After weeks of speculation, Eurogamer has stepped in to confirm that Microsoft’s higher-specced Xbox, currently known under the codename “Project Scorpio” will be revealed this Thursday courtesy of Digital Foundry.
This will potentially lay rest to a number of rumors concerning the hardware tucked underneath the revised platform. With that in mind, there are several features of the consoles that have already been confirmed. Project Scorpio will abandon the 32MB high-bandwidth ESRAM die that is currently employed by the Xbox One. As developers aren’t allowed to ship exclusive titles for Scorpio, titles will continue to be optimized against that die.
In exchange, Scorpio will adopt 12GB of GDDR5 memory versus the 8GB of low-voltage DDR3 memory in today’s Xbox One consoles. Project Scorpio’s GPU will be 4.5x more powerful than that of the original die, and when married to an improved 8-core CPU and 320GB/s of memory bandwidth the console will be capable of full 4K content and gaming experiences.
Microsoft has been steadfast in its 4K proposal, with sources at Windows Central confirming that the machine will feature codec support for streaming video content in 4K. Additionally, HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) will be utilized for encoding 2160p, 60 FPS video for streaming and Game DVR. That represents a massive bump in quality over the 720p, 30 FPS performance of the the standard Xbox One.
With nothing further confirmed, there is the slight possibility that Forza Motorsport 7 will make a brief appearance to showcase what the machine is capable of. It’s worth acknowledging however that the internal hardware is looking to be the key focus, with gaming content likely reserved for E3 in June.
To clear up the speculation: @digitalfoundry will have an exclusive Xbox Scorpio reveal on @eurogamer this Thursday at 2pm UK / 6am Pacific. pic.twitter.com/S6xxT2YCcn
— Eurogamer.net (@eurogamer) April 4, 2017
Keep an eye peeled to GTPlanet for more on Project Scorpio as it becomes available.
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