Xbox Scorpio Dev Kits coming with A SPEC BUMP over Retail Scorpio with 44 Radeon Customized Compute Units

[dalekphalm]

31 minutes ago, alamox said:

that is excatly my point, why does microsoft cling into a dead console, that would bring the quality of the games down for the common denominator ( xbone ).

game made from the ground up for 6 TeraFlops are completely different from games made for 2TeraFlops, then supersampled to 4k.

 

dozens of millios is a bit of a strech they barely broke 25million units, that is a couple dozen, it's not yet plural untill you get quantity of 3 dozen..., ps4 is closing in on 60 millions units, and the games line up and exclusivity paints rather a clear picture.

the increase in compute does barely allow 4k, and it is a marketing tool, contrary to say " detail rich games", the bump from xbone to scorpio performance although it allow the 1080p content to be run at 4k, it does that with details downgrade in favor of pixel count, which brings me to my point, the overall game will be more empty than any usual 1080p game could allow, and far less fps count.

i do wanna ask you a question, on PC would you pick an HDR 144hz 1080p monitor ? or an SDR 144hz 4k ?

and explain to me why, thx.

You're arguing semantics about my words.

 

First, that 25 million figure? It's actually 28 million. AND it's from October 2015, the point at which Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures for XBO consoles. So we can figure that sales figure has grown a little at least.

 

But I digress, what you say doesn't change my point at all. Just because the PS4 is selling BETTER, does not make XBO a failure in the slightest. Nor does it make it "dead", which is laughable.

 

As for your question? Neither. I would take HDR 1440p 60 Hz (or 90 Hz) over 144 Hz. Preferably w/ a healthy FreeSync range.

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting, looks cool. The RAM and 1TB SSD though.

[alamox]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

You're arguing semantics about my words.

 

First, that 25 million figure? It's actually 28 million. AND it's from October 2015, the point at which Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures for XBO consoles. So we can figure that sales figure has grown a little at least.

 

But I digress, what you say doesn't change my point at all. Just because the PS4 is selling BETTER, does not make XBO a failure in the slightest. Nor does it make it "dead", which is laughable.

 

As for your question? Neither. I would take HDR 1440p 60 Hz (or 90 Hz) over 144 Hz. Preferably w/ a healthy FreeSync range.

weird because of this article dated 18 january 2017, superdata puts xbone sales around 26 millions,   how did M$ managed to lose 2 million units in 2 years ...

but i digress, i thought i spoke about line up and exclusives, because selling better is sure a vital point for a console's success, that directly leads to developers incentivised to exclusive content, that ultimately leads to the consumer's final choice for a platform, but it doesn't mean it's better...maybe when studios starts to consider PC as 2nd best platform instead of xbone, that would start becoming a problem, oh wait, it already started ? like Nier automata ? Hellblade ?

and about my question it was to see why you would pick them, not looking for the best setup, but between those 2 which one would pick.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, alamox said:

weird because of this article dated 17 january 2017, superdata puts xbone sales around 26 millions,   how did M$ managed to lose 2 million units in 2 years ...

but i digress, i thought i spoke about line up and exclusives, because selling better is sure a vital point for a console's success, that directly leads to developers incentivised to exclusive content, that ultimately leads to the consumer's final choice for a platform, but it doesn't mean it's better...maybe when studios starts to consider PC as 2nd best platform instead of xbone, that would start becoming a problem, oh wait, it already started ? like Nier automata ? Hellblade ?

and about my question it was to see why you would pick them, not looking for the best setup, but between those 2 which one would pick.

I think it's pretty clear why your figures and my figures are not agreeing. Simply put, neither of them are probably 100% accurate. As stated earlier, Microsoft stopped reporting the sales figures in October of 2015.

 

Perhaps the 28 Million figure (Which I got from VGChartz) is an estimate only:

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

28.73 Million units sold

 

Furthermore, if you actually read that article that you posted, their numbers are 100% conjecture based on comparative XBOX Live subscriptions. Which might be accurate. Or might be totally wrong.

 

Either way, 28 million consoles, or 26 million consoles, is still a very healthy figure. Is PS4 higher with their approximately 60 million? Yes. But as iterated before, that does not somehow magically make XBO dead.

 

I'm not picking between two arbitrary numbers you've made up. You gave me two totally arbitrary options, neither of which I would choose. I'm not going to play a semantics game with you about this.

[alamox]

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I think it's pretty clear why your figures and my figures are not agreeing. Simply put, neither of them are probably 100% accurate. As stated earlier, Microsoft stopped reporting the sales figures in October of 2015.

 

Perhaps the 28 Million figure (Which I got from VGChartz) is an estimate only:

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

28.73 Million units sold

 

Furthermore, if you actually read that article that you posted, their numbers are 100% conjecture based on comparative XBOX Live subscriptions. Which might be accurate. Or might be totally wrong.

 

Either way, 28 million consoles, or 26 million consoles, is still a very healthy figure. Is PS4 higher with their approximately 60 million? Yes. But as iterated before, that does not somehow magically make XBO dead.

 

I'm not picking between two arbitrary numbers you've made up. You gave me two totally arbitrary options, neither of which I would choose. I'm not going to play a semantics game with you about this.

well Superdata is a company that their job is to provide data for market research, they better be accurate.

again im not leaning on sales alone, i am poiting to the line up and exclusives again, and the fact that studios started picking PC as 2nd platform instead of xbox being delayed or canceled all together.

just to be clear, i do not have any console, i exclusively game on PC, my opinion is as objective as it gets, PS4 value makes it a great console, Xone, well it's a console that doesn't have much value imo, and my opinion seem to be backed up by a global trend from other gamers.

xbone is liked mostly in the US, because it's an american company, not because of it's quality, xbox360 had a lucky break against ps3, but even then sony managed to turn it around, where the last  years of these consoles life PS sales skyrocketed.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, alamox said:

well Superdata is a company that their job is to provide data for market research, they better be accurate.

again im not leaning on sales alone, i am poiting to the line up and exclusives again, and the fact that studios started picking PC as 2nd platform instead of xbox being delayed or canceled all together.

just to be clear, i do not have any console, i exclusively game on PC, my opinion is as objective as it gets, PS4 value makes it a great console, Xone, well it's a console that doesn't have much value imo, and my opinion seem to be backed up by a global trend from other gamers.

As a PC Gamer, if I were to choose a console, I would get the XBO (S probably, or Scorpio if it were out) over the PS4/Pro, if I had to get a console.

 

I much prefer the interface, the Controller design (hands down better than the PS4 DS controllers in my personal opinion), and I also prefer the XBO exclusives, for the most part, over the PS4 ones. Also, the XBO S includes a 4K Blu-Ray player - which while not particularly useful for everyone, is still a great addition to making the XBO S a good Media/Gaming Box for the TV.

 

And sure, globally, more people seem to choose PS4 over XBOX, but that doesn't say anything about how XBO is "dead" or dying or anything of the like. XBO has a healthy marketshare, with healthy sales, and a healthy ecosystem. Is it the biggest in sales? No. But it doesn't need to be.

 

There's room for 2 consoles (more actually) to co-exist at the same time.

[Gikero]

4 hours ago, Swatson said:

True but we're talking about different scales. I can totally see them needing an extra 64MB or an extra 512MB, but an extra 12GB?

It seems excessive to me as well, but I'm not a game developer. I was just commenting that doubling RAM and sometimes other specs is pretty normal from what I've read. 

[ARikozuM]

I wonder if the extra RAM is so that they can run simulations and recoding on just one dev kit rather than relying on a secondary computer. . 

[AlTech]

Thanks to those who helped confirm that Scorpio dev kit has 44 CUs instead of 40 and this translates to 2816 Stream Processors vs 2560.

 

 

Also, is Microsoft trying to rip on AMD?

 

Cos this is the same difference in Stream Processors that AMD charged $100 extra in the R9 290 and R9 290X

[alamox]

6 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Thanks to those who helped confirm that Scorpio dev kit has 44 CUs instead of 40 and this translates to 2816 Stream Processors vs 2560.

 

 

Also, is Microsoft trying to rip on AMD?

 

Cos this is the same difference in Stream Processors that AMD charged $100 extra in the R9 290 and R9 290X

so it's not just overclock good to know, don't see how is this riping off AMD.

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, alamox said:

so it's not just overclock good to know, don't see how is this riping off AMD.

No, I was saying that I thought Microsoft was trying to mock AMD indirectly. 

 

AMD used to offer a GPU in 2013 with 2560 SPs enabled (a 2816 SP GPU die) and offered 2816 SPs enabled in the form another GPU for $100 more despite performance being within 10% of each other.

 

In 2015 they carried on with 390 and 390X......

[trag1c]

9 hours ago, ashypanda said:

it would have made more sense if the dev kits were less powerful, as at least then you can guarantee that the retail units will have native 4K, with HDR, as now they are going to have to gimp the games just to get them to run on the retail unit. 

Not at all. You need more power and especially RAM. Reason being that you have to run your tools (Editor, Debugger, Profiler, Scripting engine/Command Console, ect.) in addition to the game. Imagine trying to program a AAA game that literally uses every possible clock cycle and every MB of RAM as you're pushing the envelope then a problem comes up and you can't run your debugging suite because there is absolutely no memory to spare or it becomes locked up because there is no more processing time to spare.

 

Any intelligent dev will set system budgets on what they can utilize. They will allocate exactly what the consumer model has and then anything extra for specs will remain for development purposes only. Read or watch any book/talk/presentation/blog from Jason Gregory for any real insight into the process of game development. Even if you don't have any programming experience they should be high level enough for the average joe to understand.

10 hours ago, Swatson said:

I doubt the dev tools require TWICE the vram and a gpu spec bump, it would be mostly bound to the cpu unless they are rendering something complex using those dev tools?

You would be surprised. RAM is at a god damn premium on consoles, trying to render extra polygons for visual debugging, keeping tabs on how long a function takes to execute as well as how many times it takes to execute. Frame times, high water marks for memory, memory usage from each system, total objects in the game world ect.

 

As far as clock cycles goes, try running a deep level profiler while trying to keep the game at a playable frame rate. Or try running a debug build of the application which takes a fair amount of additional memory and clock cycles to run just so you can use break points. Never mind trying to recreate a bug that only occurs at a certain frame rate.  

[Zodiark1593]

20 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Deffo true when 4K TVs can be bought as cheap as cheaper 1080p TVs now ...

 

Indie dev forgets that the dev kit is more powerful, wonders why everyone is complaining about slightly poor performance  

Even as far back as the PS2, the dev kits contained twice the main RAM (which the PS2 could have really used back then, but beside the point). 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Now that I think about it some more, it makes sense for some system specs to receive a bump in a dev kit. Not by this much though. The reason is if you need to run debug code, that can incur a performance hit. So by making the devkit a little more powerful, you get wiggle room so you can run your application as "expected" while running debug code. Or with any other debug utilities.

 

But the excuse that it's for optimizing top down still doesn't make sense to me.

[The Benjamins]

10 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Now that I think about it some more, it makes sense for some system specs to receive a bump in a dev kit. Not by this much though. The reason is if you need to run debug code, that can incur a performance hit. So by making the devkit a little more powerful, you get wiggle room so you can run your application as "expected" while running debug code. Or with any other debug utilities.

 

But the excuse that it's for optimizing top down still doesn't make sense to me.

they can also simulate the retail version by adjusting clocks disabling CU's and ram limiting the box.