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Microsoft unveiled the full specifications of the Xbox Series X, and boy howdy, are there a lot of letters and numbers in there (via IGN).
The entire description and explanation is found on the Xbox blog, but here’s a summary:
- CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT)
- GPU: 12 TFLOPs, 52 CUs at 1.825GHz, Custom RDNA 2
- Die Size: 360.45mm2
- Process: TSMC 7nm Enhanced
- Memory: 16GB GDDR6
- Memory Bandwidth: 10GB at 560GB/s, 6GB at 336GB/s
- Internal Storage: 1TB Custom NVMe SSD
- I/O Throughput: 2.4GB/s (Raw), 4.8GB/s (Compressed)
- Expandable Storage: 1TB Expansion Card
- External Storage: USB 3.2 HDD Support
- Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive
- Performance Target: 4K at 60fps – up to 120fps
The Xbox Series X was made with three tenets in mind: “power, speed and compatibility.” Though the customised 8 core AMD Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2-class GPU will produce beautiful visuals that are impossible to achieve on the Xbox One X, Microsoft said it “[doesn’t] believe this generation will be defined by graphics or resolution alone.” It also mentioned that dedicated ray-tracing hardware is able to deliver the equivalent of 25 teraflops of power, despite only possessing a 12 teraflop GPU.
Will all this power melt a neat cuboid hole in your desk? No. The team has been hard at work “developing brand new technology such as Dynamic Latency Input (DLI) as well as helping to shape the HDMI 2.1 specification by adding new gaming-centric features such as support for 120hz, Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM).” Furthermore, the Quick Resume feature will store game states in the SSD, and won’t be interrupted in the interim. “One of the testers on the team unplugged his console for a week, then took an update, and was still able to continue right where he left off without so much as a loading screen,” relayed the blog post.
Those who purchased Gears 5 are able to snag its Series X upgrade, free of charge, but Microsoft iterated that it won’t be leaving the previous generations behind. “Players will see the benefits of the improved hardware of Xbox Series X for backwards compatible games, including improved boot and load times, more stable frame rates, higher resolutions and improved image quality,” it explained, and added that the team is continuing to develop new doohickeys to “further enhance the existing catalog of games when running on Xbox Series X.”
The Xbox Series X is set to launch in late 2020.
