Microsoft Shares Official Xbox Series X Specs

Microsoft is today confirming some new details on the next-gen Xbox console. The company is sharing some new official specs of the Xbox Series X today, with more details expected at E3.

“Compared to the previous generation, Xbox Series X represents a superior balance of power and speed in console design, advancing on all technological fronts to delivering amazing, dynamic, living worlds and minimize any aspects that can take you out of the experience,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft.

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Xbox Series X will be powered by Microsoft’s custom-designed processor based on AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures. The company confirmed that the Xbox Series X will offer 12 teraflops of graphics performance, which is twice as more as the Xbox One X, and 8x more than the original Xbox One. In terms of processing power, the new custom-designed processor from Microsoft offers 4x more power than the original Xbox One.

Microsoft also talked slightly about the company’s proprietary and patented Variable Rate Shading system. “Our patented form of VRS empowers developers to more efficiently utilize the full power of the Xbox Series X. Rather than spending GPU cycles uniformly to every single pixel on the screen, they can prioritize individual effects on specific game characters or important environmental objects,” said Spencer.

The new VRS system will allow for more stable frame rates and higher resolution graphics without affecting the image quality. Microsoft also talked about other new features including the next-generation SSD inside the new Xbox, 120 fps support, and Quick Resume.

Xbox One Series X will also support “four generations of gaming”. That essentially means that the Xbox Series X will continue to work with existing Xbox One games, backwards-compatible Xbox 360, and original Xbox games. Microsoft says these games will look better than ever before on the Xbox Series X. Micorosft is also working on features like Smart Delivery to ensure greater compatability for games across all the generations of Xbox going forward.

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Conversation 19 comments

  • Ulfvar

    24 February, 2020 - 9:49 am

    <p>can't wait for the next generation, they are basically fixing everything that annoys me about console gaming.</p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2020 - 10:22 am

    <p>I am still unsure of the design…but need to see what it looks like in person. </p><p><br></p><p>the 120fps is pretty impressive and I will look forward to seeing what this all looks like in actual game play with the launch title of Halo later this year.</p>

  • proesterchen

    24 February, 2020 - 10:38 am

    <p>I'm guessing this will be another one of these fun pre-order and flip for a nice bonus things come launch, unless, of course, we're all done in by that virus by then.</p><p><br></p><p>I, personally, can't wait! </p>

  • wosully

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2020 - 10:41 am

    <p>My one burning question: Do I need a new TV? </p>

  • Stooks

    24 February, 2020 - 10:57 am

    <p>Price. Honestly that is what matters. This thing has to be $599 or less or it will flop big time. </p>

    • proesterchen

      24 February, 2020 - 11:01 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522773">In reply to Stooks:</a></em></blockquote><p>If Sony goes $399 like with the PS4, Microsoft may kneecap themselves again in terms of install base by going with $499. Not sure how far their 'more power!' marketing can take them, especially with the console gift giving crowd.</p>

    • rm

      24 February, 2020 - 11:29 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522773">In reply to Stooks:</a></em></blockquote><p>I doubt Microsoft will be beat on price to Sony. I mean Microsoft lost the last generation because of price (by bundling Kinect). Microsoft can also take a small loss per console where Sony will have problems doing so (Microsoft has what about a $100 billion in cash reserves).</p>

      • Stooks

        24 February, 2020 - 3:57 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#522796">In reply to RM:</a></em></blockquote><p>Sony has regularly taken a loss on hardware initially. Sony is selling way more hardware and software, I think they will try to be the lower cost option with 90% of the power.</p><p><br></p><p>Honestly with Microsoft publishing everything on Xbox and PC now, unless all of your friends are on Xbox only I am not sure what the lure is anymore for the Xbox. Even if your friends are only Xbox, I bet by the time this thing drops, way more games are going to be cross compatible. I play COD right now with Xbox friends while I am on the PC. We play the co-op missions and it all works great.</p><p><br></p><p>The safe play would be PC/Play station and then you can play anything for the most part.</p>

  • martinusv2

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2020 - 11:21 am

    <p>I would love to build a new pc with the processor :)</p>

    • jeff.bane

      24 February, 2020 - 3:06 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522793">In reply to MartinusV2:</a></em></blockquote><p>Zen 2. Current Ryzen processors are Zen 3 architecture, so you'll do a little better actually! You'll still need a beefy graphics card though.</p>

      • evox81

        Premium Member
        24 February, 2020 - 3:29 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#522820">In reply to Jeff.Bane:</a></em></blockquote><p>Not exactly. Ryzen 3 processors are based on the Zen 2 architecture. So, same process as what's available now, but the top-tier chips available now are no doubt significantly higher performance than this custom chip. </p>

  • glenn8878

    24 February, 2020 - 11:25 am

    <p>12 teraflops might seem like a big number, but how does this compare with a budget PC that costs more money. I wish they allow customers to load Windows 10.</p>

    • Jeremy Turnley

      24 February, 2020 - 12:08 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522795">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>To put that in perspective, the GeForce 2080 Super is spec'd at 11.3 TFLOPS, and so is the GTX 1080 Ti. Both of those cards were/are more expensive than even the highest estimates for the cost of the Series X</p><p><br></p><p>HOWEVER – you cannot compare console and PC hardware to one another – the OS on consoles is far more streamlined, the hardware is 100% optimized for the configuration, the RAM on consoles is shared between the GPU and CPU, and the games themselves are optimized for that hardware. I can run AAA titles with everything turned up on my 1080 Ti, but framerates are all over the map, while my much-less-powerful XBox One X can play those same games perfectly smoothly because it has zero configurations options and is tuned to run at 60fps on the hardware.</p><p><br></p><p>If you could install Windows on the One X, it would run those same games like garbage, because Windows would eat up half of the RAM and the games would be memory starved and swapping to disk.</p>

    • SWCetacean

      Premium Member
      24 February, 2020 - 1:17 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522795">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>For reference, the Nvidia GTX 2070 Super provides around 9 TFLOPS of compute at around $500 for the card alone. The RTX 2080 Super provides 11 TFLOPS at $700. But the teraflops count can be misleading and is only good for comparisons among the same generation. The new AMD Navi-based GPUs have lower teraflops values than their predecessor GPUs, but still performed better in games. So teraflops isn't that useful of a metric for measuring gaming performance. </p><p><br></p><p>Now what marketing isn't telling us is whether that 12 TFLOPS value is normalized against the GCN architecture (what the Xbox One uses) or if it's raw Navi TFLOPS. Given that one Navi TFLOPS performs better in games than an equivalent number of GCN TFLOPS, if the spec is 12 Navi TFLOPS, then the performance improvement should be more than the simple difference in TFLOPS would suggest.</p>

    • Stooks

      24 February, 2020 - 3:41 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#522795">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>Honestly "teraflops" does not mean much IMHO. </p><p><br></p><p>The Xbox One X, thanks to Digital Foundry in depth testing, was the equivalent as a AMD RX 580 in real world gaming performance. Microsoft is claiming their custom NAVI2 part will be twice as fast as a RX 580. </p><p><br></p><p>If you go to YouTube and search on RX580 vs 5700XT you will get multiple videos showing gaming bench marks that show the 5700XT is basically twice as fast as the RX580, almost exactly in most benchmarks. So I would peg the performance at 5700XT, in terms of real world gaming performance, which is in the PC world twice as fast at the RX580/Xbox One X.</p><p><br></p><p>This console wont be out until October? Maybe later? By then a 5700XT will be mid tier PC performance….if that. Right now a RTX2070 Super is the same or slightly better than a 5700XT. By October a new GTX/RTX 3060 will be out and besting the 2070/5700XT and cost you maybe $299, probably less.</p>

  • Vladimir Carli

    Premium Member
    24 February, 2020 - 12:09 pm

    <p>what about price? It's very likely that will be the most important spec in determining who will win the next generation. Microsoft has a huge advantage there because they can actually afford to "buy back" the customers that they lost. Sony cannot really swallow great losses on hardware</p>

  • Chris Payne

    24 February, 2020 - 1:06 pm

    <p>“<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">which is twice as more as the Xbox One X”</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">typo</span></p>

  • orbsitron

    24 February, 2020 - 2:14 pm

    <p>Can't. Wait. </p><p><br></p><p>!!!</p>

  • red77star

    25 February, 2020 - 1:31 pm

    <p>Performance at 2070 Super level which explains why Nvidia CEO stated that new XBOX is less powerful than 2080 ti and pretty much outdated compared to be released 3000 series. Either way, it packs enough power for gaming console. I don't care about it cause I am PC gamer but if you want to make it simple and just game on it, go get new console.</p>

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