Project Scorpio specs officially revealed

Microsoft’s Project Scorpio Xbox specifications have now gone official. It’s quite a beast too!

Last year Sony gave us the PlayStation 4 Pro; a more powerful version of the PS4 that allows you to play certain games at higher resolutions.

In the other corner, Microsoft has the Xbox One S. This turbo-charged Xbox One was more of a refresh than anything.

Project Scorpio promises to to take things to a whole new level.

So, we now have the specs. The thing is, we still don’t know what the new console will look like. Come to think of it, we also don’t know how much it will cost.

Project Scorpio specifications

CPU: Eight custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz
GPU: 40 customized compute units at 1,172MHz
Memory: 12GB GGDR5
Memory bandwidth: 326GBps
Hard drive: 1TB (2.5-inch)
Optical drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray

Eurogamer’s full reveal

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Project Scorpio Vs PlayStation 4 pro

So how does Project Scorpio stack up against the PS4 Pro?

Both Scorpio and the PS4 Pro are rocking eight cores. The thing is, the Scorpio’s hits 2.3 GHz vs. the PS4 Pro’s 2.1 GHz.

Scorpio sports 40 CUs at 1172 MHz for its GPU, while the PS4 Pro clocks in at 36 CUs at 911 MHz.

Scorpio offers more RAM to developers, providing 12GB of GDDR5 memory vs. the PS4 Pro’s 8.

The PS4 Pro only provides 218 GB/s of memory bandwidth vs. Scorpio’s 326 GB/s.

Scorpio also provides a 4K UHD Blu-ray player, while the PS4 Pro strangely omits it. As I’ve just been discussing with a buddy of mine, this is even odder given that Blu-ray is Sony tech.

When it comes to getting the most out of your 4K TV, Scorpio should outperform the PS4 Pro substantially.

	Project Scorpio	Xbox One	PS4 Pro
CPU	Eight custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz	Eight custom Jaguar cores clocked at 1.75GHz	Eight Jaguar cores clocked at 2.1GHz
GPU	40 customised compute units at 1172MHz	12 GCN compute units at 853MHz (Xbox One S: 914MHz)	36 improved GCN compute units at 911MHz
Memory	12GB GDDR5	8GB DDR3/32MB ESRAM	8GB GDDR5
Memory Bandwidth	326GB/s	DDR3: 68GB/s, ESRAM at max 204GB/s (Xbox One S: 219GB/s)	218GB/s
Hard Drive	1TB 2.5-inch	500GB/1TB/2TB 2.5-inch	1TB 2.5-inch
Optical Drive	4K UHD Blu-ray	Blu-ray (Xbox One S: 4K UHD)	Blu-ray

4K at 60fps

One of the highlights from Digital Foundry, as an example of new gamer’s power, was a demo of Forza.

DF stated that its performance is “remarkable” with the Forza Motorsport demo achieving true 4K and 60 frames per second. It managed this still with a “substantial performance overhead,” – apparently around 65%.

This means that the new console can achieve a huge amount of graphical improvements out of the box. That, still with room for developers to make additional improvements to shadows, anti-aliasing, draw distance, and various other performance-hungry aspects.