Microsoft is fully detailing its new Xbox Series S console today. The $299 next-gen console will arrive on November 10th, designed to be a more affordable option for 1440p gaming. Microsoft is using the same CPU from the Xbox Series X inside the Series S, running at 3.6Hz. This is only slightly slower than the 3.8GHz speed the Zen 2-based CPU runs at in the Series X. “The primary difference between Xbox Series X and S is the GPU,” explains Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s director of Xbox program management.
The main thing to know about the Series S is that it is built to play all the same next-gen games as its more powerful sibling, the Xbox Series X, except at a lower target resolution of 1440p rather than 4K. Both consoles can play games at frame rates of up to 120 frames per second. And the Series S will still deliver the same visual fidelity as the Series X, according to Microsoft it is capable of hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, variable-rate shading, and mesh shaders. It will also upscale the native-resolution output to 4K.
“By designing two consoles in parallel from the very beginning, we can deliver the same core gaming experience while also making it as easy as possible for developers to scale their games across both consoles with minimal effort,” said Jason Ronald, director of program management for Xbox, in a deep-dive video for the Xbox Series S. “This means that Xbox Series S delivers the same incredible next-generation experience and features as Series X just at a reduced rendering resolution.”
The Xbox Series S delivers 4 teraflops of graphics performance, which means that on paper, it is 33% less powerful than the Xbox One X (the beefiest current-generation console, at 6 teraflops) and 67% less powerful than the Xbox Series X. But it manages to deliver the same performance as the Series X because of the way Microsoft built it: In addition to the aforementioned graphics rendering features, it offers “identical I/O performance” to the Series X, courtesy of its solid-state drive and Xbox Velocity Architecture. That means that Series S owners will also see the same improvements in loading times as on the Series X, among other benefits.
In terms of the specifications, the Xbox Series S contains “the same eight-core Zen 2 CPU architecture as the Xbox Series X,” said Ronald, except downclocked slightly to run at a constant frequency of 3.6 GHz instead of 3.8 GHz. (With simultaneous multithreading enabled, the Series S CPU will run at 3.4 GHz instead of the Series X’s 3.6 GHz.) The Series S GPU contains far fewer compute units 20 instead of 52 and runs at a slower frequency of 1.565 GHz compared to the Series X’s 1.825 GHz. The lower raw numbers won’t hold back the Series S too much, according to Microsoft, because of the “virtual memory multipliers” provided by the Xbox Velocity Architecture.
The system memory is “scaled in line with the target resolution” of 1440p, said Ronald: The Series S boasts 10 GB of GDDR6 RAM instead of the Series X’s 16 GB, with less memory bandwidth. Another major difference is the internal storage. While both consoles deliver the same storage bandwidth a read speed of 2.4 GB per second for uncompressed data and 4.8 GB/s for compressed data the SSD in the Series S is half the size of the one in the Series X, 512 GB instead of 1 TB. That could be a sticking point for the all-digital Series S, with storage requirements for many modern games creeping up near the 100 GB mark.
Here’s a full spec comparison between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, from Microsoft:
Microsoft is now planning to launch both the Xbox Series X and Series S on November 10th. The Xbox Series X will be priced at $499, with the smaller Series S priced at $299.
