Microsoft has officially confirmed the existence of the Xbox Series S, including its price and launch date. In line with our earlier reports, the budget console will cost nearly half as much as the Xbox Series X at $299. The Series X, on the other hand, will be priced at $499.
Update: The post has been updated with the official specs
Both the next-gen consoles will launch on the 10th of November. In terms of features, there seems to be a parity between the Series S and X. Not surprising considering that both consoles leverage the same RDNA 2 GPU architecture and the DX12_2 API (DX12 Ultimate). You get DXR (ray-tracing), VRS (Variable Rate Shading), DirectStorage (NVIDIA RT IO equivalent) for super-fast load times, 4K upscaling and streaming and an All-Digital platform.
MS hasn’t mentioned the specs as of now, but I reckon we’ll be getting around 20 CU (1.565GHz) along with a 10GB memory buffer.
The CPU has the same octal-core Zen 2 with mobile cache hierarchy, but with as already predicted, lower operating clocks: 3.6GHz vs 3.8GHz on the Series X.
As for the GPU clocks, it’d make sense if the clocks are lower as well at 1.565GHz. , but since the GPU core is smaller, it might actually allow for higher boost clocks. The base architecture and DCU design and block diagram should all be identical, albeit smaller.
While the Series X packs a 1TB SSD, the Series S gets half as much at 512GB. Basically, with the Series S, you’re mostly getting everything halved on the GPU side and storage, with the CPU and memory largely unchanged.
Factor in the IPC uplifts with RDNA 2 and all the other rendering improvements of DX12, and we’re basically looking at an RX 5500 XT equivalent system, plus all the added features such as ray-tracing, VRS and SF. This should be able to run most titles at 1080p 60 FPS or 1440p 30 FPS with less intensive titles at 1080p 120 FPS or 1440p 60 FPS.
| XSX | XSS | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $499 | $299 |
| Release date | 10th November 2020 | 10th November 2020 |
| Processor | 8 Zen 2 cores @ 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT) | 8 Zen 2 cores @ 3.6GHz (3.4GHz with SMT) |
| GPU | 52 CUs @ 1.825GHz | 20 CUs @ 1.5GHz |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 10GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s | 10GB @ 560GB/s, 8 GB @ 224 GB/s, 2 GB @ 56 GB/s |
| Storage | 1TB custom NVMe SSD | 500GB NVMe SSD |
| I/O | 2.4 GB/s (uncompressed) | 2.4 GB/s (uncompressed) |
