back to article Microsoft's new hardware: eight x86 cores, 40 GPU cores

Microsoft's revealed the specs for some forthcoming hardware and the tale of the tape is impressive. At the heart of the device will be a system-on-chip packing eight custom x86 CPU cores clocking up to 2.3GHz apiece, plus 40 (yes forty) GPU cores at 1172MHz apiece for a total of over six teraflops of graphics-crunching …

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  1. Frumious Bandersnatch

    Project Scorpio?

    Might I suggest free hammocks for all users?

    1. GrumpyOldBloke

      Re: Project Scorpio?

      Yeah, but where can you buy hammocks?

      1. User McUser

        Re: Yeah, but where can you buy hammocks?

        Well, there's the Hammock Hut, that's on third. There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There? That's on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot...

        Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third. [3F23]

        1. LionelHutz

          Re: Yeah, but where can you buy hammocks?

          Oh, the hammock district!

    2. James 51

      Re: Project Scorpio?

      Speed read that as 'Might I suggest free hemlock for all users?'

    3. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: Project Scorpio?

      Free banana hammocks?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Project Scorpio?

      The bite comes when you see the rumoured price $700 (which means £700, or more likely in post brexit Britain £800).. according to IDC who regularly get these sort of things right.

      "I estimate the basic hardware will cost around $650, so if Microsoft wants any kind of margin at all, Scorpio will have to retail for $700 or more. "

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2017/04/07/analysts-microsofts-xbox-scorpio-could-cost-more-than-700/#1f0083be1aeb

      It will sink quicker than boaty mc boatface.

      Give a PS4 Pro will do pretty much the same, and by then likely 1/3rd of the price, Microsoft have yet again for it badly wrong...

      1. CheesyTheClown

        Re: Project Scorpio?

        $700 is excluding VAT. With VAT at 17%, that should be £819. Then consider the "you're in Europe tax" which Apple is the worst about but Microsoft tries to suck at too. I'd guess £850-900.

        1. TheVogon

          Re: Project Scorpio?

          Apparently the price is going to be more like £399 or £349.

          Is that's true then it should wipe the floor with Sony...

          http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/795193/Xbox-Scorpio-Price-specs-games-Project-Scorpio-release-news

      2. TheVogon

        Re: Project Scorpio?

        "Give a PS4 Pro will do pretty much the same, and by then likely 1/3rd of the price"

        Well it really won't

        For starters this runs a version of Windows and Direct X 12 which as we know from the PC world will outperform the Linux based PS4 software given the same hardware.

        Secondly it's got circa 50% more GPU compute power and 50% more memory bandwidth than the PS4 Pro - and a more powerful CPU.

        Thirdly it's media player is not Cinavia infected.

        And fourthly and maybe most importantly - it supports the latest Blu-ray disk spec - and likely will be the cheapest such player on the market for quite a while...

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Project Scorpio?

          PS4 runs on a variant of BSD not Linux

          Standard PC graphics ;ibraries are also not best for graphics quality.

          DX12 best, doubt it.

          Getting closer to the "Metal" is always best for performance.

          I reckon SCORIO will be about 10$ to 20% more powerful hardware wise, but never bet against Sony ICE team and Guerilla*

          * yes they did have a PS3 multiplayer which looked better than the first this generation COD

          Sorry for any bad spelling as I can't quite see my monitor clearly due to presbyopia and y moniror glasses are at work

          1. MJI Silver badge

            Re: Project Scorpio?

            Worse spelling than I thought!

            Missing key strokes mainly and a shift 4 rather than 5

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Project Scorpio?

          Anything done in Microsoft proprietary DX12 can also be done in (and is done in) OpenGL and OpenCL. PS4 runs BSD such is a more streamlined is than Bloaty Mc Bloatface windows 10 that Xbox uses.

          Hardware specs are mostly meaningless when you don't have a game lineup in place (or an established user base). Given the PS4 now has about 3x more users than Xbox One, developers focus on PlayStation, consumers buy what their friends have. You can change this with an over priced, over spec console.

          Lastly, most importantly, nobody cares about disc based formats anymore. Microsoft wasting money on this shows they really don't understand the market at all. Digital Delivery is king for music, movies and getting there for games.

          Most people understand games sell consoles, not specs, you can you the most powerful console, but if all the great games are on PS4 and all your mates have PS4 and developers focus on PS4,. All you have done is blown a wad of cash that would have bought slot of great PS4 games

    5. TheVogon

      Re: Project Scorpio?

      "Holiday 2017"

      I am reliably informed that's a colonial phrase meaning "Christmas 2017".

      1. Paul Westerman
        Unhappy

        Re: Project Scorpio?

        Aw - I was expecting Judith Chalmers

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heck

    I just got finished cannibalising and fixing my original XBOX.

    Might think about an upgrade....

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    4K? Meh

    If VGA were good enough for me when I were a lass, it's bloody well good enough for t'next generation -erm.. t'next generation's daughters t'work wi'. (Ponders) Bloody 'ell, I bin at this game too long...(pulls on coat, grabs LART, pulls wooly hat down to ears, wanders off in search of a flock of cats requiring a servant...)

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: 4K? Meh

      VGA? Luxury! When I was a lad we had CGA, and were grateful for it! If four garish colours were good enough for us, it's good enough for them!

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon
          Pint

          Re: 4K? Meh

          Colours! Pah!

          When I were a nipper we only had black screens made of slate, the only way to get an image was to scratch it on with a bit of pointed stone.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 4K? Meh

            Luxury!

            When I were a kid all we 'ad was a 'ole in the ground called 'ercules...

        2. CheesyTheClown

          Re: 4K? Meh

          I had the orange... I was told it was called Amber. And it was supposed to be better than green but Eddie Murphy told me that his grandmother suckered him worse with burgers that were better than McDonalds.

          What sucks is that simcga almost never worked for me. But to be fair, Sierra was generally good about supporting HGC.

      2. darklord

        Re: 4K? Meh

        4 Colour CGA, Blimey that was posh, When I started we had three colours, Green on black or Amber on Black or White on Black. Or vice versa but not at the same time. Them are the sort of things that gets people killed! bit like travelling at 30mph in 1829 on a train :-0

  4. as2003

    > 40 (yes forty) GPU cores

    How does that compare to an Nvidia graphics card that has thousands of 'CUDA' cores?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      How does that compare to an Nvidia graphics card that has thousands of 'CUDA' cores?

      If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use?... Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?

      "core" means a very different thing to the AMD and Nvidia crowds. Comparing core counts between radically different architectures is a largerly pointless exercise anyway. It is best to look at how the system performs on real-life applications or, failing that, on not too blatantly biased synthetic benchmarks. Looking at the peak numbers (which the article gives) could also be useful in a pinch ...

      1. MJI Silver badge

        "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use?... Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"

        A tractor

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          1024 chickens. Then I could sell them and buy a tractor.

          1. d3vy

            Sorry to be pedantic but...

            Retail cost of a chicken : £3.50 (Source)

            Gross profit (Assuming no expenses and some tax evasion) : £3584

            Cost of a tractor : £44k (Source)

            I think you're going to need some bigger chickens.

            1. Justin Clift

              Re: Sorry to be pedantic but...

              > I think you're going to need some bigger chickens.

              Tractors can be hired out you know. ;D

              1. d3vy

                Re: Sorry to be pedantic but...

                "Tractors can be hired out you know"

                I am well aware - I used to write software to automate plant hire for a highways contractor...

                As long as you can get the job done in less than 14 days I guess you could rend one (Didnt have the exact model I quoted prices for before but this is close : Source

                But thats not what the original comment said, it said "I could sell them and buy a tractor.

                My point is - no you can't. ;)

            2. MrT

              Re: Sorry to be pedantic but...

              ... chickens the size of oxen might be useful, if a tad unruly...

            3. 404

              Re: Sorry to be pedantic but...

              Doesn't have to be new and then you avoid all those DRM issues with newer models...

              https://chattanooga.craigslist.org/search/hva?query=tractor&sort=rel

              1. d3vy

                Re: Sorry to be pedantic but...

                404

                If I was in the market for a second hand tractor craigslist would be the last place I would look for one... I'd expect the chickens to do a more reliable job than anything sourced from there!

    2. adnim

      RX 480

      has 36 compute cores. The 40 Compute Units/Cores in this GPU add up to 2560 shader processors.

      The Xbox one has 16 Compute Units/Cores a mere 768 shader processors.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: RX 480

        The SCORPIO fixes the XBONE technical weaknesses.

  5. bolac

    Multiprocessing

    PS3 had eight cores ten years ago. Is Microsoft still unable to write multi-threaded software, or why are they limiting themselves to the same number of CPUs that my cheap China phone had three years ago?

    1. Ragarath

      Re: Multiprocessing

      I think you'll find they are using the right cores for the job. General processing cores are not needed a massive amount in a gaming box that is mostly about crunching graphics. Hence you'll find the box has lots of graphics competent cores.

    2. Drefsab_UK

      Re: Multiprocessing

      Because more CPU cores does not mean more overall system performance.

      To game at 60 FPS at 4k you need GPU power and thats something the xbox one lacked and MS are trying to address. Adding more CPU cores does not give them a major performance increase as most xbox games are not utilising even the 8 cores of the XBONE fully.

      Sure your cheap china phone may have a whole lot of cores, thats great but if half of those cores are doing nothing because they are waiting on the GPU or the IO then what are they good for?.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Multiprocessing

        The PS3 was a strange beast, using Cell CPUs, which IBM and Toshiba had a view to using for other applications. The Cell cores were designed to scale from the get go, hence the interest in using farms of PS3s for making supercomputers.

        Game developers though found it a bit tricky to use it to its full potential.

        As a result, the PS4 (and XBOX One) are x86 based, both with AMD graphics.

        You can't compare x86 cores with Cell cores or nVidia cores. Nor can you compare to mobile chips with many cores - the idea there is to use a big core for intensive applications and a little core for when the phone is idling... the aim is to save battery power, not to use all cores at once.

        1. James 51

          Re: Multiprocessing

          A bigger problem than the unusual choice for CPU was the bandwidth choke which meant it was hard to move large amounts of data around.

          1. Sir Runcible Spoon
            Joke

            Re: Multiprocessing

            Multiple cores in either CPU or GPU are only truly effective if they can be used efficiently.

            Middle-management in other words.

          2. MJI Silver badge

            Re: Multiprocessing

            One good thing about the PS3 was the fast connection between CPU and GPU, it enabled the fast but low throughput GPU to use a few CPU SPUs to do calculations.

            Hard to code for, but when done properly by the likes of Naughty Dog or Guerilla the results were astounding.

            The 360 was a lot easier to code for but ultimately a bit less powerful.

      2. ChrisC Silver badge

        Re: Multiprocessing

        "what are they good for?"

        Cores, what are they good for, absolutely nothing...

        ...unless you're running a whole bunch of different things that can make use of all the available thread processing power at hand ;-)

    3. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Multiprocessing

      1 main CPU core

      6 SPU cores

      7 cores basically, but most of them got used as surrogate GPUs.

      And console CPUs are a little bit different to telephone CPUs.

      last gen though was fascinating.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Microsoft's new hardware

    'Sadly this is not a new Surface Studio or cloud server: it's the next XBOX, aka “Project Scorpio”.'

    Can I put Linux on the Microsoft hardware?

    1. d3vy

      Re: Microsoft's new hardware

      "Can I put Linux on the Microsoft hardware?"

      On the surface book - yes.

      I'd imagine it would be possible on the studio - but dont own one and cant find anyone online that has done it... But I'd imagine that it would be possible as it is on the Book and tablets.

      On the console - probably not. But then youve not been able to do that on anyones consoles for quote some time (You could on the original XB if I remember rightly)

  7. MartinB105

    Now all it needs is some games ...

    ... that aren't also coming out on PC.

    Seriously, all the best games right now are on Sony's console. All the hardware in the world isn't going to help Microsoft if they don't put some good exclusive games on it to compete with the PS4.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Now all it needs is some games ...

      PC games don't really hurt Microsoft's cause since they're almost universally for Windows.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Now all it needs is some games ...

        Games on Steam tend to be cheaper than for XBOX, and I imagine MS take a bigger cut of XBOX software sales, too. Don't forget MS's subscription fees for XBOX live, too.

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