Next-gen Xbox arrives in Fall 2020: AMD powered, supports ray tracing and 120Hz 8K displays

[Polycount]

Highly anticipated: Although Cyberpunk 2077 was arguably the star of the show at Microsoft's annual Xbox E3 conference, that doesn't mean there weren't any other announcements to get excited about -- Project Scarlett, the gaming behemoth's next console, got a soft reveal as well.

On stage, we received new information about Scarlett's hardware and performance capabilities: now, we know it will feature "high bandwidth" GDDR6 memory and a "next generation" solid state drive. Combined, Microsoft believes that hardware will pave the way for reduced or outright eliminated loading screens in games.

So, what about the more meaty specs? Apparently, Scarlett will run a "custom-designed" AMD processor based on Ryzen Zen 2 technology, as well as a Navi-based video card.

Courtesy of this hardware, Scarlett will include support for a "variable" 120Hz refresh rate, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, 8K resolutions, and "ultra-low latency input." All in all, Microsoft claims Scarlett will be four times more powerful than its predecessor, the Xbox One X. While we'll have to see real-world performance results before we can verify those claims, they don't seem entirely unreasonable.

...Scarlett will include support for a "variable" 120Hz refresh rate, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, 8K resolutions, and "ultra-low latency input."

Speaking of the Xbox One X, Microsoft insists that the transition from the aging console to Project Scarlett will be relatively seamless. "With Project Scarlett, we continue our commitment to compatibility by ensuring your gaming accessories and Xbox career will also move forward with you, along with thousands of games across four console generations which will look and play best on Project Scarlett," the company says.

That statement seems to imply that a certain degree of backward compatibility will be available with Xbox One games. That's not exactly a surprise (the PlayStation 5 will have similar features), but it is still nice to know given the massive libraries many console gamers have already amassed.

In short, Project Scarlett is looking to be a pretty significant step forward for the Xbox community; even if it doesn't appear to be offering anything significantly different than the PS5.

If you're wondering when you can get your hands on a Scarlett system, Microsoft says it will be arriving sometime during the holiday season of 2020. As for what games you'll be able to pop in to take advantage of Scarlett's fancy new tech, the company says the upcoming Halo Infinite will be a notable launch title.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/80433-xbox-2-holiday-2020.html

 

[LogiGaming]

In B4 people come and say "120fps ahah they can´t even get 30" without realizing the word "support" and that even 60fps @ 120hz still offer an objectively superior experience than 60fps @ 60hz.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.


I was promised "4K capable" with Xbox One and PS4 and that turned out to be vaporware till PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were released. It'll be more than 5 years before 8K TV's crack the prices that 4K TV currently occupies.


#2 I never bought the Xbox One X. When I got bored with Xbox One, I went out and spent over $5000 on a gaming PC (with a 2080Ti and a Core i9 Ex that can trace rays) and to tell you the truth, I've played my Xbox One over 90% less this year than last year.

#3 I won't be buying Scarlett unless I see some must have games.

#4 I was NOT as satisfied with Xbox One/ PS4 generation as I was with 360/ PS3 generation. There's very little variety in games anymore. I used to have DDR games, Guitar Hero with my iON Rocker and now it's like the variety has dried up. I spent more than 50% of my gaming time playing just Battlefield 4 and Mortal Kombat X.

#5 I will not be happy with Scarlett if it doesn't give us a user defined storage like Sony did to allow us to use whatever size HDD we feel meets our needs. SSD is getting cheaper and a 7200 RPM 6TB HDD can be had for less than $100. I was never happy with the 500GB storage of my Xbox One: Day One edition nor the look of the WD 4TB portable HDD I had to add on.

 

[LogiGaming]

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.

Lol here we go... SUPPORT, doesn´t mean every game will be 8k. Plus, this should be obvious, if it will have HDMI 2.1 port confirmed, wich supports 4k @ 120hz, it must support 8k @ 60hz aswell. Pure maths/science. No one said games will run at 8k.

 

[pyro226]

Lol here we go... SUPPORT, doesn´t mean every game will be 8k. Plus, this should be obvious, if it will have HDMI 2.1 port confirmed, wich supports 4k @ 120hz, it must support 8k @ 60hz aswell. Pure maths/science. No one said games will run at 8k.

Except it doesn't. 8K refers to 2X as wide as well as 2X as high, unless the aspect ratio changes from 16:9. It's 4X the total area. So 4K at 120 becomes 8K at 30hz. You'd be better off pumping 4K into your TV at the 60hz or 120 hz and letting the TV figure out how it wants to scale it. 4K into 8K scales perfectly, so it's not difficult for the display to figure out, shouldn't have much latency penalty at all. You'd potentially also maintain the input's 60/120 fps.

 

[m4a4]

Next-gen promising to be cross-generational and cross platform? Now we're talking...

 

[yRaz]

Lol here we go... SUPPORT, doesn´t mean every game will be 8k. Plus, this should be obvious, if it will have HDMI 2.1 port confirmed, wich supports 4k @ 120hz, it must support 8k @ 60hz aswell. Pure maths/science. No one said games will run at 8k.

Except it doesn't. 8K refers to 2X as wide as well as 2X as high, unless the aspect ratio changes from 16:9. It's 4X the total area. So 4K at 120 becomes 8K at 30hz. You'd be better off pumping 4K into your TV at the 60hz or 120 hz and letting the TV figure out how it wants to scale it. 4K into 8K scales perfectly, so it's not difficult for the display to figure out, shouldn't have much latency penalty at all. You'd potentially also maintain the input's 60/120 fps.

8k can mean many things, it could be 32:9 ultrawide and every resolution in between. Why I find support to be important is for latency reasons. Relying on a TV to upscale for has a huge impact on latency, TV latency varys widely. Rendering in say 1440p and upscaling to 8k interally before being output to the TV could do wonders for latency. I've seen TV latency while gaming in the 150ms range. And, Lets be honest, most people aren't going to be gaming on a $3000 TV like me, its going to be the $200-300 Walmart TVs. FPGA in my TV cost as much as a 2080, they aren't putting high end graphics in a super cheap display. With recent graphics showing amazing advances in AI assisted upscaling I'm confident that this isn't being included trivially.

 

[amstech]

I was promised "4K capable" with Xbox One and PS4 and that turned out to be vaporware till PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were released..

I got a bridge I will sell you.

 

[gigantor21]

Another round of vague nonsense about performance and resolution is tradition with each new gen, LOL.

I have a feeling a lot of the biggest games won't even be at native 4K, especially in the early days.

 

[LogiGaming]

Except it doesn't. 8K refers to 2X as wide as well as 2X as high, unless the aspect ratio changes from 16:9. It's 4X the total area. So 4K at 120 becomes 8K at 30hz. You'd be better off pumping 4K into your TV at the 60hz or 120 hz and letting the TV figure out how it wants to scale it. 4K into 8K scales perfectly, so it's not difficult for the display to figure out, shouldn't have much latency penalty at all. You'd potentially also maintain the input's 60/120 fps.

Except it does. HDMI 2.1 has 48Gpbs so it can perfectly support 8k @ 60hz, not 30hz only. Considering the console will have a HDMI 2.1 port it´s obvious it will support 8k 60hz aswell, wich doesn´t mean games will run at that res.

 

[pyro226]

Lol here we go... SUPPORT, doesn´t mean every game will be 8k. Plus, this should be obvious, if it will have HDMI 2.1 port confirmed, wich supports 4k @ 120hz, it must support 8k @ 60hz aswell. Pure maths/science. No one said games will run at 8k.

Except it doesn't. 8K refers to 2X as wide as well as 2X as high, unless the aspect ratio changes from 16:9. It's 4X the total area. So 4K at 120 becomes 8K at 30hz. You'd be better off pumping 4K into your TV at the 60hz or 120 hz and letting the TV figure out how it wants to scale it. 4K into 8K scales perfectly, so it's not difficult for the display to figure out, shouldn't have much latency penalty at all. You'd potentially also maintain the input's 60/120 fps.

8k can mean many things, it could be 32:9 ultrawide and every resolution in between. Why I find support to be important is for latency reasons. Relying on a TV to upscale for has a huge impact on latency, TV latency varys widely. Rendering in say 1440p and upscaling to 8k interally before being output to the TV could do wonders for latency. I've seen TV latency while gaming in the 150ms range. And, Lets be honest, most people aren't going to be gaming on a $3000 TV like me, its going to be the $200-300 Walmart TVs. FPGA in my TV cost as much as a 2080, they aren't putting high end graphics in a super cheap display. With recent graphics showing amazing advances in AI assisted upscaling I'm confident that this isn't being included trivially.

Cinema is 2.39:1. Double wide is roughly 3.55:1. Most all TVs are 16:9 now days though.

Cheap TVs aren't going to be 8K anytime soon anyway. No real worry about latency resizing of 8K on cheap displays.

I believe it's more down to picture quality. Having to resize it twice degrades picture quality. AA and similar filtering is better done on the faster console as well. Most TV don't have the hardware capable of better forms of filtering.

If you read / watch Techspot videos of Nvidia's DLSS, it's currently a bust. Not really better than traditional upscaling and introduces artifacts / distortion. They're doing interesting stuff with it, but it's not really that good for video at the moment. Maybe in another 4-6 years when hardware improves, it'll be different.

 

[koblongata]

OMG AMD seems to be inside every direction the future is heading, PlayStation, Stadia, Samsung, and now XBOX... Even Intel now has AMD technologies inside too... just hope they do make enough money out of those and become a truly worthy competitor though.

 

[Puiu]

OMG AMD seems to be inside every direction the future is heading, PlayStation, Stadia, Samsung, and now XBOX... Even Intel now has AMD technologies inside too... just hope they do make enough money out of those and become a truly worthy competitor though.

Most of these are high volume low profit endeavours. The server market is where AMD will make the big bucks.

 

[gamerk2]

OMG AMD seems to be inside every direction the future is heading, PlayStation, Stadia, Samsung, and now XBOX... Even Intel now has AMD technologies inside too... just hope they do make enough money out of those and become a truly worthy competitor though.

These types of deals yield *very* low profit. Sure, it's steady income for about a decade, but it's not going to move the profitability needle much.

Except it does. HDMI 2.1 has 48Gpbs so it can perfectly support 8k @ 60hz, not 30hz only. Considering the console will have a HDMI 2.1 port it's obvious it will support 8k 60hz aswell, wich doesn't mean games will run at that res.

That's how I read it; the Xbox supports 8k by default as the output port supports it.

I predict we won't see a single 8k title on the console.

 

[Hardware Geek]

Looks like M$ wants to be first out of the gate. I'd certainly consider the upgrade as long as they keep the ability to play 4k movies from disk. I sold my PS4 and bought an xbone S. Kids don't care which platform they use, and I stopped caring about gaming when every other game became another FPS clone. I'm not the target market anymore and wouldn't buy one if the parasites didn't demand it so I can have 5 seconds of f*cking peace.

 

[Xallisto]

Four times more powerful than Xbox One X, since that has 6 Tflops of power are they really making the claim that this will have 24 Tflops? I find that a very dubious claim. There has to be a caveat.

 

[gamerk2]

Four times more powerful than Xbox One X, since that has 6 Tflops of power are they really making the claim that this will have 24 Tflops? I find that a very dubious claim. There has to be a caveat.

Keep in mind the XB1's CPU was only about as powerful as the 360's CPU at ~105 GFLOPS; I could see a 30-40% performance boost on the CPU alone disregarding thermal constraints. The rest would be GPU driven, and yeah, I could see 2-3x performance there easy, again disregarding thermals.

 

[Ravalo]

Ray tracing =/= Navi architecture (unless amd announces an amd alternative to ray tracing)

8k support = pointless (for now)

Also the zen 2 cpu is probably a custom ryzen 5 3600 and the gpu will be equivalent to an rx vega 56 (which will probably be 200$ by the time the console is released)

 

[MaXtor]

doesn´t mean every game will be 8k.

True, maybe they'll have an 8k 120fps 2d Tetris game.

 

[m3tavision]

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.

I was promised "4K capable" with Xbox One and PS4 and that turned out to be vaporware till PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were released. It'll be more than 5 years before 8K TV's crack the prices that 4K TV currently occupies.
#2 I
#3 I
#4 I
#5 I will not be happy with Scarlett if it doesn't give us a user defined storage like Sony did to allow us to use whatever size HDD we feel meets our needs. SSD is getting cheaper and a 7200 RPM 6TB HDD can be had for less than $100. I was never happy with the 500GB storage of my Xbox One: Day One edition nor the look of the WD 4TB portable HDD I had to add on.

Did you even watch the Video..? You are complaining about the past dude..

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.

Lol here we go... SUPPORT, doesn´t mean every game will be 8k. Plus, this should be obvious, if it will have HDMI 2.1 port confirmed, wich supports 4k @ 120hz, it must support 8k @ 60hz aswell. Pure maths/science. No one said games will run at 8k.

SONY PlayStation Promises 4k 120Hz gaming: https://www.techpowerup.com/256401/sony-playstation-5-promises-4k-120hz-gaming

Xbox "Project Scarlett" to be 8k and Ray-Tracing Ready, AMD powered : https://www.techpowerup.com/256396/...and-ray-tracing-ready-amd-powered-coming-2020


Hunh..?
Nobody here is suggesting that games this year are going to be 8k and 120Hz... just that they have enough hardware to reach it. Suggesting that 4k @ 120hz will be the sweet spot...!

 

[cldmstrsn]

Damn the writing really is on the wall for Microsofts Xbox. Everyone literally went meh to this. There were a few die hards but man you can really tell no one gives a ****. Truth be told people really want to see the PS5 as Xbox just seems an extension of PC now which to me is great, they should save their money and and go full on PC development.

 

[Hardware Geek]

QUOTE="cldmstrsn, post: 1752512, member: 313378"]Damn the writing really is on the wall for Microsofts Xbox. Everyone literally went meh to this. There were a few die hards but man you can really tell no one gives a ****. Truth be told people really want to see the PS5 as Xbox just seems an extension of PC now which to me is great, they should save their money and and go full on PC development.[/QUOTE]
I think if anything it is more a response to the lack of any meaningful information that was revealed other than confirmation of late 2020 for the launch. It was widely reported that this is going to have nearly identical specs to the PS5. That being said, I'd love to be able to put a second drive into one of the next generation consoles and have the option of installing Windows and using it as a computer. I would be far more tempted to buy one if that were the case.

 

[Dimitrios]

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.


I was promised "4K capable" with Xbox One and PS4 and that turned out to be vaporware till PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were released. It'll be more than 5 years before 8K TV's crack the prices that 4K TV currently occupies.


#2 I never bought the Xbox One X. When I got bored with Xbox One, I went out and spent over $5000 on a gaming PC (with a 2080Ti and a Core i9 Ex that can trace rays) and to tell you the truth, I've played my Xbox One over 90% less this year than last year.

#3 I won't be buying Scarlett unless I see some must have games.

#4 I was NOT as satisfied with Xbox One/ PS4 generation as I was with 360/ PS3 generation. There's very little variety in games anymore. I used to have DDR games, Guitar Hero with my iON Rocker and now it's like the variety has dried up. I spent more than 50% of my gaming time playing just Battlefield 4 and Mortal Kombat X.

#5 I will not be happy with Scarlett if it doesn't give us a user defined storage like Sony did to allow us to use whatever size HDD we feel meets our needs. SSD is getting cheaper and a 7200 RPM 6TB HDD can be had for less than $100. I was never happy with the 500GB storage of my Xbox One: Day One edition nor the look of the WD 4TB portable HDD I had to add on.

What worries me is not 4K or 8K but I won't upgrade my 4K tv because most new ones this year are SMART TV's and I don't want that crap! The horror stories bricking and spying and the screen loading new updates are going to make me stay with my TV till it fails.

 

[elementalSG]

#1 I can't name a single person who has an 8K display... Most of the people I know are still in the 720p or 1080p life.


I was promised "4K capable" with Xbox One and PS4 and that turned out to be vaporware till PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were released. It'll be more than 5 years before 8K TV's crack the prices that 4K TV currently occupies.


#2 I never bought the Xbox One X. When I got bored with Xbox One, I went out and spent over $5000 on a gaming PC (with a 2080Ti and a Core i9 Ex that can trace rays) and to tell you the truth, I've played my Xbox One over 90% less this year than last year.

#3 I won't be buying Scarlett unless I see some must have games.

#4 I was NOT as satisfied with Xbox One/ PS4 generation as I was with 360/ PS3 generation. There's very little variety in games anymore. I used to have DDR games, Guitar Hero with my iON Rocker and now it's like the variety has dried up. I spent more than 50% of my gaming time playing just Battlefield 4 and Mortal Kombat X.

#5 I will not be happy with Scarlett if it doesn't give us a user defined storage like Sony did to allow us to use whatever size HDD we feel meets our needs. SSD is getting cheaper and a 7200 RPM 6TB HDD can be had for less than $100. I was never happy with the 500GB storage of my Xbox One: Day One edition nor the look of the WD 4TB portable HDD I had to add on.

What you say is true, after I also put a RTX 2080 Ti in my gaming rig, there really hasn't been much of a reason to turn on my PS4 Pro or Xbox One. I really do miss when there were exclusives likes DDR or Dance Central or Guitar Hero and even those Kinect Sports games requiring novel hardware that only the gaming consoles had.

 

[Hardware Geek]

What worries me is not 4K or 8K but I won't upgrade my 4K tv because most new ones this year are SMART TV's and I don't want that crap! The horror stories bricking and spying and the screen loading new updates are going to make me stay with my TV till it fails.

I did precisely that for precisely the same reasons. My workhorse 1080p dumb tv made it just over 4 years. New one is about as dumb as TVs get today, but still has issues switching apps and inputs. That being said, 4k HDR is awesome and worth the hassle, although I did get an extended warranty because TVs just don't seem to last.