Xbox Scorpio Presentation Spotted at AMD’s CES 2017 RYZEN/Vega Booth

[EricHiggin]

EricHiggin said:

Worst case scenario the CPU portion will be Bristol Ridge with 4 or 8 Excavator cores. Best case scenario will be Raven Ridge with 4 or 8 Ryzen cores.

You need to take into account that Intel core i series chips are all WAY overpriced, especially the top tier models. This is because Intel has had no competition for years. Now that Ryzen will go toe to toe, Intel will have no choice but to drop their prices drastically.
For this reason AMD will have to sell Ryzen at a very reasonable price to make sure consumers see the performance and price advantage and side with AMD. There are a lot of people out there right now saying "thanks AMD, now we will be able to keep buying Intel, just at a much lower, and more reasonable price, all thanks to you!". AMD fans will buy Ryzen regardless, but it will take time for the public to get it through their heads that Intel isn't the only option, and that AMD Ryzen is the better deal (barring any unforeseen complications). A much lower price than the Intel equivalent will accelerate this transition.

This whole situation makes Ryzen cheaper, right off the bat, and when you add in an ongoing, important customer, like MS, who will be buying the same chip in VERY large quantities, you can expect the cost of Ryzen (as well as Vega) to be at an acceptable cost for a Premium console late 2017.

You also have to take PS5 into account. We all know its coming, late 2018 or 2019, and it will no doubt have Ryzen if they stick with x86, which is most likely, since AMD has said they are working on future APU's for MS and PS. For Scorpio to be a year or two "behind", with an Excavator CPU, PS5 will end up being spec'd so much higher that it'll leave Scorpio worse off than XB1 was in comparison to PS4. As long as MS sticks to "we aren't coming out with a console every couple of years" than Scorpio would be left in a bad position without Ryzen cores in it once PS5 launches. There would be at least 2 or 3 years, if not more, that Scorpio was well behind PS5 before its successor showed up.

Vega also makes sense with a Ryzen CPU, because Ryzen is a big leap and a new x86 design for AMD, and will be the new standard going forward. The Radeon GCN cores have had a fairly similar design for years now, but Vega will make a big leap with its new NCU design, which will also be a new standard going forward. It makes sense for MS to jump on board now and have the same standards in Scorpio that PS5 will have, so it's not left behind next gen.

All these reasons (there's a lot more) are reason enough for MS to make the APU Ryzen+Vega. Even if it means they have to subsidize Scorpio to some degree early on in its life cycle.

 

Pemalite said:

EricHiggin said:

Worst case scenario the CPU portion will be Bristol Ridge with 4 or 8 Excavator cores. Best case scenario will be Raven Ridge with 4 or 8 Ryzen cores.

Worst case is the CPU is Jaguar.

EricHiggin said:

AMD fans will buy Ryzen regardless, but it will take time for the public to get it through their heads that Intel isn't the only option, and that AMD Ryzen is the better deal (barring any unforeseen complications).

Best to wait for the chips to land before we jump to such conclusions.
But historically that trend is usually the case, AMD is usually better price/performance than Intel.
Even during the Athlon 64 days when AMD had price parity with Intel, AMD out-performed Intel, thus they still provided better Price/Performance.
Now the FX era... Aka. Socket AM3+ was terrible value, especially in the last couple of years, anyone who recommended an AMD FX in 2015/2016/2017 was silly and should hand over their PC gaming permits. :P
If Ryzen is competitive with Intel on performance (Currently benchmarks show it's not able to keep pace with Intel on a core to core basis with ES chips) then AMD is likely to match it's price relative to Intel.

EricHiggin said:

You also have to take PS5 into account. We all know its coming, late 2018 or 2019

I think 2020 is likely the year we get the Playstation 4 and "Xbox Two". 2018 is likely not going to bring with it substantual enough upgrade over 2017's technology (Vega) to warrant the start of a new console generation.
Fact is, consoles now rely on PC technology, when PC technology slows/stagnate, that affects consoles as well.
Plus 10nm LPC at TSMC or Global Foundries isn't there yet for large, complex monolithic chips and will likely require multi-patterning which will drive up costs.

EricHiggin said:

For Scorpio to be a year or two "behind", with an Excavator CPU, PS5 will end up being spec'd so much higher that it'll leave Scorpio worse off than XB1 was in comparison to PS4.

We have no idea what CPU scorpio will use. (We need information not speculation. :P)
Scorpio is a console of this Generation not next generation.
Scorpio will be the most powerful console of this generation.

EricHiggin said:

All these reasons (there's a lot more) are reason enough for MS to make the APU Ryzen+Vega. Even if it means they have to subsidize Scorpio to some degree early on in its life cycle.

Vega makes sense and has been in development for years which AMD and Microsoft would have been throwing ideas back and forth about.
It should help Microsoft achieve 4k gaming on the Scorpio fairly well thanks to the efficiency gains it brings.
8-core Ryzen however is going to be transistor heavy and doesn't make sense in a cost-sensitive design unless you wish to blow out SoC size, Jaguar is counted in millions of Transistors remember, not Billions that Ryzen will.
Of course there should be cut-down versions of Ryzen, remove the L3 cache for instance and that should shave a chunk of the transistor count at the expense of performance.

 

hudsoniscool said:

EricHiggin said:

MS has been clear about how they want balance. Jaguar+Vega is CPU light and GPU strong. Excavator would be much closer but still CPU light. Ryzen, which would be a cut down 8 core version or a full 4 core, would be balanced. The only way it ends up being Jaguar, is if they somehow manage to clock it at 3Ghz+ and that is super unlikely. 

Ryzen may not be as powerful or could be expensive yes, but like Athlon 64, it's most likely going to meet all expectations. Jim Keller. Right now AMD can't afford to screw this CPU arch up. 

Late 2019, I am counting as 2020. 3 years PS4 to Pro. 3 years Pro to PS5 max. Mid gen. I do wonder if PS was shooting for 2.5yrs between them,  and delayed slightly due to the Scorpio announcement though. 

No way MS launches another console sooner than another 4 years after Scorpio. That puts Xbox Two at late 2021 launch. 

A 2020 PS5 could maybe use an AMD ARM CPU,  but most likely x86,  making it Ryzen or better. 

If MS were going to do the mid gen thing,  they would have launched Scorpio already. MS decided to get PS to take the bb gun shot while they stood back and watched while they loaded their cannons. MS knows competing directly with PS is like climbing Everest, so they decided to wait till the weather is better and take a heli instead. We'll see if their plan works. 

Vega seems like the only thing everyone can agree on lol.

I'm confused why you think the absolute latest Sony will launch the ps5 after pro is 3 years. But on the other side you say the absolute earliest ms will launch Scorpio 2 after Scorpio is 4 years? I tend to think 2020 for both, or 2020 for Xbox and 19 for ps5.

I meant to reply to another post, which makes what I said more clear, but quote function wasn't working so I just replied in general.

If PS waited 3 years to launch Pro and said its a mid gen upgrade, that would mean halfway, which would put PS5 at a late 2019 launch. Sure PS could wait longer, but if Scorpio turns out to be Ryzen+Vega, PS would not chance waiting any longer than late 2019, and may even think about launching sooner, even though they may not want to.

MS has said they don't want to do mid gen upgrades. That may change possibly, but going off of the information we have, 4 years seems most likely. Just look at Xbox to 360 = 4 years. 360 to One = 8 years (or 2, 4 year cycles). One to Scorpio = 4 years. If Scorpio is Ryzen+Vega, it'll be quite powerful for its time, and could possibly last 6 to 8 years like the 360, but there's no way MS launches Xbox 2 or Scorpio 2 any sooner than 4 years after Scorpio.