Xbox Scorpio console gets GPU with 40 compute units at 1176MHz

Microsoft has released extensive details about the Xbox ‘Scorpio’ hardware. The Polaris GPU has 40 compute units clocked at 1176MHz. Hardware DX12 implementation in the command processor should provide a major speed advantage in DX12 games.

The GPU of the upcoming Xbox console consists of 40 compute units with a clock speed of 1172MHz. That’s a big increase compared to the Xbox One, which has 12 cu’s with a speed of 853MHz. The new Xbox also has more graphics processing power than the PlayStation 4 Pro, which has 36 cu’s at 911MHz.

The GPU is based on AMD’s Polaris GPU, which is also in the RX 480. That video card has 36 cu’s with a speed of 1266MHz. Although the GPU is basically the same as that of video cards for PCs, according to Microsoft, it is a custom version with many adjustments made specifically for the console.

According to Microsoft, hardware DirectX 12 implementation has been added to the command processor of the GPU. Games that use DX12 could therefore run much more efficiently. Draw calls that now cost thousands of instructions can be handled in 11 instructions with the new implementation. This should be noticeable in games such as Battlefield 1, Gears of War 4 and new Forza titles.

Microsoft speaks of a Scorpio Engine. The console builder includes the soc that contains, among other things, the cpu, gpu and memory controller. It is a chip with 7 billion transistors made on the 16nm finfet process of TSMC with a surface area of ​​360mm2. Like the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 4 Pro, the processor has eight cores. It would be further developed AMD Jaguar cores, with various adjustments. The clock speed has been increased from 1.7GHz to 2.3GHz and a total of 4MB L2 cache is present.

The console contains 12GB GDDR5 memory at 6.8Gbit/s, good for a total bandwidth of 326GB/s. There is 8GB of memory available for games. The rest of the memory is used for background processes and rendering the interface in 4k resolution.

According to Microsoft, sixty game-specific adjustments have been made to the GPU pipeline. Scorpio’s hardware has been modified and optimized for popular game engines. Microsoft has done that by looking at the bottlenecks on the current Xbox One console.

Current Xbox games could therefore easily be optimized for the new console. For example, Microsoft demonstrated Forza Motorsport 6 in native 4k resolution with 60fps. The GPU would only be taxed at 66 percent. Converting the engine to Scorpio would be done in two days. Microsoft’s goal is for games currently running on the Xbox One S in 1080p or 900p to run in 4k on the new console.

Microsoft has also confirmed that Scorpio will not only offer benefits to owners of 4k TVs. Games are downscaled from 4k to 1080p resolution when played on a full HD TV. This produces sharper images through super sampling.

The details about the hardware have been revealed in a series of articles and videos from Digital Foundry and Eurogamer. Microsoft has provided the website with extensive technical data about the new console, which will be released in the fall. The name of the new console has not yet been announced. For now, the console bears the project name ‘Scorpio’.

Project Scorpio Xbox One PS4 Pro

Project Scorpio Motherboard