No Technical Limit, No Technical Problem With Scorpio 12 GB GDDR5
Stardock CEO Brad Wardell had a lot to say on Twitter about the Scorpio 12 GB GDDR5 capacity, citing that for many years to come, developers won’t have an issue with maxing out resources. And it’s true – developers are allocated 5.5 GB on the PS4, which holds 8 GB total of GDDR5 RAM. But what really makes a difference is what you’re rendering in, and this was the main topic of discussion Wardell posed on Twitter:
And it'll take a couple years to make a AAA level core-neutral game to fully utilize the power like Scorpio and APIs like dx12/Vulkan.
— Brad Wardell (@draginol) April 23, 2017
Having a neutral-core engine is the groundwork in order to take advantage of low-level APIs like DirectX12 and Vulkan API (both on Scorpio). Stardock’s Ashes of Singularity is using their Nitrous engine to accomplish just that. Nitrous uses multicore processing from the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit – look we’re not going to hold your hand here, this is how computers work, you should know this, we’re not going to baby you). Wardell then posed the notion that, technically, DX12/Vulkan can do multi-thread processing, loading textures and backgrounds in parallel:
Most of your loading screen time today is caused from processing textures and meshes. In dx12/Vulcan, this can easily be done in parallel.
— Brad Wardell (@draginol) April 23, 2017
Everyone’s concerned about CPUs and hyper-threading, utilizing a multi-core processor and its logical cores, but no one ever talks about GPUs doing the same thing to load those sweet, sweet games. This could be a huge step for gaming consoles and their developers, shortening load times, bumping up the intensity of graphics, and rendering in 4K without a problem. Currently, Scorpio’s tech specs are 6 teraflops of computing power through an eight-core CPU clocked at 2.3Ghz, 12GB of GDDR5 RAM (what we’ve been talking about) and 40 Compute Units (read, logical cores), with lossless 4K gaming at 60 fps. This thing is a beast of a console, and just saying tech specs like that makes you think of buying a really high-end gaming PC. Wardell’s statement rings true, Scorpio is here, and it’s here to sit on your shelf for years to come.
Look, we’re not going to baby you.