Scorpio offical reveal incoming, along with 4K Forza, RDR2 and Battlefront.

[+Asmodai MVC]

22 minutes ago, George P said:

It depends on the GPU makers and if they want to add DX12 directly into their GPUs, but I have a feeling the answer is no.

 

This isn't like going from DX11 to DX12, which was a software side, API change.  This is taking D3D12 from software and sticking it into the GPU directly.  It's a very custom job specific to the xbox.

The quote is CPU related not GPU.  If it is indeed a hardware change it's even less likely AMD will add it to PC CPUs and even if they did that PC game developers would use if if the far higher selling Intel CPUs didn't likewise have it.  I still suspect it's marketing spin for the reduction of draw calls going from DX11 to DX12 though.

[Vandalsquad]

7 minutes ago, Asmodai said:

The quote is CPU related not GPU.  If it is indeed a hardware change it's even less likely AMD will add it to PC CPUs and even if they did that PC game developers would use if if the far higher selling Intel CPUs didn't likewise have it.  I still suspect it's marketing spin for the reduction of draw calls going from DX11 to DX12 though.

It's a GPU change the engineers have made that takes over CPU calculations, so you free up the CPU even more. 

 

Just noticed the 16XAF filtering applies to 360 games as well, considering you missed that generation your going to be playing these games in the best possible way now.

[George P Global Moderator]

54 minutes ago, Asmodai said:

The quote is CPU related not GPU.  If it is indeed a hardware change it's even less likely AMD will add it to PC CPUs and even if they did that PC game developers would use if if the far higher selling Intel CPUs didn't likewise have it.  I still suspect it's marketing spin for the reduction of draw calls going from DX11 to DX12 though.

Yeah, they added the needed instructions into the GPU directly so that the CPU now doesn't need to make such detailed instructions for the GPU, what would take thousands of draw calls from the CPU to the GPU to render a scene is now cut down to 11 because the GPU doesn't need to CPU to translate all the dx12 stuff for it since it knows it now.   This is why I said they've basically added DX12 right into the GPU itself.

 

It's a big custom job that I doubt anyone at amd or NVidia will like to add to their PC line of video cards, which is a shame because this is a big piece of optimization.  This is also why the scorpio can do native 4k games with just 6tflops while on the PC we have to brute force things with raw power and little optimization since everything is more general.  

[Vandalsquad]

Quote

Did you see it running a game?

Yes. Well, a ForzaTech demo, which is a stress test based on the Forza Motorsport 6 engine, running the maximum number of cars around a track with dynamic weather and all the bells and whistles turned on.

link

 

Not sure how I missed this about running Dynamic weather as well, even looking at the picture now the sky looks like FH3, same as the wet weather on the track.

 

FM7 will be a beast. 500+ cars, Dynamic weather, actual damage, Native 4K. 

[Showan]

21 hours ago, BajiRav said:

Not much actually, just add an entire PS4 to PS4 Pro and you've Scorpio.

 

Not much more powerful, you're right. Just 50% more memory, 22% more GPU clock, UDH BluRay drive etc. etc.

 

im not the brightest... but some of the breakdown i actually got and am quite impressed.

 

they basically took the jaguar chip broke it down and rebuilt it with better tech. impressive

[+Asmodai MVC]

5 hours ago, Showan said:

they basically took the jaguar chip broke it down and rebuilt it with better tech. impressive

You mean a die shrink?  They did that with the One S too.  It's pretty standard for consoles to have die shrinks (be "rebuilt with better tech" over the life of a console).  For example the PS3 CPU went from 90nm to 60nm to 45nm over it's life.  What's different this time around is when they did that before they were careful to keep the frequency the same for compability purposes despite the smaller revisions being capable of running at higher clocks.  The Jaguar chip in Project Scorpio is clocked 31% higher than the launch Xbox One and has 31% higher performance which means they made no major hardware modifications to it other than shrinking it and raising the clock.  They did also have to tweak it to support the GDDR5 unified memory and such but those are things Jaguar was already tweaked for by AMD for the PS4.  I'm not saying MS doesn't have some extra little tweaks here and there but it's not any sort of radical redesign of Jaguar.  What happened with the GPU and memory subsystem are far more impressive.

[George P Global Moderator]

Well, we've got the technical specs and they're really good, now we need to see what it'll look like and what it'll cost.  I see posts here and there saying it'll be over $500, I doubt it.    They've said this is still a consumer targeting device and has to have a price point for them, so all this talk about $600 or w/e is off the mark.   I think it'll be $499 with the 1TB hdd, maybe $549 with a 2TB hdd if they want to, but we're talking 7 months from now, probably a November release, and most of this tech has been in the works for months already so costs have been cut as well.   For example, the CPU has shrunk, the GPU while it's more beefy it's also on a 16nm die compared to the older 28nm, so its cheaper.   We've got more and faster RAM so that does up the costs from that side but the audio/video block for example, it's the same exact thing already in the XB1S, not something new.

 

the UHD BD drive is the same from what I've read, so no new costs there also.   I'm thinking $499 is possible even with all this work and power, heck, take a hit and charge $399 and make it up on games like crackdown 3 and so on.

[Mando]

7 minutes ago, George P said:

Well, we've got the technical specs and they're really good, now we need to see what it'll look like and what it'll cost.  I see posts here and there saying it'll be over $500, I doubt it.    They've said this is still a consumer targeting device and has to have a price point for them, so all this talk about $600 or w/e is off the mark.   I think it'll be $499 with the 1TB hdd, maybe $549 with a 2TB hdd if they want to, but we're talking 7 months from now, probably a November release, and most of this tech has been in the works for months already so costs have been cut as well.   For example, the CPU has shrunk, the GPU while it's more beefy it's also on a 16nm die compared to the older 28nm, so its cheaper.   We've got more and faster RAM so that does up the costs from that side but the audio/video block for example, it's the same exact thing already in the XB1S, not something new.

 

the UHD BD drive is the same from what I've read, so no new costs there also.   I'm thinking $499 is possible even with all this work and power, heck, take a hit and charge $399 and make it up on games like crackdown 3 and so on.

im thinking along the same lines $499 on release and a drop to $399 in Q1 2018

[Mando]

20 hours ago, Showan said:

 

im not the brightest... but some of the breakdown i actually got and am quite impressed.

 

they basically took the jaguar chip broke it down and rebuilt it with better tech. impressive

yep in NV talk they "Ti" d it

[George P Global Moderator]

3 minutes ago, Mando said:

im thinking along the same lines $499 on release and a drop to $399 in Q1 2018

Yeah, $499 is a good place to start when you think of all you get in the box to start.  The OG XB1 going for $499 back then wasn't smart at all because it was going directly against the PS4 at $399 and it was the weaker of the two systems.  The scorpio can cost more than the PS4 Pro to start because we're talking about a more powerful and newer system, specially if they can release a number of games to release with it that showcase the extra abilities.  Like FM7 and crackdown 3, etc, need more games to boost things, it'll be interesting to see how it goes for sure and MS needs to push out more content.

[Mando]

5 minutes ago, George P said:

Yeah, $499 is a good place to start when you think of all you get in the box to start.  The OG XB1 going for $499 back then wasn't smart at all because it was going directly against the PS4 at $399 and it was the weaker of the two systems.  The scorpio can cost more than the PS4 Pro to start because we're talking about a more powerful and newer system, specially if they can release a number of games to release with it that showcase the extra abilities.  Like FM7 and crackdown 3, etc, need more games to boost things, it'll be interesting to see how it goes for sure and MS needs to push out more content.

we also should factor in the ease of porting DX12 titles from PC arena to the scorpio, heck if MS were REALLY smart, theyd open it up to Valve also and have its steam platform...but that wont happen. They also need to push the media center idea more also, youve got a top notch 4K bluray player/media consumption set top unit there throw in.

 

id consider another xbox when the pay once play on any supported MS platform becomes the norm. 

[Vandalsquad]

18 hours ago, Mando said:

id consider another xbox when the pay once play on any supported MS platform becomes the norm. 

Would say we're already there, for any first party titles anyway. Every Microsoft published title or xbox exclusive gets PC as well for free if you go digital. 360 titles backwards compatible for free, constantly moving more titles in. The amount of engineering this would of taken we can we'll assume they'll continue to work with every future xbox as well due to 'no more generations' everything tied to your Live account will also continue to work on future consoles I would put money on. The backlash over Sony and Nintendos online stores constantly price gauging every generation and Microsoft  continuing  to listen to the players after the disastrous launch.  

 

The only thing we're missing now is OG Xbox support and it had one of the largest original title line ups for a console ever that I would love to play through again, and I'm betting even the xbox one let alone the Scorpio has enough power just for software emulation alone. Not needing to download the titles like 360 and port them over or worry about licencing. Spencer said never say never, but wants as many 360 games ported as possible first and that's their main goal. But I would truly be surprised if they didn't have people already working on emulation.

 

Being able to continually play every xbox game ever, on every new console launch going forwards? That's doing it right. 

 

Money on $499US. Probably around $650-$700 Australian. Will preorder the moment its available.

[George P Global Moderator]

The play anywhere stuff is nice but some say it's hurting hardware sales because why get an xbox if you can play on the PC?  Of course lots of 3rd party PS4 "exclusives" are also on the PC more and more now, like the new Nier for example.   So it's really down to the 1st party stuff and MS needs more 1st party exclusives.  I don't get why they killed scalebound for example.

 

So while I like the play anywhere stuff I think MS needs to maybe bring things to the xbox first and then to the PC as play anywhere, maybe like 1 or 2 weeks on the xbox to start and then bring it to the PC.

[Vandalsquad]

4 hours ago, George P said:

The play anywhere stuff is nice but some say it's hurting hardware sales because why get an xbox if you can play on the PC?  Of course lots of 3rd party PS4 "exclusives" are also on the PC more and more now, like the new Nier for example.   So it's really down to the 1st party stuff and MS needs more 1st party exclusives.  I don't get why they killed scalebound for example.

 

So while I like the play anywhere stuff I think MS needs to maybe bring things to the xbox first and then to the PC as play anywhere, maybe like 1 or 2 weeks on the xbox to start and then bring it to the PC.

I don't think they care where they sell the game as long as they get you into that windows 10 & live environment since Microsoft is a lot larger than it's xbox division which would have to be one of the smallest parts. I don't think there's that many console gamers who decided to play on PC instead, people who are that into PC gaming usually where never going to buy a console anyway. I have a more than competent PC but PC gaming does nothing for me compared to when I was 16. Now it's all about popping that disc in, instant working, laying on a comfortable couch, big screen TV and talking to the those normal real life friends who only console game.

 

I can only assume they cancelled it for a good reason.. After sinking so much money that they wouldn't want to just write off. Development hell, not delivering? Guess we'll never know now.

 

Sony has had a smashing of first party games this year making the xbox look quite worse exclusive wise for the last 6 months, we do get SoD2, Sea of Thieves, Crackdown and Forza at the end of the year all which I've been looking forward to all for years, but new first party exclusives? I'm 100% behind you and expect some announcements at E3 since they've changed everything else people have complained about since launch it's the only thing left that people are bitching about at the moment. Here's hoping anyway..

[George P Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, Vandalsquad said:

I don't think they care where they sell the game as long as they get you into that windows 10 & live environment since Microsoft is a lot larger than it's xbox division which would have to be one of the smallest parts. I don't think there's that many console gamers who decided to play on PC instead, people who are that into PC gaming usually where never going to buy a console anyway. I have a more than competent PC but PC gaming does nothing for me compared to when I was 16. Now it's all about popping that disc in, instant working, laying on a comfortable couch, big screen TV and talking to the those normal real life friends who only console game.

 

I can only assume they cancelled it for a good reason.. After sinking so much money that they wouldn't want to just write off. Development hell, not delivering? Guess we'll never know now.

 

Sony has had a smashing of first party games this year making the xbox look quite worse exclusive wise for the last 6 months, we do get SoD2, Sea of Thieves, Crackdown and Forza at the end of the year all which I've been looking forward to all for years, but new first party exclusives? I'm 100% behind you and expect some announcements at E3 since they've changed everything else people have complained about since launch it's the only thing left that people are bitching about at the moment. Here's hoping anyway..

Yeah, really need to push into more 1st party and 2nd party (MS published and paid for but made by another developer) and get those out quick.   It's the only way to push things ahead, just doing a new Forza and a new Halo and a new Gears isn't enough now.  Hell, just go out and pay and get some 2nd party exclusives and so on.

[Vandalsquad]

12 hours ago, George P said:

Yeah, really need to push into more 1st party and 2nd party (MS published and paid for but made by another developer) and get those out quick.   It's the only way to push things ahead, just doing a new Forza and a new Halo and a new Gears isn't enough now.  Hell, just go out and pay and get some 2nd party exclusives and so on.

The crying of Playstation fans like Tomb Raider all over again  No I would love to see them go use some of Microsofts war chest and buy up more exclusives and say go for it. Some more info on Forza, Scorpio will pretty much be running the game at 1070 equivalent.  

 

 

[Showan]

On ‎4‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 2:21 PM, Asmodai said:

You mean a die shrink?  They did that with the One S too.  It's pretty standard for consoles to have die shrinks (be "rebuilt with better tech" over the life of a console).  For example the PS3 CPU went from 90nm to 60nm to 45nm over it's life.  What's different this time around is when they did that before they were careful to keep the frequency the same for compability purposes despite the smaller revisions being capable of running at higher clocks.  The Jaguar chip in Project Scorpio is clocked 31% higher than the launch Xbox One and has 31% higher performance which means they made no major hardware modifications to it other than shrinking it and raising the clock.  They did also have to tweak it to support the GDDR5 unified memory and such but those are things Jaguar was already tweaked for by AMD for the PS4.  I'm not saying MS doesn't have some extra little tweaks here and there but it's not any sort of radical redesign of Jaguar.  What happened with the GPU and memory subsystem are far more impressive.

I also meant better tech from a software perspective a well.

to re-write and move some of the instruction sets to make life easier for the architecture as a whole overall is fascinating...

[George P Global Moderator]

5 hours ago, Vandalsquad said:

The crying of Playstation fans like Tomb Raider all over again  No I would love to see them go use some of Microsofts war chest and buy up more exclusives and say go for it. Some more info on Forza, Scorpio will pretty much be running the game at 1070 equivalent.  

 

 

Yeah, why not?  Nothing Sony isn't doing already, only fair IMO.  

[+Asmodai MVC]

On 4/6/2017 at 0:44 PM, George P said:

Yeah, they added the needed instructions into the GPU directly so that the CPU now doesn't need to make such detailed instructions for the GPU, what would take thousands of draw calls from the CPU to the GPU to render a scene is now cut down to 11 because the GPU doesn't need to CPU to translate all the dx12 stuff for it since it knows it now.   This is why I said they've basically added DX12 right into the GPU itself.

 

It's a big custom job that I doubt anyone at amd or NVidia will like to add to their PC line of video cards, which is a shame because this is a big piece of optimization.  This is also why the scorpio can do native 4k games with just 6tflops while on the PC we have to brute force things with raw power and little optimization since everything is more general.  

I'm still not convinced they made any significant hardware changes.  I can't look up the exact quote because work (where I tend to look at these forums while I wait for compiles and such) blocks eurogamer but Digital Foundry has updated their article to say that even the original Xbox One will get this new command buffer modification which makes it sound more like a software/firmware change than anything else.

[+Asmodai MVC]

On 4/9/2017 at 4:25 AM, George P said:

The play anywhere stuff is nice but some say it's hurting hardware sales because why get an xbox if you can play on the PC?  Of course lots of 3rd party PS4 "exclusives" are also on the PC more and more now, like the new Nier for example.   So it's really down to the 1st party stuff and MS needs more 1st party exclusives.  I don't get why they killed scalebound for example.

 

So while I like the play anywhere stuff I think MS needs to maybe bring things to the xbox first and then to the PC as play anywhere, maybe like 1 or 2 weeks on the xbox to start and then bring it to the PC.

I've heard that argument as well but I don't buy it.  Most people, for whatever reason, don't want to hook a full PC to their TV in their living room.  In a rare case I'm actually with the majority on that particular point.  I have a gaming PC in my "Office" but I like to buy consoles for my living room TV.  I think Play Anywhere is awesome because of that because it means I can buy the game once and play it in my office or my living room.  I think consoles also just work better for things like Sports games, fighting games, party games like Rock Band, etc.  I'm a PlayStation guy generally speaking and I have a decent gaming PC (i7 with RX480 and 16GB RAM) and plan to build a new 4k PC late this year or sometime next but I'm still excited about Project Scorpio for the living room.

[BajiRav]

On ‎4‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 5:05 AM, George P said:

Well, we've got the technical specs and they're really good, now we need to see what it'll look like and what it'll cost.  I see posts here and there saying it'll be over $500, I doubt it.    They've said this is still a consumer targeting device and has to have a price point for them, so all this talk about $600 or w/e is off the mark.   I think it'll be $499 with the 1TB hdd, maybe $549 with a 2TB hdd if they want to, but we're talking 7 months from now, probably a November release, and most of this tech has been in the works for months already so costs have been cut as well.   For example, the CPU has shrunk, the GPU while it's more beefy it's also on a 16nm die compared to the older 28nm, so its cheaper.   We've got more and faster RAM so that does up the costs from that side but the audio/video block for example, it's the same exact thing already in the XB1S, not something new.

 

the UHD BD drive is the same from what I've read, so no new costs there also.   I'm thinking $499 is possible even with all this work and power, heck, take a hit and charge $399 and make it up on games like crackdown 3 and so on.

They'll be going with $399, anything more will be stupid IMO and I don't think hardware is any costlier than PS4 (in launch window). I'd even say $399 launch in summer and $349 + game for holidays. They'd probably take a hit during holidays if this is really Microsoft of the olden days.

[George P Global Moderator]

Some more scorpio info out of DF today, the system will come with HDMI 2.1 and support AMDs freesync technology.

 

source

 

[Vandalsquad]

11 hours ago, George P said:

Some more scorpio info out of DF today, the system will come with HDMI 2.1 and support AMDs freesync technology.

 

source

 

Bloody impressive... Throws a spanner in the works but was planning on buying a new 75"+ with the excuse of needing it with the misses when our new place is ready. This won't be any TV's yet when I'm looking at picking one up  Good to see them future proofing the hell out of it but.

[George P Global Moderator]

I just got a new 55" 4k HDR LG tv yesterday, sure it doesn't have support for this but I figure most games will aim for 4k at some fixed framerate, be it 60 or 30 depending on the game.

[+Asmodai MVC]

4 hours ago, George P said:

I just got a new 55" 4k HDR LG tv yesterday, sure it doesn't have support for this but I figure most games will aim for 4k at some fixed framerate, be it 60 or 30 depending on the game.

I don't think any current TV supports Freesync nor do I think they likely will in the future.  It's neat to have in there and you can use it if you hook your Xbox to a monitor but major televisions aren't designed to support video games and freesync has no value in normal video content.