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Hardware 09 December 2020, 15:29

Is Xbox Series S Better than Xbox One X?

The Xbox Series S is a lot of excitement - cheaper than Xbox One X it's supposed to offer a new quality. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be very "next-gen," and Internet users are wondering if it will be at all stronger than the Xbox One X.

Table of Contents

After the announcement regarding the release date of Xbox Series S, many players were astounded: how can a next-gen be so cheap? The prevailing opinion was that it's a great move; the lack of Blu-ray will be compensated with Game Pass and numerous digital promotions. However, there were those who started to wonder loudly whether Series S was going to be as good as Microsoft was trying to convince us – after all, the console was supposedly cheaper than Xbox One X. What's the catch?

How can users of the strongest console of the current generation think about switching to a cheaper one? - Is Xbox Series S better than Xbox One X? - dokument - 2020-12-09
How can users of the strongest console of the current generation think about switching to a cheaper one?

Sasan Sepehr, a senior technical producer at Remedy Entertainment, added some oil to the fire. According to him, from the consumer's point of view, this is great information, because he will get the equipment for years at a lower price, but from the industry point of view, Series S poses a "problem." In a later statement, he explained that these problems are related to optimizing games for a weaker version of the console. Other people in the industry also were not very optimistic about this subject. The question asked by many Internet users – will Xbox Series S be better than Xbox One X – seems well justified? We will try to find the answer in this article.

Specification

The comparison of both consoles will start with an analysis of the components, to get an idea of the theoretical power of each iteration of the new Xbox. You will find the detailed system specs in the table below:

 

Xbox Series S

Xbox One X

Processor

8 core – 16 thread, Zen 2 by AMD, 3.6 GHz/3.4 GHz

8 core – 8 threaded Jaguar (two clusters of four cores each), @2.3 GHz

GPU

AMD RDNA 2, clocked at 1.565 GHz, 20 computing units

AMD, clocked at 1.172 GHz, 40 computing units

GPU computing power

c. 4 TFLOPS

c. 6 TFLOPS

RAM

10 GB GDDR6 (8GB at 224 GB/sec, 2GB at 56 GB/sec)

12 GB GDDR5 at 326GB/sec (9 GB of memory available for developers)

Disc

512GB NVMe SSD, 2.4 GB/sec for uncompressed files, 4.8 GB/sec for compressed files

1TB HDD, 5400 rpm, approx. 49.5 MB/s

Drive

None

4K Blu-ray

MSRP

$299 on launch day

$499 on launch day

As you can see, Xbox Series S doesn't look better on paper. The most notable difference is RAM, Blu-ray drive, and potentially more GPU computing power, all speaking in favour of XOne X. What's the reality?

We are now waiting for the developers' move – was this the reaction to the news about Series S specs? - Is Xbox Series S better than Xbox One X? - dokument - 2020-12-09
We are now waiting for the developers' move – was this the reaction to the news about Series S specs?

As far as the CPU is concerned, however, there's a real chasm – the newer console has a really strong unit from AMD based on the Zen 2 architecture, with clocking and multi-threading support. The unit ought to be more than capable of running any kind of modern game. Meanwhile, XOne X has a much slower Jaguar CPU, from the previous generation of AMD CPUs (around 2013), when the company was clearly lagging behind Intel in terms of performance. This unit is low-voltage (some say it's a laptop chip, which is not entirely true), octa-core, and based on not very successful cluster technology.

In the case of Xbox One X, the processor is the bottleneck, because in most scenarios, it limits the quite efficient GPU. Let's add that thanks to a significant increase in CPU power, games shouldn't have a problem with 60 frames per second on Xbox Series S, since Microsoft doesn't really aim for 4K or advanced graphical effects.

Mikolaj Laszkiewicz

Mikolaj Laszkiewicz

Have been working at GRYOnline.pl since May 2020. First, he was a newsman in the Technology department, over time he began to get involved in games and journalism, as well as edit and supervise the Technology newsroom. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Futurebeat.pl site. He previously shared his thoughts on video games in, e.g. various thematic groups. A lawyer by education. He plays on everything and in everything, which can sometimes be reflected in his reviews. His favorite console is the Nintendo 3DS, he plays a new FIFA every year and tries to broaden his gaming horizons. Loves broadly understood computer equipment and disassembles everything that falls into his hands.

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