After a long wait following last year’s E3 tease, Microsoft has finally revealed the specs behind their upcoming Project Scorpio project — and they’re a doozy.
Unveiled exclusively by tech hobbyist site Digital Foundry, Project Scorpio’s internal workings are in striking distance of mid-grade gaming PCs in terms of CPU and GPU strength. Its specs put the Xbox One to shame, and gives current top dog PlayStation 4 Pro a serious run for its money. The system boasts 6 teraflops of computing power, compared to the Xbox One’s 1.31, and the PS4 Pro’s 4.2. In addition, there’s a greater focus being placed on 1080p — definitely an uptick from the One’s controversial standard 900p. There is also a hardware-wide implementation of DirectX 12, which will allegedly cut down CPU workload by half on supported games.
What’s most interesting, however, is the chip at the center of it all. Dubbed the Scorpio Engine, this System On Chip (SOC) bundles all of the console’s power into one consolidated chip. Coming in at 360 square mm, it’s a tiny thing, yet is something of a technical marvel. The CPU, GPU, and audio-visual processors are all bundled into this centralized piece of tech. It’s an evolved version of the Jaguar found in current-gen consoles, with 8 cores and a 4 MB cache as usual, but with a 2.3GHz behind it as compared to the current 1.75GHz.
Also worth noting is the potential implementation of native 4K, which DF reports is definitely a possibility with this system. Current Xbox One games could run at native 4K, and DF reports that the latest Forza was doing just that. That’s in addition to the upscaling capabilities we’ve seen with the PS4 Pro and One S. According to the reports, performance and graphical capabilities are in striking distance of the GTX 1070 and the Fury X-Class.
This could mean a lot for the landscape of console gaming. We’ve entered an era where consoles might start getting more iterative releases, with graphical and processing boosts. We’re seeing console gaming’s first real big challenge to PC gaming in quite a while, if not the first real challenge to ever occur — even if what’s on display can’t really hold a candle to a customizable PC with a GTX 1080 kicking around inside of it. We’re seeing 4K gaming becoming a real possibility for a more mainstream audience.
We’re seeing a whole lot of possibilities, really, but only time will tell how consumers really respond to it, or how well third-party publishers and indie devs work for it. But for now, Project Scorpio certainly seems like it’ll be an impressive piece of tech, and we’ll allegedly be seeing it Q4 of this year. In the meantime, check out Digital Foundry’s breakdown below.