There are some new details about Microsoft's mid-cycle refresh of the Xbox One gaming console. Sony's comparable console is the PlayStation 4 Pro.
The new console seems to be using eight of the same AMD Jaguar cores as the original Xbox One, but the clock speed has been increased by about 31%, from 1.75 GHz to 2.3 GHz. Microsoft has passed on the chance to use AMD's new Zen cores, which were only recently released for desktop users.
The big gains are in the new GPU, which may be AMD Polaris or Vega-based. Peak shader throughput increases from 1.23 teraflops to over 6 teraflops, allowing for 4K (and VR?) gaming. Scorpio will have 40 "compute units" (AMD terminology), compared to the 16 of its predecessor. The GPU seems to be more powerful than an AMD RX 480. In comparison, the PS4 Pro's GPU performance is rated at 4.2 teraflops.
Scorpio will include 12 GB of GDDR5 memory, 8 GB of which will be usable by games. The Xbox One came with 8 GB of DDR3 memory, with only 5 GB usable by games. System memory bandwidth has been more than quadrupled to 326 GB/s from 68.3 GB/s, and the memory bus width has increased to 384-bit from 256-bit. The small amount of embedded memory found in the Xbox 360 and Xbox One has been cut in this new design, due to the massive increase in overall memory bandwidth.
One odd detail: both the Xbox One S (for "slim") and Project Scorpio will come with 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray optical drives, while Sony, the Blu-ray champion, did not include support for the format in the PS4 Pro. UHD Blu-ray defines optical discs with capacities of 50, 66, and 100 GB. For storage, Scorpio will come with a 1 TB hard drive (at least initially).
Will the 8-core design (with at least 7 usable by games, and likely still one thread per core) result in more multi-threading and utilization of more cores in PC games? Both the Xbox One and PS4 were released in November 2013 with 8-core x86 CPUs.
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Microsoft's mid-cycle refresh for the Xbox One, the Xbox One X, has been announced. Graphics performance is quadrupled (and then some) to allow for 2160p gaming:
As far as the hardware itself goes, thanks to Microsoft's ongoing campaign, we already know the bulk of the details of the console. The 16nm SoC at the heart of the new Xbox One design is meant to be significantly more powerful than the original and S versions of the Xbox One, vaulting MS from having the least powerful console to the most powerful console. All told, the Xbox One X will offer almost 4.3x the GPU compute throughput of the Xbox One S, while the CPU cores have received a healthy 31% clockspeed boost (Interesting aside: Microsoft is still not calling it Jaguar, unlike the XB1/XB1S). The memory feeding the beast has also gotten a great deal faster as well, with Microsoft switching out their 8GB of DDR3 for a large and very fast 12GB of GDDR5, which has a combined memory bandwidth of 326GB/sec.
AKA the X-OX. Can it run NetHack in 4K?
Previously: PlayStation Neo and Xbox "Project Scorpio" to Bring 4K Resolution and VR to Console Gaming
The Race for 4K: How Project Scorpio Targets Ultra HD Gaming
More Details About the "Project Scorpio" Xbox One Successor
Microsoft has detailed the system-on-a-chip powering its refresh of the Xbox One (the company's answer to the PS4 Pro, which was released in November 2016):
Today at the Hot Chips conference, the company released schematics and details about the internal workings of the SoC that is set to power the upcoming 4K-ready gaming console. We already knew much of what the company discussed at the Hot Chips presentation, including the core count; clock speed; and bandwidth specifications of the CPU, GPU, and memory used in the system, but now we know how the components interact with each other.
[...] The Scorpio Engine is a monster of an SoC developed by AMD, featuring a 359mm2 die with seven billion transistors built on TSMC's 16nm FinFETT+ technology. The GPU compute units (the yellow section of the layout) consume most of the large die's surface area. The Scorpio Engine's GPU components include four shader arrays that each offer 11 compute units. Microsoft said that one compute unit per shader array is left inactive to compensate for yield problems that may occur.
The right side of the SoC die features the two four-core 2.3GHz CPU clusters (represented in dark green on the diagram). A pair of cache controllers flanks each CPU cluster. Twelve GDDR5 memory controllers line the top, bottom, and right edges of the SoC. The retail Xbox One X features 12GB of memory. Developer kits offer 2GB per channel for a total of 24GB system memory.
[...] When Microsoft announced Project Scorpio, the company boasted that the new console would be the first to deliver 6Tflops of 32-bit floating point performance. During the Hot Chips presentation, the company said that it managed to squeeze out "just a hair more than 6Tflops." Each of the 40 compute units can perform 128 floating point operations second. Multiplied by the 1,172MHz core clock, that's a total of 6,000,640 Flops. [sic - see comment below -- Ed.(FP)]
[...] The new console features an eight-core Jaguar-derived CPU like the one found in the Xbox One S console, but it operates 31% faster than the previous version. Microsoft said that most of the CPU performance optimizations revolve around memory latency improvements of the main memory controllers (up to 20%). The company attributes the improvement to tripling the available memory channels and increasing the number of main memory banks by a multiple of six. It also credits the rearrangement and enlargement of the TLB cache, and the introduction of a redesigned and larger Page Descriptor Cache, which "caches information about nesting page translations" and improves performance by "up to 4.3%."
The image in question from the article.
Previously: PlayStation Neo and Xbox "Project Scorpio" to Bring 4K Resolution and VR to Console Gaming
The Race for 4K: How Project Scorpio Targets Ultra HD Gaming
More Details About the "Project Scorpio" Xbox One Successor
Xbox One X, Formerly Project Scorpio, to be Released November 7th for $499
(Score: 2) by lx on Friday April 07 2017, @08:55AM (2 children)
More important than clockspeeds or GPU:
How is the spying?
Is it also new and improved?
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday April 07 2017, @09:10AM
It will be the same for all their recent platforms - all spyware and adverts, no functionality.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday April 07 2017, @11:29AM
They all but dumped the Kinect, so it's not all doom and gloom.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @10:05AM (3 children)
The name as been leaked.
It will be called the XBox ThreeSixty, as it's the followup to the XBox One.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday April 07 2017, @12:09PM (1 child)
No no no, Xbox One ThreeSixty sounds silly. They should go with Xbox 1360.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday April 07 2017, @07:07PM
XBox 11, obviously.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 07 2017, @11:38PM
XSpy Nineteen Eighty-Four :p
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @10:52AM (5 children)
Why do they have all this memory left unusable to game devs? This makes no sense. Imagine the PS1 had 512K of memory unusable for games.
The problem with modern consoles is that they are just PC's. There's nothing to optimize for because it's just a standardized PC build with shitloads of DRM all over it. Back in the day, those games ran bare metal and developers had lots of tricks and quirks they could abuse. Sure, most developers didn't care and were not mentally or culturally equipped to take advantage of that, but some were. Naughty Dog was a big one on PlayStation, for instance.
It's just a sad state of affairs, really.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday April 07 2017, @12:13PM (3 children)
It's particularly true of the Xbox, as Microsoft are pushing Direct3D, where portability is emphasised.
The PS4 is different: it has its 'GNM' low-level graphics API, specific to the platform.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Friday April 07 2017, @01:47PM (2 children)
I find it very hard to believe that Sony would be pushing anything of a proprietary nature.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday April 07 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)
Their consoles have always been this way. They never really made an effort with OpenGL.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @05:19PM
That joke went so far over your head that I had to report it to the FAA.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 07 2017, @05:45PM
There's an expectation of services running parallel to the game, and instant access to them while the game is still running. For example, voice chat, streaming to console/Twitch/Beam/whatever, and just screenshots and recording. You might be able to update one game while playing another. There may be more I'm not thinking of since I don't own one of these.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Friday April 07 2017, @06:08PM
Next gen console is previous gen PC : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 07 2017, @11:42PM
The killer question. Can you install a real operating system on it and use it for whatever? calculation cluster?