Microsoft whitepaper sheds more light on Project Scorpio

Dave W. Shanahan

A Microsoft whitepaper has revealed more details about Project Scorpio. The whitepaper, titled “Reaching 4K and GPU Scaling Across Multiple Xbox Devices” is a look at what Microsoft has planned for ultra HD and inadvertently reveals more about Project Scorpio’s hardware.

The Microsoft whitepaper is dated after the E3 2016 reveal of Project Scorpio and offers some insight on what Microsoft has planned. Microsoft plans to not add ESRAM to Project Scorpio that plagued the Xbox One, and instead offer an enhanced L2 cache and support memory compression.

Digital Foundry also released a video on their theories about Project Scorpio in regards to the Microsoft whitepaper.

According to the whitepaper, Microsoft details its plans for Project Scorpio:

“ESRAM remains essential to achieving high performance on both Xbox One and Xbox One S. However, Project Scorpio and PC are not provided with ESRAM. Because developers are not allowed to ship a Project Scorpio-only SKU, optimizing for ESRAM remains critical to performance on Microsoft platforms.”

Microsoft has already stated that there are no plans to leave the Xbox One behind with the introduction of Project Scorpio and by stating that ESRAM “remains critical” reiterates Microsoft’s position.

Either way, Project Scorpio looks like it will be a serious 4K contender.