Xbox Project Scorpio can use checkerboarding for 4k just like PS4 Pro

A white paper from Microsoft states that the Xbox Project Scorpio console can also use upscaling techniques such as checkerboarding to display games in 4k resolution. It also appears that unlike the Xbox One, the console does not have esram.

The details are in a document that, according to Digital Foundry, has been available to developers since July last year. The document is not publicly available, but Eurogamer’s technical department has verified the content and is reporting extensively on what is in the whitepaper.

While Microsoft has indicated that games from its own studios will run in native 4k resolution, the document outlines ways for developers to upscale. For example, half resolution can be used, whereby the game is rendered in a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, but certain elements such as shadows or light effects are displayed at half resolution.

Microsoft also mentions sparse rendering as an option. That is another name for the technique known as checkerboard rendering, which is used on the PlayStation 4 Pro. Half of the pixels are rendered in a checkerboard pattern and the other pixels are filled in via extrapolation. That produces images that are more detailed than full HD, but do not contain the full eight million pixels of a native 4k resolution.

On the PlayStation 4 Pro, some games are rendered with 1800p checkerboarding, for example Watch Dogs 2. Because Project Scorpio has more processing power, that game could probably be rendered with 2160p checkerboarding on the Microsoft console.

Developers don’t need to use upscaling. They can also choose to render games in native 4k resolution. However, it is not unexpected that upscaling may be required to display games with high-quality graphics and detailed game defenses. The console is four times more powerful on paper and could therefore display games running in 1080p resolution on the current Xbox One in 2160p resolution. However, many Xbox One games run in lower resolutions such as 900p or 720p. To scale that up to native 2160p would require more powerful hardware.

The white paper provides some additional details about Project Scorpio hardware. It turns out that the console does not contain esram. The Xbox One contains 32MB of this memory, integrated on the CPU and GPU. This very fast memory is used to compensate for the relatively slow speed of the ddr3 memory that Microsoft uses in the Xbox One. According to Microsoft, the memory in the Scorpio console is fast enough to do without esram. The new console uses gddr5 memory with a bandwidth of 320Gbit/s. However, developers must continue to support the Xbox One esram when creating new games, so that the game also works well on the current console. You are not allowed to create games that only work on the new Scorpio console.

Exactly which AMD processor architecture Microsoft uses in Project Scorpio is not yet known. Digital Foundry suspects that these are the same Jaguar cores as in the current Xbox One, PS4 and PS4 Pro, but at a higher clock speed. That suspicion is based on the fact that Microsoft indicates that for certain processor-intensive tasks, such as animations, upscaling can also be used. With a game that runs at 60Hz, the CPU could render the animations at 30Hz and display them with interpolation at 60Hz.

The white paper confirms that Project Scorpio will get four times the L2 cache as the Xbox One. The document also mentions the computing power of six teraflops. Microsoft already announced that figure when the console was announced. This makes Project Scorpio more than four times more powerful than the Xbox One and the One S variant.