Analysis: What Xbox One Scorpio means for the future of the console wars
Enlarge / The exploded innards on what will surely be the most powerful game console in existence... until the next one. (credit: Eurogamer / Digital Foundry)
Evaluating a new piece of gaming hardware based solely on the numbers on a spec sheet is always tough. That said, the Scorpio specifications Microsoft put out today through Eurogamer suggest the system should easily outclass the current top-of-the-line PS4 Pro. Between the faster CPU, improved GPU, and extra RAM and bus bandwidth, it's not hard to believe Microsoft's next console will be able to deliver games that can run at a fully native 4K resolution with solid, high frame rates.
This improvement will come at a price, of course, and that exact price is one of Scorpio's biggest remaining unknowns. Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter guesses that Scorpio will cost $500 when it launches later this year, significantly higher than the PS4 Pro's $400 asking price (it would also precisely mirror the price difference between the original PS4 and the Xbox One when they launched in 2013). The PS4 Pro also has a year's head start on Microsoft's mid-generation upgrade, meaning any Sony price drop could come sooner.
| Xbox Scorpio | Xbox One S | Xbox One | PS4 Pro | PS4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 8 "custom" X86 cores @ 2.3GHz | 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.75GHz | 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.75GHz | 8 Jaguar cores @ 2.1GHz | 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.6GHz |
| GPU | 40 "customised" compute units @ 1172MHz | 12 GCN compute units @ 914MHz | 12 GCN compute units @ 853MHz | 36 AMD Radeon GCN compute units @ 911Mhz | 18 AMD Radeon GCN compute units @ 800Mhz |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR5 | 8GB DDR3/32MB ESRAM | 8GB DDR3, 32MB ESRAM | 8GB GDDR5 (plus 1GB DDR3) | 8GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 326GB/s | 68GB/s, 219GB/s | 68GB/s, 204GB/s | 218GB/s | 176GB/s |
| Hard Drive | 1TB 2.5-inch | 1TB/500GB 2.5-inch | 1TB/500GB 2.5-inch | 1TB 2.5-inch | 500GB 2.5-inch |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-ray | 4K UHD Blu-ray | Blu-ray | Blu-ray | Blu-ray |
There's also the open question of diminishing returns when it comes to Microsoft's extra horsepower. While very few PS4 Pro games are able to hit a native 4K resolution, Leadbetter notes that Sony's system "has proved... that checkerboarding, advanced anti-aliasing techniques, temporal super-sampling, and dynamic resolution go a long way in closing the gap between sub-native ultra HD resolutions and the true 4K experience Microsoft is aiming for."
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