Digital Foundry: Xbox Scorpio

Important to note that Forza 6 4k demo is not only running it at 60fps, but at a GPU load range of anything between 50-70%. That's crazy for something that was ported in 2 days with almost no optimisation other than art assets. There's so much headway for those devs to play with, assuming other game engines scale similarly.
 
I jokingly said they should call the Scorpio the Xbox One Remastered, but lo and behold, it can literally remaster Xbox One games. lol
 
Zvonimir Boban said:
Oh my sweet child, Forza doesn't drop frames.

The start of the race when all the cars are bunched together like that is the most demanding part of a race as well, if you watch the video he says that the GPU use actually dropped to around 50-55% at times during the race.
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I thought he said other parts were more demanding and it reached 70-80% ?
 
Ash735 said:
It's essentially what Sony did for the Pro except Microsoft FIXED all the complaints:

- Has a 4k Blu-ray drive
- ALL Games will supersample if using 1080p
- Forced 16x AF eliminates the crappy texture filtering
- It applies these fixes to older games and even Xbox 360 games
- 12GB RAM with 4GB reserved for OS, meaning games get a nice 8GB to play with

If they can get it out for the same price as a Ps4 Pro, Microsoft can eat that loss for a while to get this machine out there.
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All of this stuff is genuinely terrific. It's super thoughtful and Sony should have put more thought into implementation with the Pro. No way this winds up the same price as the Pro unless MS is just burning cash though. Pro will be a year older and with weaker tech. It's gonna get a price drop.
 
Most disappointing thing that I did not expect, and it's not the evolved Jaguar CPU, it's that the GPU isn't based on Vega. It's Polaris (with some semi-custom stuff) much like PS4 Pro.

Yes, it's got 4 more CUs and much higher clockspeed, giving it 6TF vs PS4 Pro's 4.2TF.
 
Lime said:
The line between tech analysis and advertising is pretty blurry

Dark10x, I hope you guys are having an internal discussion about the implications of this reveal. Just for future analysis.
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I didn't see anything outside of tech talk in the video. Sure we saw the same thing?
 
Sgt. Kabukiman said:
It's really weird to see Digital Foundry doing this.
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I agree. Im guessing a commercial arrangement for the excluive was a certain amount of coverage, and certain statements being made.

Which is very not DF, but you cant really turn down an advanced under the hood look of a new machine
 
I kinda still hope microsoft does a separate reveal for the scorpio before E3. I dont want them to spend a good chunk of the conference just talking about that and not games
 
Baleoce said:
Important to note that Forza 6 4k demo is not only running it at 60fps. But at a GPU load range of anything between 50-70%. That's crazy for something that was ported in 2 days with almost no optimisation other than art assets. There's so much headway for those devs to play with, assuming other game engines scale similarly.
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They added in 4k assets. Not optimized them.

This isn't what I expected but at the same time I understand it and the approach they went makes sense. It's not just regular parts overclocked they made changes to address bottlenecks and improve performance beyond a stock part. I definately see it hitting 399 while be way more powerful than we all think.
 
Looks really good, but the issue with MS is the games imo. If they can bring some decent games out for it I might be interested.
 
RedSparrows said:
In other news, given the vast majority of console buyers don't buy the vast majority of exclusive games other than big tentpole things (hello 1 million Nier sales, hello 50+ million PS4s), MS could score a lot without investing one iota in any new exclusive games by marketing Scorpio as a mega powerful, and not mega expensive, OMG NOO EXPERIENZ thing.
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The downlplay of sales in this post is just as bad as the downplay of specs in this thread.
 
SG-17 said:
Is Microsoft still releasing their exclusives on PC?
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They backtracked on the statement that every title will also be a Play Anywhere title. Plus Phil Spencer said that there will be PC exclusives and Xbox exclusives, so no, not all games will be.
 
UraMallas said:
I don't understand something and maybe someone more techy can help me out.

DF says that because DX12 is (built in?) that they will be able to something (not sure the benefit) in 10 to 12 processed instead of 1000s. What does that mean and how will it affect my games? The presenter seemed pretty impressed by how they did it so I'd like a little more info on it.
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Just means the CPU isn't being used as much for anything where it has to the tell the GPU to-do things.

This cuts a lot of the actual workload down from the CPU so you can squeeze more into it.

In-terms of games, they can fix more CPU specific tasks on there. It most probably won't result in 30fps games being 60fps, but will remove any dips from 30fps.

Hope that helps :)
 
iswasdoes said:
I agree. Im guessing a commercial arrangement for the excluive was a certain amount of coverage, and certain statements being made.

Which is very not DF, but you cant really turn down an advanced under the hood look of a new machine
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This is hardcore.... Lolol
 
Widge said:
From the article on the topic of third party titles:



More involved = more effort.
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Yeah, but in this case he's talking about porting these games to 4k. I mean, yeah, it will depend on the developers, how well their games are optmized and stuff like that. But at least we can say 1080p and 60fps seems easily achievable, generally speaking, for most current gen games.
 
The question is if specs were the reason people didnt buy the X1? Sony first party content in my mind has eclipsed anything Microsoft is churning out.
 
Dehnus said:
It's neither.

But Sony Fanboys will say it's Jaguar.
And MS fanboys will say it's Zen based.
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It might not be 'Jaguar' but it's clearly a derivative of it. 8 Zen cores would be far too large, and you can't just scale them down... CPU architectures don't work like that.
 
Zombie James said:
My initial thoughts:

- Microsoft going all-out is nice to see.
- 4K60 video capture. Oh yeah.
- I really like the sound of MS' analysis methods and customizations.
- Full 8GB available for games is huge.
- Downsampling across the board for 1080p sets is huge.
- Sounds like it's going to run hot as hell.

My biggest concern hardware-wise now is actually pricing. Before the reveal, I was pretty sure they'd be able to hit $399 but now I'm not so sure. It's a step up from the PS4 Pro in literally every way, not just one or two, and their thermal solution doesn't sound cheap, either.

If anything, if MS do somehow manage to hit $399, the PS4 Pro can't stay at that price without getting slaughtered.
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It is also a year after PS4Pro. I mean if Scorpio came out Nov16, i will have blow my load too. But 12 months is nothing special in your list.
Heck vapor chamber is no big deal too. Nvidia/Amd has been using it in their reference gpu. Its as exciting as 'water-cooling' in Samsung phone
For something special in console cooling, check out how Sony cooled their phat PS3. Btw Sony phones had 'watercooling' years before Samsung too.
 
Seeing a lot of speculation based on price, and I definitely agree with DF that it "seems" like a $499 machine. I'm really curious to see what price Microsoft will actually decide on though. $399 seems like they'd be taking a loss on each unit sold, but it would make them extremely competitive.

All that being said, I'm going in expecting $449 - $499 now. Microsoft has proven with the Surface line that they don't mind pricing higher than their competition if they feel the value is there. I'd love to proven wrong though!
 
OsirisBlack said:
gpu, uhd Blu ray,fancy for console cooling system and custom chip set. It's not going to be 399 and 499 is wishful thinking. There is a reason they keep using the term ENTHUSIAST when talking about the price point.either way it looks impressive on paper. One good exclusive that I can't play on my PC and I'm in
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nah the console really does not have any expensive stuff build in.
360mm² die only on a very mature 16nm FF process 2 years down the road after first mass production
12GB of cheap 6.8Gbit/s GDDR5 Ram (lower clocked than PS4 Pro)

that leaves the cooling and custom motherboard power supply for each individual chip


i can assure you, that this console will not be more than $499 with 100% certainty

Dehnus said:
It's neither.

But Sony Fanboys will say it's Jaguar.
And MS fanboys will say it's Zen based.
Click to expand...

what?
the CPU is based on the Jaguar microarchitecture. period
there is nothing more to discuss.
 
I like how Digital Foundry expects it to be $499 and almost everyone screams that they don't know shit and this is confirmation it will be $399.
The guys who actually saw the machine and saw it running think is $499 but they don't know nothing.
 
Having watched the video, the sheer amount of customisation is incredible and how they used then mid gen to see where the bottle necks happen and target them is smart
 
Jumeira said:
Lots of people in denial, they're willingly distorting facts to themselves and ignoring info by experts as to why this is a huge step up from Pro (and a huge step up for console architecture in general)
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Laymen won't recognize which one is a Scorpio screen if you compare it with a PS4 Pro screen. That's why MS got DF on the board to have them explain what's nice about Scorpio because games won't tell the difference. It's just an overclocked PS4 Pro and 1.5 step up.
 
Jumeira said:
Lots of people in denial, they're willingly distorting facts to themselves and ignoring info by experts as to why this is a huge step up from Pro (and a huge step up for console architecture in general)
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I agree. And yeah, Scorpio really does seem extremely impressive and I think it'll do well with its target audience(like the elite controller does). There is a market for premium, and the techniques MS use on Scorpio are a huge step up indeed.

I still remember people saying Scorpio wont ever hit 4K at all, and will be $800-$1000 lmao xD
 
Baleoce said:
Important to note that Forza 6 4k demo is not only running it at 60fps. But at a GPU load range of anything between 50-70%. That's crazy for something that was ported in 2 days with almost no optimisation other than art assets. There's so much headway for those devs to play with, assuming other game engines scale similarly.
Click to expand...

Games are going to look incredible and run like butter. They designed the entire system around this sort of optimization.
 
AmyS said:
Most disappointing thing that I did not expect, and it's not the evolved Jaguar CPU, it's that the GPU isn't based on Vega. It's Polaris (with some semi-custom stuff) much like PS4 Pro.

Yes, it's got 4 more CUs and much higher clockspeed, giving it 6TF vs PS4 Pro's 4.2TF.
Click to expand...

I'm also not sure why people expected Vega either.
 
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