions sometimes.

So basically, if you're loading a map on your PS4 or XBO, and it takes 50 seconds on a HDD, and 45 seconds on a SSD, it's not because of SATA II, its mostly because of the stupid Jaguar cores. If that wasn't the case, upgrading to a SSD from a regular HDD would be what? A jump from like 100-160MB/s read speeds to 250-300MB/s read speed. Still twice as fast.... but you don't get twice the half the load times, because the bottleneck is actually the CPU.

Given that CPU bottleneck, SATA III wouldn't help much with the XBO and PS4 performance.

Interesting. Isn't USB cpu dependent? If so, wouldn't an external USB drive consume more resources?

I found a great deal, so I ended up buying a 1TB Forza bundle.