Microsoft’s eagerly awaited new Xbox video game console is almost here, and you can shell out $500 (£450, AU$749) for the Xbox Series X now that preorders have started. Or, you might decide to save a couple hundred and opt for the lesser — but still very appealing– Xbox Series S. We now have a clearer picture of what to expect from the Xbox Series X, short of the types of answers we can only get by booting one up and starting to play a final unit.
The Series X enters a scene that looks very different than when its predecessor, the Xbox One X, arrived three years ago. Though technically it’s competing with other living room game consoles, notably its sibling the Series S and the upcoming Sony PS5, in practice it’s now challenged for a share of your entertainment time and money by hugely popular phone-based mobile gaming and the Nintendo Switch handheld console, as well as nascent cloud gaming options and established PC gaming.
What’s the Xbox Series X release date, and how much will it cost?
The Series X costs $500 — less with a trade-in — and preorders have begun; the console will ship on Nov. 10. Unfortunately, the process wasn’t much smoother than the PS5 preorders, which retailers began too early. It sold out quickly.
What are the Xbox Series X’s specs?
The console is based around AMD’s current-generation Zen 2 processor architecture plus a graphics processor using AMD’s forthcoming RDNA 2 microarchitecture, so presumably built on the Navi 7-nanometer process.
The system’s CPU is an eight-core custom Zen 2 processor running at 3.8GHz (3.66GHz with simultaneous multithreading). Its GPU is a custom RDNA 2 processor at 1.825GHz with 52 CUs that will create 12 teraflops. This puts Microsoft’s new console among some of the higher-end gaming PCs.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Processor | 8-core AMD Ryzen Zen 2-architecture CPU at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT) |
|---|---|
| Graphics | AMD Navi/RDNA 2-family GPU with 52 CU at 1.825GHz (12TFLOPS FP32) |
| Video memory | 16GB GDDR6 with 14Gbps 320-bit interface (10GB at 560GB/s allocated to GPU, 6GB at 336GB/s allocated to rest of system with 3.5GB for GPU) |
| Storage | 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0; proprietary 1TB SSD add-on module; USB 3.2 external HDD support |
| Optical drive | Yes, 4K Blu-ray |
| Maximum output resolution | 8K 60fps; 4K 120fps |
| Audio | Ray traced |
| New controller features | Share button, Dynamic Latency Input |
| VR support | unknown |
| Console streaming | Yes (Console Streaming) |
| Backward compatibility | Xbox One and supported Xbox 360 and Xbox games |
| Subscription tie-in | Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate |
| Dimensions | 5.9 x 5.9 x 11.9 in/151 x 151 x 301 mm |
| Preorders start | September 22 |
| Release date | November 10 |
| Price | $500 |
With all the updated components, the xbox series x vs ps5 certainly seems like a big step up from its predecessor. The solid-state storage will allow faster startup of games and shorter loading screen times than the previous models’ hard disk drives provided, even for older games. While Microsoft vaguely says the updated processor has “four times the processing power of the Xbox One,” any speed update helps and will apply to all games.
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