[Update: Processor and Internal Assembly] Xbox Project Scorpio Revealed - Mid cycle 4K console revolution?

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, MageTank said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: MSI B250M PRO-VDH Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($69.49 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($54.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital RE2 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($42.00 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB ARMOR 8G OC Video Card  ($219.99 @ Jet) 
Case: Rosewill SRM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($19.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.89 @ OutletPC) 
Total: $496.24
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-06 17:31 EDT-0400

 

I like this much better anyways. 4 ram slots, lol. 

maybe a better PSU like a cxm 450

or this if you need to save money https://pcpartpicker.com/product/zNK7YJ/evga-power-supply-100b10500kr

[AshleyAshes]

16 minutes ago, MageTank said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: MSI B250M PRO-VDH Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($69.49 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($54.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital RE2 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($42.00 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB ARMOR 8G OC Video Card  ($219.99 @ Jet) 
Case: Rosewill SRM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($19.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.89 @ OutletPC) 
Total: $496.24
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-06 17:31 EDT-0400

 

I like this much better anyways. 4 ram slots, lol. 

Your build is a fat cow in terms of physical size when compared to any console.  It can't access 4K Netflix.  No UHD BD support.  It has no operating system.  It has no control peripherals, not even a keyboard. And it doesn't even have Wifi.

 

I find it really weird that every time someone on this forum tries to build a 'Console Killer' on PC Part Picker on this forum, they make MASSIVE compromises, but so long as the raw GPU and CPU specs match, they call it mission accomplished.

 

A game console, any game console, is a TV and couch friendly box that is fairly compact, very friendly with multi-media streaming applications and can act as the center point for a home entertainment center.  Aaaaaaand, they all ship with at least one input device, namely, a game pad.  ...Meanwhile, every 'console killer' I see built here is, as priced out, a huge box that is capable of doing nothing but displaying "Reboot and Select Proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device".  Do you know what would happen if people opened up brand new game consoles, plugged them in and the only thing they were capable of out of the box was asking for boot media?  They'd burn down the store they bought it at.

 

I know I've made this argument before but as someone has actually built and actually uses HTPCs with Steam in their home, it's not as easy as just slapping some parts together.  Consoles have a lot of little functions that you guys always ignore.  Heck, do you guys know how few mobos can just boot via a remote/gamepad/keyboard input from any off state?  Not all.  For my Z77 board I built an arduino into the computer, with an electrical relay and IR sensor, it's tapped into the EATX 5v+ stand by power rail and it's only job is to turn the computer on or off.

 

[LakeeZdino]

8 hours ago, randomhkkid said:

12GB GDDR5

that is insane for a console

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Your build is a fat cow in terms of physical size when compared to any console.  It can't access 4K Netflix.  No UHD BD support.  It has no operating system.  It has no control peripherals, not even a keyboard. And it doesn't even have Wifi.

 

I find it really weird that every time someone on this forum tries to build a 'Console Killer' on PC Part Picker on this forum, they make MASSIVE compromises, but so long as the raw GPU and CPU specs match, they call it mission accomplished.

It wasn't about being a "console killer" but rather saying that pc hardware isn't overpriced. The $500 builds were in response to: 

7 hours ago, Tedny said:

So, How much Pc gaming overpaying for Hardware if that console is just 500$ ?

 

[MageTank]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Your build is a fat cow in terms of physical size when compared to any console.  It can't access 4K Netflix.  No UHD BD support.  It has no operating system.  It has no control peripherals, not even a keyboard. And it doesn't even have Wifi.

 

I find it really weird that every time someone on this forum tries to build a 'Console Killer' on PC Part Picker on this forum, they make MASSIVE compromises, but so long as the raw GPU and CPU specs match, they call it mission accomplished.

 

A game console, any game console, is a TV and couch friendly box that is fairly compact, very friendly with multi-media streaming applications and can act as the center point for a home entertainment center.  Aaaaaaand, they all ship with at least one input device, namely, a game pad.  ...Meanwhile, every 'console killer' I see built here is, as priced out, a huge box that is capable of doing nothing but displaying "Reboot and Select Proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device".  Do you know what would happen if people opened up brand new game consoles, plugged them in and the only thing they were capable of out of the box was asking for boot media?  They'd burn down the store they bought it at.

 

I know I've made this argument before but as someone has actually built and actually uses HTPCs with Steam in their home, it's not as easy as just slapping some parts together.  Consoles have a lot of little functions that you guys always ignore.  Heck, do you guys know how few mobos can just boot via a remote/gamepad/keyboard input from any off state?  Not all.  For my Z77 board I built an arduino into the computer, with an electrical relay and IR sensor, it's tapped into the EATX 5v+ stand by power rail and it's only job is to turn the computer on or off.

 

When did I even mention a "console killer"?

 

You are calling out one of the biggest ITX enthusiasts on this forum, and questioning my knowledge on small form factors? Slow down buddy, lol. I've actually thrown a 980 Ti in a sub-4L box before without using the HD Plex converter. "Building an HTPC" doesn't impress me in the slightest, lol. 

 

As for the 4k netflix scam, you can't even use it unless you use the iGPU, so it takes 4k gaming off the table, unless you want even more crippled cache. Netflix's awful DRM should never be used as a boon for consoles, when it's not a demanding hardware limitation that's not being met.

 

As for OS cost, you can use specific flavors of linux and enjoy a very limited library, or go the cheesy, less ethical route of abusing Windows 10 Evaluation copies infinitely (won't go into details, because shenanigans are involved). Either way, there are plenty of options. I know people that simply ignore the activation prompt entirely at the cost of seeing that eyesore of a watermark. Either way, when making strict hardware comparisons, software is off the table. If we are factoring in software costs, let's factor in PC's far cheaper games while we are at it. I can't even remember the last time I paid $60 for a game, lol. 

 

P.S: I'll bet any amount of money my current PC is smaller than your HTPC, and is still fast enough to exceed Xbox's 4k gaming standards, lol. 

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, MageTank said:

You are calling out one of the biggest ITX enthusiasts on this forum, and questioning my knowledge on small form factors? Slow down buddy, lol. I've actually thrown a 980 Ti in a sub-4L box before without using the HD Plex converter. 

This seems irrelevant unless you managed it at the $500 price point.

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

P.S: I'll bet any amount of money my current PC is smaller than your HTPC, and is still fast enough to exceed Xbox's 4k gaming standards, lol. 

It most certainly is.  My HTPC is built entirely out spare parts and is full fat ATX.  But see, I never tried, it's futile.  I know that trying to match a game console's volume with a PC is just going to cost a lot of money that I have no interest in spending.  I'd also never pitch it as a console killer.  More like 'That neat PC that's a total pain in the ass 5% of the time'.

 

My experiences with trying to match a HTPC's 'just works and works great from the couch' experience and honestly the whole effort is a big pain and you never get there.  You can get CLOSE with some real effort, but there's always something stupid that wants to be a problem once in a while.

[AshleyAshes]

6 minutes ago, MageTank said:

As for OS cost, you can use specific flavors of linux and enjoy a very limited library, or go the cheesy, less ethical route of abusing Windows 10 Evaluation copies infinitely (won't go into details, because shenanigans are involved). Either way, there are plenty of options. I know people that simply ignore the activation prompt entirely at the cost of seeing that eyesore of a watermark.

Yeah, we can literally file everything in this quote under 'Things no console owner would put up with, they'd just return the stupid thing first'.

[MageTank]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

This seems irrelevant unless you managed it at the $500 price point.

It's no less relevant than you completely ignoring my previous posts, and ranting about something completely unrelated to the point I was making. Just to fill you in:

49 minutes ago, MageTank said:

 Are you ignoring linear scaling on purpose? Or just trolling? You can't look at potential raw compute performance as the be all, end all for the end user experience. Look at the mobile 1070 vs the desktop 1070. The mobile 1070 has 2048 cuda cores, while the desktop 1070 has 1920. This is a difference of roughly 6-7%. Both also have very similar factory boost speeds. 1683 for desktop, 1645 for mobile 1070. A difference of roughly 2.5% in favor of the desktop GPU. Yet, the desktop 1070 performs about 10-15% faster than it's mobile counterpart on average, due to two very specific reasons. Power limit, and thermal limit.

 

On the mobile variant, a strict power limit is imposed. It doesn't matter if your thermals are amazing, it's voltage and power are artificially limited to meet a specific power envelope. Sure, custom vBIOS can circumvent this entirely, but it's tedious. Next, you have the thermal limits. When dealing with small form factors, there are only so many ways to keep something cool, before physics comes to slap you in the face with a reality check. On the desktop variants, you have custom, more exotic cooling solutions and superior power delivery to handle overclocking and manage thermals. On small form factor, proprietary systems... you have little to nothing to tinker with. Compare the higher core count of this "custom RX 480", but it means absolutely nothing when you factor in how severely crippled it really is, to meet the strict power and thermal constraints imposed upon it. 

 

As for whether or not 4k gaming can be done on a PC with a $500 budget, sure, but it won't look pretty:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: Asus H110M-E/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($46.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($54.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Western Digital AV-GP 250GB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($19.00 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB ARMOR 8G OC Video Card  ($219.99 @ Jet) 
Case: Rosewill SRM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($19.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.89 @ OutletPC) 
Total: $499.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-06 17:23 EDT-0400

 

That being said, 4k at 30 (with medium settings) isn't hard to pull off for even a modern budget gaming PC. However, I'd rather target 1080p 60, or 1080p 120. Far better experience in my eyes. I do understand that most consoles are used on TV's, and 120hz on TV's are not quite the same as 120hz on a computer monitor. We are talking a different world of latency, lol. 

 

TL:DR? Linear scaling is as rare as a unicorn, and never settle for 30fps, even if it's 4k, lol. 

I was completely aware of the small form factor. The man I was talking to, never once mentioned form factor when he asked:

7 hours ago, Tedny said:

So, How much Pc gaming overpaying for Hardware if that console is just 500$ ?

I get that when you factor in the total experience, other factors need to be accounted for, but that was never the intent of my posts. You can't simply change the context of something to suit your own point either. If we were to go down that rabbit hole, it would never end. It would involve comparing costs of Xbox Life to PC's "free" online, frequencies of game sales, the vast differences in free to play titles that each side has (free MMO's for PC make up a large market in and of itself), etc. 

 

I do strict hardware comparisons, because that is what I am comparing between the two. The capability of the hardware, not the actual cost of the end-experience. If I were to do that, TV and monitor costs would also have to come into effect, and god knows what you go G-Sync or Freesync, you can never go back, lol. 

[Misanthrope]

7 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I've been assuming they're going to put a Year tag on each Console.  With strict Backwards compatibility at least 2 cycles.

 

Thus Scorpio (2017) & Scorpio (2021) keeps Xbone One games.  Scorpio (2025) drops Xbone One games at upscale.

 

Considering it's Microsoft, this was *always* the logical move they should have done.  Put the games on x86 allows them to be playable at least 2 generations up.  It puts upwards of 15 years of games within reach of everyone.  Companies love to run out "game of the year" editions.  Now they can run out "game of the Era!" editions with little upgrades yet still keep an online playerbase, if it has one.

There is no reason for Scorpio 2021 to drop original xbox one games: those rules about supporting 2 generations back no longer apply: ALL generations involved are x86 so if someone wants to boot up a 2015 classic in 2021 even if it means 900p there is no reason whatsoever why they couldnt support that just as I am able to launch a 2007 game from my Steam library on my 2017 hardware.

[Citadelen]

4 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

But still, AMD Jaguar cores are weak AF....

You haven't read what I typed or watched the video have you?..

Draw calls are a breeze for them, and they don't need to process audio. For 4K 60FPS they will most likely be absolutely fine.

[Bleedingyamato]

1 hour ago, Vode said:

Fuck the warranty, my games are loading faster and the system is quieter.

 

But yeah beware it's not that easy... 

I don't think I'm that brave.  ?

 

I thought ssds didn't affect load times much unless it's something with a lot to load like an open world game or something with lots of load screens.

 

But you noticed a significant improvement on your Xbox One S?  That would be nice.  It does seem to take a bit longer than I'd like sometimes.  

[Not_Sean]

To the guys asking how the hell the GPU can run 4K60 when all the benchmarks point to it not working, Give this video a watch. most of the current games the "Ultra" setting does very little (Yes it makes a difference, but its tiny)

 

They should be able to dial back the settings a little get the FPS and still have a game look amazing, Now at the risk of been burned at the Stake.. Dear PCMR there is more to life than Ultra. 

Than been said and with pitchforks about to kill me, This looks good and since I was looking at getting a Xbox anyways will just grab one of these  
 

 

[Citadelen]

3 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Does this mean that CPU load increases with lower resolutions? No

Um.

Yes, yes it does. 

You really are funny to talk to sometimes.

 

[Not_Sean]

4 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Um.

Yes, yes it does. 

You really are funny to talk to sometimes.

 

Please stop quoting PCGUY he really seems to be making this up as he goes. 

[Citadelen]

5 minutes ago, Not_Sean said:

Please stop quoting PCGUY he really seems to be making this up as he goes. 

It's like talking to a Patrick that doesn't know anything.

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

11 minutes ago, Not_Sean said:

To the guys asking how the hell the GPU can run 4K60 when all the benchmarks point to it not working, Give this video a watch. most of the current games the "Ultra" setting does very little (Yes it makes a difference, but its tiny)

 

They should be able to dial back the settings a little get the FPS and still have a game look amazing, Now at the risk of been burned at the Stake.. Dear PCMR there is more to life than Ultra. 

Than been said and with pitchforks about to kill me, This looks good and since I was looking at getting a Xbox anyways will just grab one of these

I've pointed out a while ago that ultra quality options are questionable at times. Like texture resolution. I've yet to find a game where maximum quality had a significant difference than the detail below it while justifying the need to consume 25% more VRAM.

[Citadelen]

Oh and congratulations to @AshleyAshes, who's earnt the rare triple posted badge!

[MageTank]

Just now, Tedny said:

You know, It doesn't matter how fast will be everything render if you don't want play in any of those games 

What does that have to do with anything? 

[Jahramika]

10 hours ago, randomhkkid said:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-project-scorpio-tech-revealed

 

 

Edit: Lol thank you whichever mod changed this so the embedded video works

 

Quick Specs

'Scorpio Engine' SoC

100% backwards compatibility with Xbone and Xbone S

360mm squared

8x Jaguar x86 cores - Clock bumped from 1.75Ghz to 2.3ghz (PS4 Pro is 2.1Ghz)

40 'customised' CUs @1172mhz - Up from 12 from GCN @853/914mhz (PS4 Pro 36 'improved' GCN @911mhz)

12GB GDDR5 384-bit - Up from 8GB+32MB DDR3+ESRAM (PS4 Pro 8GB GDDR5)

326GBps Memory bandwidth - Up from 68GBps+204/219GBps (PS4 Pro 218GBps)

4K UHD Blu-ray - Same as Xbox One S (Xbone and all PS4s have just standard Blu-ray)

1TB HDD with 50% more bandwidth

 

More stuff

Microsoft is aiming this console at 4K gaming, any 900p or better title on current Xbones can easy run at the same frame rate at 4K on Scorpio.

The Scorpio GPU is only 96mhz off the RX480 GPU whilst having 4 more more compute units. - Most likely Polaris based

4K60 demonstrated on Forza rock solid @60 - 70% GPU utilisation - 4K screenshots in the article

With Forza at PC ultra quality settings utilisation is at 88% - 4K60 GTX1070 level performance

Each SoC tuned at the faactory for a specific power profile - Vapour chamber cooling + centrifugal fan

245W power supply - This is insane

2.7x triangle and vertex rate, 6.0 tera-flops

8GB ram for games, 4GB for system

Spatial surround and Dolby Atmos sound

Direct3D 12 pipeline

4K60 HEVC decode and encode

HDMI 2.0

Downsampling enabled from 4K to 1080p screens - Not per game basis a la Sony

All previous games using bilinear/trilinear texture filtering will be replaced by maximum anistropic when run on Scorpio - This is a dark horse improvement

Free sync adaptive refresh rate support - So is this

 

Possible E3 2017 release

~$499 according speculation in the second article from related links section below

 

Thoughts

This actually looks pretty impressive, to have at least 480X performance in a console system at 245W is an engineering feat in itself. I wonder what the cost will be like?

Expecting them to drop the VR compatibility bombshell at E3, but apart from that this just confirms all the detective work that Digital Foundry have done.

The only slight surprise is the utilisation of the ancient Jaguar cores, I guess this was done for compatability reason but it's disappointing. From the PS4 Pro coverage by DF the CPU seems to be a bottleneck in many situations so I don't see how the Scorpio will alleviate this, hopefully the use of D3D12 is better at utilising that CPU than the PS4's OGLES implementation.

 

Related links

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-project-scorpio-back-compat-five-ways-your-existing-games-will-be-better

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-scorpio-is-console-hardware-pushed-to-a-new-level

 

Pictures!

SoC w/memory modules

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Major components:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The cooling system:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Lo All consoles and Pc Gpus have Dx12 hardware except Nvidia, keep on milking.

[MageTank]

Just now, Jahramika said:

Lo All consoles and Pc Gpus have Dx12 hardware except Nvidia, keep on milking.

Nvidia does have DX12 hardware though. What are you on about?

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Jahramika said:

Lo All consoles and Pc Gpus have Dx12 hardware except Nvidia, keep on milking.

NVIDIA has DX12 hardware. And in fact, they support a higher feature level than AMD at the moment (Intel supports the highest level though, funny enough)

 

Asynchronous compute is not a required feature of DX12 and Vulkan.

[randomhkkid]

21 minutes ago, Jahramika said:

Lo All consoles and Pc Gpus have Dx12 hardware except Nvidia, keep on milking.

 

21 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Nvidia does have DX12 hardware though. What are you on about?

 

20 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

NVIDIA has DX12 hardware. And in fact, they support a higher feature level than AMD at the moment (Intel supports the highest level though, funny enough)

 

Asynchronous compute is not a required feature of DX12 and Vulkan.

Not quite sure what @Jahramika is on about. All this means is that more draw calls can be pushed with better multi-threaading, a win all around for the games development community.

[Citadelen]

23 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

NVIDIA has DX12 hardware. And in fact, they support a higher feature level than AMD at the moment (Intel supports the highest level though, funny enough)

 

Asynchronous compute is not a required feature of DX12 and Vulkan.

Intel and Nvidia have the same level of support, AMD is still on DX12.0 though, we'll get DX12.1 support with Vega from them, as they're implementing rasterisation, with I'm personally very excited about.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Intel and Nvidia have the same level of support, AMD is still on DX12.0 though, we'll get DX12.1 support with Vega from them, as they're implementing rasterisation, with I'm personally very excited about.

Yeah, I rechecked what I said and it's not feature levels, but Intel has a higher level of feature support. As in it Intel maxes out the features required (except minimum floating point precision which is at 16-bits, but I don't think anyone's going to care about that)