The Xbox One Scorpio will be a complete overhaul of the Xbox One console hardware when it launches next year, but looks like Microsoft have already begun to incrementally improve performance of the console with the launch of the Xbox One S, the slimline redesign of the console that launches worldwide today.
As Digital Foundry reports, the Xbox One S has a GPU clock-speed of 914MHz, up from 853MHz in the original model, which is a 7.1% increase.The eSRAM sees an increase in its bandwidth accordingly to, now bumped up to 218GB/s. These enhancements and upgrades all seem to be part of an effort to make the Xbox One S capable of outputting 4K and HDR video.
“Some games (ones that utilize dynamic resolution and/or unlocked frame-rates) may see a very minor performance improvement,” said Microsoft’s Albert Penello, senior director of product management and planning to Eurogamer. “Our testing internally has shown this to be pretty minor, and is only measurable on certain games, so we didn’t want to make it a ‘selling point’ for the new console.”
Which is admirable, but I honestly think it would have been fine had they done it- especially since it almost sounds now like the Xbox One S is the kind of incremental upgrade on the original system that the PS4 NEO promises to be for the PS4, while the Scorpio seems to be a complete overhaul- almost a generational leap.
The Xbox One S appears to already be selling out, so it seems like there will be a lot of box One owners who will have access to the improved and boosted performance that it offers.