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Inside the Scorpio Engine: the processor architecture deep dive

tapedeck

Do I win a prize for talking about my penis on the Internet???
Slightly OT but..I have to admit I'm somewhat cautious about expecting a highly graphically upgraded Forza 7 to run at native 4K/60 on Scorpio..that seems like a pretty tall order. Who knows maybe they won't even try for native res and just go for checkerboarding to leave processing power for the improved visuals.
 

dr_rus

Member
I can't says about NV4x but I had a FX 5200 or 5500 (NV3x) and this card was really bad with FP32... the games I played that had option to switch to FP16 was like a dream with high playable fps.

RSX was kinda of frankenstein compared with others nVidia GPUs at the time... there is no NV arch similar to RSX.

FX is NV3x. RSX is based on NV4x and it's hardly a Frankenstien of anything, it's pretty much a regular G70 with 128 bit bus and some tweaks in caches and command processor to make it a better pair to Cell. NV4x had FP16 running at the same speed as FP32.

So it is not as efficient if the pro used fp16? I would love to see what artifacts are present in fp16 if the pro used it completely instead of fp32.

What is?
 
Which was also possible on Scorpio.

It's not about simply using FP16, it's about using 2xFP16 in one hit. That's where the advantage lies albeit in extremely limited use-cases.

I don't think anyone is suggesting FP16 on its own bestows any particular advantage.
 

leeh

Member
It's not about simply using FP16, it's about using 2xFP16 in one hit. That's where the advantage lies albeit in extremely limited use-cases.

I don't think anyone is suggesting FP16 on its own bestows any particular advantage.
I mean, I don't have a clue on this for the most part, but the post was stated the optimizations could be done on Scorpio as it wasn't using dual rate FP16, just FP16?

Then again, with that in-mind, you'd half that time on the PS4P then?

I try..
 
It is the only test we have. Thus far it indicates what was said. But like you said more tests are needed and I'm sure they will do that. I have no doubt in DF and Turn 10 results. If you think they're lying show the receipts.

I'm not saying they are lying. In the PC world there is a good reason why tests provided by the hardware manufacturer are dismissed as little more than marketing until independent sources can verify them. It's the same principle here.

I don't get why you want to just ignore the information in front of you?

Because I don't trust the source. I don't consider first-party tests and benchmarks to be trustworthy. I want independent verification.

It's the only evidence we have. This is DF, not some random journo.

It's not Digital Foundry running the test. It's Digital Foundry being shown a test run by Microsoft.
 

Fredrik

Member
Looking forward to the GT - Forza face off!

It's actually a good comparison for once with the games releasing in a similar time frame. I predict GT will have a more appealing look overall with it's realistic lighting model. But Forza will trump it with other effects, resolution, and possibly frame rate stability.
Just by looking at the GTS beta videos I think Forza will have some trouble trumping GT on anything regarding visuals this time, but Polyphony has had several years longer development time on GTS so I'd still be impressed if Forza just gets close.
 
I mean, I don't have a clue on this for the most part, but the post was stated the optimizations could be done on Scorpio as it wasn't using dual rate FP16, just FP16?

Then again, with that in-mind, you'd half that time on the PS4P then?

I try..

Whilst I confess I haven't looked into Dice's use-case too closely, Pro can fetch two things at once under extremely limited and certain circumstances. This is in no way suggesting Pro is anywhere near Scorpio: it clearly isn't.

But it might mean with clever coding (I.e. careful use of use of FP16 when appropriate) Pro can perhaps metaphorically perform at 103% equivalence (number pulled out of arse here).

Scorpio probably has zero reason to ever use FP16 but even if it did, it's still going to dramatically outperform Pro for the vast majority of GPU use-cases except where FP16 is used (or where Pro can use FP16 with no losses).
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
It's not Digital Foundry running the test. It's Digital Foundry being shown a test run by Microsoft.
I'm just assuming Richard was already shown games on the Scorpio and he's under NDA. He's allowed to make a passing comment about Forza, then states it's "debatable".

Debatable = Start massive speculation threads on GAF and give us clicks

---
Not referring to you, Sad Affleck, but some of the downplaying going on here is actually sad. I understand and respect your position to just wait for actual benchmarks, friend.
 
I don't think anyone is suggesting FP16 on its own bestows any particular advantage.
Actually it does, it reduces register pressure during calculations. This is why games already use it even on hardware that doesn't run it any faster than FP32. Pro (and Switch) can just run such code much faster.

That too I wonder how quiet is thier cooling solution with the vapor and fan?
The type of fan used is a blower, which are typically louder than other types. That doesn't mean it'll be loud, per se, but I definitely wouldn't expect total quiet.
 

Colbert

Banned
Do you guys get annoyed when politicians say "the American people are tired of such and such"? Because that's how I feel when I read sweeping generalizations like this.

Sorry for the pointed emphasis on the ESRAM. But don't you think the new setup is far mor straight forward and leads to faster results developing a game by the absence to optimize for it (okay not really as you have to run the same game on Xbox One too)?
 
As long as it's quiet I wouldn't mind it being as big as the original Xbox One (even though I'm expecting it bo be smaller)
Ditto. I wish console manufacturers aimed for this. But the success of "jet engine" consoles show that it's basically a non issue in purchasing decisions, so will go for "ooh sexy!" over "silent vcr" in future I guess.

Still, we can hope the surface team manage silent sexy
 

Night.Ninja

Banned
So is it possible that Microsoft could release a FP16 add on that would make the Scorpio just as powerful as a ps4 pro, kinda like a Nintendo 64 expansion pack?
 

leeh

Member
Whilst I confess I haven't looked into Dice's use-case too closely, Pro can fetch two things at once under extremely limited and certain circumstances. This is in no way suggesting Pro is anywhere near Scorpio: it clearly isn't.

But it might mean with clever coding (I.e. careful use of use of FP16 when appropriate) Pro can perhaps metaphorically perform at 103% equivalence (number pulled out of arse here).

Scorpio probably has zero reason to ever use FP16 but even if it did, it's still going to dramatically outperform Pro for the vast majority of GPU use-cases except where FP16 is used (or where Pro can use FP16 with no losses).
Thanks for the overview.

To ask more questions then, you say there's no point in using FP16 ever, does that mean what was posted on B3D incorrect and it was using dual-rate FP16? Wouldn't the lower precision make the calculation quicker anyway?

It's not like I know much about it, just all this area interests me. I'm also presuming that these sort of tweaks in a game engine is probably the lowest you can go in-terms of the stack in an engine? Would this mean any performance gains you can find using dual rate FP16 would have to go through extensive testing due to how many areas it would actually touch?

Because I don't trust the source. I don't consider first-party tests and benchmarks to be trustworthy. I want independent verification.
Fair enough. When we deal with clients, it's always usually very showy and always tries to create a certain image so I respect your stance on it.

Let's hope we get some other media soon :)
 
Actually it does, it reduces register pressure during calculations. This is why games already use it even on hardware that doesn't run it any faster than FP32. Pro (and Switch) can just run such code much faster.
Thanks for the clarification, good to know.

Thanks for the overview.

To ask more questions then, you say there's no point in using FP16 ever, does that mean what was posted on B3D incorrect and it was using dual-rate FP16? Wouldn't the lower precision make the calculation quicker anyway?

It's not like I know much about it, just all this area interests me. I'm also presuming that these sort of tweaks in a game engine is probably the lowest you can go in-terms of the stack in an engine? Would this mean any performance gains you can find using dual rate FP16 would have to go through extensive testing due to how many areas it would actually touch?


Fair enough. When we deal with clients, it's always usually very showy and always tries to create a certain image so I respect your stance on it.

Let's hope we get some other media soon :)
See Liabe's reply as that clarifies there is a benefit. I just didnt envisage Scorpio needing to use it due to its power.
 

dogen

Member
Thanks for the overview.

To ask more questions then, you say there's no point in using FP16 ever, does that mean what was posted on B3D incorrect and it was using dual-rate FP16? Wouldn't the lower precision make the calculation quicker anyway?

The lower precision can improve performance if it lowers register pressure, even without double rate calculation.
 

Putty

Member
Just by looking at the GTS beta videos I think Forza will have some trouble trumping GT on anything regarding visuals this time, but Polyphony has had several years longer development time on GTS so I'd still be impressed if Forza just gets close.
GT needs work still...and the power difference means Forza "should" trump GT in quite a number of GFX options....Scorp vs Pro i mean...
 

MilkyJoe

Member
So is it possible that Microsoft could release a FP16 add on that would make the Scorpio just as powerful as a ps4 pro, kinda like a Nintendo 64 expansion pack?

3b4.png
 
I wonder what the roadmap looks like in the run up to E3? Do we get any more articles it videos from DF or any other outlet's or is that us done now - is there any more to even tell? It's going to be a long two months, either way.
 

MilkyJoe

Member
Yeah, I've written a few replies to the thread in the past day but it's hard to not sound rude or dismissive so I just delete them. But someone should probably make a StarFox SuperFX chip joke at some point here.

That is mirroring my face as I am trying to think of how to reply. I have lost all sense of reality with this whole FP16/32 thing. I don't know what is a serious post, what is taking the piss. It's literally the only thing I could think of posting that is representative of my thoughts.
 
I think that will be it for Scorpio news now until E3.

They have that Phantom Dust reveal just before E3 apparently where 'a story needs to be told' on it's development. Hopefully that leads to an anouncement of more OG Xbox game conversions.

Then I think they might do a Forza 7 teaser trailer before E3. They have done that before in recent years.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
I can't says about NV4x but I had a FX 5200 or 5500 (NV3x) and this card was really bad with FP32... the games I played that had option to switch to FP16 was like a dream with high playable fps.

RSX was kinda of frankenstein compared with others nVidia GPUs at the time... there is no NV arch similar to RSX.

iirc it was pretty well a G70 (which is a 7800), but with half the ROPs and bandwidth from the GDDR3, and clocked lower. Pixel and vertex configs were similar though, and both types of shaders were identical or near identical to the 7800.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1682/rsx-reality-synthesizer

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/127/geforce-7800-gtx


Sony hadn't put as much focus into the GPU as they did the CPU (not saying that myth that they intended all-Cell before, they had a GPU in the plans earlier), which made the RSX decidedly more off the shelf then the excellent for the time Xenos. Not that it was unchanged, FlexIO for instance, but it wasn't nearly as novel.

I always wonder what the generation would have been like if they paired the Cell with a better GPU like the Xenos. Despite launching a year later, the GPU was a big letdown on their end, and by the end of the generation when people knew how to use Cell, most of its work was filling in for RSX, pre-culling geometry etc.

The 7800 also did FP16 datatypes on the pixel shader, since those older cards had split pixel/vertex shaders it was easier to separate what was needed, where unified shaders have all the hardware necessary for FP32 no matter what (and it's now being used with RPM).
http://techreport.com/review/8466/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx-graphics-processor/12
 

00ich

Member
I always wonder what the generation would have been like if they paired the Cell with a better GPU like the Xenos. Despite launching a year later, the GPU was a big letdown on their end, and by the end of the generation when people knew how to use Cell, most of its work was filling in for RSX, pre-culling geometry etc.


Wasn't the design finalized a year before release, but then multiple holdups Blu-Ray and HDMI happened? I'd really liked to know what the PS3's development history was.
 

Lady Gaia

Member
Wasn't the design finalized a year before release, but then multiple holdups Blu-Ray and HDMI happened? I'd really liked to know what the PS3's development history was.

Sounds like a fine topic for a completely different thread. Not that this thread is healthy or anything, but that's no reason to inject a completely tangential subject that is likely of little or no interest to people coming here to discuss Scorpio technical details.

... which is entirely different from the majority of the thread's technical focus, which is at least on topic when it comes to understanding what decisions Microsoft has made and how they will impact the performance of their design. All the FP16 talk is only off topic if you think the whole reason for the thread is to crow about Scorpio's unquestioned superiority in every respect. I happen to think understanding the complete picture is worthwhile in a technical deep dive thread. I hope there's more actual discussion when we get more details, and not just an avalanche of people trying to be cute by trolling endlessly.
 

Dehnus

Member
Then why on Earth are we having arguments spanning several pages over this? How much 'faster' will FP16 stuff be done on PS4P?

A whole Holy Terra Full of Quaks. Namely one Holy Terra filled to the brim with Duckie Demo Duckies!

Give me those Duckies, SONY!

(Seriously though,those things were cute! :)).
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Wasn't the design finalized a year before release, but then multiple holdups Blu-Ray and HDMI happened? I'd really liked to know what the PS3's development history was.

Yeah I remember that talk floating around, the blu ray drive delaying it. That would make sense, as launching a year later with a GPU the Xenos handily beat was so underwhelming.

What that generation could have been if they gave the GPU as much focus as the Cell.

That's a pretty neat graph.

Yeah, so we know how the GTX 7800 benefitted from FP16 at least :p

shadermark.gif
 

Broman1978

Junior Member
Minecraft 2
1 year complete exclusive for Xbox One / Scorpio /Win 10
They are gonna sell ALOT of Xbox´s.
Then release it on Switch/PS4 etc.
They are gonna make pleeeenty of money that way anyway.
 

Leyasu

Banned
Minecraft 2
1 year complete exclusive for Xbox One / Scorpio /Win 10
They are gonna sell ALOT of Xbox´s.
Then release it on Switch/PS4 etc.
They are gonna make pleeeenty of money that way anyway.

I have often thought that they might go down that route with Minecraft
 

Pasedo

Member
What if Scorpio is essentially a laptop. A gaming console with a built-in screen that you can also plug into a TV.
 
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