Xbox Project Scorpio Specs Include 9GB DDR5 RAM, Executive says

The world’s biggest gaming event, E3, will start Tuesday and the biggest reveal expected at the event is the new Xbox Project Scorpio — the biggest Xbox refresh in a decade. Mike Ybarra, corporate vice president, Xbox, and Windows gaming platform, revealed an exciting detail about the upcoming console on Twitter on Friday.

“We’ll keep tuning Scorpio to empower creators to share the best versions of their games. Unlocked extra GB of RAM for them, now 9GB of GDDR5,” he tweeted.

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This means that Xbox Project Scorpio will ditch Xbox One’s 32MB ESRAM/8GB DDR3 setup for around 12GB of built-in RAM, with some developer kits even indicating 24GB RAM. Out of this at least 9GB will be available for gaming, with the rest being reserved for non-gaming tasks, system resources, and multi-tasking apps.

Such an optimization will free up resources for gaming, which will, in turn, help the Xbox Project Scorpio perform better than both its predecessors and its competitors. Based on early demos, Xbox Project Scorpio should be capable of 4K video and gaming and 60 frames per second gaming.

But, what if you are playing a game, which does not need that much power? The rest of RAM, in that case, would be used to speed things up and provide you a smooth gaming experience sans lag.

Xbox Project Scorpio is Microsoft’s attempt at competing with its major, perhaps an only rival, Sony. Despite offering features such as the Kinect functionality, the Xbox has lagged behind the PlayStation in terms of sales. Microsoft’s strategy seems to be launching a more powerful Xbox at a similar price tag as its predecessors. According to Valuewalk, the device might be priced at $499, which is same as Xbox One at launch and $100 more than the current pricing for the PlayStation 4. The ploy to attract gamers is offering high-end gaming PC features at just $100 more — along with the increased RAM, the console is expected to offer eight custom 64-bit cores clocking at 2.3 GHz, a 1,172 MHz processor, which, at least in theory, would allow gamers to play 4K games seamlessly.

Read: Project Scorpio Release Date: Microsoft To Reveal New Xbox Console At E3 2017

But, while 4K might be the attraction for Xbox Project Scorpio, chances are that it might not work out as Microsoft has indicated. A 4K monitor is still an expensive acquisition, and if you happen to be an avid gamer, you would have already borne the cost of switching from your earlier gaming console to the Xbox Project Scorpio, which would make for an expensive gaming setup. For many gamers, a better utility would be the extra RAM they get, which would actually the extra RAM they get, which could make their gaming experience better and might be the ultimate USP of the upcoming gaming console.

However, there is still a lack of clarity on what software upgrades Microsoft is bringing with the Project Scorpio, but we will get to know them soon.