As we already know that Xbox currently possesses the world’s most powerful console on paper. Landing a powerful uppercut on Sony, Microsoft has completely dropped the ball by revealing what’s powering their next-gen console, and even presenting us with a walk-around as more of the console is revealed. Microsoft has opted for a throw everything right out the gate policy as they have revealed almost every aspect of their Series X console, except for the price and the actual launch date.
In comparison, Sony has only revealed the logo for its next-gen device. Microsoft announced their prowess along with Austin Evans and Digital Foundry as they unveiled the actual specs. According to Microsoft, the next generation of Xbox will be characterized by three main components – Power, Speed, and Compatibility.
“While the Xbox Series X will deliver a massive increase in GPU performance and continue to redefine and advance the state of art in graphics with new capabilities such as hardware-accelerated raytracing,” said Jason Ronald, Director of Product Management on Xbox Series X, “We don’t believe this generation will be defined by graphics or resolution alone.”
While all speculations regarding the Xbox are now shattered, here are some actual specs that are just as tasty as we expected them to be. The CPU will feature an 8 core unit with a boost clock of 3.8 GHz Custom Zen 2 CPU with a 3.6 GHz clock without SMT. On the graphical side, a 12 TFLOPS, 52 Compute Unit Custom RDNA 2 GPU will take charge with a @1.825 GHz clock speed. While those numbers are hardly unheard of in the PC department, for a console, they are hitting it out of the park and beyond.
The memory department gets love as the RAM will be upgraded to 16 GB GDDR6 with 10 Gigs operating @560 Gb/s for gaming purposes with the rest split between the OS and handling other activities for the consoles. A 1TB expansion card will be made available in addition to the 1 TB Custom NVME SSS on board.
The hardware will also feature hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing, but Microsoft kept mum as to explore that door. While the console is aimed at 4K gaming with a frame rate of 60 fps, Microsoft believes that they can target 120 fps with this set-up. With this announcement, we have already had a taste of what Xbox fans can look for in their next big toy, all eyes will be on Sony to make their next move.