Xbox Scorpio: the best display of AMD technology yet

Microsoft detailed its mid-cycle Xbox refresh console, Project Scorpio, teasing that the new 6TFLOPs beast was a huge leap in technology and performance over the Xbox One - and even the PS4 Pro.

Microsoft's upcoming Project Scorpio console rocks a custom x86-based 8-core processor at 2.3GHz, with a GPU that rocks 40 CUs based on Radeon GPU technology at 1172MHz - a huge leap of the 12 CUs of Radeon GPU tech found inside of the Xbox One (at 853MHz) and the 36 CUs found in the PS4 Pro at 911MHz.

As it stands, it's the best showing of AMD's awesome APU technology inside of Project Scorpio - and the advancements that have been made since the 28nm design inside of the Xbox One, and the refreshed Xbox One S console with the 14nm FinFET tech being used. The new APU inside of Project Scorpio is nothing short of impressive, with both Microsoft and AMD putting in the hard yards to get it right. Microsoft has made some stellar choices with the architecture and design work in Project Scorpio, and AMD is able to perfectly showcase its APU prowess inside.

Project Scorpio has enough power for 4K 60FPS gaming - at least in a Microsoft title with Forza, with the new mid-cycle refresh console offering similar GPU performance to NVIDIA's pretty beefy GeForce GTX 1070, or even AMD's last-gen experiment, the Radeon R9 Fury X.

The biggest deal here is that Microsoft is still using the Jaguar CPU architecture, but it's just heavily tweaked. Microsoft didn't opt-in for AMD's recent Ryzen CPU architecture, which is disappointing - but I expected as much. Microsoft were able to drag up the performance of Project Scorpio by leaps and bounds, all while using the much older Jaguar CPU architecture - what will the true next-gen console from Microsoft (and I'm sure, AMD) be capable of?