Digital Foundry Microsoft Xbox Scorpio Reveal [2017: 04-06, 04-11, 04-15, 04-16]

Even if its super fast to port I am sure MS wants more than just a port , they are going to want more textures /higher quality along with just the res bump

I'm not so sure software will be a bottleneck at all. Considering almost everything will run better anyway. It's not like they have to wait for a system seller. The tech is the main selling point for the hardcore public in this case. IMHO.
 
I agree but they're doubling down on 4K with a generous 12Gb for assets as well. I wonder, would this require devs build separate One and Scorpio builds, one with 4K assets and one without? I have a bunch of Steam games with "4K" textures and these texture packs will range from 20Gb up to 60Gb (Fallout 4). Standard distributions and optional downloads of Scorpio?
I believe that yes, this is addressed. The system will download the assets depending on the hardware you own, to avoid having folks download extra content they don't need. I forget where I read this however.
 
sounds like they only got parts in January I am sure some third party devs are just getting dev kits now . Even if its super fast to port I am sure MS wants more than just a port , they are going to want more textures /higher quality along with just the res bump

The new Lord of the Rings game is supposed to have a Scorpio version, so there must be companies working on it already.

I would hope a lot of the 1st and "2nd" party games get upgrades. I'd love to see an upgraded Quantum Break. I'm not sure how many multi-platform games will get patched. Assuming it'll be a mix, probably the some of the same ones that got PS4 Pro patches.
 
I believe that yes, this is addressed. The system will download the assets depending on the hardware you own, to avoid having folks download extra content they don't need. I forget where I read this however.
I didn't read anything like that in the article. Are you sure you didn't dream it? :sly:
 
The ISA for the command processor was reverse-engineered when the PS4 was jailbroken.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1959060/
The command processor, as it's called externally, is itself a collection of multiple processors whose ISA is designed to fetch packets and check/process them with loaded microcode. AMD has many such custom F32 cores, each running microcode and setting values into more internal queues or hardware registers.
The GPU looks more like a single entity from a very high level, but that breaks down very quickly in a way CPU cores don't until you get very close to the pipeline.

At other times, AMD has updated the microcode of its GPUs retroactively, such as when it added functions for priority queues and the queue language for HSA to GCN2 and higher GPUs.
Some of the inconsistencies in the delivery could have come from specific hardware features not being present (possibly yet another microcode processor), or insufficient space to load all the microcode packages needed.

More recent GCN GPUs have significantly expanded this capacity in some way, so perhaps Scorpio has adopted that design parameter.
I'm still not sure if the GPU is purely of the Polaris or later bent, but without some low-level disclosures I'm not sure how we'd find out.

I'm not sure about the "evolved" Jaguar, either. Microsoft said they tweaked the Xbox One's Jaguar, but then said they didn't really touch the cores specifically. The latency improvement sounds like it's something similar to what they did for the Xbox One, or more changes to the interfaces or logic further out from the cores.
 
I would hope a lot of the 1st and "2nd" party games get upgrades. I'd love to see an upgraded Quantum Break. I'm not sure how many multi-platform games will get patched. Assuming it'll be a mix, probably the some of the same ones that got PS4 Pro patches.

Ideally, Microsoft will want to make it possible for publishers to submit Scorpio code as early as possible. Some PS4 near-launch games (Infamous) got decent Pro updates yet more recent games (Until Dawn) did not. I'd wager a lot depends on the actual support of old code by individual teams and/or publishers just like some games receive a post-released patch or two then nothing ever again is likely just because the team has moved on and rebuilds of old code to support new features are not always trivial, especially Q&A. You're unlikely going to get much in the way of revenue to cover the costs so it's mostly an act of goodwill and goodwill = $$$ in the real world.

But the earlier Microsoft allow games be submitted, the greater the window of opportunity is for imminent releases to support Scorpio later in the year. First parties are hopefully a given but even money-grabbing bastards Ubisoft made an effort for PS4 Pro. If you can front-load the effort now, rather than later, it's an easier decision.
 
I didn't read anything like that in the article. Are you sure you didn't dream it? :sly:

I believe I have read or heard similar in an article / video before, this is not from the current DF releases.

It may have been around the launch of GOW4 when Scorpio talk was high on how Scorpio will differ from Xbox one S. No idea and may have been speculation especially as a quick Google seems to suggests how PC has a 4k texture pack to download if your pc supports it, and as a uwp release the console experience will most likely be similar.
 
I'd been looking for a reason to spring for an "S". I'm glad I didn't find one in the end as I'm sold on this.
What would it take for you to be disappointed by Scorpio?

Within the specs we already knew (6TFLOPs GPU, 320GB/s, 8-core CPU) or were 90% sure about (12GB RAM because of the 12 chips we saw around the SoC in 2016's renders), where exactly did the Scorpio surprise you in a positive way?

Specs-wise, so far we're getting the lowest common denominator of all the possible alternatives within the known specs: GPU with Polaris architecture, moderately clocked Jaguar cores, not an inch above 6TFLOPs, 32 ROPs, no SSD or Hybrid mass storage, nothing about VR..


So what did convince you to wait for this? Was it the forced AF and Boost on older Xbone and X360 titles? Object-based audio?

From what was presented today, I just haven't seen many features that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced to buy a Scorpio.
Perhaps you just know a lot more about the console than I do (which is not only possible but probable too :p )


As you can see, we doubled the amount of shader engines. That has the effect of improvement of boosting our triangle and vertex rate by 2.7x when you include the clock boost as well. We doubled the number of render back-ends, which has the effect of increasing our fill-rate by 2.7x. We quadrupled the GPU L2 cache size, again for targeting the 4K performance.
(..)
Microsoft gets the benefit of AMD's delta colour compression (DCC) system, an element that wasn't present on Xbox One.

Is any of this not deriving from Polaris tech? Quadrupling L2 cache means going to 2MB, which is probably less than Vega and the same as Polaris 10.
BTW there's only 32 ROPs? I thought Microsoft had gone for 48 ROPs given the total memory bandwidth and the 4K target.
 
just plug it in and play, it can run unpatched x1 games, just better.

Where'd you get the source for this? The question was if he can just take is external HDD that currently has 360 and XB1 games on it and just plug it in, or if there will need to be some patches to download or games reinstalled or something.

I have seen nothing so far that indicates what you stated above.
 
From what was presented today, I just haven't seen many features that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced to buy a Scorpio.
Perhaps you just know a lot more about the console than I do (which is not only possible but probable too :p )
From what I understand from the ending of the DF videos, they will be continuing more coverage on the remaining customizations of the hardware. Whether that has actually happened already or not, I'm unsure.
 
What would it take for you to be disappointed by Scorpio?

Within the specs we already knew (6TFLOPs GPU, 320GB/s, 8-core CPU) or were 90% sure about (12GB RAM because of the 12 chips we saw around the SoC in 2016's renders), where exactly did the Scorpio surprise you in a positive way?

Specs-wise, so far we're getting the lowest common denominator of all the possible alternatives within the known specs: GPU with Polaris architecture, moderately clocked Jaguar cores, not an inch above 6TFLOPs, 32 ROPs, no SSD or Hybrid mass storage, nothing about VR..


So what did convince you to wait for this? Was it the forced AF and Boost on older Xbone and X360 titles? Object-based audio?

From what was presented today, I just haven't seen many features that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced to buy a Scorpio.
Perhaps you just know a lot more about the console than I do (which is not only possible but probable too :p )




Is any of this not deriving from Polaris tech? Quadrupling L2 cache means going to 2MB, which is probably less than Vega and the same as Polaris 10.
BTW there's only 32 ROPs? I thought Microsoft had gone for 48 ROPs given the total memory bandwidth and the 4K target.

Where are you seeing the 32ROPs?
 
From what was presented today, I just haven't seen many features that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced to buy a Scorpio.
Well, we have confirmation of all the elements that were not clear (6TFLOP, GPU only or a combination of GPU and CPU - confirmed, 6TFLOP GPU only), etc., we have confirmation that they are hitting or exceeding their goals, we have confirmation of what this is achieving on some of the software, at least, and what they are expecting to add in terms of quality features in games over an XBOX One.

But additionally we now have confirmation that it carries XBOX One S's differences as well - integrated PSU (not a given seeing as this is likely a higher powered box, but now a clear indication of MS listening to customers and setting a new precedent); UHD Blu-Ray player confirmed which previous commentary has been "we'll wait and see". Although we haven't seen the final enclosure what is clear is that this is a lining up to be a complete superset of the S and there is nothing to decide if the pricing isn't an issue. Until now that has not been confirmed.

The main negative for me is still no dedicated Kinect port, but that is the same as the S.
 
What would it take for you to be disappointed by Scorpio?

Within the specs we already knew (6TFLOPs GPU, 320GB/s, 8-core CPU) or were 90% sure about (12GB RAM because of the 12 chips we saw around the SoC in 2016's renders), where exactly did the Scorpio surprise you in a positive way?

Specs-wise, so far we're getting the lowest common denominator of all the possible alternatives within the known specs: GPU with Polaris architecture, moderately clocked Jaguar cores, not an inch above 6TFLOPs, 32 ROPs, no SSD or Hybrid mass storage, nothing about VR..


So what did convince you to wait for this? Was it the forced AF and Boost on older Xbone and X360 titles? Object-based audio?

From what was presented today, I just haven't seen many features that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced to buy a Scorpio.
Perhaps you just know a lot more about the console than I do (which is not only possible but probable too :p )




Is any of this not deriving from Polaris tech? Quadrupling L2 cache means going to 2MB, which is probably less than Vega and the same as Polaris 10.
BTW there's only 32 ROPs? I thought Microsoft had gone for 48 ROPs given the total memory bandwidth and the 4K target.
Yeah.The DF article reads like a PR panflet with little substance.
 
Where'd you get the source for this? The question was if he can just take is external HDD that currently has 360 and XB1 games on it and just plug it in, or if there will need to be some patches to download or games reinstalled or something.

I have seen nothing so far that indicates what you stated above.

That's two questions in one. Will it be binary compatible the installed games on external media.

Will you get direct improvements with unpatched 360 or x1 titles. Ie fresh install.of already released titles from.diak or download with no developer patches.

The former is unknown but the latter was talked about. No screen tearing, stable frame rate, highest possible resolution for dynamic resolution games, forced 16x AF on all titles.
 
Well, we have confirmation of all the elements that were not clear (6TFLOP, GPU only or a combination of GPU and CPU - confirmed, 6TFLOP GPU only), etc., we have confirmation that they are hitting or exceeding their goals, we have confirmation of what this is achieving on some of the software, at least, and what they are expecting to add in terms of quality features in games over an XBOX One.

But additionally we now have confirmation that it carries XBOX One S's differences as well - integrated PSU (not a given seeing as this is likely a higher powered box, but now a clear indication of MS listening to customers and setting a new precedent); UHD Blu-Ray player confirmed which previous commentary has been "we'll wait and see". Although we haven't seen the final enclosure what is clear is that this is a lining up to be a complete superset of the S and there is nothing to decide if the pricing isn't an issue. Until now that has not been confirmed.

The main negative for me is still no dedicated Kinect port, but that is the same as the S.
Yes, we have confirmation it has the minimum in the power speculation range speculated.But worse as it seems GPU tech is inferior to PS4 Pro's.And they want to sell the message about a super gpu with the directx embebed thing(that could be a Polaris standard thing as techreport's journalist says).Is the cloud computing all over again.Why did Spencer say they were a year later than Sony to get better tech?.
 
The main negative for me is still no dedicated Kinect port, but that is the same as the S.

This is the bummer part for me as well. It may still work out as I intend to put my OG X1 in the living room and Kinect is probably a better fit there for the few games that I have that utilize it. I'll miss the voice command capability even though I use it sparingly.

What I really wished would be possible is to have Kinect BC games on my X1 that utilize Kinect 2.0.
 
Back
Top