Next Gen XBox announced - Project Scarlett

[ultimatebob]

So, it looks like Microsoft has finally announced their next gen XBox gaming console:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/9/1...box-hardware-specs-price-release-date-e3-2019

It looks like it will have the latest AMD Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU cores in it, which will supposedly offer 120fps 4K support (I’ll believe that when I see it), and 8K TV support as well.

It will also (finally) come with SSD storage, which should help to make those loading screens a lot shorter. That said, I’d imagine that many games will eventually end up getting streamed to this console anyway, so it might be your network bandwidth that determines load times instead of your storage speed.

It’s supposed to come out for the 2020 XMas shopping season, but I didn’t see anything on pricing yet. With those hardware specs, I’d personally guess a launch price of $600. What do you guys think?

 

[Aikouka]

I think we shouldn't be surprised about what we heard in regard to the Scarlett. Given that both Microsoft and Sony are working with AMD, their solutions ended up being fairly similar. Although, it is interesting to see just how similar they are this time around, as the original Xbox One and PlayStation 4 had slightly different memory implementations. (Those differences pretty much eroded with the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro though.)

Microsoft did hint at a "newer SSD" just like Sony, and it makes me wonder... are we not talking just PCI-E 4.0 as that doesn't seem to really fit the bill that they were describing. I mean... sure, PCI-E 4.0 is newer than PCI-E 3.0, but it's not such a radical departure to use the sort of language that they did. I saw some comments talking about using AMD's High Bandwidth Cache Controller technology, which was first introduced on Vega, but... given that the system already uses combined GDDR6 memory, HBCC doesn't really seem useful. On the other hand... what about Intel/Micron's 3DXPoint? Some early tests show it as promising over existing SSDs, and it provides another interesting benefit: persistent, low-latency memory. That could lead to the system effectively shutting off while inactive and storing its state to (3DXPoint-based) disk.

 

[sxr7171]

So this new ssd is just optane? Why haven’t we found it helps with pc gaming at all?

 

[KentState]

So this new ssd is just optane? Why haven’t we found it helps with pc gaming at all?

Just a guess, but a pc isn't a dedicated gaming machine and therefore the OS and hardware aren't arranged in a format to specifically support it. There are plenty of specialty compute and IO related devices that handle NVMe much better than a typical pc.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The real question is whether they will have exclusives worth my time. I think I’ve given up on Xbox because they are giving me everything on PC and for console only titles the next PlayStation will likely have similar performance.

Not really playing a lot of games lately anyway though to be honest. Only a few very select titles.

 

[KentState]

The real question is whether they will have exclusives worth my time. I think I’ve given up on Xbox because they are giving me everything on PC and for console only titles the next PlayStation will likely have similar performance.

Not really playing a lot of games lately anyway though to be honest. Only a few very select titles.

Hypothetically, they could build a platform that is IO focused which doesn't translate neatly to Windows. With all the talk of leveraging flash storage as memory and heavily reducing load time, the typical PC won't have that ability so devs will focus on lower specs. Fidelity wise, the PC version may still appear superior, but may be outclassed in OS and storage on the mid to low end. Then again, we have to take all the initial details with a grain of salt.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Hypothetically, they could build a platform that is IO focused which doesn't translate neatly to Windows. With all the talk of leveraging flash storage as memory and heavily reducing load time, the typical PC won't have that ability so devs will focus on lower specs. Fidelity wise, the PC version may still appear superior, but may be outclassed in OS and storage on the mid to low end. Then again, we have to take all the initial details with a grain of salt.

Why should I care about the OS and storage when it comes to the games themselves? Like if I get the same game either way I don't need to buy an Xbox. Not sure what you mean though so perhaps I'm missing your real point?

 

[KentState]

Why should I care about the OS and storage when it comes to the games themselves? Like if I get the same game either way I don't need to buy an Xbox. Not sure what you mean though so perhaps I'm missing your real point?

Sorry, probably wasn't clear. My point was that this gen may actually perform better than a typical PC.

 

[quikah]

Sorry, probably wasn't clear. My point was that this gen may actually perform better than a typical PC.

A typical PC is weaker than the current gen of consoles. Typical PC has lousy or no GPU.

All the talk about next gen SSD is kind of pointless, ANY SSD would show a massive increase in performance over the current gen console's spinning drives. SSD doesn't really improve gameplay that much, it just improves loading time. The one thing that a next gen SSD would allow is a reduction in RAM, they would be able to get away with more loading from disk with a very high speed SSD rather than loading into RAM.

 

[cmdrdredd]

A typical PC is weaker than the current gen of consoles. Typical PC has lousy or no GPU.

All the talk about next gen SSD is kind of pointless, ANY SSD would show a massive increase in performance over the current gen console's spinning drives. SSD doesn't really improve gameplay that much, it just improves loading time. The one thing that a next gen SSD would allow is a reduction in RAM, they would be able to get away with more loading from disk with a very high speed SSD rather than loading into RAM.

Yeah and I don’t buy into the 4K 120fps claim. Maybe some titles but the ones that do won’t have the same quality graphically and 8k tv support? That’s just worthless. So I’m back to my original point, that there is no reason for me to want the next Xbox. Maybe the next PlayStation but that’s it.

 

[purbeast0]

There is absolutely no reason to even care about 8k right now. They STILL can't even do 4k at 60fps as the norm right now on current consoles. Instead of trying to get more polygons how about they fucking think of new IP's and creative games?

I have 0 interest in another Halo game. It's going to be more of the same with better graphics.

I saw some Gears 5 footage the other day. I watched like a 10 minute clip. Gameplay wise it looks IDENTICAL to Gears 2. If it didn't have fancy graphics I wouldn't have been able to tell you it was another game.

That is the problem with MS. They have no games.

 

[IntelUser2000]

All the talk about next gen SSD is kind of pointless, ANY SSD would show a massive increase in performance over the current gen console's spinning drives. SSD doesn't really improve gameplay that much, it just improves loading time.

In benchmarks SSDs show 30-40x gains over HDDs.

In real world loading tests, the gains are maybe 2-3x in average.

But the next generation consoles are talking about 10-20x reduction in loading time. I believe it. These are machines dedicated for one thing, and its gaming. Plus, its only sold in a single configuration, and the specs don't change for 6-7 years. The thing you can do in Year 1 is different from what you can do in Year 5.

Microsoft did hint at a "newer SSD" just like Sony, and it makes me wonder... are we not talking just PCI-E 4.0 as that doesn't seem to really fit the bill that they were describing. I mean... sure, PCI-E 4.0 is newer than PCI-E 3.0, but it's not such a radical departure to use the sort of language that they did

And PCI-E 4.0 on SSDs for PCs help it zilch, so that's not it.

So this new ssd is just optane? Why haven’t we found it helps with pc gaming at all?

Optane is way too expensive. It's not using Optane as caching or anything of that sort. It was said even with their 900P/905P SSDs Intel doesn't make much money on them. It's a full-on SSD with the next gen consoles.