Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[AlNom]

The Xbox one has a 256 bit bus for DDR3? It also has 16 chips.

Ack, typo. Was thinking about 2Gbit/4GB memory. For a while Sony was only going to have 4GB GDDR5 anyways. Even the Yukon Document for Durango mentioned only 4GB DDR4 on a 128-bit bus.

XO uses 4Gbit density DDR3 on a 256-bit bus to hit 8GB.

At the time of Xbox one conception 2Gbit Gddr5 wasn't a sure thing for 2013.

6970/7970 was using 2Gbit, anyways, see above corrections.

The last minute switch for PS4 was more or less a repeat of 360's doubled RAM, and 4Gbit GDDR5 just came through the pipe late 2012.

 

[function]

The good thing about this iterative console stuff is they will finally be forced to leave their crippling E/D/SRAM fixation behind...you cant mess with garbage like that in the real world. It's gonna be 256 bit buses from here out. And good, GDDR5/X is getting so fast. Isn't the freakin GTX1080 on a 256 bus? Well I know the R 480 X is anyway.

Is that Nick Baker responsible for EDRAM? He should be fired.

Congratulations, with the design parameters facing the X1 hardware team, by ditching esram you've just managed to make the system even weaker.

Even less power to run the CPU/GPU, and with the phat GDDR5 bus taking up nearly half of the die area freed up by losing esram you still can't go wide enough to catch the PS4. But hooray, the system is now more expensive to make than the current X1, and perhaps even the PS4, and you probably can't shrink it.

But sure, fire Nick Baker.

 

[eastmen]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review

Intel nuc using an i7 6770hq which is a 4c 8 thread 2.6ghz(3.5ghz turbo) 45w TDP chip with 16 gigs of ddr 4 , a Samsung 950 pro ssd











So we should be able to see a device of this size as an xbox one tv nuc at a $100 bucks. Running prime 95 + furmark this only hits 77w which isn't to far off the 110w the xbox one used under load.

 

[DieH@rd]

Speaking of resolution and VR, the Rift is 2160 x 1200.

Typical Xbox One game is around 1600 x 900. To keep the same proportion of frame buffers in esram at rift resolutions you'd need 1.8 times the esram.

64 MB of esram would appear to be a reasonable amount of super fast scratchpad for a 1080+ and Rift focused system, potentially offering FuryX levels of BW.

Thing to note, Oculus and Valve recommend VR devs to hit 3024x1680 [downsampling for AA].

 

[Rikimaru]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10343/the-intel-skull-canyon-nuc6i7kyk-minipc-review

Intel nuc using an i7 6770hq which is a 4c 8 thread 2.6ghz(3.5ghz turbo) 45w TDP chip with 16 gigs of ddr 4 , a Samsung 950 pro ssd

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So we should be able to see a device of this size as an xbox one tv nuc at a $100 bucks. Running prime 95 + furmark this only hits 77w which isn't to far off the 110w the xbox one used under load.

This costs $700 without HDD and RAM.

 

[eastmen]

This costs $700 without HDD and RAM.

Yes because of the intel mobo and chip.

The actually enclosure would be a lot cheaper to produce , most likely in the 10-20 range. a 14nm xbox one apu , 8 gigs off ddr 3 and the mobo wouldn't cost $700

 

[function]

Thing to note, Oculus and Valve recommend VR devs to hit 3024x1680 [downsampling for AA].

Yeah, Mr Fox mentioned what I'm assuming to be the same thing. You need more data than the native resolution of the device to hit recommended quality across the display area after the necessary transforms.

It does appear that there may be ways around this though, rather than just brute forcing at a higher resolution.

Really hoping to see Polaris offer similar tech to Nvidia.

 

[function]

Yes because of the intel mobo and chip.

The actually enclosure would be a lot cheaper to produce , most likely in the 10-20 range. a 14nm xbox one apu , 8 gigs off ddr 3 and the mobo wouldn't cost $700

True, but under load I can imagine that little HS&F combo screaming like a Ghostbusters fan after hearing of the female led remake.

 

[eastmen]

Yeah, Mr Fox mentioned what I'm assuming to be the same thing. You need more data than the native resolution of the device to hit recommended quality across the display area after the necessary transforms.

It does appear that there may be ways around this though, rather than just brute forcing at a higher resolution.

Really hoping to see Polaris offer similar tech to Nvidia.

if pricing is low enough I rather just go dual card with one card for each eye. I will have to see more benchmarks of the NVidia tech in action to see if its really worth it

 

[eastmen]

True, but under load I can imagine that little HS&F combo screaming like a Ghostbustesr fan after hearing of the female led remake.

Well

The maximum chassis temperature observed by the thermal imager was slightly above 60 C near the fan's exhaust vent. At that point, a sound level Android app running on the HTC One M7 recorded 59 dB. For comparison purposes, the Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 recorded 50 dB in a similar scenario.

Its not far off from eurogamers ps4 measurements

However, the launch PS4 was measured at a peak 60dB, dropping down to a minimum of 43dB and 57dB on average. In contrast, CUH-1200 handed in a peak 56dB, 42dB minimum and 52dB on average. It may not sound like a lot, but decibels aren't measured on a linear scale, and the Pocket News blogger notes that the new unit is noticeably quieter. As the new unit uses the same fan as the older hardware, the reduction in noise must simply come down to a lower rpm overall.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-quieter-cooler-and-more-power-efficient-blog



Of course it also depends on what wattage the 14nm apu needs. The intel chip is hitting 75w . Anand did tests of the original xbox one and it was hitting 120w

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7528/the-xbox-one-mini-review-hardware-analysis/5

So assuming the same case with the same fan as the intel nuc could they get the xbox one apu at 14nm to 75w or less ? The lower they go the less the fan would have to spin. Also depending on the design you could make the system a bit thicker and add in a larger fan to keep noise down.


Add in a better video compression hardware + ac and you could have a small box that will do nextflix , prime , hulu whatever + xbox 360 gaming + xbox one gaming + streaming from Scorpio.

If it came in at $100 or $150 I would invest in it . As my xbox 360s go , I will be replacing them with firesticks or the like. This would be more interesting to me.

 

[Jay]

Add in a better video compression hardware + ac and you could have a small box that will do nextflix , prime , hulu whatever + xbox 360 gaming + xbox one gaming + streaming from Scorpio.

If it came in at $100 or $150 I would invest in it . As my xbox 360s go , I will be replacing them with firesticks or the like. This would be more interesting to me.

$100-$150 for a machine that plays xo games? I think you might be waiting a while for that.
if they pulled that off, that would be the only thing they would need to slow at e3. Rest of the 70mins cancelled

 

[MrFox]

Power density have an exponential impact on cooling cost, and/or noise, and/or system size.
On any system, these are mostly vertical asymptotes (horizontal axis being watts), the closer you are from the limit, the steeper the slope.

All noise measurements we see are completely unreliable.
Anyone using a smartphone app is providing crap numbers.
Any measurement done in an office will have too much background noise.
Measurements not even including the distance indicates incompetence and should be ignored.

 

[eastmen]

$100-$150 for a machine that plays xo games? I think you might be waiting a while for that.
if they pulled that off, that would be the only thing they would need to slow at e3. Rest of the 70mins cancelled

remove the bluray player $30 , hardrive $30 . Cut the casing down by more than 2/3rds , cut the power usage down and so forth. You can go from $300 down to $100/150 pretty quickly.

 

[MrFox]

A console that doesn't allow used games might have some "messaging" issues.

 

[eastmen]

A console that doesn't allow used games might have some "messaging" issues.

This would be the media stick / apple tv competitor nothing in that class allows used games either. It would be for streaming apps first and games second. The allure of the device would be that it could do everything that a Roku box or apple tv or fire tv or NVidia shield tv can do but runs all windows apps and xbox games.

 

[iroboto]

remove the bluray player $30 , hardrive $30 . Cut the casing down by more than 2/3rds , cut the power usage down and so forth. You can go from $300 down to $100/150 pretty quickly.

Be uhh conservative with just cutting down $. It's never that straight forward, these consoles still need to last, they aren't exactly installing bottom of the barrel parts.

That being said an Xbox slim coming in $150-200 price point with sales dropping as low as $100 would be a great machine for value but that is for another thread. As this thread is about Scorpio. And the device likely to be announced is the slim. Lol. We do have things backwards here.


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[function]

Any bets as to whether Scorpio will have HDMI in?

I see no evidence that it paid off for MS. Even "no games, so sorry" Kinect is likely to have paid off better for MS than HDMI-in and ir-b-b-b-b-blaster.*

*I know IR-blaster was part of Kinect, but it was more part of the "Gold subscription TV remote" angle they got self-rekt by.

I really hope a cheaper and more capable Kinect does resurface next gen, with more realistic and game oriented goals.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

True, but under load I can imagine that little HS&F combo screaming like a Ghostbusters fan after hearing of the female led remake.

That's certainly one possibility but one of the touted benefits of moving to 14/16 nm FF (from 28 nm non-FF) is anywhere from 40-70% reduction in power consumption. The upper range around 60-70% is if it is mainly used to reduce power consumption and not to increase speed. TSMC, for example, states a generic 40% increase in speed along with a simultaneous 60% reduction in power consumption.

Presumably Microsoft wouldn't be looking to increase the speed and would be going for a straight shrink which would play well into the power efficiency curve. Now, the SOC isn't the only power consumer in the machine (so it's not going to drop to 30-40 watts while under load) but it is by far the largest power consumer in the platform.

At load when running games the XBO can go up to 120 watts although I've seen some sites have measured closer to 110 watts for the entire console. I'd just put that down to silicon variability or games tested.

Anyway. It isn't inconceivable that they could get the power consumption of the entire machine down to around 50-60 watts under load, perhaps less if they can realize power savings in other areas (the dual WiFi chips for example, or LPDDR instead of DDR). And that's assuming they keep using mechanical HDDs (which is the logical choice). An SSD would give great savings with regards to power and heat, but is still too costly for integration into a cost sensitive console.

At that point you aren't far off from the above Intel NUC. Possibly even matching it or even bettering it depending on components choses. The noise would be noticeable (like the Intel NUC) but likely wouldn't be "screaming."

That Intel NUC will certainly still be quite a bit louder than the current XBO. And I don't think Microsoft would want to sacrifice that much in the acoustics to achieve an extremely small form factor. Hence why the rumored slim (also has to house a optical drive) will be roughly the size of the PS4. It's still smaller, and you don't have to get too exotic with the cooling system or component choices (cheaper DDR rather than LPDDR, for example) which will help with the BOM.

But it's certainly possible they could get something close to the Intel NUC in size while still being fairly quiet. For example, if they adapted their cooling system (larger and more robust) from the Surface Pro 4 for use with a SFF XBO along with finding the most power efficient components they can along with an SSD.

Thinking about it. They could always make a Media centric XBO with a smallish 16-64 GB eMMC SSD (cheaper than you can make a mechanical drive). The storage wouldn't be enough to allow you to store games on it which means if someone wanted to play games on it, they'd have to hook up external storage. But in a situation like that they could certainly make something similar in size to an Intel NUC with acoustics that are similar or better when running media. And similar or slightly worse when gaming.

I don't see it happening, but it's certainly possible if they wanted to put in the cost and effort.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

Any bets as to whether Scorpio will have HDMI in?

I see no evidence that it paid off for MS. Even "no games, so sorry" Kinect is likely to have paid off better for MS than HDMI-in and ir-b-b-b-b-blaster.*

*I know IR-blaster was part of Kinect, but it was more part of the "Gold subscription TV remote" angle they got self-rekt by.

I really hope a cheaper and more capable Kinect does resurface next gen, with more realistic and game oriented goals.

I dont think Xbox Slim will even have HDMI IN.

 

[milk]

Its a very nice troll post.

I've linked to multiple reviews showing the thermals and power usage of the intel nuc along with the launch xbox one under load.

But instead of using any type of fact to counter what I've posted , you choose this. Bravo.

Sorry if this has hurt your feelings, but it wasn't dirrected at no-one in particular. Rather, at the many people who get a bit too over-ambitious with their speculative design proposals/wish lists.
I swear I've been trying my best to avoid this kind of post cause some mods don't like it. But I've seen so much wet dreaming it was getting too hard to contain myself. Sorry serious posters.