Microsoft has crafted quite the technical wizardry for Project Scorpio, with a semi-custom chip made by AMD which includes 12GB of GDDR5 RAM that, according to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has "no real technical limit on games".
Wardell was fielding questions on Twitter, where he said: "It'll take a couple years to make AAA level core-neutral game to fully utilize the power like Scorpio and APIs like DX12/Vulkan". He added that with Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity was their "first real test of Nitrous (our multicore engine). We love it but it's not AAA".
He added that "one big feature of DirectX12 and VulkanAPI that ppl don't hear much is that I can load gfx assets to the GPU from multiple threads", following this up a minute later on Twitter with "most of your loading screen time today is caused from processing textures and meshes. In DX12/Vulkan, this can easily be done in parallel".
Check below for a huge content index on everything we know about Project Scorpio so far.
Project Scorpio confirmed specs
- SoC: Highly customized 360mm² AMD System-on-Chip built on 16nm FinFET
- GPU: Polaris-derived GPU with 40 Compute Units at 1172MHz, 6TFLOPs of Compute Performance
- CPU: Custom x86 "Jaguar Evolved" 8-core CPU at 2.73GHz, 4MB L2 cache
- Memory: 12GB GDDR5 memory with 326GB/s bandwidth (12x 6.8GHz modules on a 384-bit bus)
- Storage: 1TB 2.5-inch HDD
- Media: 4K UHD Blu-ray player
Project Scorpio coverage index
- Microsoft reveals why Ryzen isn't in Project Scorpio
- Project Scorpio's tuned power efficiency reduces heat
- Project Scorpio has Vega GPU architecture in its design
- Microsoft confirms Project Scorpio reveal for E3 2017
- Microsoft already planning beyond Project Scorpio
- Project Scorpio specs revealed in full
- Project Scorpio supports FreeSync, FreeSync 2, HDMI 2.1
- Project Scorpio devkit revealed
- Project Scorpio runs Forza 6 at native 4K60FPS Ultra at 88% GPU usage
- Project Scorpio has the power, now it needs games
- Project Scorpio only takes 1% perf hit with 4K assets
- Project Scorpio shouldn't cost $700, nor $399
- Can Project Scorpio's custom hard drive be swapped out?
- Project Scorpio has custom hard disk to load 4K textures
- DirectX 12 games will have advantage in Project Scorpio
- Project Scorpio could be a sleek compact powerhouse
- Project Scorpio devs have access to 8GB GDDR5 RAM
- Xbox Scorpio: the best display of AMD technology yet
- Project Scorpio will play all Xbox One games better
- Project Scorpio could challenge GTX 1070 and Fury X GPUs
- Project Scorpio rocks high-end vapor chamber cooler
- Project Scorpio hits 4K 60FPS in Forza 6
- Project Scorpio: 6 TFLOP Polaris GPU at 1173MHz, 2.73GHz Jaguar CPU, 12GB GDDR5 memory