Final Microsoft XBox Project Scorpio Specifications Revealed

After weeks of speculation, Digital Foundry has the scoop and has unveiled the official specifications for Microsoft’s XBox Project Scorpio console, finally dispelling rumours about whether it will re-use the XBox One’s Jaguar cores or make the leap to the recently released Ryzen. Since it is already known that Microsoft has promised an 8-core CPU solution, it completely rules out any other non-AMD solution in the running.

Digital Foundry reveals however that Project Scorpio will indeed make use of x86 Jaguar cores but has been reconfigured to improve its performance and get a 550MHz boost (now running at 2.3GHz with a 4MB L2 cache).  The new “Jaguar Evolved” cores has been reworked to prioritize latency and has been optimized at the silicon level to improve coherency between CPU and GPU. Compared to the original x86 Jaguar cores on the XBox One, the x86 Jaguar Evolved cores are 31 percent faster. Aside from performance improvements, also integrated is the latest AMD media block, meaning that the Xbox GameDVR gets an upgrade to 4K60 using the next-gen HEVC codec.

Promising a 6TFlop graphical horsepower at E3, XBox Project Scorpio has a new custom GPU running at 1172MHz with a much greater 12GB GDDR5 memory  compared to the XBox One which had an 853MHz GPU and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. In terms of performance, Digital Foundry states that they saw a working demo of Forza Motorsport running at Native 4K hitting 60 frames-per-second with a substantial performance overhead still. Despite the 4K target, Microsoft promises that various resolution modes including 1080p will be available as well. Since it will be natively support 4K, Microsoft says it will have HDMI 2.0 connectors to provide enough bandwidth.

The entire package is supposedly much more compact as well (including an integrated power supply) and cooled with an advanced vapor chamber heatsink similar to high-end video cards, although final enclosure details and information has not been revealed yet.

“We went to a custom designed adapted centrifugal fan for this design, It kind of looks like a supercharger on a car, it looks like an intercooler almost. Every part about this is custom designed for the application.” says Leo Del Castillo, XBox hardware project manager.