4K gaming is already on the rise thanks to the PlayStation 4 Pro having an early start. Released last year in November, the higher-spec Sony console already has a number of titles taking advantage of the additional headroom, and is further enhanced when VR is factored into the equation. The other half of this 4K race remains absent for the time being: Microsoft.
Project Scorpio—Microsoft’s souped-up Xbox One console—hasn’t been the topic of discussion for several months now, not since its official revealing at E3 last year. While Microsoft remains tight-lipped on the upcoming refresh, Eurogamer’s Richard Leadbetter has come across some very interesting information that puts the console back in the spotlight, months before any news is likely to come from the Redmond software giant themselves.
A whitepaper entitled “Reaching 4K and GPU Scaling Across Multiple Xbox Devices” goes into detail on how Scorpio will tackle the Ultra HD standard, even revealing more details on the underlying hardware itself. Kicking things off is the bombshell reveal that Scorpio will abandon the ESRAM die currently used in the Xbox One.
ESRAM (embedded static RAM) is a small high-bandwidth memory die specifically designed to bypass the shortcomings of the much slower primary DDR3 RAM. While the 32MB chip is ruled out for Scorpio, Microsoft suggests developers continue to support it for the sake of the legacy Xbox One hardware.
It is worth mentioning that the document specifically outlines the following provision: “However, Project Scorpio and PC are not provided with ESRAM. Because developers are not allowed to ship a Project Scorpio-only SKU, optimising for ESRAM remains critical to performance on Microsoft platforms.” This echoes numerous statements by Xbox head Phil Spencer that Scorpio will not ship with exclusive titles, existing alongside the current Xbox One.
Scorpio’s six teraflop GPU is once again confirmed in the paper, with peak performance rated at 4.5 times that of the original Xbox One, as revealed last June. Also revealed in the document is an L2 cache four times that of the original, a new detail that doesn’t reveal much outside of the updated GPU architecture being reminiscent of AMD’s Polaris.
Central to Scorpio’s 4K target, Microsoft references several techniques within the document that are aimed at improving efficiency without impacting image quality as a means of taking a base 1080p image and scaling it to 4K. Half-resolution and sparse rendering are two of the discussed techniques. Interestingly enough, the latter of the two goes by another name: checkerboard rendering.
The technology should sound familiar as the same method is used by developers for the PS4 Pro. On the face of it, the applied techniques suggests Scorpio isn’t the “true 4K” console as it was originally touted to be at last year’s E3. However, the document acknowledges that at least one first-party title has transitioned to native 4K. The first game that comes to mind—echoed by Eurogamer—is Forza Motorsport.
Not only have the previous two entries in the franchise run at a native 1080p and 60 fps, the recently-outed Forza Motorsport 7 is a likely candidate in demonstrating Scorpio’s power with a native 4K experience to boot.
Eurogamer cautions that this is speculation based on a number of factors, though the only hard evidence is the aforementioned whitepaper confirming the absence of ESRAM, boosted L2 cache and support for memory compression technology. Dated just after the original reveal last year, aspects of the final design may have changed since then. While it shouldn’t be much longer of a wait before the platform is mentioned through official channels, there’s this comment from Xbox head Phil Spencer:
Great day, Scorpio update w/ team. Played my first games on early Scorpio unit. Games played great, console looked right, proud of the team
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) January 24, 2017
For the original article be sure to head on over to Eurogamer, and be sure to stay tuned to GTPlanet for more on Project Scorpio as it becomes available.
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