Project Scorpio: Final Specs Revealed

[Arthur]

Looks surprisingly good (for a console ).

 

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

 

Edited April 6, 2017 by Arthur

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Looks surprisingly good (for a console )./QUOTE]

 

That looks surprisingly good full stop I think! I was underwhelmed by the PS4 and xBox One specs. The 360 was a massive leap forward but not so the next gen.

 

This looks exciting again.

[GuyJD]

 

^this so much!

[Bagpuss66]

Excellent specs, only problem I can see is that Microsoft will have to win over Gamers that have gone to Sony. It could be that a lot of people will hold off until they see the specs of the new PS5.

They will have to develop some killer game and not just Halo and Forza.

[Snoochieboochies]

I wanted a PS4 Pro but i begrudge shelling out money for a new PS4 so soon when i have a perfectly good original one that still works.

 

I am defiantly interested in the Scorpio. I may defect over to Microsoft if it's reasonably priced.

[sted]

Excellent specs, only problem I can see is that Microsoft will have to win over Gamers that have gone to Sony. It could be that a lot of people will hold off until they see the specs of the new PS5.

They will have to develop some killer game and not just Halo and Forza.

 

it depends if this is the end of generational consoles for ms i know atm it looks like being sold as a top end box for gamers but IN 2-3 years id imagine its production costs might be similar to the one-s now so they can quietly kill that off make it cheaper and replace a say 10tf box thats still an xbox one but an even better one and so on.

 

ms have a real issue with exclusive content atm they have basically forza (which is getting milked too much imo) and halo which isnt what it once was and the release calendar this year (pre e3 where they really NEED to announce a lot of exclusives) is pants what is there beyond sea of thieves and probably forza 7?

 

they have lost this generation and badly i dont see any way short of sony going broke of changing that the gap is too great but if they go the end of generations route they get to sell people a new console every 3-5 years and they dont loose their old games that could be the game changer they need esp if ps5 means a fresh start again for sony

[Rob_D]

From a Hardware standpoint, I really like it. But as much as it looks like an awesome piece of kit, MS haven't release any exclusive games. Thanks to Win10 cross-play, there is literally no reason to own a one, let alone get a new console.

But, it does sound really awesome.

[Dos_Box]

This does look very exciting. I was taken aback a bit by the RAM level as I was expecting it to have a bit more than that, but if they have hard coded a lot of the previous overheads into the CPU then I suppose they know what thay are doing.

That and they have to keep the price down!

Talking of prices, the BBC have a commentator on their article on the specs here: Microsoft releases details of Project Scorpio console - BBC News saying they are estimating it to cost about the £400 level.

Given that it will be interesting to see just what the storage they use will be. I would have expected them to be using SSD's and it would be very silly for them to be shoehorning 5400 spinning disks in there, wouldn't it?

*My main bugbear with the XBox One is the slow HDD speed. It's like loading tape games back in the 80's at times with out the LOAD "" .

[sted]

This does look very exciting. I was taken aback a bit by the RAM level as I was expecting it to have a bit more than that, but if they have hard coded a lot of the previous overheads into the CPU then I suppose they know what thay are doing.

That and they have to keep the price down!

Talking of prices, the BBC have a commentator on their article on the specs here: Microsoft releases details of Project Scorpio console - BBC News saying they are estimating it to cost about the £400 level.

Given that it will be interesting to see just what the storage they use will be. I would have expected them to be using SSD's and it would be very silly for them to be shoehorning 5400 spinning disks in there, wouldn't it?

*My main bugbear with the XBox One is the slow HDD speed. It's like loading tape games back in the 80's at times with out the LOAD "" .

 

the thing is a year ago (or whenever it was announced) i was interested but post zelda botw im not sure i even slightly care about it as i think ive had more fun in that one game on my switch has provided more fun than any single game ive ever owned on my xbox one probably more than any series tbh so im not sure that power is the issue and thinking back the games ive enjoyed most recently have been on wii-u/switch so unless they reveal something huge for it at e3 im going to save the case on the console (and the tv and amp to cope with 4k and i want new rear speakers)

[Rob_D]

I would have expected them to be using SSD's and it would be very silly for them to be shoehorning 5400 spinning disks in there, wouldn't it?

*My main bugbear with the XBox One is the slow HDD speed. It's like loading tape games back in the 80's at times with out the LOAD "" .

 

I was surprised the PS4 and XB1 didn't have SSD options, and really surprised the PS4pro didn't.

Inferring from what I've heard Scropio won't have an SSD (again surprised). But there was talk of the using the "extra ram" as a ram-disk to cache regularly used files. :S

[Dos_Box]

I was surprised the PS4 and XB1 didn't have SSD options, and really surprised the PS4pro didn't.

Inferring from what I've heard Scropio won't have an SSD (again surprised). But there was talk of the using the "extra ram" as a ram-disk to cache regularly used files. :S

 

I suppose it's simply down to cost. Any resonably -read useful- sized SSD (1TB or 500GB) would add too big a tag to the system price. Given there has been a big increase in SSD prices in the past 6 months (not just down to BREXIT, but a shortage of memory chips) we'll still have to wait quite a while before they are standard in any consoles I think.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Yeah SSDs in consoles are a long way off I think. There's no end in sight for the shortage and prices are still going up.

 

Adding £100+ to the price of a console doesn't seem viable.

[Arthur]

I was surprised the PS4 and XB1 didn't have SSD options, and really surprised the PS4pro didn't.

I wasn't surprised at all for the same reasons @Dos_Box and @ICTDirect_Dave mentioned.

 

If Microsoft or Sony did add SSDs to their consoles they would have to be really tiny (16GB or 32GB) due to cost and that would be pointless because you wouldn't fit many games on it.

 

A much better option is to include a user-replaceable HDD.

[sted]

I was surprised the PS4 and XB1 didn't have SSD options, and really surprised the PS4pro didn't.

Inferring from what I've heard Scropio won't have an SSD (again surprised). But there was talk of the using the "extra ram" as a ram-disk to cache regularly used files. :S

 

but being what it is (and its apparently shipping with a 1tb drive which id suggest isnt enough and a 2tb isnt much more) i wonder if they will allow you to upgrade it like the ps4 some 360s what about an sshd so 64gb sd enough for 1 game and os and mechanical for main storage

[Rob_D]

but being what it is (and its apparently shipping with a 1tb drive which id suggest isnt enough and a 2tb isnt much more) i wonder if they will allow you to upgrade it like the ps4 some 360s what about an sshd so 64gb sd enough for 1 game and os and mechanical for main storage

Fair points. I guess an SSD option for double the price probably wouldn't sell so well.

The idea of a small SSD as a cache (MS storage spaces already does this in enterprise) would be cool. Or even that new intell NVME bridge chip (

).

 

I guess as load times are something that seems to have been complained about a lot recently, I expected either Sony or MS to to try something to increase storage speed.

[foofighterjim]

what about an sshd so 64gb sd enough for 1 game and os and mechanical for main storage

 

I doubt 64GB will be enough storage once the 4K games start coming out. Look at Gears of War 4 now; that install is well over 80GB the last time I looked.

[Theblacksheep]

I've got a SSD in my Pro, should be an easy upgrade on xbox should you want faster load time. Worth it to get in BF1 tanks first, while everyone else is still loading.

 

Its not just raw speed, MS need to improve their loading technology too. Some games require hour installs while Sony has some stream loading technology. They've had some time to develop this, so hopefully they step up their game in this dept too.

 

What it really needs is more big exclusive games.

[sted]

I've got a SSD in my Pro, should be an easy upgrade on xbox should you want faster load time. Worth it to get in BF1 tanks first, while everyone else is still loading.

 

Its not just raw speed, MS need to improve their loading technology too. Some games require hour installs while Sony has some stream loading technology. They've had some time to develop this, so hopefully they step up their game in this dept too.

 

What it really needs is more big exclusive games.

you cant (for a given value of cant) replace the hdd in an xbox one yourself. If you open the console up its supposed to trigger a flag that can get you banned from live for owning a modded console. you also cant download an os like you can for ps4

[Rob_D]

you cant (for a given value of cant) replace the hdd in an xbox one yourself. If you open the console up its supposed to trigger a flag that can get you banned from live for owning a modded console. you also cant download an os like you can for ps4

 

Props to Sony for properly supporting disk upgrades. Hopefully MS will catch on and let do you do drive upgrades on the scorpio.

[Arthur]

Props to Sony for properly supporting disk upgrades.

It would be even better if Sony didn't artificially limit the speed of your SSD due to a system-level bottleneck in the PS4 and PS4 Pro.

 

 

Hopefully MS will catch on and let do you do drive upgrades on the scorpio.

I hope so too.

[DalekSec]

Every time i head 'Scorpio' it keeps reminding me of the Dirty Harry villain

[Arthur]

Every time i head 'Scorpio' it keeps reminding me of the Dirty Harry villain

It reminds me of the ugliest car ever made.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Scorpio

 

 

The Scorpio is in joint first position with the Fiat Multipla.

[sted]

It reminds me of the ugliest car ever made.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Scorpio

 

 

The Scorpio is in joint first position with the Fiat Multipla.

outsides ugly but they are really comfy inside

 

from what they were saying on major nelson podcast i wouldnt expect scorpio to have upgradable hdd

[Arthur]

The Scorpio dev kit has an 1TB SSD and a 1TB HDD.

 

Inside the next Xbox: Project Scorpio and its brand-new dev kit

 

For starters, the kit sports a real-time clock and battery backup, as well as an OLED screen w/ navigation button on the front of the box and five programmable buttons. This seems like a small but meaningful quality-of-life improvement for devs: if you’re working with Scorpio dev kits, you should be able to set them up to display useful data like, says, frames per second, at a glance.

 

The dev kit has exactly the same ports (down to an HDMI IN jack) as the retail Scorpio, as well as an additional three front-facing USB ports and an extra NIC (network interface card) for transmitting debug information while running a multiplayer game.

 

The kit now also vents from the back and sides, rather than the top, to make it easier for devs to stack Scorpio dev kits without running into problems or having to build weird spacers out of office supplies (or Lego).

 

"I kid you not, I go to first-party studios, I go to third-party studios, and they have dev kits stacked. But they basically built blocks, or used Lego, as a gap so they could vent", said Gammill. "Well now you can stack these 10 high".

 

It’s also more powerful than the retail console: 44 CUs on the GPU instead of 40, 24 GB of DDR5 RAM (double retail's 12 GB), and a 1 TB solid-state drive in addition to the retail console’s 1 TB hard drive. Microsoft’s pitch to devs is consistent here: build your games big (4K native textures, etc.) and tune them down to run on the Scorpio and other Xbox One consoles.

 

The company also wants to make a show of listening to developers’ feedback about a key game dev gremlin: iteration time. To that end, it’s promising that Scorpio dev kits will be basically “hands-free” in terms of setup: you unbox ‘em, hook them up to power and Internet, boot them up and basically just walk away as they automatically configure themselves and download updates.

 

Microsoft is also packaging a new high-speed transfer cable in with Scorpio dev kits that Gammill claims can push 100 GB of data in about 4 minutes.

 

"It takes a hell of a long time to transfer a full build to a kit", Mike Rayner, technical director at Microsoft's Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition, told Gamasutra. He claims the new transfer cable is a significant time-saver for the studio, as they can now push a build for testing "6 to 7 times" faster.

 

"Something that would have taken 35-45 minutes now takes a couple of minutes," he added. "So that's pretty huge for us".

 

Incidentally, the new cable isn't limited to Scorpio dev kits; Rayner says the "low-cost device" works with Xbox One and Xbox One S as well, and should help developers across the board cut down their iteration speed.

 

 

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Can I have one of those dev kits please?