Based on what some Industry Vets say about the current specs of the Neo , the scorpio far out powers it. I wonder if that's why they didn't present it

Scorpio is on year out (expected 2017).... that might also be WHY it is so much more powerful (and also why they didn't present anything).

Hardware can evolve quite a lot in a year... with a double node shrink this year for GPUs, yet Nvidia not really even trying to make their cards as fast as they could be*, and AMD seemingly not being in a rush to finish their highend offerings**, MS might get much more power when releasing their hardware a year later.

We don't know yet how much of a speed bump we can expect from 14nm GPUs (or modern CPUs once AMD catches up to Intel and Intel no longer can fill their Mainstream CPUs with ever growing iGPUs, and price their real improved CPUs out of the reach of consumers), but the current bump we see from Nvidia most probably is not all there is to get (once the process matures and Nvidia puts out gaming only cards).

Expect the same from AMD, which might not try to resell their Tesla chips as gaming cards, but most probably will start out with smaller chips and more conservative offerings until they get more expierience with the new process (which might already happen by next year).

About the new consoles supporting 4k/60Hz: Dream on!

The new PS4 Neo has roughly the power of a GTX 970... see for yourself how much FPS this card puts out in 4K in modern games set to high or ultra settings (hint: not even 30Hz)... the new XBox reaches the power of last gens R9 390X. That is maybe enough for 30Hz at higher settings. Just about. Even the High-end cards of last gen struggled with stable 30Hz in some games. Reaching an average of maybe 40 FPS over all games, as long as graphic settings were high. And the 390X was far from highend.

So unless games in Neo mode opt for 4k/30Hz AND lower the graphics setting, not going to happen on PS 4 Neo. On the Scorpio 4k/30Hz MIGHT be an option, but then the devs have to be VERY careful that the framerate remains stable.

Of course if we talk about less demanding, non-AAA games, 4k/60Hz will not be an issue... but for many of these games, even todays consoles could do that IF they could output 4k/60Hz (don't know really).

VR at the current low resolutions (around Full HD) might be possible in 60 Hz, maybe 90 Hz (for the Occulus/XBox) without reducing the graphic fidelity on the new consoles. 120Hz for PSVR will be out of reach with just the power of a GTX 970, at least for demanding titles. The 90Hz of the Occulus and the 50% more power of the Scorpio might mean that here you CAN output at the full frequency (the fact that cutting the frequency from 90Hz to 45 Hz is just a tad too low might be one reason why MS opted for 50% more power over the PS4 Neo with their PSVRs max of 120Hz (and thus half rate of 60 Hz))

*DP cores and other stuff not really useful for gaming but only Tesla cards taking a lot of space on the GP104 (GTX 1080 and GTX 1070), combined with all kinds of limiters to prevent the return of the "Thermi" debacle (the GP104 most probably could reach 2,5 GHz, but power and temp limiters mean 2 GHz is the max for all cards unless you hack the BIOS and whatnot), the highend GP102 meant for the 1080 Ti and most probably next Titan card being a CUTDOWN GP100, expected to have around 2/3 or so of the maximum size GPU dies reached in the past, thus coming with the very low SP shader count of the GP100 (bigger than GM 100's 3000-odd shaders, but common, its a double node shrink! The shader count could be doubled if the GP 102 would be the same size as the GM 100)

IPC of the cards have gone DOWN, not up (that could be down to immature shaders, OR inefficient architecture), and given the architecture is almost unchanged to Maxwell (thus it is unclear if they REALLY behave better in DX12 than Maxwell), rather Meh! cards at the current prices.

Why does Nvidia even matter when discussing consoles that have AMD onboard anyway? Because for as much as AMD says they no longer want to react to Nvidia, its always competition first and foremost that drives innovation. At the moment Nvidia seems to be rather interested in milking customers than innovating. I hope AMD does not follow suit now that there seems be quite a price gap between their offerings.

** still no juicy details for even the first new polaris cards, vega (performance and highend chips) still months away.

Seems it is only me not caring about VR at all (reminds me Athlon x64 CPUs) as it is still at infacy but enjoying performance benefits on Full HD.

VR is hype for me and won't expect shift before 5 years

Seems it is only me not caring about VR at all (reminds me Athlon x64 CPUs) as it is still at infacy but enjoying performance benefits on Full HD.

VR is hype for me and won't expect shift before 5 years

Same here. Waiting to see how the sector evolves. 2nd Generation devices (Occulus Rift 2, Vive 2, PSVR 2) might get interesting IF we can by then output 4k resolutions to both eyes at 90+Hz, go cable free AND have a working solution not only for Hand controllers, but also foot ones (the frictionless threadmill for example)...

Without the last 2 points, I might still be interested in it for flight simulators and racing games. Maybe give it a spin in other games.... if the price for such a niche device is low enough. Because that is what VR is and will be until we see some revolutionary new technology: Niche.

This is also most probably why Nvidia Boss said "we are 20 years out for solving the current VR problems"... because real immersion, which is VR's first an foremost aim, will most probably not be possible without a direct brain interface removing the need to physically move during your VR expierience. Until then, you either have an extremly large space to move around in, or are limited to smaller or seated expieriences.

How awesome would an openworld game be in VR? Yeah, not gonna happen soon.

I said it before and I will say it again: this first generation of VR will dissapoint the broad masses of people just like 3D TVs did years ago. The technology and expierience is not bad (neither was the 3D TV expierience)... but it is still held back by some technological and price issues (like 3D TVs were when they first came up... my 2014 TVs 3D expierience is almost flawless, with little crosstalk and ghosting, and bright enough image). Add to that the unrealistic expectations some people are having, and the missing killer apps, and 2016 suddenly doesn't look like such a good year for VR.

Danger is that by the time industry has caught up, prices have come down and most of the 1st gen issues have been solved, as well as first hacky solutions for the physical control and the inclusion of other senses have been developed, the broad masses of gamers have moved on to the next big thing. The 2nd, or 3rd generation VR devices might be brilliant. By that time, VR might have been given up again until someone takes another risk on it in 10 or 20 years.

Granted, that is a pretty pessimistic outlook. I still see 4k resolutions as the next big step in gaming graphics, not VR. That is not revolutionary at all, but will instantly refine the current gameplay expierience without much investment by the industry by the sheer additional power graphics cards in a few years hopefully posses.

And 8K gaming can still improve on that, at least for big screens. THAT is what I am waiting for. No more hacky AA, no more specular noise. More immersion by sheer brute force.

If I get that in a VR Goggle with the additional 3D capabilites, bigger virtual screen and higher refresh, then great. I'll take it. But its not mandatory to me, and I will not pay more for the 2nd or 3rd generation VR Goggles than I would for a good screen. Which is 500$, max, for me.

Especially as I don't expect VR Goggles alone to give me that "total immersion VR" some people hype the current virtual not-so-reality devices as. I expect to be at least 10 years older when I finally can lay in a REAL VR device, and freely move around in a virtual world without being restricted by the physical reality.

THAT is Virtual reality to me... cutting all ties to the physical world, at least for a limited time. Not just having a nice all around virtual screen with real 3D and some nifty new controllers for the hands... its a start, but not really enough that I would call it "VR".

Honestly, the entire show's been lame to me so far. Mostly pre-rendered cutscenes, heavily scripted on-rails games, gimmicks in their infancy (VR), and announcements everyone knew was coming.

The real interest for me is not 4K but VR, but consoles having the power to support 4K at 60hz is a performance water-level that directly benefits VR - the Occulus' resolution is half 4K at 90hz. (It's two 1K's - 1K for each eye).

Basically, even if you don't care about 4K TVs, "supports 4K" is a marketing term that basically means "has buttloads of graphical power".

4k support literally just means that the video-out hardware can put a native 4k signal over the cable, so your 4k TV's upscaler won't kick in. Instead, the xbone slim will do the upscaling from 900p or whatever shitty res your games are running at, and has no extra GPU horsepower :lol:

I didn't know the XBone Slim even had any hardware improvements. I'm purely thinking hardware capabilities of the new console refreshes (Scorpio and Neo). Microsoft claims it can do "rendering at true 4K" with "uncompressed pixels" (?), and also "rendering at 60hz". Maybe they mean rendering at 4K or 60hz. :(

It's still just Microsoft marketing at this point, ofcourse, with no real known specs.

They also implied Xbone could do 1080p smoothly, and we all know how that turned out. ^_^

However, due to Rift's image warping, you want to actually render at something like 1.7x resolution, so: 1836 × 2040 × 2 = 7490880 (90% of 4k).

Ouch, didn't know that.

Maybe they mean rendering at 4K or 60hz. :(

Given the rather middling specs for 2017, and the performance of GPUs in the 6 Tflops area, I'd say that is probably spot on.

Of course, they could be taking just about HDMI2.0, which allows the console to output 4k/60Hz... so theoretically, yes, your games could run at 4k/60Hz. Given the Power of the console, most probably not going to be the latest AAA games at a graphical fidelity comparable to High/Ultra on PC, but some Indie game with simpler graphics, or 2D title might actually use such a resolution...

Given I drive my 4k monitor at 4k in some games with a GTX 670, and getting smooth framerates (30 Hz of course :)), that is actually quite achievable. Even if only for less demanding titles.

(the GTX 670 has about 2.5 TFlops, so double the Framerate should be quite possible with 6 Tflops)

Yeah it depends on the game of course. The hardware *can* currently output a 1080p@60 signal, and the new ones might be able to do a 4k@60 signal... But games always have to make sacrifices to reach those limits.

You can probably count the number of 1080p@60 PS3/360 games on one hand, because the graphical limitations were too great for most.

Doesn't a hardware refresh defeat the entire point of a console, i.e. one hardware platform that everyone targets?

I never buy into the hype ... I'll wait to see how things pan out in real life !

Doesn't a hardware refresh defeat the entire point of a console, i.e. one hardware platform that everyone targets?

Yep, as a dev, I'm not looking forward to optimizing/tuning the renderer's pipeline twice (or, 4 times for 2 consoles)!

As a consumer I'd probably be pissed if I owned a ps4/Xbone :lol: