Project Scorpio game console is spoken and written for a long time, more than a year. This name is the codename of the next-generation game console from Microsoft. Earlier, the company several times mentioned Project Scorpio, but without much specificity, only saying that it will be a “breakthrough” in the world of video games. For example, the head of the Xbox division in Microsoft Phil Spencer (Phil Spencer) talked about the console still almost a year and a half ago. At the E3 2016 Project, he said that this box will be the most powerful in the world. According to him, the console is capable of playing games in 4K resolution with a frame rate of 60 fps. All this was said a year and a half ago. What now?
Microsoft has repeatedly stated that the next-generation console is not just an updated “hardware”, it is a qualitatively new device that offers the widest opportunities to its users. One of the parameters reported by the developers of Project Scorpio before – a graphics adapter with a performance of 6 teraflops. Such a high performance was achieved thanks to a zero-based graphics card. It is paired with 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM and a custom eight-core processor. So the hardware platform is very powerful. The other day the corporation shared additional information about its project.
4K games for every gamer
Developers Project Scorpio promise the work of the console with games with a real 4K resolution, without any interpolation. Moreover, the frame rate is actually stated at 60 fps with this mode of graphics.
“For me, all this has a special meaning. It’s much more than just displaying these 8+ million pixels on the display during the game, “said Kevin Gammill, a spokesperson for the Xbox Core development team. “This means displaying pixels without losing the screen refresh rate, it will be the same as the 1080p version of the same title, which is extremely important for us. Quality audio will add the ability to dive. It’s not only what you see, but what you hear. ”
Developers of the new generation console told that in this console almost everything was developed from scratch, the main elements are very productive. The project team previously used a special hardware emulator to test how the games on the new hardware look and work. For the best game balance developers have tested several modes of the device, and this work was conducted long before the creation of any significant hardware platform for Project Scorpio.
Now the hardware base is already there, as a confirmation of the work done, journalists of several publications showed the prototype Project Scorpio, which was able to reproduce a demo version of the ported from Xbox One ForzaTech in 4K mode with 60 frames per second. The video card of the system was loaded only by 60%.
So what’s inside?
So, the hardware configuration includes an x86 processor with 8 cores, each with a frequency of 2.3 GHz. Microsoft reported that the new processor has not only increased the frequencies for the cores, but also a large number of optimizations for the overall performance increase.
Xbox One uses 8 GB of DDR3 RAM with 256-bit Bus. Accordingly, the system capacity is about 68 GB / s. This is not so much, so a way was found to circumvent the restriction – the use of eSRAM with a capacity of 32 MB. The bandwidth of this memory, integrated into a single-chip system, was 204 GB / s. The total bandwidth of Project Scorpio is 326 GB / s, plus the removal of eSRAM, which caused problems to game developers. Of the 12 GB installed in the new system, 8 GB can be used for games, and another 4 GB is reserved for the operating system.
The GPU was mentioned above. In more detail, the number of computational units of the graphics system is increased from 16 to 40, while the frequency of its operation increases from 853 MHz to 1172 MHz. Microsoft managed to double the number of shader units. This gives a 2.7-fold increase in the performance of computing units when processing certain kinds of graphic objects. Added and full support for DirectX 12, which opens up wide opportunities for the creators of games. For example, you can increase the number of draw calls.
The central element of the whole system is a one-chip chip with 7 billion transistors, manufactured using 16-nm technology. The total area of the chip is 360 mm 2 .
As for other characteristics, it is known that the amount of memory is 1 TB. Among the findings is HDMI 2.0. The developers left and optical drive, supporting Blu-Ray 4K. Power consumption of the console will be small – about 245 watts. An evaporating chamber is used to cool the attachment. Scorpio also has backward compatibility with the Xbox One. If someone has not bought yet the last game console from Microsoft, you can enjoy both hits for it and next-generation consoles already on Scorpio.
Generally speaking, the game ecosystem is a sick subject for any gaming console. Lack of hits can be a serious obstacle to the promotion of almost any “iron” project, including Project Scorpio. So Microsoft needs to try to ensure that by the time the new console is released, it has already developed the appropriate game titles for it.
And yet the moment – so far neither the design, nor the price, nor the exact release date (stated in winter 2017) Project Scorpio is unknown.
