Rumor: XBox dual SKU next-gen launch

[Jay]

Just seems like a lot of weight (and a dedicated thread!?) for someone with that background.

Let me get this right, all ms documentation referred to the 1X cpu as a custom x86, and therefore he got it wrong for reporting what he was leaked?
How long was it before it was fully understood that it was just a jaguar?
Anyway.

A 6TF base sku with zen cores could do well, may even target. 1440p so downscaling 1080p and upscaling to 4k wouldn't be to bad.
The reason for not using Scorpio engine is it wouldn't be able to play next gen games if there's only bc and games are not forced to work on xo.

Not everyone needs the best IQ, just the ability to play next gen games at a reasonable price.

 

[goonergaz]

Was he though ? Did Microsoft ever acknowledge there was a Jaguar in their console ? I think they always stated the CPU was a Custom AMD 8 cores CPU and nothing else.

Let me get this right, all ms documentation referred to the 1X cpu as a custom x86, and therefore he got it wrong for reporting what he was leaked?
How long was it before it was fully understood that it was just a jaguar?
Anyway.

A 6TF base sku with zen cores could do well, may even target. 1440p so downscaling 1080p and upscaling to 4k wouldn't be to bad.
The reason for not using Scorpio engine is it wouldn't be able to play next gen games if there's only bc and games are not forced to work on xo.

Not everyone needs the best IQ, just the ability to play next gen games at a reasonable price.

It was a modified Jaguar, it's still a Jaguar. To say he was 99% sure it's not a Jaguar is simply him being wrong, or trying to mislead and imply something better than it was.

 

[msia2k75]

It was a modified Jaguar, it's still a Jaguar. To say he was 99% sure it's not a Jaguar is simply him being wrong, or trying to mislead and imply something better than it was.

Not everyone is knowledgeable in terms of CPU naming scheme...

Anyway, the fundamental reason for doing these SKUs is really related to economics. Silicon scaling doesnt seem to bring anywhere near the cost reductions they did in the past and it's going to get worse. Consoles still need to be affordable with a mainstream price market hence why this dual SKU (actually there are three of them) strategy. Seen in this light, i repeat, MS' strategy makes complete sense imo.

 

[iroboto]

Was he though ? Did Microsoft ever acknowledge there was a Jaguar in their console ? I think they always stated the CPU was a Custom AMD 8 cores CPU and nothing else.

Yea, he's written some things that were slightly off, I wouldn't necessarily say outright wrong, but on a technical discussion we would probably call it more incorrect than correct. He's not a technical journalist, so his interpretations of the information, or his ability to follow up on those types of things are not going to be inline with the quality of other technical blogs/news.

In many ways you are right Global. If he's looking at a leak, MS does always just write 'CUSTOM x86 processor', it never says modified Jaguar or anything like that. And he might not make the connection that it's custom jaguar processor.

 

[iroboto]

Just seems like a lot of weight (and a dedicated thread!?) for someone with that background.

he's certainly more connected than a lot of people. He wouldn't have lasted this long and had other publications point to him if all he pushed out was garbage.

 

[iroboto]

I'm sure devs could implement a RT mode at the sacrifice of res or fps etc, it shouldn't come in the way of other things. But man there's a world of difference of designing a game with 6-7tf of power vs 12tf, one system would have enough juice to make a world twice as big for example. Yet the more powerful SKU X2 could only up res the smaller world in 4k, higher textures and af.
Price is indeed a big factor, I wonder how much a 15tf X2 would cost, $599 sounds likely.

Just doing some napkin math and following past methods:
edit:

Using "Google Supplied" numbers for Tflops,

360 -> .24 Tflops [Xbox 360    ]
XB1 -> 1.2 Tflops [Xbox One    ]
PS4 -> 1.8 Tflops [PS4         ]
PRO -> 4.2 Tflops [PS4 Pro     ]
SCO -> 6.0 Tflops [Xbox Scorpio]
ANA -> 12.0 Tflops [Anaconda]

And looking at flop/pix in units of 1000,

                                   360   XB1   PS4   PRO   SCO   ANA
================================= ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====
 960 x  540 @  30 Hz =  16 Mpix/s   15    77   116   270   386   750
1280 x  720 @  30 Hz =  28 Mpix/s    9    43    65   152   217   428
 960 x  540 @  60 Hz =  31 Mpix/s    8    39    58   135   193   387
1280 x  720 @  60 Hz =  55 Mpix/s    4    22    33    76   109   218
 960 x  540 @ 120 Hz =  62 Mpix/s    4    19    29    68    96   193
1920 x 1080 @  30 Hz =  62 Mpix/s    4    19    29    68   _96_  193
1280 x  720 @ 120 Hz = 111 Mpix/s    2    11    16    38    54   108
1920 x 1080 @  60 Hz = 124 Mpix/s    2    10    14    34   _48_   97
1920 x 1080 @ 120 Hz = 249 Mpix/s    1     5     7    17    24    48
3840 x 2160 @  30 Hz = 249 Mpix/s    1     5     7    17    24   _48_
3840 x 2160 @  60 Hz = 498 Mpix/s    0     2     4     8    12   _24_
3840 x 2160 @ 120 Hz = 995 Mpix/s    0     1     2     4     6    12

There's straight up 2x quality per pixel if you baseline the 6TF of power with 1080p resolution.
I can't see how a 12 TF system could compete with a 6TF system at native. Assuming reconstruction to 4K at best it would catch the 1080p system and have similar flops/px.

You would need 24TF at 4K to catch a 6TF 1080p at native. Pushing a little bit more in the flop range isn't going to be a dramatic difference. But RT will be though. I'll take RT + reconstruction over more flops.

Next gen should be about lighting, shadows, ao, GI, and maybe even some reflections. *maybe*

edit: I'll come back and remake a proper Tim Lottes table. Just sort of forgot how we coded tables

 

[Jay]

It was a modified Jaguar, it's still a Jaguar. To say he was 99% sure it's not a Jaguar is simply him being wrong, or trying to mislead and imply something better than it was.

Would it be better if you just pretended it never came from him for you?
Approach it like someone asking, what about this for a strategy by MS?
I don't think it's a crazy idea and is an interesting discussion point. Like shifty said, it's about the ideas

 

[Jay]

Just doing some napkin math and following past methods:
1080p = 2073600px
6TF
28.9 Mflops / px

4k = 8294400px
12TF
14.46 Mflops/px

There's straight up 2x quality per pixel if you baseline the 6TF of power with 1080p resolution.
I can't see how a 12 TF system could compete with a 6TF system at native. Assuming reconstruction to 4K at best it would catch the 1080p system and have similar flops/px.

You would need 24TF at 4K to catch a 6TF 1080p at native. Pushing a little bit more in the flop range isn't going to be a dramatic difference. But RT will be though.

One of the reasons I said it could be 1440p not 1080p,
reasonable 4k upscale image, clean 1080p.
Don't market as 1080p machine, just lower powered sku for the budget non streaming market

 

[Deleted member 13524]

There's absolutely no point in releasing a console in 2019/2020 that targets 1080p. At the very least it's 1440p render with smart upscaling to 4K (DLSS, checkerboard, etc.).

Unless it's a handheld.

 

[BRiT]

What if it targets the $299 segment?

 

[AlNom]

Indeed. Common sense test would be, why not just use Scorpio? Why bother re-releasing the same SKU.

Re-using Jaguar after 7 years would be utterly insane, albeit very Nintendo if they were super paranoid about HW BC.

 

[iroboto]

Re-using Jaguar after 7 years would be utterly insane, albeit very Nintendo if they were super paranoid about HW BC.

View attachment 2770 View attachment 2770 View attachment 2770 View attachment 2770 View attachment 2770


View attachment 2769

lol !

yooo.... GPU side rendering!! Give it lifeeeeee already. #FreeUptheCPU ! #executeIndirectlyAlready

 

[ultragpu]

Just doing some napkin math and following past methods:
1080p = 2073600px
6TF
2.89 Mflops / px

4k = 8294400px
12TF
1.446 Mflops/px

There's straight up 2x quality per pixel if you baseline the 6TF of power with 1080p resolution.
I can't see how a 12 TF system could compete with a 6TF system at native. Assuming reconstruction to 4K at best it would catch the 1080p system and have similar flops/px.

You would need 24TF at 4K to catch a 6TF 1080p at native. Pushing a little bit more in the flop range isn't going to be a dramatic difference. But RT will be though. I'll take RT + reconstruction over more flops.

Next gen should be about lighting, shadows, ao, GI, and maybe even some reflections. *maybe*

edit: I'll come back and make a proper Tim Lottes table. Just sort of forgot how we coded tables

Your math only makes sense if we're gaming on a 1080p screen , on a 65" 4k screen things could change drastically. I'm not an advocate of native 4k for the record, 4k reconstruction like you said would have similar flops/px and I believe would be the better choice all said and done. Late 2020 is well and truly The 4k era and I bet even the average Joe wouldn't mistaken it. You just can't market 1080p any more. That said the perfect balance lies with 4k reconstruction and then turning up the rest to 11, something a 6-7tf machine just won't deliver.

 

[turkey]

Whilst 4k sets are selling well I think many folks game away from the main screen, be this a games room, child's bedroom or monitor. I suspect many folks are happy with their 1080 set for gaming and will continue to be especially if the cost is $100 lower at launch.

Also not forgetting how many little Timmy's there are who's parents will buy them the new console to play Fifa / fortnight or whatever with little technical understanding.

They need to go asperational as well as ultra mainstream, the S and X combo seems to be selling well for them atm, and I can see.why they would want to carry that forward.

 

[goonergaz]

Yea, he's written some things that were slightly off, I wouldn't necessarily say outright wrong, but on a technical discussion we would probably call it more incorrect than correct. He's not a technical journalist, so his interpretations of the information, or his ability to follow up on those types of things are not going to be inline with the quality of other technical blogs/news.

In many ways you are right Global. If he's looking at a leak, MS does always just write 'CUSTOM x86 processor', it never says modified Jaguar or anything like that. And he might not make the connection that it's custom jaguar processor.

Except he said "I'm 99% sure it's not a Jaguar", not "I'm not 100% sure if it's a Jaguar/not a Jaguar". Do you get the difference?

Would it be better if you just pretended it never came from him for you?
Approach it like someone asking, what about this for a strategy by MS?
I don't think it's a crazy idea and is an interesting discussion point. Like shifty said, it's about the ideas

I'm just saying we have a thread for the next gen rumours already, why do we have a dedicated one for this?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

What if it targets the $299 segment?

We right now have GPUs using 230mm^2 chips with 6 TFLOPs and 8GB GDDR5 at 256GB/s costing $200, and those cards target 1440p.

In the 7nm era they can probably have a 200mm^2 full SoC that has a larger and/or higher-clocked ~8TFLOPs GPU and a new CPU module, together with a 192bit GDDR6 bus for 12GB at 384GB/s.


If you look at the market right now, the biggest problem against getting a $300 console would probably be to fit 12GB of fast RAM in the budget, but that's one thing they can't cut regardless or game parity will be hard to achieve.

Re-using Jaguar after 7 years would be utterly insane, albeit very Nintendo if they were super paranoid about HW BC.

Nah, although they're not on the level of Microsoft, Sony already does emulation.
They wouldn't keep using Jaguar anymore, at the very least because it would put them in a large disadvantage against the next XBox.

 

[iroboto]

Except he said "I'm 99% sure it's not a Jaguar", not "I'm not 100% sure if it's a Jaguar/not a Jaguar". Do you get the difference?



I'm just saying we have a thread for the next gen rumours already, why do we have a dedicated one for this?

The other thread if for our spec thread. This is for our rumour thread.
Yea, I get where you are going. It's still up to us put the rumour through the paces and determine it's validity. We definitely can't take his word for it, but ignoring him altogether is sort of making this a boring forum too

Anyway, too many corroborating news sites posting their own news on this.

 

[iroboto]

Your math only makes sense if we're gaming on a 1080p screen , on a 65" 4k screen things could change drastically. I'm not an advocate of native 4k for the record, 4k reconstruction like you said would have similar flops/px and I believe would be the better choice all said and done. Late 2020 is well and truly The 4k era and I bet even the average Joe wouldn't mistaken it. You just can't market 1080p any more. That said the perfect balance lies with 4k reconstruction and then turning up the rest to 11, something a 6-7tf machine just won't deliver.

If there is a box for 4K, then you're covered.
If the 6TF variant is grounded at 1080p that's fairly super duper and have the higher more expensive box for 4K users.
Let people have the option. I don't think an all-in-one box is necessarily easier to market/scope for developers. It's also not easier to market.
What would the baseline be for a 4K machine? How do you market that performance level when 1/2 the population is still very much using 1080p screens. It's not like 4K monitors have taken off.

 

[iroboto]

https://www.thurrott.com/xbox/19539...conda-anthem-danta-lockhart-maverick-and-roma

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm just saying we have a thread for the next gen rumours already, why do we have a dedicated one for this?

We don't have a thread for next-gen rumours, unless you can link me to it. We have a thread for discussing the next-gen hardware, the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, etc of the mainstream boxes. A report on a two-tier launch doesn't contribute to that. The major discussion here in my mind is how realistic is this rumour given the new low-tier console is rumoured about the same power as the XB1X? Where does that leave the 'no more console generations' idea for MS, and XB1X becoming the low-tier of next-gen?

The discussion here is all about business, positioning, and the difference between what could be achieved in the low tier 6TF console versus XB1X, and whether it makes sense or if this rumour is mistaken. It's not giving info about the new hardware other than rumour of an SSD AFAICS, which is no value as a rumour as we already speculated on it; SSD talks requires confirmation or technical details to be of value.