Yesterday during the AMD New Horizons stream, they finally unveiled their upcoming Ryzen desktop-class CPU, which will go head to head with the best that Intel can muster. The CEO of AMD showed off the new breakthrough in technology destroying the Intel Core i7 in benchmarks, and Geoff Keighley showed off some rather boring gameplay running the processor. Since it’s pretty difficult to actually experience these things through a livestream, one can only imagine the impact.
AMD also spent some time talking about their partnerships with Microsoft and Sony, discussing the successes they’ve had with the Xbox One S and other products. They also mentioned how they’ve been working with Microsoft on the upcoming Xbox Scorpio. However, nothing was revealed relating to the Scorpio at all.
AMD have been very quiet on their products until today, showing off some teasers for the upcoming Vega graphics architecture as well. But what does all this mean for Project Scorpio? Gamers have already started speculating on the possible impact these announcements might have on social media, while some others already started working hard debunking these possibilities.
Firstly, the Ryzen is currently a desktop-class processor which will most likely run into the market at around $300-500 entry level. This automatically puts it way past the price range the Scorpio will be aimed at. However, AMD is quite popular for their APU products, and it isn’t without merit to assume that Microsoft along with AMD will have used some of these smart technologies to push the boundaries of what they can achieve with the 6 TFLOPS of computing power already revealed for the product.
From what it seems, the Scorpio project will be using an APU (CPU+GPU) and 12 GB of DDR5 memory, but so-called experts have already discussed how they doubt that the console would be able to achieve native 4K frame rates at graphical fidelity high enough to merit the purchase, since the PlayStation 4 Pro already struggles with this. This paired with the current AMD range adds to the merit of these doubts. However, Microsoft was probably in the right to have delayed the product until end of 2017 to make sure that they grab some of the next generation technology AMD has been working on. It wouldn’t make sense building a new high-performance console using old hardware like Sony did with the PlayStation 4 Pro. At least I hope.
What the Scorpio might do is integrate the latest Ryzen technologies, and build on that to achieve the goal of making the Scorpio capable of achieving 4K and high-fidelity VR for the next generation of gamers all within a price traditional for a console. AMD have already touted how they have built a system that can intelligently predict what the app/game will require using neural net technologies, and with Microsoft already using Cloud computing technologies in their exclusive games, it stands to reason that all these in unison will deliver a system that can and most likely will deliver high fidelity graphics at 60 FPS and 4K UHD resolution. The exact implementation of these new methods remains to be seen.
With E3 just around the corner, Microsoft is sure to announce the Xbox Scorpio console then and blow our minds with how epic the system will be, and redefine what power means for consoles. Hopefully we’ll know more about the processor, memory and GPU before that.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.