Doesn't make any difference. Even on PC with monster CPUs the extra grunt is only used for rendering. The game content has to be targeted for the lowest platform, aka the Xbox One.
Exactly, and even then some multiplatform games will be designed to run on the Nintendo Switch. Come to think of it the PS4 actually has less CPU grunt than the XB1 as well as it ran at 1.6GHz rather than 1.75GHz.
TBH the Xbox One did not need much extra CPU grunt if it was just aiming for Xbox One games at 4K/4+ time the resolution, the basic game logic will not be changed much.
What report? They never mentioned anything about 50% in reduction. Even using the find function only things that were coming about it were in the comments section. Based off your write up, the reduction in overhead comes almost solely from the API overhead, which was already significantly cut down in DX12. So it probably is a skewed statistic. Probably something like 6ms overhead to 3ms. I really don't think it's much of an improvement.
Well yes the memory helps, latency was also a given. It's all on one die afterall. Again, it may be much better but certainly the CPU in general is a disappoint to me. It may be enhanced but the cores remain the same and cores are still slow(compared to even old bobcat cores!) It's great they removed as many bottlenecks and limitations as possible, but the cores themselves are still the weakest link.
I like the GPU. A custom Polaris 10 with more cores and a redesigned front end, that is always interesting stuff.
edit: Didn't see your post SPS till after I posted this.
While you are right extra grunt is used for rendering, on console they can really take advantage of more. That's the whole point of developing on console instead of PC(outside of money side of things)? A single platform to make it easier to develop for. Look at first part games, Halo or even from Sony Uncharted, the things they do with what they got is insane.
In one of their videos, Digital Foundry did state that the reduction in CPU API overhead was around 50%. This may not amount to much, but 1st party console devs have always been able to get a lot out of hardware and this will be no different.
To put it simply MS customised the console's design to better suit how developers used the original Xbox One hardware, creating a situation where the Scorpio was designed to suit current programming methods. Typically developers have to work in a way that suits the console, whereas the Scorpio was designed in the opposite way.
It is hard to tell how Microsoft's customisation will help developers, but they are certainly an improvement. They seem to be focused on eliminating certain bottlenecks within the system, though it is hard to tell exactly how much of an improvement it will be.
TBH this console is not aiming to run all games at 4K 60FPS, after all the console has to be reasonably affordable. It is designed to run Xbox One quality games at a native 4K, which these hardware upgrades should be able to achieve provided that the Xbox One version aims for 900p or 1080p. Hard to know what visual upgrades that devs will offer beyond the resolution jump is hard to know, though higher res textures are a given.
I personally wanted to see a CPU with higher clock speeds, but TBH Microsoft seems to have created a console that is much more powerful than the PS4 Pro, which is exactly what they were aiming for. It also looks like they made the console easier to develop for thanks to their hardware changes, making it easier for devs to take advantage of the console's extra performance without meeting an unforeseen bottleneck to code around.
