Microsoft absolutely pulled again the curtain on the {hardware} powering the Xbox Series X on Monday, going deep in each an Xbox weblog and an inside look supplied to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry. The disclosures didn’t disclose a lot past what we already knew or may discern however made one factor abundantly clear: Microsoft’s next-gen console will put most gaming PCs to disgrace.
We knew that the Xbox Series X would characteristic AMD’s kick-ass Ryzen CPU cores, however now we all know it’s the total monty. The console will include an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen implementation, operating at a locked clock pace. That clock pace will fluctuate relying on whether or not sport builders need to faucet into all these threads, or determine to stay to the eight bodily cores alone for barely sooner single-thread efficiency. The chip will run at 3.8GHz if a sport sticks to the bodily CPU cores, or 3.66GHz if builders open up the total 16 threads.
MicrosoftConsidering that 4 cores had been the norm in PC gaming only a few scant years in the past, having eight cores as the brand new console commonplace—the baseline goal for sport builders—is an enormous deal, particularly as Sony’s rival PlayStation 5 will even deploy a Ryzen chip. This ought to straight make PC video games higher as soon as builders wrap their heads (and engines) across the new capabilities.
The similar “rising tide floats all boats” applies to the Xbox Series X’s storage system, too. While current-gen consoles ship with abysmally gradual spinning arduous drives, Microsoft’s next-gen behemoth will come inventory with a blazing-fast 1TB NVMe solid-state drive, with the power to double that through an growth slot. Adios, atrocious world loading instances.
Better but, not less than a part of the technological spine behind the Xbox Series X’s blisteringly quick “Velocity Architecture” is coming to Windows PCs, too. My colleague Mark Hachman took a deeper dive into what we all know concerning the DirectStorage I/O system and different particulars to this point.
MicrosoftExternal storage within the Xbox Series X
And lastly, the customized GPU based mostly on AMD’s upcoming RDNA2 graphics structure seems to be like an utter beast. It packs in a whopping 52 compute models at a locked 1.825GHz clock speeds. By comparability, AMD’s strongest present discrete graphics card, the $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT, wields simply 40 CUs at a typical sport clock pace of 1,755MHz. So the customized graphics contained in the Xbox Series X are each greater and sooner than AMD’s present PC champion (although greater discrete graphics playing cards on are the horizon). The Xbox Series X will even assist DirectX-based real-time ray tracing, variable charge shading, and mesh shaders, matching the options supplied by Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs.
Exciting stuff certainly. As per standard for a brand new console era, the Xbox Series X outpaces the overwhelming majority of gaming PCs getting used right now. Most individuals’s rigs aren’t rocking eight cores, lightning-quick NVMe drives, and a high-end Nvidia graphics card able to ray tracing. And in the event you do have a rig that meets these specs, you spent an arm and a leg to get it. Which brings us to the largest query remaining for the Xbox Series X: How a lot will it value?
MicrosoftTime will inform, however don’t count on it to return low-cost. In the meantime, make sure you try the intensive Xbox and Digital Foundry posts for a lot, rather more information if you would like a deeper peek behind the scenes. If you’re extra within the straight specs, you’ll discover these beneath.
- CPU: 8x Cores @ 3.Eight GHz (3.66 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/ 320mb bus
- Memory Bandwidth: 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s
- Internal Storage: 1 TB Custom NVME SSD
- I/O Throughput: 2.Four GB/s (Raw), 4.Eight GB/s (Compressed, with customized {hardware} decompression block)
- Expandable Storage: 1 TB Expansion Card (matches inside storage precisely)
- External Storage: USB 3.2 External HDD Support
- Optical…
