Xbox Series X: Full Specs Released

The full specs list for Xbox Series X has been released. The specs were revealed in an Xbox blog post, and you can see the full list below. Those specs also confirm what the Series X's mystery port is for - as Digital Foundry reports, Microsoft and Seagate have made a proprietary external 1TB SSD that can be plugged into the console for extra storage. Essentially, it's a giant memory card. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-loading-times-tech-demo"]

• CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT)
• GPU: 12 TFLOPs, 52 CUs at 1.825GHz, Custom RDNA 2
• Die Size: 360.45mm2
• Process: TSMC 7nm Enhanced
• Memory: 16GB GDDR6
• Memory Bandwidth: 10GB at 560GB/s, 6GB at 336GB/s
• Internal Storage: 1TB Custom NVMe SSD
• I/O Throughput: 2.4GB/s (Raw), 4.8GB/s (Compressed)
• Expandable Storage: 1TB Expansion Card
• External Storage: USB 3.2 HDD Support
• Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive
• Performance Target: 4K at 60fps - up to 120fps

Digital Foundry's testing includes some impressive reading. The Series X processor, for instance, is powerful enough to run four Xbox One S game sessions simultaneously. Ray Tracing - a major point of pride for both Xbox Series X and PS5 - is also delivering apparently incredible results. Dedicated hardware inside the Series X seemingly means that the console can handle more intensive Ray Tracing than expected, harnessing the equivalent of 25 teraflops of power, despite the console's GPU having 12 Teraflops. The Quick Resume feature continues to sound impressive, too, storing game states in the SSD and allowing you to turn off, unplug, or update your console, then boot directly back into the game, where you left it running. Per the Xbox blogpost: "One of the testers on the team unplugged his console for a week, then took an update, and was still able to continue right where he left off without so much as a loading screen." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=9-new-xbox-series-x-images&captions=true"] One major point covered in today's news is the benefit of Series X on older games. We've already learned that Gears 5 will have a Series X port, free to those who already own it; however, Microsoft has also discussed a curated list of Xbox One games that it will work to improve on the new hardware, upping resolutions and potentially doubling frame rates. The Series X is also seemingly capable of applying convincing HDR effects even to games that weren't designed with that functionality in mind. Digital Foundry was shown both Halo 5 and original Xbox title Fusion Frenzy (released well before HDR was a going concern), running with what was apparently a real-looking HDR effect. This is system-wide, and should apply to any game capable of running on Series X, no matter its age. This tech can also be used to add colourblindness modes to games that didn't support them at the time. We also got a true sense of the console's size today, using a banana for scale (and a fridge, just for the fun of it). As pointed out by Austin Evans, the console's internals include a Master Chief Easter egg - which the Xbox One X also did. It's becoming a bit of tradition. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-quick-resume-tech-demo"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and has rarely been as pumped for chips he can't eat. Unless you can eat them, and that's a whole other groundbreaking feature. Follow him on Twitter.