Microsoft’s Project Scarlett to use Zen 2 and next-gen Radeon processors

The next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2020, delivering a significant upgrade over today’s console offerings on both the CPU and GPU fronts, facilitating the next major shift in gaming graphics and world simulations. 

Brad Sams,  an executive editor of Thurrott.com, has claimed that Microsoft’s next-generation “Project Scarlett” console will feature AMD’s upcoming 7nm Zen 2 CPU cores as well as a next-generation, likely Radeon, graphics unit, with backwards compatibility being a big concern for the gaming giant. 

With Scarlett, Xbox is targetting 4K resolutions at 60FPS framerates, with Sams claiming that hardware will be less of a console differentiator than it has been in previous generations, with Microsoft planning to offer a variety of exclusive gaming software while bringing affordability to the table with game streaming services. 

Given the designs of AMD’s next-generation EPYC processors, it is likely that Microsoft’s next-generation console will utilise a similar multi-die system architecture, perhaps using the same 8-core Zen 2 core clusters as EPYC, allowing Microsoft to use a proven off-the-shelf chip design from AMD while benefiting AMD with the economies of scale offered by high-volume console hardware. A unified package with an interconnected I/O die, 8-core Zen 2 CPU die and a custom Radeon graphics die seems probable for both the next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft.