The beast revealed
In a lengthy series of blog posts today, Microsoft finally revealed a megaton of technical information about its upcoming Xbox Series X console. What was likely going to be a big centerpiece for their GDC talks, the company chose to now relay the information to the public and developers via the web and a few hands-on previews.
Here’s the basic technical information for the box:
| CPU | 8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.6 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU |
| GPU | 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU |
| Die Size | 360.45 mm2 |
| Process | 7nm Enhanced |
| Memory | 16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320b bus |
| Memory Bandwidth | 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s |
| Internal Storage | 1 TB Custom NVME SSD |
| I/O Throughput | 2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block) |
| Expandable Storage | 1 TB Expansion Card (matches internal storage exactly) |
| External Storage | USB 3.2 External HDD Support |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive |
| Performance Target | 4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS |
This translates to a machine that’s roughly more than twice the power of the Xbox One X, with an emphasis on utilizing the power and benefits of an SSD, from loading more at once to being able to pause several games without needing to turn them off.
Ray tracing is a huge part of the next gen story for both Microsoft and Sony, and the company is showing a few examples of it, including how Minecraft would benefit from the visual technology.
Additionally, the Series X will allow for expandable storage, or as we call it: memory cards! They’re back!
The entire piece is located over on Xbox Wire. The Xbox Series X is still planned for a holiday season 2020 release.
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