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Microsoft Xbox Project Scorpio Puts Out 6 TFLOPs On Par With Current Gaming PCs (hothardware.com)
MojoKid quotes a report form HotHardware: Microsoft is hoping to usher in a new era in console gaming just over a year from now. While the company is just a month away from launching the Xbox One S refresh in the U.S., Project Scorpio is the console that really has gamers talking. During E3, Microsoft provided scant details on the console, only cluing us in to the fact that it would support virtual reality, 4K gaming, and push 6 TFLOPs of computing power. Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, CD Projekt Red's Principal Narrative Designer, had a few things to say about that last bullet point regarding compute performance. If you recall, AMD's newly introduced Radeon RX 480 offers peak performance of 5.8 TFLOPs, which puts it in close proximity of Microsoft's Project Scorpio. But of course, trying to compare consoles to PCs using this stat alone isn't exactly apples to oranges, though Tomaszkiewicz explains, "For sure [Scorpio] will have better looking games," Tomaszkiewicz said. "If this was available when we were working on Wild Hunt, I would expect similar quality that we have on PC right now or even better maybe." HotHardware's report goes on to mention that once new console hardware is introduced, it's frozen for years at a time without any updates. Therefore, it would only be a short while before PCs would completely outcompete it in terms of performance. Also, given the fact that Project Scorpio is not arriving until late 2017 at the earliest, the 6 TFLOPs of power won't seem like much when compared to the new cycle of high-end GPUs with far superior performance. Tomaszkiewicz agrees, adding, "New graphic cards are being released very often and more often than the new consoles being released. So I think it will put Scorpio on par with the PC is that we have at that point. But I think PC is growing so fast that it'll outpace [Scorpio]."
I'll believe it when I see it.
project scorpio is not the console that "really has gamers talking". microsoft has lost this console cycle, and is not going to catch up with a new half-cycle-release. it's still an xbox (or an "xbone", as the more pornographically inclined would say), and not going to lose it's bad reputation as easy.
"4.77MHz ought to be enough for anybody"
-- Sun Tzu
Nvidia 1080 GTX = 8.9 TFLOPS
6!=8.9
Regards.
Console hardware stays the same, so although it may theoretically not perform as well as the top tier hardware available, it can often have better looking games...
A console game does not need to cater to lower spec hardware, nor does it need to deal with disparate configurations or other background software impeding the game, nor is your memory wasted by os features that are unrelated to gaming.
You can even program the hardware directly, bypassing the overhead caused by the various abstraction layers.
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So yes, sounds pretty much as you would expect. The hardware in the console doesn't change but it also needs to hit a certain price point at launch. Usually the hardware of a console is sold at about a break even price point right when launched and profits come from game licensing and eventual production cost improvements. Given that the typical price of a new console these days is around $400 or $500 you would never expect the state of the art GPU to be included as those parts alone are going to exceed that price point. So yes, this years new crop of GPU designs is likely a safe bet for this mass market device launch next year. Remember for the $400 price you still have to include storage, processor, power supply, enclosure, packaging and all the other bits and pieces.
So sure, a current gaming PC costing 3x or more of a console is more powerful and will continue to outpace the console performance as time marches on. Apples and oranges. For pure gaming performance the consoles usually do pretty good on bang for the buck.
When you develop for console you develop for the lowest common denominator. This IS the advantage you have. Now you have two console with the same targeted environment, one slightly better at throughput than the other, and initially with lower numbers. Would you target that, add millions of dollars worth of development in bell and whistle , only to have barely a better sales, and risk the ire or their "lower" console brethen because the screenshot presented were only for scorpio ? And if you develop *for* scorpio you will miss on xbox one 1.0 player.
I know that some hold that console generation should be shorter or whatnot (e.g. totalbuiscuit on youtube argue that that the last generation was too long) but the splitting ehre will make it so probably nobody with a sane mind will invest into getting more power out of scorpio and having different config and development on an already expansive console development without real benefit sales wise (at least initially). And if nobody is adding bell and whistle, why should people buy the new one when the old one less expansive does as well ? Remember console fit one niche : the one where you get a hardware with known spec and develop for it. Scorpio break that. It will add confusion on buyer, reviewer, developper side.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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For reference to a PC this would put the GPU at a peak theoretical performance of an AMD 290/Nvidia 970. Or rather an RX 480 this year, making next years latest and greatest equal to this yeas low mid end. A perfectly predictable console type performance as compared to what was launched 3 years ago already.
Will be interested to see how well it sells, along with Sony's competing Neo... thing. Never been a console generation with an "upgrade" halfway through it, you could argue the Sega 32x was such a thing but being non back/forwards compatible made it different.
That being said both Sony and MS will have to make VR games non backwards compatible, there's not really any room to lower system requirements on VR titles at the moment. Since MS doesn't even have a headset that'll be easy for them, but Sony does so it might be awkward to then have people with a PSVR unable to play PSVR games because they don't have a PS4 neo.
People still link stories from this garbage hardware site. As usual old news that every reputable sites has run stories on days if not weeks ago.
SteamBox it is, then
At least I get to choose the hardware, upgrade when I like, and not be stuck in low-end performance by the time I build one.
Also Tflops are very useless as a measure of anything performance related.
It's entirely possible to get some FPGAs and make a machine that does a lot TFLOPs by shoving several useless floating point negate circuits that keep processing a register.
And while it's not as drastic on the case of the Xbone, it's quite possible they use the same architecture as on the Xbox one to keep backward compatibility, and this means the "6Tflops" it will offer are slower than the "6Tflops" you find on a modern videocard.
The Radeon RX 480 is to be made on a 14 nm finfet process.... Intel is having delays with 10 nm process. 7 nm will be even harder. 193 nm light has been pushed really hard. Frankly, I would have this extra power console pretty powerful. The nvidia 1080 GTX is 16 nm, 314? mm^2. I'd make the GPU a bit bigger than that. This console will last a pretty long time.
For a console to make sense it has to put out at least 2x the performance of the current gen PC, otherwise it will be obsolete before production even ramps up, just like the XBOne/PS4 ended up being.
Make a console with a removable GPU? Like games in the Super Nintendo!
One of the great parts of the console world was standard performance. We were all on the same level. Our games looked and ran equally good. Most importantly they ran as well as the developer could make them run with exactly our hardware. Now we not only have cross platform games losing the ability to squeeze the last performance out of platforms with some games running horribly on one platform but not the other, now we also have multiple consoles in a single release cycle to play with?
So consoles are going to lose the "it just works" benefit over the TV. Computers now can work with most console hardware, games are rarely console exclusives these days, and Microsoft is trying to unify the platforms.
What is the purpose of the console?
Nice, a future project vs something that is available NOW.
so microcuck tottally ripped off the people that bought the one, and they are going to build a new one already to play amazing shit like doom, tomb raider and hitman, so they are going to rip them again because that stuff is barely any fun or good
congratulations i guess
The 480 is a bit better than my 970 which barely is ok for my vive. Once triple a games come out for vr these cards will be bottom of the barrel... imagine in a year and a half.
Come on microsoft, you often have great ideas then implement them poorly. Kinect would have been great.... the latency made it shit. Windows 10 would have been great... the fact that it does stuff out of the users control made it shit. Your vr glasses needs more than 12 pixels... your live 3d model creator which works on any phone.... where is it??? come on is there anyone in your camp that will step up and force something to be awesome all around?
So they're comparing the complete processing power of a console, just to the processing power of a GPU, and saying they're about the same. Which totally ignores the processing power of the CPU in the PC. Sorry, it's not even close.
What is the purpose of the console?
Social gaming around a centralized monitor (TV) with plug-in-play functionality. But yes, standardization is somewhat gone in favor for market segmentation. But the premise is still he same; plug in, turn on, choose game, pick up controller and game. Hardware wise, yeah, a glorified x86 based PC mass-produced on contract (to amortize the cost) for the projected generational life of the unit.
Life is not for the lazy.
nope, that's not the case anymore either. There are very few multiplayer games that you have multiple people sitting in front of the same couch for anymore. Now the games are all over the network, and people are using their consoles more like gaming rigs with all the drawbacks that consoles come with. For the same price as a console you can purchase a mid range gaming pc that you can upgrade. Are there people afraid to open a case? yes, and those people will always be at a disadvantage for various reasons.
they are talking about releasing a console a year from now that compares to today's mid range hardware. TFLOPS means nothing for GPU performance. the GTX 1080 with 5.3 TFLOPS walks all over the AMD 480 from a performance standpoint. The only place consoles can get a boost in performance is by the vendor squeezing out every last bit of performance to get "close" to PC gaming levels the year they were released, after that and often well before PCs walk all over console performance without all the special optimizations that are done for each console platform.
For me, it's the unified controls. I absolutely hate using a keyboard and mouse to play games (obviously I am not a "hardcore gamer", and I'm fine with that). I know you can connect a controller to use for many PC games, but it never really feels like any thought went into it.
You cannot purchase a midrange gaming PC for the price of a console.
You can buy a non-gaming/office PC for the price of a console, but those rather suck for playing games on.
The Xbox One is $279 retail with two games at the moment (GameStop). The PS4 is $349 with a game.
I don't think you're going to be able to match the hardware in those for that price.
Sorry, but you must have missed any entire generation of cross platform games that ran well on exactly one system and ass on the other two.
On a PC, if a bad port with mediocre graphics takes a $1000 card to run 60 FPS it doesn't seem to count because "I got mine, f u" from all the elites. Throwing money and hardware at bad optimization is DUUUUUUUMB.
Honestly if they'd just announced a "new" console 100% backwards compat with all games and peripherals every four years, everyone should be excited. But announcing an "upgrade" after four years is somehow an unstable platform.
I honestly think 100% of the complainers just play PC games. Everyone else is wondering where we can open our wallets to play existing console games at smooth 60fps already. I'm not naive enough to believe 4K gaming is coming to consoles or that VR will win over, I just want my quiet little $4-$500 tv box upgraded every few years with incremental performance.
What is the purpose of the console?
A fool is easily separated from his/her money. The I need the newest shiny has been beaten into a new generation and they have no issues spending $500+ on new phones every new model, so upgrading to a new console will be no issue.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
In mid-September, about a dozen Xbox one games will support Xbox Play Anywhere. This feature adds a copy of select games to your Windows Store purchases when you buy them on Xbox One or vice versa. So you're right only in the sense that Windows 10 Anniversary Update is a dependency for Xbox Play Anywhere. It's not clear to what extent other existing and future Xbox One games will come to support Xbox Play Anywhere.
Nvidia 1080GTX = $599
Go build a $400 system with a $600 GPU.
$600 != $599
Colloquial price quotations like this follow the significant figures rule. 600 has one significant figure and can thus represent any value between 550.00 and 650.00. 599 has three significant figures and can thus represent any value between 598.50 and 599.50. These ranges overlap.
That and I'm pretty sure console games can store textures pre-swizzled for a particular GPU's cache architecture, or shaders pre-compiled for a particular shader ISA.
A console game does not need to cater to lower spec hardware
Yes it does. A lot of Game Boy Color games, especially earlier ones, included a backward compatibility mode for 4-gray systems (Game Boy, Super Game Boy, and Game Boy Pocket). Compromises in gray mode often involved lower frame rate and less graphical detail, due to a slower CPU, less VRAM, lack of hardware-assisted copying of data to VRAM, and the dramatically slower green LCD of the original Game Boy. Later GBC games on monochrome systems would allow playing only the first chapter (Conker's Pocket Tales) or even just display an error message.
I imagine the same will be true of PlayStation 4 Neo games.
nor does it need to deal with disparate configurations or other background software impeding the game, nor is your memory wasted by os features that are unrelated to gaming.
Including social features, such as Xbox Live notifications, text chat, and voice chat?
What is the purpose of the console?
People have this amazingly misguided idea consoles were 'intended' to offer platform stability. That was NEVER the case. Instead it was an artifact of the development cycle: hardware costs money to develop, and that money has to be recovered. Only when sales slow down do console manufacturers invest in a new generation.
Now it is different: AMD is designing the hardware, so instead of investing, Sony and Microsoft can do simple periodic refreshes at negligible cost. And since not doing so will cause one or the other to fall behind and become irrelevant, they have no choice than to update.
Platform stability in consoles is now a thing of the past. Consoles are nothing but cheap, low-end, locked-down PCs now.
So nothing that can't be done with a PC now then.
Not "intended" but rather that has been the last major benefit and drawing card for them.
PCs have been able to do anything a console does until now. After this there will be no reason left to buy a console.
Can I finance it by making game makers pay me to be allowed to make games for the system?
Yes, and gamers might even get better games that way because only serious studios will consider the overhead of a console developer program worth it to reach the market. Compared to PC gamers, users of the console maker's download store theoretically have to skip past less "amateur hour" to get to a worthwhile game. This sort of uncertainty as to whether you'll end up with "amateur hour" is what killed the Atari 2600 back in 1983 and almost brought down the North American video game market with it. The licensing scheme is how Nintendo managed to restore North America's trust in video games, despite the NES not being that much more powerful than the ColecoVision and Commodore 64.
The Scorpio isn't even released yet and it is already disgustingly out-of-date at a supposed "6 TFLOPS". I will say that it is impressive that the Scorpio is going to be a console with the power of a gaming computer, but with all of their new titles also being released for PC as well, is there even a point to purchase the new Scorpio?
input peripherals
Walmart special keyboard, Walmart special mouse, that's what, $25 total?
OS (everyone forgets the OS)
Valve didn't; its Steam OS is a Debian fork. Windows-only Steam games won't work without Wine, but Valve made it easy to port Mac-compatible Steam games to Linux.
Ubuntu is also a Debian fork. Install Xubuntu and the Steam client on a PC, and you can run both Steam games and non-Steam apps, including apps from Canonical's repository, apps from PPAs, and apps compiled from source. This means you can use the same system for both entertainment and actual work.
The case, power supply, hard disk, operating system, controller etc can be re-used from one generation to the next.
As new games become bigger from one generation to the next, it becomes harder to reuse the hard disk. Games got bigger from the PS1 generation (CD, with games only rarely multi-disc) to the PS2 generation (DVD, with dual layer common later) to the PS3 generation (usually single layer BD on PS3 or usually one or two DVDs on Xbox 360) to the PS4 generation (2-layer BD on both PS4 and Xbox One).
In the end it's going to be a just another console that studios dumb down game user interfaces for and make textures blurry for.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Oh. So getting games that are essentially the same as the game by the same name with a by one smaller number behind it is considered "better" now? I was under the impression that this is more or less a rip-off.
In the meantime, you can buy a load of games on Steam for the same money, try them and return them if they're not up to their claim, effectively paying less for more games. And new games, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"What is the purpose of the console?" - Console-tards haven't evolved past requiring a "joy"stick or some other sort of specialized controller to enjoy their games.
Both the Neo Geo AES and 3DO Interactive Multiplayer broke $1,000 after adjustment for inflation to 2013 dollars. Intellivision came close at $935. The 3DO sort of flopped, but the Neo Geo retains a following.
The GTX 1080 is nvidia's top of the line card. It's at 9 TFLOPS. It's out today- not in months, when something better will be available. And of course, you can link up two cards together, if you wanna go full retard.
Anyway, obviously a lot more power in a console is nice. But I suspect there's a lot of marketing spin here, and the slashdot summary also helpfully points out that by 2017 the state of PC cards will be better.
One of the advantages of consoles is that MS et al take a hand in what is allowed on the system. While it's true that some games on the XBox|PS are crap, in general you have more quality game releases on the consoles. The amount of utter-garbage that you have to wade through on Steam is becoming a disadvantage at this point -- with so many fricking mobile-ports and complete turd-like console ports with devs that barely even give an afterthought to KB+Mouse control scheme.
It puts out enough TFLOPS to be on par with current gaming machines at this present time in 2016, but Project Scorpio doesn't hit until 2017. Probably late 2017 at that. There's also more variables that factor into gaming performance than how many TFLOPS the GPU is putting out.
Social gaming around a centralized monitor (TV) with plug-in-play functionality.
Now that TVs are thin and affordable, I was under the impression that families had become willing to buy one TV and console per person rather than one TV and console per household. A LAN game from one bedroom to the other, combined with the runtime performance cost of calculating PVS and environment mapping for each split window, makes same-screen slightly less of a selling point now than it used to be. Plus online gaming supports play with friends who have moved away or with friends you met online.
And if you do want same-screen but can't afford to build a second gaming PC to keep next to the TV, laptops and the Steam Link thin client bring PC games into the living room.
You can buy a non-gaming/office PC for the price of a console, but those rather suck for playing games on.
But a console also sucks for playing non-games on. So buy a gaming PC kit and a $50 Steam Link thin client for the price of an office PC and a major console.
The Xbox One is $279 retail with two games at the moment
How many games will a player buy for that $279 console over its service life, and how deep are Xbox sales compared to Steam and Humble sales?
I just want my quiet little $4-$500 tv box upgraded every few years
You could always buy a $50 TV box that relays audio and video from your PC over Ethernet.
This can be a texture problem, models detailing problems, lighting problems, and even physic problem. All of that cost money to configure, develop, and test. If the money is justified , people will do it. If there is not many scorpio at the start , forget it, unless microsoft PAY them to do it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Current PCs already have better stats than scorpio and we are a year out. How does everyone forget recent history so fast? High end PCs build months before the ANNOUNCEMENT of the PS4 and Xbox One already had better stats.
You buy a console because you just want to play your game on your couch and have it work. You don't buy it because its the best hardware because it never is and never will be thanks to its price point.
The XBox and Playstation are canned PC's. There is no reason they couldn't have 1.5/2 year refreshes. The reason we have to wait until 2017 is that both consoles are AMD. And AMD's new processors won't be out until later this year and they need so many months in order to develop enough stock that the console kids aren't crying they can't get a hold of one.
Quite frankly they need to be done with it and just put out their own proprietary x16 slot in the box. The next AMD processor will be a big deal but after than it won't matter for gaming. If they go x16 they they should style the cards as both console and PC compatible. That way the card is the same for dev box. And most importantly console gamers can sell their old graphics cards in the PC market. Only XBox branded cards will work in an XBox of course.
There is no reason console games can't be tiered by performance or even offer different performance depending on the model of the console. I would argue it would be a selling point since Microsoft would probably insist that older games get a refresh in graphics. So upgrade your console and all the games you already own get upgraded.
"Why isn't the game properly optimized for the high end console? The low end is holding us back!"
"Why isn't the game optimized for the low end? I'm getting frame rate drops and the high end are kicking our asses online, ever since they launched the new consoles they don't give a crap how it runs on the existing user base's console, they just want to upsell us!"
The users will just be yelling at each other, at the devs, and at the console manufacturers. There's going to be even more crap than usual on forums now.
Twinstiq, game news
If the guaranteed ability to put in a disc and play the game all the way to the end the first day you buy it is gone, then so is the advantage of a console. On the PC there are many times a game is released and isn't playable on a large portion of systems and needs to be patched, and these gamers have to wait an indeterminate amount of time to play the game they bought. Sure, you can return games on steam, but that doesn't solve the problem. You wanted to play that game at that moment for whatever reason.
Or maybe an OS or driver update completely breaks a certain game, one you wanted to go back to and play. Same case, you can't do much. On a console, a game will always be playable whenever you want, because it is specifically crafted for that hardware, and that same spec was used to test the game.
If that advantage is gone then it won't be worth it for me anymore. I don't have time/patience for such troubleshooting. At least Nintendo games are always reliable so maybe I will just stick to that brand.
Twinstiq, game news
What makes you think your Xbox One console isn't spying on you just as much?
Oh, don't get me wrong, I got off the Microsoft train at the 360 station
What makes you think your PlayStation 3, Wii U, or PlayStation 4 console isn't spying on you just as much?
Problem is, in order to be sure a game will run on a "Steam Machine", you have to restrict your list to the titles that run on Linux
I concede that the existence of titles not ported to Linux and games' varying minimum CPU/GPU/RAM requirements could cause consumer confusion. But because a Steam Machine can act as a Steam Link endpoint, you can run a game on a compatible Windows PC elsewhere on your home LAN and display it on your Steam Machine's monitor.
if you start calling Windows-based machines Steam Machines, you also have to look out for what small percentage of titles don't run on Windows.
There are four possibilities for a Steam game: Windows-only; Windows and Linux; Windows and macOS; or Windows, macOS, and Linux. Though this begins to sound reminiscent of Monty Python's SPAM sketch, my point is that Valve forbids the other three possibilities (macOS and Linux, macOS-only, and Linux-only). From Greenlight FAQ:
If your game is macOS-only, you should be selling it in the Mac App Store rather than Steam.
PCs have been able to do anything a console does until now.
Except run console specific games, and be truly affordable. Oh sure, you can buy a cheap PC, but the Master Race types on Steam would laugh at you if you called some $500 PC from a big box store a gaming rig. They'd be saying "Spend 1500 on a real rig n00b or j00 will get p@wn3d in LoL and TF2"
After this there will be no reason left to buy a console.
Plenty of reasons, games and game genres that don't appear on PC, preference for console controls that aren't the 360/Xbox one game pad, preference against using Windows, preference for not having to worry about system requirements/tweaking, one-button-it-just-works-easy-everything, and price.
I know you cannot connect a keyboard and mouse to a console and play.
Because the controller people would cry like babies after getting their asses handed to them.
We understand, you dislike choice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Perhaps consoles need the external graphics solution like in alienware, this way it's extensible yet offering entry level owners to still use the onboard graphics and play the latest games (albeit in 1080p with stuff turned off..) ?
PCs have been able to do anything a console does until now.
Except run console specific games, and be truly affordable. Oh sure, you can buy a cheap PC, but the Master Race types on Steam would laugh at you if you called some $500 PC from a big box store a gaming rig. They'd be saying "Spend 1500 on a real rig n00b or j00 will get p@wn3d in LoL and TF2"
Cost is a matter of perspective. I'm gaming on a 6-year old PC now, with the only upgrade during that period being a new GPU. And I expect this machine to last me quite a few more years. I had it before the XBox One and PS4 came out, and I will still be playing on it by the time the Neo and Scorpio come out.
Prices for games are lower on PC as well, especially now that we live in the era of the Steam Sale.
As for what other people are saying... How exactly is their opinion relevant?
After this there will be no reason left to buy a console.
Plenty of reasons, games and game genres that don't appear on PC, preference for console controls that aren't the 360/Xbox one game pad, preference against using Windows, preference for not having to worry about system requirements/tweaking, one-button-it-just-works-easy-everything, and price.
You can use a PS4 controller with PC as well. And worrying about system requirements/tweaking became obsolete at the start of the 32-bit era. That's the one that is just about over now...
more quality game releases on the consoles.
You mean like with the concept that every Xbox game will also be playable on the computer with the unified environment?
The number of quality games is the same. AAA titles appear on all platforms. The percentage may be different, but then that all depends on what you define quality, and that answer is not budget or marketing.
Oh sure, you can buy a cheap PC, but the Master Race types on Steam would laugh at you
You're being laughed at anyway. There's nothing new there and on inherent real benefit to going console over PC in this case.
Plenty of reasons, games and game genres that don't appear on PC
I think you may have forgotten what else Microsoft is doing, Unified Windows Platform. The idea that there are magic console exclusive games is firstly very rare already and secondly about to disappear completely as the xbox and Windows 10 merge into one beast.