The New XBox seems to be using a full fledged Polaris 10 GPU

Hardware Hub Other Hardware
1

Not sure about this, but it seems as though the XBox Scorpio (stupid name) will be using a the full enabled Polaris 10. It is claiming 6 TFLOPs which is above the 480's 5.5ish TFLOPs. I assume that the GPU will be lower clocked in the XBox than in a discrete GPU, so a low clocked adaptation of the 490 would be likely. I would like to note that I do understand that the XBox uses an APU, not a dGPU, but I assume that the graphics section of the APU will be basically the 490, which will be one hell of a performer. 4k? Not likely, but a hell of a lot more powerful than the current specs as well as the PS4 Neo, if the rumors are to be believed.

An interesting point to note about this article is that they make it sound like they aren't going to release a "new" XBox again. I had heard rumors as early as around 2010 that Microsoft was planning to do incremental upgrades of a singular console (ie One) starting with this generation. That would be a logical thing to do, making backwards compatibility a problem of yesteryear. It would also make consoles very much akin to pcs. This could keep consoles more relevant in comparison to the current pc hardware. As new, faster GPU tech becomes available, they integrate it into the new version of their XBox. This eliminates a second problem of console gaming, outdated hardware. Hell, they could do regular yearly or biyearly releases. Should probably stick to using the year of release as the identifier of the revision instead of these stupid codenames (seriously? Project Scorpio?). If this is what they are planning, then not only is nVidia out of the current consoles, they likely won't get into Microsoft's or Sony's consoles ever again. This may be why there are rumors of nVidia being desperate to get into the Nintendo NX. If Nintendo goes that route too, then nVidia will be out of the consoles game permanently.

I like that AMD is getting more business, I like that consoles are fixing their own issues, I like the idea of better, newer hardware being regularly available to console gamers and the elimination of backwards compatibility. However, if nVidia is completely edged out of the console market entirely, I don't know how that will affect things. It would basically be a monopoly. However, it wouldn't be a monopoly in the traditional sense. I don't think that it would affect prices for the end user. Hell, as it stands, AMD makes peanuts off of console sales compared to what they would make with the same units sold in the pc market (assumption anyway). This might explain why. AMD possibly got a contract for the forseeable future, not just a single console generation. The consoles' needs and AMD's tech aligned really well and made it possible. It shouldn't affect end users, so I don't think I mind it. It could result in nVidia doing it's damndest to get Sony or Microsoft to switch over. However, considering that they don't have an x86 license and don't have any experience making x86 CPUs (and I assume that they would want to stick with x86 so that they can keep the incremental upgrade model, should they release a whole new console), and AMD wouldn't make CPUs and not APUs for consoles in order to benefit nVidia, so they would have to rely on Intel to back up the other half. Doesn't look so good for nVidia as far as getting into Xbox of Playstation at any point in the future.

http://wccftech.com/xbox-scorpio-revealed-8-core-cpu-6-tflops-computing-power-320-gbs-memory-bandwidth/

1 Like
2

Hmmm.... They could just build a GPU onto the mobo like nvidia did with the 980. Overall I don't agree a yearly or bi-yearly release. Really about every 4 years is probably better.

1 Like
3

How often they release revisions is completely up to them. The point is that they can easily keep up with pc hardware now. Much smoother transitions to faster tech.

4

I am surprised someone here does not know how unimportant tflops are.

AMDS old The 6990 has 5.9 tflops of power thats really really close to six as you can see but that card is old as dirt and can't match todays cards. Console companies chose tflops as the unit of measurement because 1 they are really really fucking unimportant. 2 Its the biggest number which also so happens most people don't know about for them to yell out and market. The 590 has half the tflops of the 6990 yet the 6990 is not twice as good its equal to a 590.

1 Like
5

The TFLOPs tell us how many stream processors there are. It tells the hardware itself, not the performance of it.

6

Found the perfect example using a single gpu card Radeon fury x 8601.6 tflops. Geforce Gtx 1080 8228 TFLOPS. By theory the the Fury x should be slightly better...But its not not even close its significantly worse..

7

Of course not. They have different architectures. Compare the Fury X with something that has the same architecture as it. The 380 is a good example.
Fury X = 8.6 TFLOPS
380 = 3.48 TFLOPS
That is roughly 40% of the Fury X's compute. Then we look at performance in game.

70% vs 29% That is 41%. That is margin of error level of performance difference. You expect the 380 to have 40% of the performance of the Fury X and it basically does. So now, again, comparing like with like. The GPU in the consoles is based on GCN, just like AMD's GPUs. So you should be able to compare them more or less as they will have the same performance more or less per stream processor. (Of course you have to take into account the efficiency for coding for consoles vs pc hardware but whatever) XBone has 1.3TFLOPs and the Scorpio will have 6TFLOPS. That is a massive increase. Nearly 5x the performance.

8

Well, you also have to consider optimization on the software side. Even though AMD's GPU may have more power on the hardware side, it still doesn't mean developers are going to effectively optimize their games or AMD's firmware is on par with Nvidia's.

1 Like
9

It is simply a different architecture. They have different IPCs between them.