Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

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This may or may not be true. It's going to depend on how much of an upgrade the CPU is over the one used in the XBO, and whether it can remove or reduce the CPU as the limiting factor on framerate in games which are wholly or partially CPU limited.

If the game was purely GPU limited, then it should be relatively easy as you mention. We know at least that the GPU will be more than capable of rendering XBO level of graphics IQ at native 2160p resolutions as long as the CPU isn't a limiting factor (which it is in certain games).

Oh wait, you're only talking resolution. Duh. Yeah, that should be relatively easy. It's hard for me to decouple framerate from any game discussion talk as it is the single most relevant non-gameplay statistic in determining whether I'll enjoy most games.

Regards,
SB
;) no worries, and I get it lol.
 
Would some of these techniques to create this continuum of resolution/performance between XB1 -> Scorpio -> PC allow for a mid range PC to mimic Scorpio-ish performance on a 4K display ? I think 1080P gaming on a PC is relatively moderately expensive so if you don't have a 4k display you might be set for a while with Steam games to boot.
I don't see a reason not to. Reconstruction techniques will be the new norm going forward for resolutions greater than 1080p, I mean we've seen it for resolutions with less than 1080p as well (R6 Siege). Most PC hardware has just been powerful enough to rip straight to 4K. But if console is getting 4K based hardware and going with reconstruction and upping the fidelity, those same options should be available on PC.
 
Strange fanboy thinking? What about those people who think everyone has a powerful PC in their home and no one is going to buy Scorpio except some early XB1 adopters? Or those people who trying so hard

I hope that wasn't aimed at me, because that's not what I said. I don't mind being called a fanboy tho ;)

Base Scorpio specs land it squarely to be able to take theoretically _any_ XBO game and make it run natively at 4K. The implications there are pretty big but are often ignored because everyone wants to use that power to make graphics better and resolution no longer matters, and not to anyone's fault, but MS marketed it that way.

The biggest advantage here is that any XBO game can become 4K with relatively small effort; looking back at the existing 3 year catalog of XBO games, any developer can go back and make some tweaks to the graphical buffer to 4K remove esram calls and you've got a 4K game. This would also apply to any developer who cannot leverage checkerboard rendering techniques or does not have the time schedule to meet their deadlines to make a vastly optimized 4K reconstruction renderer.

For developers who want to do more, or are working on future titles, the expectation is that they will leverage reconstruction and use the remaining power on other things.
MS does not care if it's 4K*, they only care if it's vastly superior to its competition in which reconstruction would enable.

MS walks away with some big wins here in this department, Scorpio will be the king of graphics at least until next generation arrives and it can (I think) launch with an enormous existing catalog of games patched to be 4K. Do not be surprised if this E3 there is a massive catalog of 4K Scorpio games ready.

4Pro requires a bit more work to make this happen, it ultimately does not have the hardware to run a game at 4K natively, at least it has no chance at running a PS4 game at 4K without reconstruction;

tldr; I would expect the result to see more 4K games (through w/e rendering means) on Scorpio than on 4Pro.

Thanks for the great reply :)
 
While this is true for 1080p X1 games i don't think it is as easy of a task for 900p games (which is a large number of titles). The effective jump from 900p to 2160p in raw pixels is x5.7 while the jump in theoretical performance is around x4.6 (compared to OG X1). Of course, not every title scales the same and different titles will hit different bottlenecks.
its dependant on what was stopping it from being 1080p.
rops, tflops, esram, type of engine. time, combination.
so even if you note that there's different bottlenecks, in the end we really don't know how many of those games would reach 4k on Scorpio.
even if it was purely tflops, different considerations would be made now on Scorpio, would it need the same level and type of aa is a simple example.

fact is developers have choice what to do with power and how best to use it, so they may not even aim for 4k native unless it benefited their game more.

I'd be extremely surprised if there isn't a clear difference between x1 and Scorpio, even with the info we know.
as for 4pro and Scorpio, no one can say how much of a visible difference there will be, we don't even know the full paper specs. Has ms added anything custom like Sony has?

also didn't the white paper indicate that for a particular engine to go from 1080p to 4k native it took less than the raw pixel count would indicate it should? Obviously a single case, but does show it's not just as simple as saying you need x amount tflops.
 
also didn't the white paper indicate that for a particular engine to go from 1080p to 4k native it took less than the raw pixel count would indicate it should? Obviously a single case, but does show it's not just as simple as saying you need x amount tflops.

For anyone that's been into PC gaming for a long time it should be pretty obvious. Benchmarks for games show that when increasing resolution, 2x the pixels doesn't require anything near 2x the power. Or to put it another way. A 2x increase in pixels does not result in a halving of performance. This was true even in the Dx9.0 days.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/970/6

A 2.44x increase in pixels (1280x768 -> 1600x1200) and performance goes down by only 32%.

Something more modern, Crysis 3, as graphics rendering has gotten more complex.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/23

A 4x increase in pixels (1920x1080 -> 3840x2160) results in a 68% drop in performance rather than a theoretical 75% drop.

Something less taxing like The Witcher 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/24

Only a 55% drop.

Just looking at some others
  • Battlefield 4 only drops 51.9% in performance.
  • The Division only drops by 43.7%
  • GTA V by only 51.6%
I'd say for the vast majority of XBO games a simple increase in rendering resolution to 4k native at the same graphical settings will be trivially easy. In theory you could increase the resolution of the majority of XBO games from 1080p to 2160p with a 3 TFlop GPU while keeping the same graphics IQ settings at the same relative performance. Going from 900p to 2160p should still be pretty easy for Project Scorpio. 720p to 2160p would be problematic however as that's a massive 9x increase in pixels.

Depending on game and depending on how ambitious the developer is, you could have a native 4K version of the XBO game with either increased performance or additional graphics IQ at the same performance.

Regards,
SB
 
I hope that wasn't aimed at me, because that's not what I said. I don't mind being called a fanboy tho ;)



Thanks for the great reply :)
no worries! took me a while to spot it. I think we all just are too forward thinking ;) we often forget about the titles that have shipped already. If it weren't for game pass I wouldn't have been giving more thought into it.
 
It's really not though, the problem with 900p is that there ain't too many 1600x900 screens (I'm not sure if X1 even supports that resolution on such a display) and running that res on a 1080p display can lead to an ugly result.

XB1 outputs 1080p or 720p image. 1080p has 1.2x more vertical resolution of 900p. Isn't 4K checkerboard basically 1800p? And since 4K is 2160p, that means it has 1.2x more vertical resolution than 1800p. So in my layman view I'm not seeing how the debate for true 4K shouldn't have the same arguments that true 1080p had over 900p.

Tommy McClain
 
There's some strange fanboy thinkings out there! Why would Scorpio affect a PS4 owner's upgrade choice? It's literally nothing to do with them, any more than Apple releasing a new phone or Samsung a new fridge-freezer. If I want a better Pro experience, I buy a 4 Pro, regardless what othe products are out.

Why would that be that different to the first adopters which jumped from 360->PS4 for price/power reasons or were pissed off about MS? The people which once made the 360 the PC-Gamer/CoD/Bro console before. These people can as easily switch to Scorpio with the right incentives and with momentum that can quickly change the preferred console narrative.
 
Why would that be that different to the first adopters which jumped from 360->PS4 for price/power reasons or were pissed off about MS? The people which once made the 360 the PC-Gamer/CoD/Bro console before. These people can as easily switch to Scorpio with the right incentives and with momentum that can quickly change the preferred console narrative.
For that matter the price point of the Scorpio is still unknown, MS may not announce the price at E3 to gauge the consumer demand for a while.
 
Why would that be that different to the first adopters which jumped from 360->PS4 for price/power reasons or were pissed off about MS? The people which once made the 360 the PC-Gamer/CoD/Bro console before. These people can as easily switch to Scorpio with the right incentives and with momentum that can quickly change the preferred console narrative.

Start of a new gen is an ideal time, by now PS4 owners have a decent catalog and friends list (etc). I can't imagine anyone switching when you see how great Horizon looks on PS4 you have to wonder what Scorpio can offer to make it worth it. Then, of course, we have PS5 looming round the corner so why not just wait a couple years for true next gen?
 
Why would that be that different to the first adopters which jumped from 360->PS4 for price/power reasons or were pissed off about MS? The people which once made the 360 the PC-Gamer/CoD/Bro console before. These people can as easily switch to Scorpio with the right incentives and with momentum that can quickly change the preferred console narrative.
That's switching platform. The wording didn't say switch platform or 'buy Scorpio' but 'lose interest in upgrading to Pro', suggesting they'd just stick with their PS4's until PS5 came around.
 
Possibly. Depends what the arguments are precisely.

That's a different situation to 'killing motivation to upgrade'. If you mean, "Scorpio may convince some potential PS4 Pro upgraders to switch platform," then I'd agree.

Some potential Pro upgrades as well as those who may consider upgrade their PCs. Both of these groups may affect Pro sale.
 
Start of a new gen is an ideal time, by now PS4 owners have a decent catalog and friends list (etc). I can't imagine anyone switching when you see how great Horizon looks on PS4 you have to wonder what Scorpio can offer to make it worth it. Then, of course, we have PS5 looming round the corner so why not just wait a couple years for true next gen?

Well in line with my last comment, once again, I guess all of this leads back to Game Pass. MS has been making huge strides to reduce barrier to entry on their console. By E3, if we imagine every XBO title on Game Pass is announced to be 4K, EA Access game are all 4K, and then more 4K games coming. Someone can buy into scorpio pay $15 and have access to 130+ 4K games from the get go. With the additional benefit of now having access to Xbox exclusives as well as ensuring the best looking 3P games go forward.

Normally, I would agree with the idea of building into an ecosystem, but this really reduces that barrier and opens up an opportunity for people to catch up quickly (for being away from the platform for 3 years).

And so, I do believe that with proper marketing of game pass and Scorpio, and the right price point, I think you will see people (hardcore market) grabbing Scorpio possibly as a secondary console and just run with game pass or something (more price sensitive will stick with XBO). At the end of the day, MS has provided a great number of options to consumers that have never been available in the past, and so I'm not sure if the standard rules may apply as well as they once did.

I'm not saying that everyone is going to jump on board and go crazy, but if the game pass games are great, and they are scorpio patched, I could see some folks wanting to pull the trigger. The game pass is really effortless when compared to having to wait for sales and what not.

As for your final point. They could also wait for the next xbox after Scorpio -- buy game pass and have 100+ games at 4K ready to play ;) ... I know they are older, but I mean, I assume a lot of those games will be 1P exclusives.

We all know the 1st year of a new generation launch, aren't really leveraging the power of that new console yet, new techniques need to be devised etc. So that first year may not be as big of deal as it once was. The market is certainly changing, if you're expecting a new console in 3 years ... peoples appetites to upgrade earlier will significantly drop.
 
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I find the discussion around being deep into an ecosystem pretty interesting.
I've heard people say:
1. "well already invested into echo system, so not going to change"
2. "Well already invested in echo system and so won't change. Although I only play new games, old games don't interest me, I don't go back and replay them"

The second one is a bit contradictory. So they may feel heavily invested, but may actually be more open to switch than they first thought, given the right conditions.

The second group is more likely to be the hardcore gamer also. If that's a ps4 owner, would they keep the ps4 (if not already upgraded to a pro) for exclusives, and get a Scorpio for x1 exclusives and the better 3p games.
And as said for couple months could buy xgp to catch up on any exclusives they feel like playing.

A lot is really different than it used to be.
 
Well in line with my last comment, once again, I guess all of this leads back to Game Pass. MS has been making huge strides to reduce barrier to entry on their console. By E3, if we imagine every XBO title on Game Pass is announced to be 4K, EA Access game are all 4K, and then more 4K games coming. Someone can buy into scorpio pay $15 and have access to 130+ 4K games from the get go.
Except most of those games aren't 4K games designed to maximise the console, but simpler games and retro games. Gears of War at 4K is still going to look like a last-gen title on your fancy new Scorpio. The only way to get games that look as good as your console can manage is to buy them as normal, because it'll be a long time before Scorpio native games found their way onto Game Pass, just as it's a long time for AAA games to come to PS+.
 
Except most of those games aren't 4K games designed to maximise the console, but simpler games and retro games. Gears of War at 4K is still going to look like a last-gen title on your fancy new Scorpio. The only way to get games that look as good as your console can manage is to buy them as normal, because it'll be a long time before Scorpio native games found their way onto Game Pass, just as it's a long time for AAA games to come to PS+.
You'll explain this further? I'm going off the assumption that Scorpio can and will be able to natively output an XBO title 4K natively (with a Scorpio patch - not XBO emulated) and probably have some room to breathe as well.
Also not sure why GoW @ 4K would look last-gen? my PC with a 1070 can handle it at ultra 4K above 30fps, pretty sure an optimized version of it would fair much better.
 
The list of games looks to be mostly XB360 games running in BC mode. So I assume running Gears from Game Pass on your Scorpio will mean running a BC game rendered at 4K. If you feel XB360 launch game graphics rendered at super high resolutions is enough to look next-gen against modern engines with their gorgeous lighting and whatnot, we'll just have to disagree. ;)
 
The list of games looks to be mostly XB360 games running in BC mode. So I assume running Gears from Game Pass on your Scorpio will mean running a BC game rendered at 4K. If you feel XB360 launch game graphics rendered at super high resolutions is enough to look next-gen against modern engines with their gorgeous lighting and whatnot, we'll just have to disagree. ;)
oh! well that would be a shame if true LOL. I would hope that the entire list of games on games pass is not all 360 games. I think that would be a critical mistake. The alpha list doesn't look 'great', but I think by the time the game pass is released to consumers we'll have a better idea by then.
 
I recognise it may be subject to change, but I prefer to base my current thinkings on current information rather than possible future information. ;) If the game list turns out to be very different from the one currently described, my view will change accordingly.

As for Gears being the X1 version, it's still a remake, no? Like the Uncharted Collection doesn't look a patch on Uncharted 4 because it's still based in last gen. If Gears is a current-gen super remake, then I'll retract that as an example and use one of the other games. :p
 
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