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Digital Foundry: Xbox Scorpio

Are people really expecting native 4k60/30 in lots of games from a OCRX480/Jaguar?.... This is going to be Neo all over again... I was hoping for a vega/rysen combo.
 

Akronis

Member
Your not reading my post right, I am saying racing game genre is NOT a good benchmark for gaming power.

Wake me up and lets talk when a console can do Witcher 3 at 60 FPS, thats all I want, looks like we will have to wait until next gen to get 60 FPS gaming on AAA open world games.

Scorpio looks good, but Sony could of dumped at Vortex cooler on the Pro and upped the specs last year, I have 2 Ps4 pro and 1080 vs 4K is nice but I want more frame rate power.

Good job MS but it looks like ZEN is just too big a beast for consoles in 2017

The timeline wasn't there for Ryzen. Open world games are going to suffer the most this gen due to weak CPUs, but there's still plenty eye candy to be had with both the PS4 Pro and Scorpio. They're both great for the money.
 

Elios83

Member
It's a PS4 Pro one year later.
Specs are as expected, 6 Teraflops, Jaguar derivative CPU, 12GB GDDR5 with 8 usable by developers. Dreams of Zen, more than 6TF, 4K60fps in most games etc were the same of the magical 5.5TF Pro.
I expect they will be able to deliver a decent chunk of games at native 4K but we'll still hear about non native techniques like checkerboarding as well in many games.
Now Microsoft has to deliver with price (because competition won't stay at 399$ for long) but most importantly games.
 

JeffG

Member
Yes, discussing price point of upcoming hardware is extremely odd and nerdy

Games magazines have never done this from the beginning

its not odd and nerdy. But it is easier to understand. The burger flippers and the children can wrap their heads around dollars.


Odd and Nerdy would be discussing why MS moved DirectX 12 to hardware

How do you solve a bottleneck issue?

You can throw more compute power at it, or you can reduce the load

MS did both


Thats cool Odd and Nerdy stuff. But it is being glossed over mainly because it is harder to understand. But thats ok. Not everyone gets it.
 

Bsigg12

Member
Someone break this down for me;



Wouldn't this mean a lot more than just 'a custom 2.3ghz' cpu?

They added the new DX12 hardware piece which allows them to do that. The CPU is custom @ 2.3ghz and rather than handling those draw calls itself, it sends it to the new processor that does it allowing the CPU to have resources go elsewhere.
 

oti

Banned
So the extra power and optimization is all for naught and no improvements will be seen?

yeah-ok.gif


Might as well just scrap it then, such a horrible design and all. I'll just go build a PC and ascend to the land of the master race just to be sure. It's the only way.

Funnily enough, that's basically what Spencer said after the announcement last E3.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/spen...ing-for-you-if-you-don-t-have-a-4k-tv/0168577

In hindsight this statement was clearly meant to persuade people to buy an Xbox One S last year.
 
Oh I'm not criticizing the CPU. It was the only logical choice for the system, and really the only option MS had was to upclock the Jag and put in some extras to help. There is nothing wrong with what they did.

I just think the people acting like it's a bigger improvement than it is are kinda silly.

Unless we know, in overall CPU workload percentage during rendering, how much CPU workload is saved by having draw calls processed by dedicated hardware outside the CPU, it's seems like an adjective battle where no one is right.
 

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
Someone break this down for me;



Wouldn't this mean a lot more than just 'a custom 2.3ghz' cpu?

Not really. Low level APIs have been taking care of this even before this generation started. This is exactly where the sort of 'coded to the metal' idea on consoles came from. It's not nothing of course but it's a small improvement over what already been done for some time. From an end user perspective it means very little
 

Milennia

Member
it's not a generational leap. it is designed to run games at xbox one quality or higher at native 4k.

next gen would hopefully be better than current gen fidelity + native 4k.

Native 4K at 60 is what next gen should be shooting for and if that's what this claims to be then that's what it claims to be.

My rig can barely get 30 at native 4K resolutions and it isn't a slouch and costs a good deal more than this thin will.
 

geordiemp

Member
Technically, Jaguars can't hit 2.3 GHz. There is probably some silicon changes.

Are you really sure ? I read somewhere the max speed of the Jag design is 2.4 GHz.

So, I always thought Jaguar for scorpio ......I am sure that I guessed correctly at 2.2 or 2.3 GHz JAG somewhere on a noticeboard, cant be arsed to look it up lol.

Edit, found it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puma_(microarchitecture)

AMD 6410 does JAG to 2.4 turbo...

Yup, can turbo charge to 2.4 Ghz if you have enough cooling, so 2.3 is about right, standard PUMA performance high clock.

Its a standard Jaguar with great cooling and some nice PR blurb IMO.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
From the article I dunno how much real world change this will have though

I'm still not sure how much impact going from thousands of cycles to 11 would have on 8 cores flipping at 2.4 billion times a second.

I just think we should keep in mind halving DX12 CPU use != freeing half the CPU.
 

spekkeh

Banned
Why? By any real metric I'd say it's a more mainstream architecture than XB1.
Being the only platform with a user-managed SRAM pool was much more of an optimization liability.

On the sole basis that it is the fourth console spec that they need to optimize for. They will always focus on XB1 Noob, like they will focus on PS4 Noob, that's where the market is.

Then going from PS4 Noob to PS4 Pro code is a rather minor difference, that demonstrably most pubs can't even be bothered with because it hardly improves their sales. Why would they put in the even bigger effort going from XB1 Noob to XB1 Pro optimization? It's something else if they 100% rely on middleware maybe, but that's not the devs that you want to see make the Scorpio sing.
 
Watched half the video... "Microsoft has delivered or over-delivered on every promise thus far." Sounds good. Still have to wait for a price for me, but I'm excited to have a real strong powerhouse console in the market.
 

catspit

Member
I think 'has to' is a bit negative. Microsoft now have the (much) more powerful console but Sony are still in charge.

Cut the price of the Pro and Slim PS4, make sure the release calendar is still tight, and the sales will keep on trucking on.

I am pretty sure the pro will get a price cut by the xmas holiday/Microsoft scorpio release
 
Native 4K at 60 is what next gen should be shooting for and if that's what this claims to be then that's what it claims to be.
this won't be running games that run at 900p30 on XB1 at native 4k60.

hte only game mentioned so far is forza which ran at 60fps on og xb1

also 60fps for most games will never ever be a target. next gen will target 4k30 w/ increased complexity
 

shanew21

Member
It's a PS4 Pro one year later.
Specs are as expected, 6 Teraflops, Jaguar derivative CPU, 12GB GDDR5 with 8 usable by developers. Dreams of Zen, more than 6TF, 4K60fps in most games etc were the same of the magical 5.5TF Pro.
I expect they will be able to deliver a decent chunk of games at native 4K but we'll still hear about non native techniques like checkerboarding as well in many games.
Now Microsoft has to deliver with price (because competition won't stay at 399$ for long) but most importantly games.

The bigger difference will be the additional techniques they are able to deploy after upping resolution. If it can run native 4K games but then up a lot of the settings to Ultra, that's a big leap.
 

Matt

Member
Unless we know, in overall CPU workload percentage during rendering, how much CPU workload is saved by having draw calls processed by dedicated hardware outside the CPU, it's seems like an adjective battle where no one is right.
Well, I kinda know.

It's helpful, absolutely. No doubt about that.
 

Akai__

Member
I also wonder why they increased the memory availability for the OS/Dashboard now that Snap/Pip are gone.

Video says for the 4K Dashboard, but I believe that this will be easily customizable, just like when they free'd up RAM reserved for Kinect.
 

BigPapi

Member
This is like that infamous Mattrick's line lol

you're not wrong though

Mattrick's line was made at the cusp of a new gen after spending 8+ years on the 360. Whereas scorpio is being launched as a mid gen refresh that is targeted toward the hardcore.

Replied without reading the whole thing lol
 
What is this?

Wow.

What exactly is "wow" worthy about the post ?
The only thing inaccurate is the part about ms killing Halo. Its not dead but its not the franchise it used to be either.
Lots of people share his views on forza and gears 4.
Alot of gamers did jump from the 360 to the ps4. Including myself.
Alot of people are going to be thinking, myself included, whether the graphic bump for scorpio will be worth the upgrade.
 

Ding II

Member
I don't know where people are getting this whole, "It's gonna be $500" thing. Nothing about this design sounds particularly expensive.


  • The SOC is the same size as the one in the ~$250 One S
  • It's gonna have 50% more memory than the (by then) ~$350 PS4 Pro. That's gonna cost some, clearly, but we're talking a few 10s of dollars, tops, compared to the Pro.
  • Cranking up clock rates on a GPU doesn't actually cost anything, once the R&D has been done. Sure, AMD is gonna want to get paid, but again, we're talking a few bucks. MS is saving money by going with a clock bump instead of allocating more die space to functional units.
  • Vapor chamber heat sinks and squirrel cage blowers are hardly leading edge tech.
  • Stuff like the UHD drive are already in the cheapo S
I'm just not seeing where all the expense is supposed to come from. ($250 more than the One S hardware?!) And of course, even if the Scorpio did cost $200 more than the S to build (it won't), there's no reason MS has to charge $200 more for it. The sudden insistence that console hardware needs to be profitable on launch day is the main reason why this generation has been so underwhelming compared to all(?) previous ones. One would hope that MS has learned that giving customers a little more than their money's worth is a good way to build loyalty and user base. Doing so led to their success with the 360. You'd hope they might consider doing it again.

Could MS charge $500 for this thing? Sure. They've done stupider things in recent memory. Should they? Hell no. Are they forced to? Not at all.
 

Seth

Member
I guess i need to wait for some comparison of multi platform games. Honestly, theres very little i like about the xbox one, and would be alright if i never got to play the exclusives - as they aren't that good imo. Ive owend the original xbox one and also have the S and really dont know why i bought them. Multi plats need to play significantly better, not just a bit better, if im even going to consider this thing.
 

Cpt_Cabal

Neo Member
That doesn't stop PC from having improved textures, why would it stop Scorpio?

You know, I find it odd that a forum like NeoGAF, that is supposed to cater to gamers who know their tech, seems to be rampant with people who can't grasp plain and obvious concepts like this.

Or are some on here being deliberately obtuse?
 
The difference this time is they will still have the Xbox One S which will do a good enough job at running all the new releases that come out for the Xbox brand and will be very reasonably priced. May even see an Xbox Scorpio mini released as a refresh and to keep the styling the same.

Then the Scorpio is the premium console for core gamers who want the best gaming experience. The market has been changing over the past few years with more focus on core gamers, premium hardware and e-sports. Rather than motion control, budget hardware and casual market.

See, I like this.

I don't play my Xbox One S a lot -- I mainly use it for 360 backlog and a couple of exclusives...and 4K Blurays. So having that is perfectly fine for me because it's a damn good media machine and it doesn't look like Scorpio will do much for me in that regard, so I'm fine with that.


This is definitely the "iPad Effect" -- cheaper model for the normal folk, more "hardcore" model for the "hardcore." You expand your audience with one, and get more sales from the other.

Specs look great, though. That Forza screenshot looks fantastic.
 
Nice hardware, REALLY nice hardware - but that's only half the battle. I can't realistically imagine Microsoft have been sitting on a gang of interesting exclusives though. Gotta have stuff to play on the damn thing.
 

Interfectum

Member
Any chance Sony can take a page or two from this announcement and start forcing downsampling/texture filtering on a system level through OS updates?
 

Maximus P

Member
I'm going to guess this will release at the same price the original xbox One came in at in the UK. So 429.99 with a game packed in. Probably fifa 18 or Forza 7.

Better start putting some money to one side.
 

Savantcore

Unconfirmed Member
I am pretty sure the pro will get a price cut by the xmas holiday/Microsoft scorpio release

Yeah I agree, I just don't think it's the 'desperate counter-attack' some people might believe it to be. Sony are in such a position that they are able to combat a whole new console with a simple price cut and still have a decent chance of coming out on top this holiday season.

It's gonna be a massive Battle of the Games at E3. How exciting.
 
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