Today is the near ending point of E3 to where the gaming and the tech community fuse together to create an event that suits both industries. Today at the E3 event they have finally announced the Xbox Scarlett console.
I myself am not a big Xbox fan, I don’t use Xbox, but this is still something pretty interesting to see with the outer audience as well. In the Scarlett direct, the founders claim Scarlett should reduce the number of pauses seen in any prior Xbox consoles. They have made pretty good promises in there past directs and presentations so I can accurately see this change
Part of this is contributed to now having a Solid State Drive within the console which is what we see more commonly occur with new consoles in comparison to using a mechanical drive in the past. I want to dive further within the CPU to find more about this. This is the first time I have seen Xbox, or any console does a collab with a chipset company, even though this has always traditionally happened with AMD and Xbox
New AMD Processor – Zen-2 CPU
For this console they are using an AMD Zen-2 processor I can infer this is almost as if a new generation is happening since we are taking mainly PC integrated CPU’s and applying them more to gaming consoles to give them a better advantage in the outcome. The Zen-2 is one of the first Gen 3 processors I get to research a lot on anyway
Halo Games Comparison
This new custom made Zen-2 is estimated to be 4x more powerful than any other CPU used prior to other Xbox consoles. In the Project Scarlett presentation, it is claimed the main focus of the Scarlett is to reduce to completely get rid of all pauses found within games. If successful, Halo Infinite, the partnered game I should get a more realistic feel as if I were playing the 2017 Halo Wars Two.
The Zen-2 is a 7nm which uses a 4 GHz base clock speed, 16 thread based system which is something we still see a lot in the late 2000 series, but just a tad higher, but not entirely significant. Since the latest Gen 2 processors are also mostly 7nm the similarities are pretty self-explainable. I guess AMD wouldn’t want to surprise their users too much with this
Xbox Scarlett Physical Controls
The Xbox Scarlett has a control scheme almost the same as both the Xbox One and Xbox 360, especially if you have an Xbox One it looks more similar so getting used to it will be very easy. Whenever I play Xbox One or at least the last time I played Xbox One I sort of getting a dominant heavy feeling when playing games on the console, so I can see this becoming more amplified when it comes to our Xbox Scarlett knowing what we know so far
If we’re going to compare this to PS5 I could say the PS5 has more of an arcade look to it, it looks more durable and how the Xbox Scarlett has more of a professional look to it.
Radeon RDNA Architecture And Graphics
Project Scarlett mainly catches my attention because of the streaming graphics. A bit of a basic statement but there’s more to it. This device is supposed to make it easy to stream gameplay to your mobile device and further interact with it from there. Project Scarlett uses a Radeon RDNA architecture GPU which to make a guesstimate is around 3 – 5x more technologically advanced streaming wise on any mobile device you have at least, so not only should the pausing issues be resolved on the console, in general, it should most likely be reduced as well on streaming on mobile devices
New Power Saving Methods
RDNA is said to give us a better gaming experience by reducing power, bandwidth, and latency, we see this method being naturally used often in other 14mn Graphics Cards but what makes it any different from the rest? The 7nm FinFET allows the GPU to give it a 1.5 per watt performance.
Traditionally, I would assume AMD would just give it DirectX software and or then give it a base and memory clock, a basic but they probably would have acknowledged power issues by this point and had to switch it up
E3 Conclusion
Xbox Scarlett has its pros and cons when it comes to any type of gameplay. People can debate whether the Zen-2 is a bit too much of a processor or not. This is just a small example but there are many debates on if the Xbox Scarlett is overrated or not. In a general sense, I like Xbox Scarlett so far, but I can’t guarantee I’ll get it immediately once it comes out. If you would like please check out my fellow partner NateRVN on youtube. He will be making a review on the featured games at E3. Overall I would give it a 4.5 / 5 stars [star rating=”4.5″]
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