Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[3dilettante]

I thought Ars was just referencing Polygon and Kotaku in this instance.

I don't recall Ars standing out in terms of the console rumor space. Scoops/rumors do not seem to really begin there or receive further elaboration or substantiation. I'm drawing a blank on its major insights in this sphere, versus some of its historical articles on CPU architecture or in different scientific fields.

 

[Jwm]

Although when you think about it a Xbox streaming stick it is probably a little more advanced than a chromecast. I mean it has to stream games and work with a controller with with little lag/latency..all in the form of a small stick.

So a near $100 price tag while expensive may not be so crazy...

How far off would this be from the current streaming stick that they offer? Erm...the Wireless Display Adapter. I wonder if they are just reworking/or simply rebadging that product. Granted I have been too busy to fully see everything that is flying around the fun E3 silly season, so I might not be thinking about what this stick actually is.

 

[zed]

Is Ars bad for this stuff? Serious question. I don't really go there.

Its a good site, though anything written by Kyle Orland comes with some Bias

 

[Shortbread]

Its a good site, though anything written by Kyle Orland comes with some Bias

And some mental gymnastics issues with charts and graphs...

 

[Rangers]

I feel like we should temper expectations on clocks as well. nVidia just has the higher R&D budget.

Hasn't helped them in the past, as generally in brute strength Nvidia are behind AMD. Think Titan X vs Fury X, in teraflops the latter wins. They usually make up the deficit basically by paying devs to code in a biased manner for their cards. As a consequence, over time AMD cards tend to age much better.

Not to say maybe this time it's finally catching up to AMD. I suppose, but we haven't seen Polaris yet (which already is not a great thing).

 

[eastmen]

How far off would this be from the current streaming stick that they offer? Erm...the Wireless Display Adapter. I wonder if they are just reworking/or simply rebadging that product. Granted I have been too busy to fully see everything that is flying around the fun E3 silly season, so I might not be thinking about what this stick actually is.

MS has the miracast dongle they sell which is like $50 and all it does is mirror your laptop / pc / tablet with no wires (you can also extend y our desktop.


I think this will be more like the intel sticks. If will use either an intel quad core atom set up like all the others on the market with perhaps the xbox one controller tech built in for games and control or it will use some type of amd apu.

If its a stick it will be to small for a xbox one apu. However what if its a small box like the NVidia or fire tv ? Is there any chance a 14nm xbox one apu with 8 gigs of ram can fit in such a thing ?

 

[function]

Would it really make sense to use 8GB HBM2 and then 8GB DDR4 in a console? If you're already using a HBM2 2.5D interposer setup it easier to avoid the 2nd memory bus completely. Less complex design, less heat, smaller PCB and less parts which might be even cheaper in the end.

A 2-bus setup could be usable for CPU latency reasons but would that really be a relevant decision factor for MS?

Suggesting a pool of DDR4 is based on the presumption that HBM2 will be significantly more expensive than DDR4 (far more assembly work in creating the stacks, attaching to interposer, more chances for error during assembly, lower volume etc). But this is just an assumption, and I just can't find anything to indicate what costs of HBM2 might be.

My thought is that by going with DDR4 for low BW use, you can reduce the number of stacks and go with a smaller interposer. 8 x 16 Gb DDR4 @ 2400, in x8 configuration, on a 64-bit bus, is super mainstream stuff and would provide ample BW for dash and caching at more or less the lowest cost you can get going forward. It might even save some power too - while HBM2 offers fantastic power per bit, the BW it delivers is massively beyond what you need for a huge chunk of what you're storing.

But yeah, it could be that despite this the economics weight if favour of simply using more HBM2 for the reasons you outline. AMD are going to be offering Zen APUs that support both HBM and DDR4 though, so there's the potential to go that route if MS want.

 

[Globalisateur]

I thought Ars was just referencing Polygon and Kotaku in this instance.

I don't recall Ars standing out in terms of the console rumor space. Scoops/rumors do not seem to really begin there or receive further elaboration or substantiation. I'm drawing a blank on its major insights in this sphere, versus some of its historical articles on CPU architecture or in different scientific fields.

You are right, Ars were just referencing Kotaku and another outlet about VR stuff. Polygon has its own sources for the Scorpio. Not from real untrustworthy leakers like Neo. Directly from the corporation: "anonymous Microsoft sources".

But announcing a console 20-21 months before its release? seems to me Microsoft don't want people buying PSVR + Neo and instead want them to wait one whole year (because creating a new console from the start takes time) to buy their own console + Occulus. Really obvious IMO. They don't care about the harm they can do on their own XB1 anymore.

It's like they suddenly understood that Sony were going all out with Neo + PSVR + hundred of VR games and reacted...

Polygon even has the rumored Neo specs wrong. It's ~4.2 tflops (~4.19 if you use the already rounded 1.84 numbers), not 4.14 tflops. But we already knew they weren't that good with charts, estimations and numbers.

 

[turkey]

MS has the miracast dongle they sell which is like $50 and all it does is mirror your laptop / pc / tablet with no wires (you can also extend y our desktop.


I think this will be more like the intel sticks. If will use either an intel quad core atom set up like all the others on the market with perhaps the xbox one controller tech built in for games and control or it will use some type of amd apu.

If its a stick it will be to small for a xbox one apu. However what if its a small box like the NVidia or fire tv ? Is there any chance a 14nm xbox one apu with 8 gigs of ram can fit in such a thing ?

What if they only need to supply enough for universal apps and games.

Specs for that

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/system-resource-allocation

UWP apps and games running on Xbox One share resources with the system and other apps. Therefore, UWP apps and games will have access to the following resources:

• In this preview, the maximum available memory is 448 MB.
  
  • In future releases, the maximum available memory will be 1 GB.
  • When running your application or game from the Visual Studio debugger, these memory constraints do not apply. This limit is only applicable when not running in debugging mode.
• Share of 2-4 CPU cores depending on the number of apps and games running on the system.
  
  
• Share of 45% of the GPU depending on the number of apps and games running on the system.
  

If they limit what it runs at once and obviously will never have a full game running would they be able to provide thoes sort of specs?

Sounds like the apps have to accept the lower possibility so again a stick may be able to come in with lower specs than total available on the console?

 

[eastmen]

I think that would be really short sighted . The xbox one is already 3 years old. I think limiting yourself to a 3 year old spec is going to handicap the whole thing.

The xbox one at launch used 110w during game play from the wall. I believe that is with Kinect attached. I think if they get down to 50 watts or less they can fit it inside something like the apple tv sized box

Look at the intel nuc kits

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Hasn't helped them in the past, as generally in brute strength Nvidia are behind AMD. Think Titan X vs Fury X, in teraflops the latter wins. They usually make up the deficit basically by paying devs to code in a biased manner for their cards. As a consequence, over time AMD cards tend to age much better.

Explain why Fury X scales so poorly over AMD's other cards as well? Teraflops aren't everything.

 

[mpg1]

I think that would be really short sighted . The xbox one is already 3 years old. I think limiting yourself to a 3 year old spec is going to handicap the whole thing.

The xbox one at launch used 110w during game play from the wall. I believe that is with Kinect attached. I think if they get down to 50 watts or less they can fit it inside something like the apple tv sized box

Look at the intel nuc kits

It won't be that small. It's rumored to be 40% smaller. So a bit smaller than Xbox 360 S.

 

[eastmen]

It won't be that small. It's rumored to be 40% smaller. So a bit smaller than Xbox 360 S.

That's the slim which most likely has a bluray drive. I'm talking about the xbox tv device. Xbox one apu on 14nm no bluray. Can they get it down to the size of an apple tv or intel nuc . That would make a killer media device for $100

 

[Nisaaru]

An AppleTV is a <2Watt device. Use some common sense here

 

[Deleted member 11852]

An AppleTV is a <2Watt device. Use some common sense here

The old ones maybe, the 4th get AppleTV is a power eating monster and been measured eating 2.4 watts decoding Netflix 1080p streams!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

An AppleTV is a <2Watt device. Use some common sense here

Which isn't that much smaller than an Intel NUC which is a 15 Watt device. Use some common sense here. He did after all, also reference the Intel NUC.

4th Gen Apple TV - 3.9" x 3.9" x 1.3"
Intel NUC - 4" x 4" x 2"

It's has a bit less height but otherwise pretty similar. That said, I don't think we're getting XBO performance in a 15 Watt device.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

Maybe for the Xbox Stream powered by the Cloud!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I fully expect the Xbox TV (or whatever it ends up being called) will be fully capably of streaming games from an Xbox device (maybe even PC), otherwise why even give it the Xbox Brand.

I also fully expect the Xbox "stick" to be based on something like the Intel Compute stick, probably based on the Cherry Trail version (~100 USD). Alternatively I guess they could go with an ARM version running Windows Phone OS customized with an Xbox UI?

Regards,
SB

 

[ShyGuy]

I wonder if there is a chance that Scorpio is not an upgraded XB1 but rather the start of MS's next generation, released four years to the day after XB1. If they take the rumoured 6TF GPU and add in a Zen CPU and 32GB's of GDDR5 / HBM RAM it would be roughly the same leap over XB1 that XB1 was over 360. They could make it completely backwards compatible with XBOX, 360 and XB1.

Nov 2017 launch at $399, pure core gamer focused marketing that made PS4 so successful.

 

[bunge]

I wonder if there is a chance that Scorpio is not an upgraded XB1 but rather the start of MS's next generation, released four years to the day after XB1. If they take the rumoured 6TF GPU and add in a Zen CPU and 32GB's of GDDR5 / HBM RAM it would be roughly the same leap over XB1 that XB1 was over 360. They could make it completely backwards compatible with XBOX, 360 and XB1.

Nov 2017 launch at $399, pure core gamer focused marketing that made PS4 so successful.

I hope that's the plan. Anything less seems like it would fall short of success.