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

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Xbox Series X: A Closer Look at the Technology Powering the Next Generation
Mar 16, 2020

by Will Tuttle, Xbox Wire Editor in Chief



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.



The Most Powerful Xbox Ever

CPU    8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.6 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU
GPU    12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU
Die Size    360.45 mm2
Process    7nm Enhanced
Memory    16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320b bus
Memory Bandwidth    10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s
Internal Storage    1 TB Custom NVME SSD
I/O Throughput    2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)
Expandable Storage    1 TB Expansion Card (matches internal storage exactly)
External Storage    USB 3.2 External HDD Support
Optical Drive    4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive
Performance Target    4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS


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