SlipperyMoose
Member
This is the year I pickup an OLED T.V. and Scorpio. Boy am I excited to game this year!
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Digital Foundry: Xbox Scorpio
- Thread starter LelouchZero
- Start date
Man I wish I could buy a new tv this year. I'll have to work with 1080p for a while, hope that super sampling looks good.
Brutal Deluxe
Member
Probably too early but anyone know if Scorpio would get the most out of an external ssd?
Scorpio may have an easily switchable drive, but I'm guessing they'll just continue to support external.
You would get whatever USB 3.0 can throughput. My external drives on OG X1 are much faster than the internal drive.
So after reading a bit more about Scorpio I have a question - a DF article mentions that Scorpio will improve the performance of every Xbox One game. Does that mean that every single Xbox One game is getting a day one patch for Scorpio? If not, what is Scorpio doing differently than the PS4 Pro that would allow you to pop in a game and get a performance boost without needing a specific patch for the game?
BleedOrange
Banned
@Albert, when is the Gamasutra development deep-dive releasing?
Brutal Deluxe
Member
Thanks, I have an external now but was contemplating an ssd if I'd get a real benefit from it. Didn't realise USB 3.0 had been confirmed
I highly doubt the internal drive is changeable. They say they have customized the internal to be better suited for 4K textures and as a result loading games in general being faster so I would expect them to keep that sealed in.
There is no base mode for the Scorpio like there is for the Pro. All games get forced to 16x AF and the engines can use as much of the power they need to hit whatever the game was designed for. That will be without a patch.
Roland Deschain
Member
Any idea if it will release in Europe at around the same time as the US?
I would hope they wouldn't make that mistake again.
arhra
Member
PS4 Pro deliberately cripples itself when running games that don't explicitly support it, in order to ensure compatibility, and the hardware was designed in such a way as to make that easy (it essentially just turns off half the GPU and reduces the clockspeeds of everything to match the old hardware). Boost Mode partially undoes that (from the performance changes that people have observed, it seems that it bumps the clocks back up to Pro levels, but still leaves half the GPU disabled, IIRC), allowing better performance in some unpatched games, but at the user's own risk (IE, if you find something that breaks with Boost Mode, you just have to disable it).
Since Scorpio is a more dramatic departure from the original XB1 architecture (most importantly, no ESRAM), they couldn't take that approach if they wanted to, so they're instead just allowing old games full access to the hardware (and forcing certain things at the hardware level, such as improved texture filtering), testing every game themselves to make sure they don't break, and applying targeted tweaks in cases where they find stuff that does (they mentioned that they may have to dial back the increased texture filtering in a few cases, for example).
Samurai G0SU
Member
Basically it will brute force better performance overall and have 16x AF applied on a system level.
examples:
if a game was 30fps and dropped a few times on the xbox one, the scorpio - in theory- should hold the 30 fps mark without any drops.
if a game has a dynamic resolution that scales up to 1080p, but it drops and stays around 900p on the xbox one the scorpio should have the resolution pretty much at max the whole time.
If a game has a line about 50 feet in front of you where textures get blurry (ground, trees, etc) then the scorpio will actually apply a higher grade of filtering that will be up to 16x. essentially that line should be moved way further away from you where you shouldn't notice.
these are for games that do not have a scorpio patch. scorpio patches are up the developer and how they see fit on using the additional power.
Development pattern. Microsoft is a software driven company so they start on xbox one doing what they do with PC for many years. You dont need a patch every card you buy..
PowerThroughLov
Member
Microsoft designed the entire Xbox one ecosystem as a VM - Virtual Machine. The Xbox one, the dashboard, the games etc all run in a virtual environment. This allows Microsoft to abstract all hardware from software - the games are talking to the virtualized hardware, not the physical hardware. The physical hardware is addressed by the VM.
This means many things that are pretty cool.
1. They can update the hardware ( potentially even change hardware vendors!) Without breaking compatibility (they just have to make sure all previously supported system calls are properly wrapped).
2. They can impose "global" changes to the VM. I tell the VM to always supersample, regardless of what the game is programmed to do.
This allows Microsoft to do things like this. It's a super hard, but super advantagous way to design a ecosystem.
Sony codes to the metal, like previous consoles. They could still potentially force a system update that globally enforced a supersample policy at the system level I suppose, but it's much harder for them to ensure it works with all games.
From what I understood they are just doing it similar to drivers on the PC where you can turn 16x AF on in any game.
tiredheadcrab
Member
This is good news. It be nice to see what its like developing for the system from a 3rd party. Unless its someone from their First party stable.
Cool.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
Sweet
tiredheadcrab
Member
I dont think Sony codes to the metal though. Pretty sure they have a layer in between the hardware and software.
If I'm not mistaking Albert said it would be from their (1st party) developers.
Nice! Can't wait.
Liabe Brave
Member
Scorpio is doing very, very little different than PS4 Pro. To really take advantage of it, games will need to be patched. For unpatched games, the main benefits are the same ones as on Sony's device:
1. Loading is faster.
2. Games that don't hit their framerate target will run better.
3. Games with dynamic resolution will hit their resolution target better.
These features are applied slightly differently, though. PS4 Pro doesn't open up all its extra power to unpatched games (for compatibility reasons), but Scorpio does. This should mean that points 2 and 3 above will see bigger improvements for Microsoft. This is good, because they almost always have higher to climb when it comes to resolution. Not everything will see all these improvements. Games that were always intended to be 900p30, and hit that mark, will not be raised further without a patch.
On the other hand, it's possible that more games will experience problems on Scorpio (Pro has less than a half-dozen with any reports of problems, and may not have any with game-breaking issues; we don't know if Scorpio will be similar despite the changed approach.) For games that do run badly on Scorpio, Microsoft will force them back to their regular state without option, so they'll run fine but will not be improved. This is unlike Pro, where a user can choose between playing an improved (but janky) game, or run like normal.
There are two other Scorpio features which are more minor, but which are novel and don't appear on Pro.
1. Forced 16x AF for everything. This will make textures look better, and Microsoft says it won't impact performance. But despite much belief to the contrary, high AF is not cheap to run. Scorpio has plenty of power and bandwidth, but forcing all developers to use this might mean they have to minorly dial back other effects.
2. Forced v-sync. Microsoft have also said there will be no tearing in Scorpio games. (Many Pro games eliminate tearing from the standard version, but it's not mandatory.) The only way I think they can ensure this is through forced double- or triple-buffering. The former would make any frame drops that happen extremely bad, so I doubt they're using that. But I thought triple buffering adds input latency to controls, so I'm not sure what effect that will have with developement.
That only makes sense. This early in the marketing effort, Microsoft will want to have control over the messaging.
Ready. Is. My. Body.
gaming_noob
Member
Interesting wording. "Portents" could mean bad or good.
Awesome! Hopefully we get a bit of something each week or every other week leading up to E3. Having a drip feed that gives us something new to talk about is great.
Jaguar Victory
Member
You are really downplaying the Scorpio man. Evangelizing every benefit as minor and no big deal. 16x AF and automatic downsampling for 1080p is a big deal. The extra power is a really big deal. It's pretty damn cool. Just get a Scorpio and feel part of the team so you won't have to soldier so much. I have a Pro.
I was just going to post this. He's working overtime in every Scorpio thread.
your post woulda been fine without this line
Don't worry bro. You won't lose much stocks.
Also I suggest to get overtime on your effort.
Liabe Brave
Member
If you think I've said something false, please let me know and I'm open to discussion. If you just don't like the points I bring up, regardless of if they're true, I don't know there's anything I can do for you.
Or perhaps this will help:
Scorpio is notably more powerful than PS4 Pro. A larger proportion of its games are going to be native 4K, and almost all of them will be improved versus on Pro. Several of the choices Microsoft has made with regards to its hardware will result in a better experience for players than on Sony's platform.
I'd be happy to repeat these beliefs of mine any time you need reassurance (though I'm not sure why my opinion would matter so much to you).
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Liabe has been cool from what I've seen, maybe the anandtech thread has put a damper on his view of the Scorpio. heehee.
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I ran a test with Ryse mimicking the Pro and Scorpio and assuming ~40GB/s bandwidth allocated to the CPU on each system. Scorpio beats the Pro by 45% at 4k res, higher than XO settings, highest textures, 16xAF, temporal AA enabled. If the they tuned the game to be memory bandwidth heavy, that gap would widen. Just a sample of the possible outcome when comparing systems.
This has me happy because the RX 480 has a hard time hitting that 288GB/s since that's actually the wall for memory clock on that GPU(2250MHz). Scorpio is utilizing a 384-bit memory bus and should be able to maintain peak bandwidth much better than the RX 480. Take it for what it is, but I think actual tests on a AMD CPU and Polaris GPU in real games beats some of this, frankly cheesy, speculation from certain sites.
wesleyshark
Banned
Awesome. Looking forward to it
4K textures for everything. Having the game load in the player quality models for all the other cars is another setting.
likedamaster
Member
So that's what he said? I have him on ignore. lol.
The Scorpio is sounding better and better. Screw the nay-sayers, it's looking to be a monster.
PeterLegend
Member
I wonder if Gran Turismo Sport on Pro will look better than Forza 7 on Scorpio.
Im interested to see the comparisons.
Im interested to see the comparisons.
Dynamic weather and TOD is a auto win for Forza when you're taking about graphical tech
tiredheadcrab
Member
Is the game confirmed to even have any of that? I though Xbox one cant handle that at all.
Nothing is confirmed (as far as I know), but FH3 has dynamic weather and TOD, albeit at 30 fps instead of 60 fps in the Motorsports games.
Of course it can handle it... See FH3 (granted 30fps), but Turn10 will just have to make sacrifices like maybe aggressive lod/dynamic resolution in order to keep 60fps on xbone with those effects. Im guessing here, maybe they wont have to even as its a circuit racer v open world.. They are wizards, they'll work it out im sure.
I haven't paid much attention to gaming since i got banned a few weeks ago. I spent part of the day getting up to speed based on this thread, and what i have to say is..
This thread is a dumpster fire.
Seriously, how did it get from reveal to casual sniping back and forth, along with hyperbole and downplaying and damage control?
This thread is a dumpster fire.
Seriously, how did it get from reveal to casual sniping back and forth, along with hyperbole and downplaying and damage control?
Came here to make sure this was posted. I'm sure it'll be a 1st Party, but oh well. Should be nice to see what they have to say and see if it can relate to other developers.
you know why
I highly doubt that, but we will see.
soundscream
Member
No gts lighting engine will still sway people because it looks better in screen shots and replays. During actual gameplay fm7 should look better.
DwightSchruting
Member
Knew I'd eventually run into MisterX's evil brother!
Metalingus5150
Member
Gee...
Nothing Liabe Brave said is unreasonable.
Take a chill pill.
Nothing Liabe Brave said is unreasonable.
Take a chill pill.