Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[Silent_Buddha]

If they can figure out a way to avoid memory contention while still using a unified pool of memory, that would render the ESRAM almost redundant. Yes, it'd still have some benefits but it'd lose some of the main benefits that it currently enjoys. No memory contention when using it and faster speed than the main pool of DDR3. Then again if the memory is fast enough (320 GB/s is a massive step up from the XBOs combined bandwidth) the memory contention may not be as much of an issue.

The ESRAM takes up a relatively massive amount of die space. I'm sure Microsoft would prefer to use that for additional CUs. It solved a problem they had during the design of the XBO, but I don't feel it's necessary for the XBO Scorpio.

Regards,
SB

 

[Jay]

I'm not suggesting esram for the scorpio, I'm saying could use hbm. Was just saying why I think a simular set up (smaller fast bit of memory) isn't necessarily evil.
Like the esram you solve contention, have fast speed, large enough size, and don't need to take up die space.
Do we know how they got the 320 GB/s?

IF it's cheaper than 12+GB of gddr5/x, it could be a good solution.

 

[liolio]

I've used higher res pictures than the one you posted, measured the number of pixels covered, created percentages of the die area covered, and applied that to die measurements. Your eyeballs are, unfortunately, a little off!

I could not believe it. I went and checked and checked again pictures... to finally notice the one memory controller that run all along the short side of the PS4. So you measurement might have been done right.

I'm not turning it into a MS vs Sony thing. They had different design goals, and you have to factor design goals in when looking at the hardware. You want to look at hypothetical hardware configurations without looking at the key realities they were designed to address. MS needed high BW, low power and lots of memory. Sony just needed lots of BW - and ended up getting lots of memory too!

They had different design goal, MSFT wanted lots of RAM. I would not vouch MSFT approach more efficient without proper data, the best metric should be average gigapixels per seconds by the power consumption.
Now my argument is that discrete parts and NUMA were fitting the requirement of both Sony and MSFT.

With the performance and power levels MS and Sony were targeting I think SoCs were the right choice, as were their memory choices. Both were keep to avoid split memory pools, and MS had additional power concerns and quite possibly the intention to shrink (we'll see when the S is out). Two different type of bus on one chip would be added complexity and force developers to use split memory - you'd need to get a pretty big pay off in return for that. It doesn't look like MS and Sony thought it was there.

I don't think so but I'm pretty sure we won't agree at this point . Dealing with NUMA is pretty much the basis, VRAM are huge enough nowadays and PCI -express offer plenty of bandwidth to move some assets when needed.

It may be for Scorpio that it doesn't play out that way (I guess we'll see), but I think Neo is going to be a SoC just like PS4 Bone.

It seems MSFT settled on a SOC again. As things work till somebody DOES something differently and it proves more efficient nobody will even reconsider. I think it is worse considering looking at the constrains the consoles manufacturers set on themselves through the use of SOC. I acknowledge that it is a difficult matter to discuss as we can get enough data (it goes for both side of the argument though).
I quit the conversation, as MSFT confirmed it is a SOC, so my speculation and the related argument wrt SOC vs discrete and NUMA vs UMA are getting OT

 

[upnorthsox]

Phil stated they could have had a more powerful console than XBO for Holiday 2016, but they wanted to hit 6 TFOPs (due to developer feedback), and that wasn't possible for Holiday 2016.

Do you have a link for this?

 

[mrcorbo]

Do you have a link for this?

From the Eurogamer interview:

We just shipped Forza Motorsport Apex on Windows. We shipped that at 4K and we looked at that. We talked to Todd Howard about Fallout and the work he's doing on Fallout VR and said, what is the spec we need to have in Scorpio to make sure we can support 4K?

So developers today are supporting multiple design points already. That's why we picked 4K and not something kind of weird in the middle. We could have done a new update this year. We actually looked at it. We went all the way to, we had the spec in front of us, should we ship something that's less than Scorpio this year, but in truth you can't do a true 4K console this year. And I just didn't think anything between what is effectively a 1080p console and the 4K console, like, from a consumer television standpoint there's nothing in the middle. So let's go focus on 4K and next year was the right year to do that.

 

[KOF]

If we needed more bandwidth, wouldn't more affordable alternative would be to use GDDR5X?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Do you have a link for this?

Unfortunately, not off hand. It's in one of the numerous interviews he did. I don't even remember if it was a video interview or a transcribed to web page interview. Had you asked the day I posted it, there's a decent chance I may have remembered which one it was in since I only had time to look at maybe 3-4 things a day related to XBO-T on the day of the conference and for a few days after. And I unfortunately don't current have the time to spend a few hours trying to track it down again. My apologies.

He does state in multiple interviews that the 6 TFLOPs was a number they settled on after getting developer feedback. But I think the blurb about being able to launch a more powerful console this year was one of their options, but for 6 TFLOPs they'd have to wait until 2017 was only in 1 or 2 interviews.

[edit]Thanks Mrcorbo for digging that up.[/edit]

Regards,
SB

 

[mrcorbo]

I'm not suggesting esram for the scorpio, I'm saying could use hbm. Was just saying why I think a simular set up (smaller fast bit of memory) isn't necessarily evil.
Like the esram you solve contention, have fast speed, large enough size, and don't need to take up die space.
Do we know how they got the 320 GB/s?

IF it's cheaper than 12+GB of gddr5/x, it could be a good solution.

Now see, I see the ESRAM as being a necessary evil that then turned out to not be necessary. So it was just evil. It's pretty much *the* reason the XBOne was so much less powerful than the PS4.

 

[mpg1]

I think this is an pretty interesting part of that Eurogamer interview article with Phil Spencer:

"On a console to console experience, when we designed Scorpio and we said 4K console, we looked at games that are running at, let's say 1080p 60 on an Xbox One, and said we want that same game to be able to run at 4K 60 on a Scorpio. We looked at the design of the games we had on Xbox One today and said, if we increase the resolution and maintain the framerate we have, could we hit that?

I think framerate's more interesting than resolution in terms of competitive gaming, and we wanted to make sure teams were able to build the 4K version of their game at the same framerate they can hit, at whatever resolution: 900 or 1K or even 720 that they're hitting on this box. So, we thought specifically about that situation and talked to developers about it."


It seems to me that Microsoft is literally doing what I speculated sony is attempting to do with games on neo and that is effectively take a Xbox One/PS4 game and simply up the resolution as far as they can while maintaining the same framerate.

And you know what they probably will do it. I mean if they just going to take an Xbox One game and not change anything except the resolution it will probably come pretty close to 4K on a machine that is 4.5X as powerful.

Question is for me is it worth the premium price to have a machine that will be playing games with medium graphical settings at 4K? I guess this is what Phil Spencer was referring to when he said it wouldn't be worth it to have Xbox Scorpio without a 4K TV. The resolution alone is the entire difference.

 

[Jay]

Now see, I see the ESRAM as being a necessary evil that then turned out to not be necessary. So it was just evil. It's pretty much *the* reason the XBOne was so much less powerful than the PS4.

Given the design goals I disagree, I also think that if the ps4 ended up with 4gb which was very possible, the ps4 would have been a very compromised machine overall imo.
As I said I'm in the minority and recognise that.

edit: Better way to put it, if xo ended up with 4gb gddr5, there's no way it could do all the things that it can and is planned to do

 

[Jay]

And you know what they probably will do it. I mean if they just going to take an Xbox One game and not change anything except the resolution it will probably come pretty close to 4K on a machine that is 4.5X as powerful.

That is the headline design goal, but he has also said it's up to the devs how they use the power.
They just wanted to make sure they had a machine that could play all xo games at 4k without loss of framerate and graphic quality.

 

[mpg1]

That is the headline design goal, but he has also said it's up to the devs how they use the power.
They just wanted to make sure they had a machine that could play all xo games at 4k without loss of framerate and graphic quality.

True but developers are going to have 4 different console target specs. Not sure how much time they are going to spend optimizing for the more powerful machines.

 

[Jay]

True but developers are going to have 4 different console target specs. Not sure how much time they are going to spend optimizing for the more powerful machines.

agreed, that's the benefit of making it powerful enough to do 4k without optimization. If dev has time then can do other stuff, it almost becomes the minimum really. Not a bad thing
with the way engines are designed though, optimise for xo, you'll reap the benefit on Scorpio also more than likely

 

[mpg1]

agreed, that's the benefit of making it powerful enough to do 4k without optimization. If dev has time then can do other stuff, it almost becomes the minimum really. Not a bad thing
with the way engines are designed though, optimise for xo, you'll reap the benefit on Scorpio also more than likely

Depends on how many dev tools Microsoft will have to make it as easy as possible for developers. After Forza Apex with all those dynamic graphics settings it's possible a lot of games will built and the optimization will happen in real time. It would be pretty cool if developers would give Scorpio users a choice of selecting max res or fixed 1080p. With the 1080p option then funneling extra power into other areas like higher details/AA

 

[davygee]

That is the headline design goal, but he has also said it's up to the devs how they use the power.
They just wanted to make sure they had a machine that could play all xo games at 4k without loss of framerate and graphic quality.

I just don't see all the fuss with 4K at the moment. We are a long time away from mass 4K adoption and considering the extra processing power required to up Xbox One games from 900p (which they are normally) to 4K would diminish any other extra graphical extras they could add to the games.

I remember everyone jumping on the bandwagon and assuming we would be getting 1080p@60 for every single game on the Xbox One and PS4, but developers decided to up the look of games and use the processing power advantage for other features rather than locking in 1080p and 60fps as standard. This is the same issue here. If 4K is a lock in, then forget anything else.

 

[Jay]

I just don't see all the fuss with 4K at the moment. We are a long time away from mass 4K adoption and considering the extra processing power required to up Xbox One games from 900p (which they are normally) to 4K would diminish any other extra graphical extras they could add to the games.

I remember everyone jumping on the bandwagon and assuming we would be getting 1080p@60 for every single game on the Xbox One and PS4, but developers decided to up the look of games and use the processing power advantage for other features rather than locking in 1080p and 60fps as standard. This is the same issue here. If 4K is a lock in, then forget anything else.

adoption of 4k isn't that far away, plus there's vr. Making a machine that can run current games at 4k, then leaving it up to devs to use it as they see fit where 4k is the quick win isn't a bad approach imo.
Especially when planning ahead a couple years after it's release.
This will become the low end/mass market device when 'next gen' starts

 

[goonergaz]

A fewthings for me; 1) people are saying 4.5x the power' - it's not a true 4.5x, only the TF - not the CPU, not the bandwidth and not the RAM. 2) XBO already struggles to hit 1080p so yeah, how realistic is it to expect this 'not really 4.5x the power' going to produce 4x the pixels by default as many seem to be suggesting? 3) it seems far too soon for 4K, so few gamers care and those that do are PC gamers sitting right in front of their screens...4k is more next gen, hell this gen can't even get 1080p right.

 

[liolio]

If we needed more bandwidth, wouldn't more affordable alternative would be to use GDDR5X?

MOst liekly yes, but are AMD memory controller ready? Nvidia seems pretty proud of their GDDR5X memory controller and they dedicated a couple marketing slides on the matter when they launched the 1080.

 

[Jay]

they need a console that can do vr, want one that can do 4k.
its not their mainstream offering, so it only needs to sell within their forecasts.
both vr and 4k may currently be niche but that doesn't mean you don't want to be in that market.

 

[davygee]

adoption of 4k isn't that far away, plus there's vr. Making a machine that can run current games at 4k, then leaving it up to devs to use it as they see fit where 4k is the quick win isn't a bad approach imo.
Especially when planning ahead a couple years after it's release.
This will become the low end/mass market device when 'next gen' starts

In my opinion though, decent 4K adoption is some way off. Look at HD and BR for one. We are just about getting to a level where there are multiple HD tv's around peoples houses and even BR isn't properly adopted. Yeah some houses will have 1 or more BR drives while others may just have one and they never buy BR discs for it and still buy DVDs.

It's good going forward, but going by the specs, Scorpio will just about manage 4K based on the medium settings of current XBox One visuals. I personally think we should get to a point where home consoles are up there with the very high or ultra settings at 1080p before we move up to displaying 4K. There is planning in advance, but if the device is out for 3, 4 or 5 years before we see proper 4K adoption, then it will be ready to be replaced.