Project Scorpio (AMD APU inside) specs [Eurogamer / Digital Foundry)

[crisium]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-project-scorpio-tech-revealed

40 Compute Units (2560 Cores)
1172MHz
12GB (8GB available for devs)
326 GB/s

CPU is just a 2.3GHz Jaguar Octocore.

Vega technology might be here, as that's the most logical way to get such a high clock speed. Or 16nm FF provides better clocks. Polaris 10 modified is in PS4 Pro and it runs at 911MHz (unclear if 14nm or 16nm). It is uncut. Xbox 1 is essentially a 7790 cut from 896 to 768 Cores, so it too has a dGPU equivalent.

However, console APUs do not necessarily get a GPU equivalent. PS4 uses a GCN 2 (aka 1.1, Hawaii timeline) with a 1280 Core chip cut to 1152. No such GCN 2 chip was ever made for dGPU.

But with AMD R&D budget not through the moon, I would guess we could see an equivalent in Vega 11. Vega 11 could be 2560 Cores, or cut down from 3072 or 2816. Note: or none of those! And does the 12GB indicate 384-bit GDDR5 for Vega 11? Maybe.

Monkey math: Polaris 10 1266MHz in dGPU, PS4 Pro 911Mhz. If Vega scales the same from console to dGPU, we are looking at over 1600MHz. Note: they almost certainly do not use the same ratios.

Gigantic increase from Xbox 1, and meaningfully faster than PS4 Pro even assuming no IPC change.

Xbox 1: 853MHz 768 Cores (28nm GCN 2?)
PS4: 800MHz 1152 Cores (28nm GCN 2)
Xbox 1 S: 914MHz 768 Cores (GCN 2 on 16nm Finfet?)
PS4 Pro: 911MHz 2304 Cores (similar to Polaris 10 / GCN 4)
Scorpio: 1172MHz 2560 Cores (Vega / GCN 5? or 16nm FF Polaris modified?)

Anyone think Vega 11 is here?

 

[Elfear]

Based on Anandtech's article, they're thinking Scorpio will be based on Zen and Vega. Should be a very powerful console if that's the case.

 

[crisium]

Ah, they speculate it could be custom chip still based on Polaris. But Polaris on 16nm FF, which could be responsible for the higher clocks - not Vega.

 

[Elfear]

Ah, they speculate it could be custom chip still based on Polaris. But Polaris on 16nm FF, which could be responsible for the higher clocks - not Vega.

Huh. They edited the article as news came in and it looks like the Vega speculation has been mostly removed.

 

[crisium]

Anandtech:

Microsoft also states that the power supply with the unit can be suited up to 245W. If we assume a low-frequency Jaguar CPU inside, that could be around 25W max, leaving 150-220W for the GPU. A full sized RX 480 comes in at 150W, and given this GPU is a little more than that, perhaps nearer 170W (or tuned to 100-150W, depending on low-frequency ranges). The power supply, in a Jaguar + Polaris configuration, seems to have a good 20-25% power budget in hand.

Up the core count of Polaris to 2560, buswidth to 384-bit, but lower the clocks to 1.17GHz and is that enough to fit in here power wise? Probably, especially with TSMC 16nm FF.

But I'm unclear if PS4 Pro is already 16nm FF TSMC too. If PS4 Pro and Scorpio are on the same process, then we have +260MHz, more cores, wider bus, has to mean much more power usage in the Scorpio. MS must simply be willing to have more heat.

 

[Bacon1]

Quality on consoles going to go up a lot!

 

[dogen1]

Quality on consoles going to go up a lot!

Imo.. 16x is a little overkill, the difference between it and 8x is almost imperceptible when you're actually playing a game.. Seems like they're enforcing a waste of performance, but I guess with 320GB/s the overhead is probably pretty miniscule. Is it for all games, or just when running older xb1 games?

 

[Bacon1]

Imo.. 16x is a little overkill, the difference between it and 8x is almost imperceptible when you're actually playing a game.. Seems like they're enforcing a waste of performance, but I guess with 320GB/s the overhead is probably pretty miniscule. Is it for all games, or just when running older xb1 games?

Well I think right now most consoles didn't really use any AF. The performance impact is usually very small but yeah some games there is an impact of 8x vs 16x.

 

[tamz_msc]

It's kinda pointless to speculate whether it is Polaris or Vega due to its semi-custom nature. PS4 Pro supported some Vega features, that doesn't make its GPU a Vega part either.

 

[dogen1]

Well I think right now most consoles didn't really use any AF. The performance impact is usually very small but yeah some games there is an impact of 8x vs 16x.

I think most games use 2x or 4x, but they also apply different amounts to different textures. Tbh, I think even 4x is pretty decent. Though, I'm not super picky about AF. Just not something that really bothers me. Neither is aliasing really. The worst thing in my opinion are extremely noticeable shadow cascades. Sometimes it just looks like bubble of higher shadow quality around you and it's extremely jarring lol.

 

[Glo.]

It's kinda pointless to speculate whether it is Polaris or Vega due to its semi-custom nature. PS4 Pro supported some Vega features, that doesn't make its GPU a Vega part either.

IMO, from what I am reading, the only thing that could eventually come from Vega is scheduling system.

 

[ConsoleLover]

Seems like a revision of the polaris design, I mean microsoft announced project Scorpio about one year ago, clearly amd worked on a custom design that would have more cu's and higher memory bus. Again it wouldn't be too hard to add 4 core cu's to polaris 36cu's, also adding 4 more ram and increasing the memory bus.

 

[crisium]

Polaris 10 dgpu released in June 2016 and the October 2016 PS4 Pro actually has a Polaris with more features. I don't see how Scorpio couldn't have Vega from a time perspective. But I agree it is likely Polaris based on what I have read.

 

[Spjut]

I'm surprised it doesn't have Vega. I guessed AMD would try hard to sell Vega to Microsoft to get everyone starting optimizing for their latest tech.

 

[HurleyBird]

Well I think right now most consoles didn't really use any AF. The performance impact is usually very small but yeah some games there is an impact of 8x vs 16x.

There's going to be a much higher impact at 4K, since distant details are resolved better which includes substandard filtering.

This is of course assuming that the screen size to viewing distance ratio is one where the additional resolution will make a tangible difference.

 

[Panino Manino]

Some argue for full Hawaii with CCN4 teaks (Delta, more CP) and 4CU disabled.

 

[Carfax83]

This console is a monster. It will push gaming to new heights, and make GPUs with 8GB of VRAM the minimum if they want to use these new 4K textures without stuttering.

 

[piesquared]

This console is a monster. It will push gaming to new heights, and make GPUs with 8GB of VRAM the minimum if they want to use these new 4K textures without stuttering.

Or Vega with HBCC.

 

[Headfoot]

FreeSync/Adaptive Sync on the new box is going to be a game changer. Maybe nVidia will finally cave to the VESA standard once its got the weight of Xbox on it too

 

[tg2708]

FreeSync/Adaptive Sync on the new box is going to be a game changer. Maybe nVidia will finally cave to the VESA standard once its got the weight of Xbox on it too

Is the gsync module something that can be upgraded to support free sync?

 

[Headfoot]

Probably not, but I'm sure nVidia has done the work to leave the door open to support Adaptive Sync from the GPU side if they later decide to. Especially since they've already done it in laptops. Likely, in such a scenario, the GPUs would support both Gsync and Adaptive Sync so your current gsync monitors wouldnt get updated to anything else but they would continue to work with nVidia cards.

 

[dogen1]

Or Vega with HBCC.

Or virtual texturing like doom. Or maybe just a really smart regular texture streaming system. IIRC, Unreal recently improved theirs significantly. Actually, Dice also put out a presentation talking about their recent renderer overhaul, with some pretty big memory savings. They now use ~570MB less at 4K.

 

[Malogeek]

Or Vega with HBCC.

Is HBCC relevant for a unified pool?