It looks like more rumours and leaks are starting to surface regarding Microsoft’s highly anticipated Project Scorpio console. This time round, the folks at Digital Foundry have managed to get their hands on some leaked documents from Microsoft which details several specifications of the GPU used in the unreleased Project Scorpio console.
According to a report by the tech site, the AMD GPU used in Project Scorpio will boast 6 TFLOPS of compute performance. In comparison, the Xbox One’s GPU has a compute performance of merely 1.31 TFLOPS – this translates to a GPU that’s about 4.5 times more powerful on the Project Scorpio console. In addition, Microsoft has also increased the L2 cache of its upcoming console by up to four times (Xbox One has 2 x 2MB).
That said, Digital Foundry’s report made no mention on the GPU architecture that’ll power Microsoft’s Project Scorpio console. However, judging by the leaked specifications and time frame before the launch of the console, Project Scorpio may most likely be equipped with a Polaris-based GPU – but Vega shouldn’t be written off just yet.
Another interesting detail in Digital Foundry’s report is regarding ESRAM. Currently, both the Xbox One and Xbox One S consoles are equipped with ESRAM, which allows their rather ancient DDR3 RAM to be ‘supercharged’ and, of course, result in performance nearly similar to that of GDDR5. Unfortunately, because this technology is limited to both aforementioned consoles, developers would have to program their games to work ‘specifically’ with ESRAM, which isn’t very efficient.
With the upcoming Project Scorpio console, Microsoft has decided that ESRAM is no longer needed, because the console will be fitted with high bandwidth memory. Besides that, the removal of ESRAM also means that developers will be able to create Universal Windows Platform games for both Project Scorpio and Windows PCs without much hassle.
Hopefully, with all the improvements and technologies that’s going to be introduced with Microsoft’s Project Scorpio, we’ll finally be able to enjoy a console that outputs and renders games at native 4K. Oh, and 60fps as well, that’s important too.
(Source: Digital Foundry)
