Xbox Series X official specs

[Legend]

Power + speed + compatibility = Xbox Series X

12 teraflops and so much more. Discover what the next generation of gaming means to Xbox: https://t.co/WWFJ6YkHzT#PowerYourDreams pic.twitter.com/RDlWXwVF8f

— Xbox (@Xbox) February 24, 2020

[the-pi-guy]

Boom that's crazy.

[Xevross]

Well there it is. This is $599 for sure. I like their strategy of super high end and low end console. Will Sony get caught in the middle and not attract anyone? Have MS pulled a blinder this gen... let's see.

[the-pi-guy]

Still a lot of specs we don't know, but so far this is nearly the most optimistic.  So pretty great.  

I feel like I'm going to be disappointed but I hope PS5 comes in pretty close. 11 TF would be a good compromise, but I'm expecting 9.  

Windows Central was on the money in regards to the Series X specs that they published last year.

What is interesting though is we haven't heard much about the lower spec SKU that Xbox is planning to launch simultaneously alongside Series X. https://t.co/M7wGwIqsnP

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 24, 2020

[Legend]

I'd still like to learn more about, well everything, but it's fun having 12 teraflops confirmed.

[Dr. Pezus]

Impressive

[the-pi-guy]

Xbox Series X: A Closer Look at the Technology Powering the Next Generation | ResetEra

Just posted over on Xbox Wire:

A few months ago, we revealed Xbox Series X, our fastest, most powerful console ever, designed for a console generation that has you, the player, at its center. When it is released this holiday season, Xbox Series X will set a new bar for performance, speed and compatibility, all while allowing you to bring your gaming legacy forward with you and play thousands of games from four generations.

 Recently, along with the tech experts Austin Evans and Digital Foundry, we had the chance to take a closer look at some of the technologies that are powering Xbox Series X and talk to the team about the choices they made when defining the next generation of gaming. We spent an entire day discussing everything from the console's custom processor and latency solutions to backward compatibility and visual enhancements.

 (Editor's Note: We'll be using some acronyms and discussing technologies in this post without always defining them. To that end, we've created an Xbox Series X glossary that contains many of these terms and more. We'll link out where applicable, and you can check out the full glossary here, as well as our features on the new Xbox Wireless Controller and how the team is reducing latency.)

 The next generation of Xbox is defined by three primary characteristics: Power, Speed and Compatibility. Let's take a look at the features and technologies of Xbox Series X delivering those three hallmarks.  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

First, the Specs.

 

 Before diving into what's meant by each feature they discuss in the article, check out the Xbox Series X glossary for details on what each feature is defined as: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-glossary/

"Xbox Series X is the biggest generational leap of SOC (System on a Chip) and API design that we've done with Microsoft, and it's really an honor for AMD to be a trusted Microsoft partner for this endeavor," said Nussbaum. "The Xbox Series X is going to be a beacon of technical innovation leadership for this console generation and will propagate the innovation throughout the DirectX ecosystem this year and into next year."

 Following the AMD presentation, Technical Fellow Andrew Goossen took the reins to dive deep into the technological bells and whistles that will be powering Xbox Series X.  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

Improving Immersion and Embracing Speed  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

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The next major tenet of the Xbox Series X is speed, which can be defined in a large number of different ways. Modern devices have changed our expectations on how quickly you can move between experiences or applications. Most of us want to be able to instantly jump into an experience or return right to where we left off. This influenced the team designing the system architecture, as they wanted to ensure they enabled gamers to spend more time playing and less time waiting.

 A big part of that revolves around the addition of a solid-state drive (SSD). We have reached the upper limits of traditional rotational drive performance, so the team knew they needed to invest in SSD level I/O speeds to deliver the quality of experience they aspired to with Xbox Series X. This was an area where the team really wanted to innovate, and they knew this could be a game changer for the new generation. But they didn't want the I/O system to be just about your games loading faster.

 Enter Xbox Velocity Architecture, which features tight integration between hardware and software and is a revolutionary new architecture optimized for streaming of in game assets. This will unlock new capabilities that have never been seen before in console development, allowing 100 GB of game assets to be instantly accessible by the developer. The components of the Xbox Velocity Architecture all combine to create an effective multiplier on physical memory that is, quite literally, a game changer.  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

Xbox Velocity Architecture is defined as:

Xbox Velocity Architecture -  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

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The Xbox Velocity Architecture is the new architecture we've created for the Xbox Series X to unlock new capabilities never-before seen in console development. It consists of four components: our custom NVMe SSD, a dedicated hardware decompression block, the all new DirectStorage API, and Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS). This combination of custom hardware and deep software integration allows developers to radically improve asset streaming and effectively multiply available memory. It will enable richer and more dynamic living worlds unlike anything ever seen before. It also effectively eliminates loading times, and makes fast travel systems just that: fast.  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

And finally - backwards compatibility:

Players will see the benefits of the improved hardware of Xbox Series X for backwards compatible games, including improved boot and load times, more stable frame rates, higher resolutions and improved image quality. The Compatibility team is also continuing to create entirely new techniques and innovation that we can use to further enhance the existing catalog of games when running on Xbox Series X.

 The Xbox team is so committed to the concept of compatibility and cross generation play, that not only do your games move forward with you, but so do your Xbox One accessories, your game saves, and progression. In fact, your entire gaming legacy moves forward with you to the next generation.  Click to expand... Click to shrink...  

[/size]

That back slot is actually an expansion port:

The memory cards/add-on NVMe drivers are pretty cool. This is what you'll use with that rear slot to expand storage. pic.twitter.com/OmiIsIVh6F

— John Linneman (@dark1x) March 16, 2020

Fridge for scale. #PowerYourDreams pic.twitter.com/2n4OEUKXUz

— Xbox (@Xbox) March 16, 2020

[Legend]

I'm impressed with how fast quick resume is with multiple games. Is that a full 16 gigabytes being loaded into ram in that short of a time period?


I wonder if they are doing anything behind the scenes to make sure this doesn't effectively replace save files and use up all of the ssd.

This felt way less impressive. State of Decay 2 is a slow loader.

[the-pi-guy]

I'm impressed with how fast quick resume is with multiple games. Is that a full 16 gigabytes being loaded into ram in that short of a time period?


I wonder if they are doing anything behind the scenes to make sure this doesn't effectively replace save files and use up all of the ssd.

This is way more impressive than what I saw earlier.

Post edit:

This felt way less impressive. State of Decay 2 is a slow loader.

This is what I saw earlier.  


This made me think the PS5 probably has a better SSD, but we (I) will see.  


Xbox Series X Quick Resume feature supports three games minimum - VG247

The Digital Foundry reports states that they watched this feature cycle through four games; Forza Motorsport 7 running in 4K60 Xbox One mode, State of Decay 2, Hellblade and Xbox 360 title The Cave. The lower the memory the game uses, the more titles can be cached in this way for Quick Resume.

So they probably have a 50 GB "partition" blanked out for the OS to swap in and out the games.  

[the-pi-guy]

Also doesn't seem like they are expecting a delay, still confident enough to include a release date this year.  

[kitler53]

I'm impressed with how fast quick resume is with multiple games. Is that a full 16 gigabytes being loaded into ram in that short of a time period?


I wonder if they are doing anything behind the scenes to make sure this doesn't effectively replace save files and use up all of the ssd.



This felt way less impressive. State of Decay 2 is a slow loader.

you were impressed?  i was shock at how bad it was for an advertised "quick resume".  i know ps4 can only resume 1 game but it resumes waaaay faster than that.  i would rather have current gens 1 game resume with lighting speed than 5 games at half-assed speed.

also, this feature by an large battleship.   it will only work with offline solo games,.. as anyone who has place a game this gen knows,.. any game with an established internet connection that is severed during the game suspension  the act of resuming can take longer than a cold start as game goes straight into a connection timeout and game resets anyways. 

with microsoft's focus on online gaming this feature will be severely hamstrung in practical use.  besides,.. who are these people that are actively playing 5 games at once.  for me it is at most 3,.. i think quick resuming into a game i put down for over a month would be more jarring than beneficial.

[the-pi-guy]

you were impressed?  i was shock at how bad it was for an advertised "quick resume".  i know ps4 can only resume 1 game but it resumes waaaay faster than that.  i would rather have current gens 1 game resume with lighting speed than 5 games at half-assed speed.

Game swapping is way more intensive than resuming the game.

The latter can be done easily by keeping the game in RAM.  The former requires re-loading the entire RAM space.  There's no bottlenecks for the former.  The latter is bottlenecked by RAM and SSD.  

 They aren't competing features like you are somewhat implying.  
It's easy to keep the last game in RAM for basically instant reloading, and have the SSD to do fast swap to swap between another game in a few seconds.  

also, this feature by an large battleship.   it will only work with offline solo games,.. as anyone who has place a game this gen knows,.. any game with an established internet connection that is severed during the game suspension  the act of resuming can take longer than a cold start as game goes straight into a connection timeout and game resets anyways.  

I don't think the feature hurts to have, even if it can't be used for online games.  
It could be a good feature for me at least.  

Don't think you have to use it...  

with microsoft's focus on online gaming this feature will be severely hamstrung in practical use.  besides,.. who are these people that are actively playing 5 games at once.  for me it is at most 3,.. i think quick resuming into a game i put down for over a month would be more jarring than beneficial.

It doesn't save "5" games.  It probably has a 50GB partition where the games get tossed into.  Could be used for 3 games for sure or 10 smaller games or something.

[Dr. Pezus]

I'm impressed with how fast quick resume is with multiple games. Is that a full 16 gigabytes being loaded into ram in that short of a time period?


I wonder if they are doing anything behind the scenes to make sure this doesn't effectively replace save files and use up all of the ssd.

This felt way less impressive. State of Decay 2 is a slow loader.

Yeah it seems more a case of state of decay being a technical mess lol.

[Legend]

you were impressed?  i was shock at how bad it was for an advertised "quick resume".  i know ps4 can only resume 1 game but it resumes waaaay faster than that.  i would rather have current gens 1 game resume with lighting speed than 5 games at half-assed speed.

also, this feature by an large battleship.   it will only work with offline solo games,.. as anyone who has place a game this gen knows,.. any game with an established internet connection that is severed during the game suspension  the act of resuming can take longer than a cold start as game goes straight into a connection timeout and game resets anyways.  

with microsoft's focus on online gaming this feature will be severely hamstrung in practical use.  besides,.. who are these people that are actively playing 5 games at once.  for me it is at most 3,.. i think quick resuming into a game i put down for over a month would be more jarring than beneficial.

As Pi explained, it's not the same as quick resume.



Don't think it'll really matter much but it's impressive none the less. It's a feature I was hoping PS4 would get since there are a few edge cases where it becomes really useful. Online games are not one of them haha.

[kitler53]

so you guys think quick resume will still be fast for 1 game and just slow for the other 4?   i guess that wouldn't be soo bad then.   not sure how i feel about it taking up 50 Gbs of my drive though.  seems expensive.



and one other point,.. why release this info today of all days.   the news is overwhelmed by coronavirus and the tanking economy.  this news won't make it to a lot of eyes right now.