Yup, there is no special customization and no secret sauce. When it comes to companies making noteworthy hardware customizations in the console space, that usually comes from Sony as they are a hardware company.
In this thread, we already have people claiming that the Scorpio is more powerful than the gtx 1080, lol. It's been really embarrassing coverage from digital foundry. Let Microsoft advertise their products by themselves. What we don't need is df trying to pass a paid ad as fact. I can't till the die shots come out from chip works.
Look, the Scorpio looks to be a fantastic piece of kit for a mid gen upgrade but it's just an rx480 and an overclocked jaguar. It's not more powerful than a 1080 or 1070 and once third party games drop, it'll be clear for everyone to see.
All I've seen today is the same pr nonsense we've seen with other consoles. Fp16, huma, power of the cloud, dx12 patch, and now it's a special dx12 co processor which is just a regular command processor. It's just sad and annoying.
Here is my issue with your perspective on this...
First off, i have not seen anyone comparing the 8 custome x86 cores of Scorpio to a GTX 1080. What people are comparing is the Scorpio's architecture as a whole to a GTX 1080, which any normal person who understands console customization would and should do.
Console optimization is fundamentally better than PC optimization and they naturally ARE, because they have access to lower level, more close-to-the-metal graphics APIs than are available on the PC, and this is fact.
The problem with PC's is that there's a billion different configurations that each PC can have, and the time to optimize for every possible configuration is nowhere near worth it, so you stick to generic, higher-level APIs. Yes, you get what you pay for, but not everything is working in tandem as with a highly developed worked out console. This is why consoles such as Xbox One, which was considered underpowered in 2013, is STILL in 2017 holding up and making games look competitive compared to high powered graphic cards.
With consoles, time allows greater optimizations, but developing for only one set of hardware, right from the very start, makes the process easier, much easier, which allows the developer to get much MUCH more out of the architecture then if trying to start from constant scratch.
It's obvious to me that you are looking at it as a piece by piece basis, you say about Scorpio... "it's just an rx480 and an overclocked jaguar. It's not more powerful than a 1080 or 1070 and once third party games drop, it'll be clear for everyone to see".
If Scorpio was a PC, you would be correct, but you are far from it, the Scorpio is it's own customized monster!
I been through this with the Saturn, the original Playstation, Dreamcast, ect, the list goes on. Every console back then was compared to $4000 Arcade architecture. The original PS proved that if you put your chips together correctly, you can get what you want out your system. MK3 was ARCADE PERFECT when it launched in OCT of 1995 on PS. The MIDWAY arcade board Tech alone to own would cost THOUSANDS, Sony accomplished this at a price of $299!!! This is where consoles kick ass!!! Fact is there is always someone out there who will try to downplay masterful architecture simply because they look at things from a small minded window. And this again, is fact.