Yo! I didn't see a Scorpio thread, so I figured I'd make my own and do a breakdown of it versus the PS4 Pro. I'll be going into the nitty gritty as best I can with what's been revealed, but I'll have a TL;DR at the bottom

So when the PS4 Pro came out, it was released as a 4k console. The issue with that being that very few games can hit 4k, even with checkerboard rendering. It doesn't have nearly the power to pull that off for most games. Only games I know of that hit native 4k are The Last of Us Remastered (a PS3 game), and Skyrim Legendary Edition (another PS3 game, albeit heavily updated). Most games tend to run at either 1440p native or 1800p upscaled.

The Scorpio is aiming for native 4k with enough power to make such a resolution necessary*. The game shown off was Forza 6, and it was running at 4k 60fps equivalent to PC ultra settings. It hit 80-86% of the Scorpio's power... the most impressive thing about this is that the Scorpio they were showing off was only 80% as strong as the final product will be, so that's actually equivalent to only 66% being used. Racing games aren't exactly the best benchmark, since most textures are really low resolution because you're going so fast, so what's the point in making them gorgeous? So basically that just means that this isn't going to be as stressing as, say, Watch Dogs 2, because that game places great emphasis on overall graphical fidelity, including texture quality. Still, it's pretty impressive. The Scorpio runs Forza 6 as well as an Intel i7 4930k @ 4ghz and a 980Ti.

With that out of the way, let's get a more direct comparison. The PS4 Pro's upgrades over the PS4 include a CPU that's 33% faster, a GPU that's ~2.3x more powerful, and faster RAM that gives it an extra 42GB/s over the base PS4 (218GB/s total). The benchmarks for the Scorpio aren't as well developed as they are for the PS4 Pro, so I can't list off percentages. That said, the CPU isn't much stronger than the PS4 Pro's, but it will function much better. One of the main purposes for a CPU in gaming is to make "draw calls" for the GPU. This basically means that the CPU asks the hard drive for new data, and then feeds it to the GPU to render. This process normally takes a few thousand instructions, but Microsoft got the process down to just 11, freeing up a LOT of CPU power for other activities such as AI and physics. The GPU is much stronger than the Pro's as well. It's got an extra 4 compute units, and said units (and all of the GPU really) have been heavily optimized instead of just being largely lifted from AMD and implemented like Sony did. On top of this, the Scorpio GPU is actually sporting a pretty sizable overclock as opposed to the underclock that the PS4 Pro has. That means that the GPU has 4 more compute units, more optimized architecture, and is clocked over 200mhz faster than the PS4 Pro's GPU. As if that wasn't enough, Scorpio also has 12GBs of RAM with a bandwidth of 326GB/s, which is 108GB/s faster than the Pro's. 4GB is reserved for system use as opposed to the 3GB the PS4 Pro uses, but that still leaves games with 8GBs of RAM to use, as opposed to the 5GBs the PS4 Pro has to offer.

Let's break it down some more. The PS4 Pro's GPU is bottlenecked by the CPU, the GPU isn't strong enough for 4k, and there's only 5GBs of RAM available for games to use. When you're pushing a higher resolution, you need more CPU power, GPU power, and more bandwidth to display more pixels. The base PS4's CPU was already bottlenecking the base PS4's GPU, so when Sony just overclocked the CPU and greatly increased the GPU, it exacerbated the issue. Between that and having the same amount of RAM, it's just not feasible to call it a 4k machine, even with upscaling. The Scorpio's CPU is stronger, but how much I'm not sure. It will probably still end up bottlenecking the GPU, but there's no way of knowing by how much. CPU power in games is increased in games over the PS4 Pro, but the GPU is also a lot stronger than the PS4 Pro's, so there's no way to really tell. The Scorpio's GPU has more compute units, has had almost every bit of it optimized, and is sitting at over 200mhz faster than the PS4 Pro's GPU. This will lead to a definite advantage. Games will have 8GBs of RAM to use, which while not optimal is still an extra 3GB over the PS4 Pro. Combined with much higher speed, that difference becomes even larger.

What does this mean in reality? Well, the Scorpio will beat the PS4 Pro in terms of resolution in every game, and likely in terms of graphical fidelity and frame rate as well. Sony went the cheap route with the Pro, opting to eschew in house optimization for lifting AMD's tech from the source and implanting it, and leaving the CPU largely untouched. Microsoft optimized CPU and GPU greatly, has 3GB more RAM available for games to use, and said RAM has much more bandwidth. Even if the GPUs were the only thing to consider, it's equivalent to an R9 280x vs a GTX 1070. Not a pretty sight. I'm not sure if Sony was rushing to capitalize on 4k or if they became complacent, but between their oversights and Microsoft's careful optimization and other design choices, it's not even close.

TL;DR: The Scorpio is a lot faster than the PS4 Pro in every facet, and will beat it in every category when it comes to resolution, and likely in terms of graphics and frame rate. If you have a 4k TV, definitely go for the Scorpio over the PS4 Pro.

*higher resolution for the sake of higher resolution is idiotic. To put it simply, games display a bunch of triangles. When you get to the point that you can't see more triangles no matter how many more you put in, then it's time to increase resolution, since that would allow you to see more triangles. If you haven't reached that point, increasing resolution wouldn't do much at all. This is why it's so important for the PS4 Pro, Scorpio, and PCs to be able to run high quality textures, character models, and effects. Without them, you may as well just run at 1080p.

All very true. I can't agree with the last line though: if you have a 4k TV, go with Scorpio. Shouldn't it be more about what games are available on Scorpio/One vs. PS4/Pro?

But yeah, Scorpio's specs will crush Pro's. The reasons, in my opinion, that Sony made the pro the way they did instead of how Microsoft made the Scorpio are simple:
1. It came out a full year earlier. This affects cost for Sony, plus gives them no benchmark to work against.
2. Microsoft has said the Scorpio is an incremental upgrade (literally, a new console that also happens to run Xbox One games, and likely will run the next generation of games as well, albeit underpowered by then. Like phones and PCs), whereas Sony has been loud and clear about the fact that the Pro is nothing more than an improved PS4. The next generation of games will only run on PS5.

Personally I'm glad Sony went that route as it frees up budget, time, and manpower to focus on PS5 and taking significant steps rather than smaller upgrades that phase out the PS4 slowly. But this is all just a matter of preference.


But no, it could never be legitimately argued that the Pro could best the Scorpio in power, but it isn't meant to really. It's an entirely different creature. Credit where it's due still: Scorpio is gonna be a beast.

I mean, okay, but literally anything that isn't forza is available on PC. No sense in microsoft making a super powerful console if they're not gonna have a decent amount of exclusives that actually take advantage of the hardware

Plus you hardly need anything over 1080p or even 720p

yoshirulez! : that PC argument irritates me so much. Microsoft owns, develops, and operates both Windows and Xbox, so why wouldn't they try to make both ecosystems great places to game?

"Hardly need anything over 1080p or even 720p" Only really graphically intense games push the resolution envelope past 1080p, most of these being really recent titles such as Watch Dogs 2 or a few older titles like Witcher 3. So for the most part, you're correct, but with actual next gen engines finally being here instead of devs using revamped engines made for the 360 and PS3, that's about to change. As for 720p... why do you hurt me so? Even a lot of last gen games benefit from 1080p over 720p. Even the difference between 900p and 1080p is pretty big for any sort of fine details, since it's a ~50% difference in pixel count.

Eirinn : Fair point on the time lapse. As for a "new console," that's not actually true. It's fitting the same slot the PS4 Pro was designed to fit. It's a heavily upgraded Xbox One. It's not like the 360, where it was an entirely new console and played some Xbox games, this is straight up a really beefy Xbone. As for games, yeah that's another good point. Very few exclusives have interested me this gen, so I didn't think about that

Really? Did They change that recently, or was I misunderstanding? Because he did say they wanted to embrace frequent releases like cell phones and abandon generations. Maybe he meant releasing an upgrade every gen? I just kind of understood the comment to mean the other. My bad.

Eirinn : all good. I'm guessing he meant that he wants to avoid classic style console gens, but considering just how finnicky consoles are when it comes to compatibility, I'm not sure that's going to be possible unless they stick to the same CPU architecture forever or plan on making emulators to run last gen games like they did with the 360 at launch and eventually the Xbone