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Digital Foundry: Xbox Scorpio

GameSeeker

Member
When is Matt incorrect? lol

Indeed. I find Matt to be one of the most trustworthy posters on NeoGAF.

Matt is solid, but Scorpio not being Zen should have been obvious to everyone. It was wholly unrealistic to expect it inside Scorpio in any capacity. The timelines didn't line up, and AMD themselves shot that down.

Yes, some of us had realized that. But if you go back through the old posts about Scorpio you will find plenty of people who were ready to bet everything on Scorpio being Zen.

Scorpio looks to be an excellent upgrade for existing Xbox One customers, much like PS4 Pro is an excellent upgrade for PS4 customers. Neither will convert many customers across family lines.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
So, just the RAM then? The rest of these are not huge drivers of price, the Pro comes with a 1TB drive and the 230$ XB1 S comes with a blu-ray drive. That's really not enough to come close to a 499$ entry price.

Your not factoring in cost of the custom chips, cooling solution. Add those with the ram with the cost of manufacturing a new product in a small amount of time and it will add to the cost more than you think.
 

nillapuddin

Member
Well, I'm not any more positive what I should about my tv situation.

Obviously 4K HDR OLED is the pinnacle, but it's so expensive.

my Vizio 1080p LED from 2015 is not out dated by any means, but I won't be getting the full experience
 

Carn82

Member
My guess is that if it would launch at 399 they would've screamed that from the rooftops.. or they might save that for E3?
 

Elios83

Member
nah this is super important (for me, too)
this basically shows how impressive the SOC is. and why it was worth to wait 1 more year.
same size, same process, less expensive to manufacture, more powerful

Not sure what you're talking about here.
The SOC is Scorpio has pretty much the same die area of the SOC in the Pro because the number of compute units is pretty much the same for both. 36 vs 40. 8 cores CPU for both. It's still a bit bigger and on the same manufatcuring process so it's not cheaper to manufacture.
If you look at specs Scorpio is getting most of its performance edge compared to the Pro thanks to higher clocks and not through a higher number of compute elements or cores. That means that they will need to use a much more expensive cooling solution compared to the Pro if they want to keep the system at about the same size.
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
Is there a timeline for XBox TWO or PS5? I don't want to drop $x00.00 CDN on this only for the next gen to come out 20 months later.
 
I am not saying that the Scorpio is as power as a 1080. My point is that it is more powerful then a pro. But because the pro is also a pretty powerful system it will be very comparable.

Definitely. Some games will look better than others but PS4 Pro won't suddenly look bad, although some Scorpio games will certainly look better because of the more RAM / power.
 

jfoul

Member
Nice, I'll probably buy it. Huge upgrade to XB1, and UHD Bluray. The built in DX12 instructions to give the CPU some relief is interesting.
 

New002

Member
The elephant in the room is once again, just like in Ps4 Pro's case, that games are still going to be constrained by XBOX1 and PS4 hardware...

We can only imagine what a true PS4 Pro and even moreso a Scorpio exclusive game could look like...

I am a Ps4 Pro owner btw and quite probably future owner of Scorpio, and I do enjoy the benefits, but the fact remains that the true potential of these machines is not going to be fullfilled.

(Think of how the geometry of a game designed specifically for Scorpio would differ compared to one made for XBOX1/Ps4.)

The elephant in the room, TO ME, PERSONALLY, is the software in the sense of line-up. I'm not particularly worried about games being hamstrung by the OG Xbox One to the point where it's really problematic.

Time will tell if either of those concerns end up being valid, and to what degree. I hope at e3 they hit the ground running with a slew of games, including exclusives, but I'm not holding my breath.
 

x-Lundz-x

Member
It's viable if they sell it at cost (ie dont lose money) and enough hardcore gamers love it to spread the good word and gain some market share back for the Xbox brand.

They are trying to get the hardcore back on their system, which is the main reason ps4 took off like it did. Early adopters are hugely important.

At 499 they will not be gaining anything back from Sony. MS has to know this.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Well it does have 4GB more RAM
It would be pretty disappointing if Scorpio didn't have better textures

They will use the same textures. PC will also use the same textures. That way goes the game. The extra ram is for comfortable 4k I'm betting. My GPU never touch a lot of it's ram because I have a 1080p screen.
 

Matt

Member
Hopefully you're dead wrong on that price expectation lol. I just don't see this over $399.
Don't know what the price will be for sure, but I would be surprised if it wasn't high.

But for all of your sake I hope I'm wrong as well.
 
nah this is super important (for me, too)
this basically shows how impressive the SOC is. and why it was worth to wait 1 more year.
same size, same process, less expensive to manufacture, more powerful


It isnt important though. The SoC are close to size because the difference between the two in term of logic is really small. One has a GPU with 36CU, the other with 40CU. The real difference comes with clockspeeds.
You can have something as fast as Scorpio GPU with 36CU but higher clockspeed. That's basically the RX 480.
The difference isnt the fruit of one more year. PS4 Pro could've been nearly as fast if they were aiming for a higher TDP, a bigger case and cooling system.
 
High clock smaller APU is a very smart option. If you can solve the cooling issue, then it gives a much more manageable die size. Onlybeing 4CU more than PS pro but getting that performance is a great result

I'll reserve comment on all the talk of just how custom everything is, because platform holders always say that. For all we know they're still jaguars but MS say 'custom x86' to avoid using the word Jaguar in case of association with lack of performance. Custom plays into their messaging

The D3D built into the GPU command processor could be a pretty big win, at least for those devs using a more standard PC pipeline. But I'd like to see some comments from developers using more streamlined console drivers

Richard said that started off as a jaguar, but customized to improve the bottlenecks, increase performance, and then developed even more customs processors to alleviate cpu usage and keep it more strictly to game code.
 
Can anybody explain a noob like me, what this console is capable of?
Is it comparable to the PS4 Pro? Say like Xbone & PS4?

Or is this basically the next generation of consoles? Is the PlayStation now outpowered like the Switch?
 
I'm curious, did the Scorpio system Forza 6 was tested on have access to the full Scorpio potential or will we see even higher performance capabilities with the release of the rumored updated SDK coming in the summer?

I would imagine even more improvement since that test was up and running in a mere 2 days
 

Raide

Member
I'm curious, did the Scorpio system Forza 6 was tested on have access to the full Scorpio potential or will we see even higher performance capabilities with the release of the rumored updated SDK coming in the summer?

Done in 2 days with none of the fancier effects they could pull off given time.

Just like previous console, they are bound to steadily lower is requirements and keep tweaking performance.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Hopefully you're dead wrong on that price expectation lol. I just don't see this over $399.

Well the fact he and Osirisblack both are insiders to an extent and both are saying over $399, it's a good guess that it will be.

New manufacturing, new components for cooling, new custom chip, more memory, add's to cost.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
So, just the RAM then? The rest of these are not huge drivers of price, the Pro comes with a 1TB drive and the 230$ XB1 S comes with a blu-ray drive. That's really not enough to come close to a 499$ entry price.

There should be more. Just tiny ones but it adds up.
CPU customization
4K Bluray vs Bluray
High End Fans
etc.
 
Even Microsoft themselves said that they dot expect this to sell super well and their base line will still be the S.

I think that's blowing things out of proportion by quite a bit. Expecting your lower priced SKU to move more units is just logical. That doesn't meant they don't plan to sell many units of their new hardware.

Nope. No way it's 399$ unless they really take a huge hit on it margin wise. Which at this point I Don't think the division can since they are being looked at under a microscope by the parent divisions.

Take some time to let your hype level out. As many others have stated, the components here shouldn't be twice as expensive as the One S. It's the way they've utilized the hardware that's impressive here. I don't see them taking a huge loss by pricing this thing at $399. Services like Xbox Live and Xbox game Pass can easily help them make up the difference.
 

Hoo-doo

Banned
Your not factoring in cost of the custom chips, cooling solution. Add those with the ram with the cost of manufacturing a new product in a small amount of time and it will add to the cost more than you think.

The same applies to nearly all consoles out there. That cost is already included.

Hardware-wise, there's zero reason to expect a >399 pricepoint. Which is great for people who want power for relatively cheap.
 
Yes, some of us had realized that. But if you go back through the old posts about Scorpio you will find plenty of people who were ready to bet everything on Scorpio being Zen.

There were, and those of us who understood that was next to impossible were trying to tell them the error of their ways. Hell as recently as yesterday I was still trying to explain to people how absurd the idea of Zen in Scorpio was.

I really don't see how so many people convinced themselves it was happening.
 

ironcreed

Banned
Yes.

2,3Ghz / 1.75Ghz ~= 31%.

The claimed performance gain is a direct result of the higher clock speeds.

It's a vanilla Jaguar. The "custom" apparently refers to anything but the actual CPU. They obviously followed the pre-reveal hype around the CPU and tailored their messaging accordingly.

But they said it was a customized and beefed up version of the Jaguar. Are they lying? Do you have receipts?
 

etrain911

Member
Can anyone explain if there is a GPU equivalent or superior GPU? They mentioned that their GPU will surmount that of a PC but I also just don't understand how that is possible, even with their shader explanation.
 

scoobs

Member
At 499 they will not be gaining anything back from Sony. MS has to know this.
Theyll convert some of the hardcore, certainly not all at once but it's about rinsing off the stink of the XB1 launch, Kinect, game sharing controversy, power differential with ps4, etc.

There is a decent chunk of hardcore gamers who will buy this just to get the best multiplatform experience.
 

Spasm

Member
He said they are very far ahead of schedule...

Pull a Saturn launch plz.
I was at E3 when that happened. Good times.

Conspiracy theory time. They're letting DF get out all the details now so that we know what we're getting when they surprise-launch at, or soon after E3. Trying to stealth-launch without getting us comfortable with it first would be a recipe for disaster.
 
People seem to still be confused on how console generations don't exist any more. See a lot of people talking about the pro and Scorpio being limited by base PS4 and xbo. These are moving targets that will continue to increase as time goes on, similar to the mobile phone market. I'd estimate about 24 months after launch you will start seeing a lot of exclusive pro and Scorpio games. Baring a huge shift in demand we won't see a ps5 or xbo successor for many year, if ever
 

dreamfall

Member
I mean the question is how the library of multiplatform console titles really will be affected.

As someone how bought most of my multiplatform titles on 360 because of the better performance, and then most of my titles on PS4 this gen because of the resolution and more stable framerate - where does this leave me?

I mean I own an XBO, and I've loved my exclusives on it and my BC digital titles that have been supported that I bought on the cheap going into this gen. 4K going forward is a beautiful thing, but god damn if I don't have much of a library at all. And for those 900p/sub 30 titles, what happens?

I'm very curious to see how this pans out - if it's a 1080/60 situation with that CPU, that's definitely progress. But we need some game announcements, and a reason to create a library even as a fortunate multi-console owner.
 

Carn82

Member
Can anybody explain a noob like me, what this console is capable of?
Is it comparable to the PS4 Pro? Say like Xbone & PS4?

Or is this basically the next generation of consoles? Is the PlayStation now outpowered like the Switch?

I think the 'It's a PS4 Pro version of the PS4 Pro' description pretty solid, but it launches a year later and so far it will probably be a bit more expensive. But it's still the same generation. The fact (same for PS4 and PS4 Pro) will run the same games will mean that stuff will still be limited by the OG PS4 and OG Xbox One specs.
 

MouldyK

Member
4K60 Forza 6 is fine and all...

...but they should have showed 4K60 Horizon 3 or even 1080/60 Horizon 3!

That's what I would love! Finally a 60fps Horizon game on a Console!
 

Space_nut

Member
But they said it was a customized and beefed up version of the Jaguar. Are they lying? Do you have receipts?

Exactly they detailed that all the CPU core blocks are revised and customized. Again NOT jaguar.

If you take a Camaro and put a LS engine in it its not a camaro anymore
 
Not sure what you're talking about here.
The SOC is Scorpio has pretty much the same die area of the SOC in the Pro because the number of compute units is pretty much the same for both. 36 vs 40. 8 cores CPU for both. It's still a bit bigger and on the same manufatcuring process so it's not cheaper to manufacture.
If you look at specs Scorpio is getting most of its performance edge compared to the Pro thanks to higher clocks and not through a higher number of compute elements or cores. That means that they will need to use a much more expensive cooling solution compared to the Pro if they want to keep the system at about the same size.

yield improvements
more matured process
more free capacity from the foundry (16nm FF not used by Apples new IPhone anymore)
350mm² is more expensive to produce in September 2016 compared to September 2017

i talk about launch Ps4 Pro SOC vs launch Scorpio SOC

It isnt important though. The SoC are close to size because the difference between the two in term of logic is really small. One has a GPU with 36CU, the other with 40CU. The real difference comes with clockspeeds.
You can have something as fast as Scorpio GPU with 36CU but higher clockspeed. That's basically the RX 480.
The difference isnt the fruit of one more year. PS4 Pro could've been nearly as fast if they were aiming for a higher TDP, a bigger case and cooling system.

in 2016 with the same yield for the same price?
no!

also in general you need a wider design for higher clock speeds.
and we need detailed die shots first, before we assume the Ps4 Pro and Xbox One Scorpio SOC are similar
they're likely way more different, than Xbox One Durango and original Ps4
 

link1201

Member
I wonder if these mid-gen upgrades will lengthen generations or shorten them. The urge to one up each other will be hard to resist depending on how successful they end up being.
 

geordiemp

Member
Yes.

2,3Ghz / 1.75Ghz ~= 31%.

The claimed performance gain is a direct result of the higher clock speeds.

It's a vanilla Jaguar. The "custom" apparently refers to anything but the actual CPU. They obviously followed the pre-reveal hype around the CPU and tailored their messaging accordingly.

2.3 / 2.1 Ghz = 9.5 %, you have to compare 16 nm silicon

I have a Pro, the extra cooler has given them 10 % approx CPU which is main bottleneck, to be fair a game at 50 FPS on Pro might hit 60 on Scorpio with better textures....

But I am just expecting similar performance Pro to Scorpio for the most part, there may be some bandwidth starved titles on Pro that run better on Scorpio.

Still may snatch one for Crackdown....
 

Raven77

Member
Do you believe everything a company tells you, lol? If Scorpio starts eating Sony's shit, you'll see a PS5 sooner than you might think. That's how business works. The Iphone7S doesn't extend the Iphone7 life, MS and Sony are going for this exact model: more skus on the shelves. Sony has a history of selling two skus at the same time: PS2 sold well even after 360's+PS3's release.Now they've turned this into a fast arms-race where you have to react to what the other competitor is doing. That's exactly what happened last year with all the Scorpio/Pro rumours in spring. They did not plan this 2-3 years in advance and they can pull this off any time now. Only the available tech is the limit.

Pretty much right on the money. They are aiming for the same market launch schedules that cellphones use. These mid gen refreshes are just that, refreshes, not really extensions due to the fact that all games have to work on the old system. So for the people that don't buy the upgrade, nothing is 'extended' for them and they will be the VAST majority of the user base.
 

Faustek

Member
nah this is super important (for me, too)
this basically shows how impressive the SOC is. and why it was worth to wait 1 more year.
same size, same process, less expensive to manufacture, more powerful

ahhh I like you! You got it. I was considering throwing in some information so no one dumb enough saw it and assumed it was another dumb fanboy war in the brewing about the sizes ^^
And yes, that extra year really helped and I assume we will see a more efficient power consumption.

They will use the same textures. PC will also use the same textures. That way goes the game.

People will never learn. Wonder if more and more will stop complaining about the "to clean" look PC games had in 2010-2013 or just accept it and stop looking at it as a drawback :/
 

valkyre

Member
Then wouldn't the same thing apply to PC graphics cards/games?

Of course and it is!

You think PC games given the chance and exclusive attention cant look better than what they do now? But this was always the case with PCs. With consoles its news to us since the coming of the Pro and Scorpio.
 

x-Lundz-x

Member
If they didn't have the Pro and Scorpio I could see it but these refreshes help ward off that late generation image quality wall that consoles hit.

This is my thinking and has been since the Pro was announced and why I think 2020 is the latest:

These mid gen refreshes are going to serve as the starting point for the Next Gen. Right now it's PS4 / PS4Pro and XB1/XB Scorpio. In about 3 years support for XB1 and base PS4 is going to be dropped and the "Next Gen" is going to start but these newer machines will be the baseline for games. Meaning all games will be released on Pro / Scorpio and the new systems but no longer for base PS4 and XB1.

I personally think the era of traditional console generations are over.
 
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