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Xbox One X

Microsoft'south Xbox Ane Ten drops on Tuesday and it's hands the strongest panel ever congenital. Its GPU sports higher clocks and boosted cores, its CPU is clocked a full 1.3x faster than the old Xbox Ane, and its unified GDDR5 retentiveness offers vastly more bandwidth (and a much simpler memory architecture) than the Xbox One'due south 32MB of cache + quad-channel DDR3 memory design.

Hardware design, all the same, isn't the entire story. Because the Xbox One 10 (Buy on Amazon) maintains full backwards compatibility with the Xbox Ane, it's on developers to deliver optimized titles with better experiences that justify the new organisation's $500 price tag.

Let's found some ground rules before we talk nearly the relative value of the platform.

  • If y'all're happy with the panel y'all own and see no need to upgrade, don't upgrade.
  • As with the PS4 and PS4 Pro, the value of the Xbox Ane Ten depends somewhat on what hardware you already ain. If you have an SDR 1080p telly, you might non want to upgrade until y'all can afford a new TV.
  • When I say the Xbox I is worth buying, that doesn't hateful information technology makes sense for literally every person right now. As with the PS4 Pro, information technology could exist that people who ain 4K TVs with HDR are best-positioned to upgrade.

Information technology'due south going to accept time for the Xbox 1 X to field a solid set of upgraded titles, just as it'south taken time for Sony to exercise the same with the PS4 Pro. Not every game is upgraded in the same mode, and Eurogamer has written a number of game profiles that range from dramatic improvements to relatively modest updates. Just the biggest single reason I'thou comfortable saying console gamers should experience good virtually opting into the Xbox Ane Ten's ecosystem is because this console has a much amend chance of driving a high-end 4K experience than the PS4.

Xbox One X

The GPU inside the Xbox I X is a Polaris-derived part that's designed for much higher operation relative to the rest of AMD'southward product stack than the Xbox Ane's GPU was dorsum in 2013. The RX 580 is a 2304:144:32 configuration with a 42.9GPixel/s make full charge per unit and 256GB/due south of retentiveness bandwidth. Microsoft'due south Project Scorpio is 2560 cores, 144-160 TMUs (we've seen both figures), with 32 ROPs (2560:144-160:32) with a 37.5GPixel/south fill rate. That's stronger than the PS4 Pro in graphics by a fair margin. Eurogamer does note that there are games, similar Assassin'due south Creed Unity, that are CPU-bound in spots, but even here we run into a xx-30 per centum flat improvement. Some games are going to hit the CPU harder than others, but Microsoft does study lowering the CPU retentivity access latency by upwards to 20 percent, which should definitely ameliorate performance when retentivity latency was a clogging. And Eurogamer besides notes that it's the original on-disk code for Unity that has an unlocked frame rate–and Unity ran like dirt at launch. Equally evaluations of performance go, information technology's probably non an platonic title.

The 12GB of memory is some other key feature. With 9GB of system RAM available for games, developers can use higher resolution targets, better particular levels, or simply better the frame charge per unit. The appearance of a simpler memory system (unified GDDR5 as opposed to 32MB cache + quad-channel DDR3) means it'll be easier for developers to hit the performance levels they're targeting without painstaking optimizations.

Finally, there's 4K and HDR. If yous're notwithstanding on a 1080p set and happy with an Xbox Ane, there'southward no reason to change that. I'm only recommending an upgrade for people who want to upgrade. But 4K + HDR is a gorgeous experience in games co-ordinate to basically everyone. And while the Xbox One Due south can provide that capability with a pocket-sized frame rate boost in some games, the Xbox One X is much better positioned to bulldoze superior experiences over the adjacent few years.

I don't think there'due south anything wrong with waiting to encounter which titles are enhanced and how the enhancement is handled, but I also wait that we will see developers taking reward of the hardware and delivering meaningful improvements. Given that the original Xbox One has been lagging Sony'due south performance since launch, this is a meaningful chance to plough the tables and play older games at higher frame rates.

Microsoft has a long history of working with developers and providing robust tools for arrangement optimization. The operation argument for the Xbox One X equally providing the best-in-class console experience is near air-tight. I'm confident saying that over the next 12 months, the Xbox One X will distinguish itself every bit the platform to shell in any game that launches for both it and the PS4. If that doesn't happen, Microsoft and its game studio partners don't deserve to exist in the market confronting Sony at all.