As the Xbone and PS4 both use AMD architectures, it’s reasonable to compare teraflops as a rough performance measure. Note this does not apply when you compare AMD and Nvidia.
Xbone = 1.0x, 1.31 teraflops
PS4 = 1.4x, 1.84 teraflops
PS4 Pro = 3.2x, 4.12 teraflops
Xbone Scorpio = 4.6x, 6 teraflops
Desktop PC AMD RX-480 = 4.4x, 5.8 teraflops
Desktop PC AMD Vega = Still unknown
The Scorpio GPU is 45% faster than the PS4 Pro. That’s a pretty massive improvement. However, it still isn’t fast enough for “real” 4k at high framerates and image quality in modern games. It’s much closer than the PS4 Pro, but it ain’t there yet.
The fact of the matter is nothing AMD currently sells is fast enough for 4k at high quality/framerates. On the desktop side the GTX 1080 isn’t sufficient either. You really need a Titan XP.
That’s why Microsoft is focusing more on image quality than resolution. Resolution doesn’t really matter past 1080p for couch gaming, 4k is just a buzzword. Image quality, you can notice. HDR matters. Framerates matter.
Argu, this gobbledygook is confusing. I just need to see it in action to figure out if I need one. That, or for awesome games to be released that just won’t work on my Xbox. Or run so badly as to effectively not work on my Xbox.
During this holiday season when the PS4 Pro was around $365 with a discount code, and Amazon was willing to take in your old PS4 for about $190 or so, that was a nice deal to upgrade the console. And yet, I didn’t do it because I use the PS4 infrequently enough that upgrading it felt unnecessary. But if there is some kind of equivalent deal to upgrade the Xbox One, I’ll probably take it, since I use the X1 every day. But it would have to be in that under $200 price range for an upgrade.
Also, I hope I don’t have to lose my Kinect to get that upgrade price. I really like saying “Xbox On”, “Xbox watch PBS”, “Xbox watch FOX”, “Xbox snap TV”, “Xbox Unsnap”, “Xbox Turn off”.
The promise (and the PS4 Pro has had growing pains here) is that these console refreshes will play modern games at 1080p with better image quality and butter-smooth framerates. Right now the Xbone and PS4 non-pro are incapable of doing that. They just don’t have the juice.
To me though, those are details. I recognize there are folks out there who need the best device available at a given time. I mean, if I really cared all that much about frame rate and resolution I’d buy a PS4. The level Xbox performs at is ok with me. But if new stuff comes out that now needs the Scorpio at its minimum, that would probably shift my thinking. 30 fps is ok for me, 15 probably isn’t.
I would think so, but it was interesting to hear about the lengths that Sony was going to so they could be sure that PS4-only games would work flawlessly on the Pro architecture, including downlocking and locking out the extra cores, etc, so that program timing would not be affected.
It appears MS’s approach is far less exacting, and may even allow existing XB1 games more breathing room as a matter of course without any patching. But here’s hoping that anything clock-dependent won’t go askew as Sony feared.
Sony is a hardware company, and their solution was hardware-oriented. Microsoft is a software company, and like you said, they did such a great job with a software solution for backwards compatibility, I bet they’ll have a good software solution for this as well.
Will Scorpio run Overwatch in native 1080p? Will it ship with an elite controller that has buttons that don’t snap off? These are the important questions.
(At least on the cheapest SKU. To be fair, the Xbox One already had one SKU which had a premium price and included the elite controller and a 1 TB hybrid drive.)
Sucks that it will take a couple years before they really take advantage of those extra ‘gflops’ in power. The original xbox one and ps4 will still be standard for another couple years. I just hope that Red Dead 2 takes advantage of the Scorpio. Probably won’t though.
So I said this back in November. But all the news reports say that in the next Xbox update, snap mode is going away. And there’s no mention of any picture in picture on the next update.
Wow. Is there a way for me to never update? I guess I can opt out of the Xbox Insider, but eventually this update is going to be rolled out to everyone. So if I want access to SlingTV which my wife watches, I’m going to be forced to update.
This sucks.
I guess the only retaliatory action I can think of right now is to buy my multiplatform games on the PS4 from now on.
I rented Project CARS when it came out. I tried the Go Kart races, and the physics felt terrible and the frame rate was soooooo bad. It was the worst I’d ever seen in a racing game. Totally not playable. So I returned the game.
Maybe by this point in the game’s development, they’ve issued some patches and fixed the frame rate? I don’t know.
I played SW: Force Unleashed demo back in the day on the 360. I thought it had potential. I think it got decent reviews. But I’m not sure if it’s a great game or just a good game.
I haven’t played Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and I don’t know anything about it. I think it’s the same developer as @tomchick’s game of the year this year.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a great game, especially for couch co-op and fairly kid friendly too. My 4-year-old loves it, though he has some difficulty with the controls. Still you can crank the difficulty way down, so it’s not a huge problem.
If MS wanted to focus on image quality they probably shouldn’t have given all those interviews promising every first party game will be native 4K on Scorpio.
