Will Xbox Scorpio ACTUALLY Run Games At 4K?
As some of you may have noticed, Sony recently changed their marketing with the PS4 Pro to "Dynamic 4K, Only on PlayStation 4 Pro". What does that mean exactly? Well, I assume it means exactly what it says.
From the announcement of the PS4 Pro to now owning one for many months, from the start I was sceptical of the idea. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually totally for the mid generation power upgrade. But sceptical on how many games would ACTUALLY run on the PS4 Pro at 4K.
Turns out there aren't very many, as anyone with even light knowledge about the hardware that goes into these machines would have guessed. You could probably count on one hand how many games the PS4 Pro supports in actual 4K.
Which brings us to where we are now, Sony changing the branding and marketing push of the PS4 Pro to being the only "Dynamic 4K" console... bit strange really. I have to admit I'm more for this push than the previous since it's less misleading. Most of the PS4 Pro's "4K" titles are indeed as said, dynamic. A lot of titles run at resolutions such as 1440p and 1900p before being up-sampled to 4K (2160p). Stretched if you will, although it does use voodo magic to make it much nicer than if it was just stretched.
But with that out of the way, let's move onto the Xbox Project Scorpio. What's my current stance on that? I'm honestly expecting more on the same here too. Though obviously the Scorpio has promise of a higher cost, meaning more power you would imagine. Will it be enough to run games at stable 4K constantly without going the "dynamic" or upscaled route? Probably not.
On paper it looks as if the Xbox Scorpio will be rocking a GPU that could be compared with AMD's RX 480, which is honestly a cracking unit for the cost... if you're looking to only max out games on 1080p. I have personal experience with this card and can confirm you wont be running much past 1080p if you want 60 in most modern games. If you're wanting 1440p with no AA settings you're looking at frames around the 30 mark. Usually above, but still around 30.
Will the Scorpio get similar performance? Of course, but you have to remember this is just a rough comparison. That and consoles generally get more out of their hardware than PCs... an advantage of developers writing to specific hardware than a "general version" for a bajillion different configurations that you'd have to deal with when developing for PC.
I think we in the end will see more 4K native titles than that of the PS4 Pro... but I highly doubt ALL titles will shoot for ACTUAL 4K, for example... open world titles are MUCH more taxing. If they do, I don't imagine they will keep that up for very long.
Which brings me to the end point... PS4 Pro Pro and Project Scorpio 2 in about a year or two?