As we mentioned the other day, some extra detailed specs for the super-special new 4K Xbox, nonetheless referred to as Project Scorpio in the mean time, have been unveiled at present. The massive information is the steroid-pumped Polaris GPU on the coronary heart of the Scorpio Engine, although which means there’s positively no house for AMD’s Ryzen or Vega graphics tech.
Want to match Scorpio’s GPU energy? You’re going to want one thing from our checklist of the best graphics cards round.
While it could sound like a plan for world domination, cooked up by an evil megalomaniac on a lump of rock referred to as Skull Island, Project Scorpio is the most important in-generation replace we’ve ever seen for a console. The massive goal is for the machine to hit 4K resolutions natively. That’s a giant ask contemplating the unique Xbox One may barely muster the GPU efficiency to nail 1080p frequently.
Eurogamer have been out in Redmond with Microsoft digging into the brand new console design. According to them the best way Microsoft are managing the 4K calls for is by utilising an upgraded customized AMD system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Scorpio Engine, which contains of each Polaris GPU cores and aged Jaguar CPU cores. It’s attention-grabbing, however in all probability not that stunning, to notice that Microsoft both weren’t given, or dediced they did not want, early entry to both AMD’s new Ryzen processor structure or their upcoming Vega graphics tech.
Microsoft had been engaged on getting the upgraded machine and its Scorpio Engine put collectively manner earlier than they’d have been in a position to get functioning Vega or Ryzen silicon in a state to be dropped onto an SoC they might mass produce in time for the vacations.
But the very fact they’re managing 60fps out of basically a beefed-up RX 480 GPU core operating at 4K is fairly astounding. Especially when it’s being paired up with what are simply barely upclocked Jaguar CPU cores operating at 2.1GHz.
The graphics part of the Scorpio Engine is sporting 40 Polaris-based GCN Compute Units (CUs) operating at a pacey 1,172MHz. Compare that with the highest Polaris 10 GPU within the RX 480 and also you’ve obtained 36 CUs operating at a most rated pace of 1,266MHz in reference card trim. Those 40 CUs give the Scorpio Engine a complete of two,560 GCN cores, nevertheless it’s arguably the reminiscence construction of the brand new SoC which makes it extra of a match for the 4K TVs it’s being aimed toward.
After all, even the upcoming Polaris refresh, the AMD RX 500 series GPUs, aren’t going to come back with that core depend, or anyplace close to that degree of 4K efficiency on the PC.
The 12GB of GDDR5 reminiscence is organized on a 384-bit reminiscence bus and Microsoft guarantees it delivers a full 326GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth. With all of the tremendous high-res belongings wanted to be shunted about for 4K gaming you want an enormous quantity of bandwidth and that’s what the swap from the Xbox One’s DDR3 reminiscence to Project Scorpio’s GDDR5 design will provide. It doesn’t fairly have the latency efficiency of DDR3 however the reminiscence bandwidth is large. And Sony’s Playstation four and Pro consoles have confirmed that GDDR5 is an admirable reminiscence subsystem for a straight video games console.
At the identical time Microsoft have shifted a few of the processing burden off these weakheart Jaguar CPU cores by offloading DirectX 12 onto the GPU as a substitute. “We constructed that into the command processor of the GPU,” defined Micrsoft’s Andrew Goossen, “and what which means is that, for all of the excessive frequency API invocations that the video games do, they’re going to all natively applied within the logic of the command processor – and what this implies is that our communication from the sport to the GPU is super-efficient.”
Basically the DX12 API doesn’t should contain the CPU in any respect when it wants to inform the graphics silicon what it wants to attract. That makes it vastly extra environment friendly and massively cuts the CPU overhead in gaming.
It’s this good, nearly lateral, pondering which means Microsoft didn’t want the Ryzen CPU structure AMD are so happy with. “On the CPU aspect of issues, we may nonetheless meet our design objectives with the customized adjustments we made,” Microsoft’s Kevin Gammill advised Eurogamer. “At the top of the day we’re nonetheless a client product. We wish to hit the price-points the place customers wish to buy this. It’s about balancing the 2.”
It all sounds slightly spectacular, with demos run within the Redmond workplace displaying the Scorpio field fortunately flinging Forza round at 4K and 60fps some six months forward of launch. Whether all this speak of bandwidth and CPU offloading will imply we’re nonetheless seeing native 4K gaming as soon as non-Microsoft developed video games hit the upgraded field solely time will inform, however that’s the firm’s essential goal for the brand new console.
Still, I have to admit to being just a little jealous of Microsoft’s DirectX 12 adjustment on the Scorpio Engine. I doubt there’ll be a approach to have the DirectX 12 API working instantly on the GPU in our gaming rigs, although it would make potential APUs extra attention-grabbing if the identical factor could be leveraged on them. Which is a giant IF.
But if Microsoft’s Project Scorpio makes DirectX 12 one thing builders goal first when creating video games for the large boy console which will effectively do good issues for the PC ports too. Most particularly for PCs operating AMD too. If the software program is prepped for DX12 in the identical manner AMD’s GCN structure, and to some extent their many-core Ryzen CPUs, is then their may see a considerable efficiency enchancment sooner or later. Though that’s completely simply pure hypothesis at this level.
What isn’t hypothesis although is that, no matter Project Scorpio finally ends up being referred to as when it does hit the market, it’s going to be loads cheaper than a 4K-ready gaming PC is. Well, not less than till the next-gen PC GPUs arrive in any case…
Source
