Digital Foundry has been to Microsoft’s Redmond offices to see the technical details that the next Xbox console that will be presented at E3 will have.
Microsoft he has invited the Digital Foundry team to his offices in Redmond to share the technical details and how they have taken the design quality, in all areas, of the final version of Scorpio it will be officially unveiled on June 11 at E3. The new console, with AMD hardware, is capable of offering 6 teraflops thanks to its GPU that has been designed from scratch to offer optimal performance on current game engines. The GPU works in combination with 12GB of GDDR5 memory and a custom 8-core CPU with 4 megs of second-level cache. All this is compactly integrated and with a good cooling system based on a steam chamber, similar to that of cards such as the GTX1080. Regarding performance, they comment that they saw Forza Motorsport running at 60 fps in 4K with Scorpio and with the same configuration parameters as on Xbox One, and that all games that run at 900p, will easily do so at 4K.
The Scorpio GPU has 4 more units than AMD’s RX 480 and runs at 94MHz less, but it does not require a large ventilation system, and is optimized for DX12. The CPU is not based on AMD’s new Ryzen architecture, due to time, design and price issues, Gammill says. Here is the comparison of features between Project Scorpio, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 Pro:
| Project Scorpio | Xbox One | PS4 Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 8 custom x86 cores at 2.3GHz | 8 Jaguar custom cores at 1.75GHz | 8 Jaguar custom cores at 2.1GHz |
| GPU | 40 custom units at 1172MHz | 12 GCN units at 853MHz (Xbox One S: 914MHz) | 36 GCN units at 911MHz |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR5 | 8GB DDR3/32MB ESRAM | 8GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bandwidth | 326GB/s | DDR3: 68GB/s, ESRAM at a max. 204GB/s (Xbox One S: 219GB/s) | 218GB/s |
| Hard Drive | 1TB 2.5-inch | 500GB/1TB/2TB 2.5-inch | 1TB 2.5-inch |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-ray | Blu-ray (Xbox One S: 4K UHD) | Blu-ray |
The console will integrate for Dolby Atmos sound and a proprietary Microsoft format called HRTF, developed by the HoloLens team. In none of the articles that Digital Foundry has published, we have been able to see any reference to virtual reality, just a statement from Kevin Gammill, group director of the Xbox platform program, which made mention of positional audio, but in relation to a good experience that does not have to be with a viewer. “Spatial audio adds to the immersive experience as well: to truly land that gaming experience, it’s not just what you see, but also what you hear.” To know all the features related to virtual reality, it’s time to wait for the presentation on June 11 at E3, in which we hope to reveal all the possible viewers compatible with the console, although this might not happen at E3, since it should be remembered that virtual reality will arrive at Scorpio after the launch, in 2018.
