Without a doubt, the biggest and most surprising reveal at the recent The Game Awards was that of the Xbox Series X, formerly known Project Scarlett, Microsoft’s next gen console launching Holiday 2020. It looks as bold as its name sounds, but though those two things were definitely brand new pieces of information, one thing that Microsoft has been maintaining ever since they first started talking about it at E3, right up until now, is how they want to make it their most impressive piece of hardware so far.
Speaking with GameSpot, head of Xbox Phil Spencer revealed some new details on the Series X, spilling information about its specs and how the console matches up in comparison to the Xbox One and the Xbox One X. First up is the GPU, which is supposed be hitting roughly 12 teraflops – as rumoured – which will be capable of ray tracing, and – Microsoft are hoping – 8K resolutions and 120 Hz refresh rates in the future.
“We wanted to have a dramatic upgrade from the Xbox One base console,” Spencer said. “So when we do the math, we’re over eight times the GPU power of the Xbox One, and two times what an Xbox One X is.”
Meanwhile, on the CPU front, Spencer says the Series X is four times as powerful as the Xbox One, while also confirming improvements to input/output speed (as much as 40 times better), an upgrade to to GDDR6 memory, as well as a solid state drive.
“I/O [input/output] is always an issue,” Spencer said. “How do we move both memory and bits around? So, we have a 40-times improvement in the I/O speed, [increased] bandwidth for us moving things around on the console [compared to] the past generation. And we’ve upgraded to GDDR6 memory inside of the box to ensure that the memory itself is able to keep up with the CPU, GPU, and the bandwidth requirements.”
“We’ve invested in NVMe solid-state drives and we’re also giving developers a lot of new capabilities, and on top of that, try to virtually eliminate load times,” he added.
All said, Spencer feels Microsoft have built “the most powerful console we can.”
“Our goal has always been to build the most powerful console we can, and I think we’re there,” he said. “We like leading in power and performance and I feel like we’re going to be there again.”
Xbox Series X is launching during Holiday 2020, with Halo Infinite as a launch title. You can get more details on the console and its new controller – which now comes with a share button (finally) – through here.
