Microsoft's new hardware: eight x86 cores, 40 GPU cores

Microsoft's revealed the specs for some forthcoming hardware and the tale of the tape is impressive.

At the heart of the device will be a system-on-chip packing eight custom x86 CPU cores clocking up to 2.3GHz apiece, plus 40 (yes forty) GPU cores at 1172MHz apiece for a total of over six teraflops of graphics-crunching capacity. 12GB of GDDR5 RAM will enjoy memory bandwidth of 326GB/s. A 1.2TB hard disk and 4K Blu-Ray rounds things out.

Sadly this is not a new Surface Studio or cloud server: it's the next XBOX, aka “Project Scorpio”.

Microsoft revealed the specs detailed above today to Eurogamer.

AMD looks to have again scored the gig of making the XBOX's SoC, as Eurogamer says the GPU cores are Radeons.

Aside from the fact that plenty of Reg readers play games in their downtime, Project Scorpio will be a significant device because all the power described above is there so that games can deliver 4K video and virtual reality. Where games go, other users follow: once Scorpio is out there it won't be long before sysadmins start to get questions about when users can have 4K and strap on some goggles at work.

So enjoy the specs above while you can, and also at “Holiday 2017” which is when Microsoft says you'll be able to buy one. Then go look up the price of 4K monitors and figure out what that will do to your budget once Scorpio-happy users ask for upgrades. ®