Xbox Series X: Specs Released by Microsoft - 8-Core ZEN and 3328 shader processors GPU

The next generation of Xbox is defined by three primary characteristics: Power, Speed and Compatibility. Microsoft now shared all specification on their blog, and they are pretty impressive.

Microsoft works with AMD on the hardware side of the console, fitting it with "Zen 2" CPU cores.  The processor holds eight "Zen 2" cores, with SMT (Hyper-threading) enabled that would account for 16 logical processors or threads. The GPU is 4K UHD gaming capable and offers real-time ray-tracing, and eys that means it is based on RDNA2 graphics architecture. It will feature real-time ray-tracing hardware optimized for DXR 1.1 and supports variable-rate shading (VRS). The GPU is listed having 52 compute units, if the shader clusters hols 64 units per cluster then that accounts for 3328 shader processor running just over 1800 MHz. That brings the new console 12 TFLOPs of compute perf (GPU).  The memory is absed on a 320-bit GDDR6 interface with 16 GB of memory shared in-between the System and GPU. The Xbox Series X will also get a 1 TB NVMe SSD with 2400 MB/s peak sequential transfer rate, and an option for one more 1 TB NVMe storage unit. 

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In order to support the needs of hardcore gamers, the team strengthened their long-term partnership with chipmaker AMD, which began working with the Xbox team over 15 years ago on the Xbox 360. Sebastien Nussbaum, Corporate Vice President & Senior Fellow, Semi-Custom Products and Technologies at AMD, spoke a bit about what the team created to help power Xbox Series X.

Thanks to a focus on transformational design and generational performance uplift, Nussbaum said that, for developers, “the console ends up being a playground for technical innovation.” This is due in large part to the raw power of the custom designed processor, powered by an 8 core AMD Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2-class GPU.

“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. We’ve listed the full system specs below, with handy links out to our glossary for definitions on what many of these terms mean: