With the dawn of the 9th generation of console gaming being months away, Microsoft has gone ahead to confirm the main specifications of the XBOX Series X. These  include 12 TFLOPs of GPU power, SSD Storage and much much more!

Microsoft officially confirms the primary specifications of the XBOX Series X

For quite some time, details about both the XBOX Series X and the PlayStation 5 have been leaked and revealed in bits & pieces here and there. Now, Phil Spencer who’s the Head Of Xbox has published a jam-packed article on the official XBOX website detailing the most important specifications of the next generation console.

When it comes to the hardware itself, the XBOX Series X will sport the following:

• A custom CPU and GPU based on AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures respectively with the latter providing 12 Teraflops (FP32/Single Precision) of power!
  

  The 9th generation of video game consoles is mere months away and Microsoft has just confirmed a good deal of information!

  • This means that on paper, the XBOX Series X will be faster than last year’s RTX 2080 Super (11.15 TFLOPs) and 2017’s RX Vega 56 (10.5 TFLOPs) when their boost clocks are enabled while totally obliterating mid-to-high-end GPUs like the RTX 2060 Super and the Radeon RX 5700 XT.
• Support for Variable Rate Shading, which allows for more efficient usage of GPU cycles, and Hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing which brings about much better lighting and reflections
• SSD Storage for better loading times although there’s no word on which configurations will be offered
• Dynamic Latency Input for reducing controller latency, support for HDMI 2.1 and 120 FPS gaming

Software-wise, the article also promises some pretty nice stuff including:

• Full compatibility with XBOX One titles with improved visuals and performance
  

  As per Microsoft’s wording, the XBOX Series X will probably be fully compatible with XBOX One titles!

  • Backward-compatible XBOX 360 and original XBOX games will also work on the XBOX Series X
  • XBOX One gaming accessories are also supported
  • The wording on backwards compatibility with the XBOX One isn’t fully clear but other media outlets seem to have understood full compatibility as well.
• Quick Resume which is a feature letting you pick up multiple games from where you left
• Smart Delivery, a feature that has you buying a game only once and getting the best available version for both the XBOX One and XBOX Series X
• Support for the XBOX Game Pass

When will the XBOX Series X be released? How much will it cost? What else is known?

When it comes to price, Microsoft hasn’t revealed much but it’s expected that the console will cost somewhere in the $400-500 range

While Microsoft has confirmed a good deal of information, some other pieces of important information are still up to speculation. One of these is the release date which is believed to be somewhere around the 2020 Holiday Season meaning that we can expect a release before the year’s out and when it comes to price, somewhere in the $400-500 range is what’s being expected.

Other than this, some leaks also suggest that the XBOX Series X will come with a 1TB SSD and a 3.7GHz CPU even though CPU frequency isn’t too relevant as a benchmark nowadays. However, these reports are unverified and things may change before the actual release later this year so they should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Conclusion

While the world is looking forward to the 9th generation of gaming, retro gaming is still massively popular and yesterday, byuu 1.0/1.1 were released which is a 25-system emulator combining the simplicity of bsnes with the high degree of accuracy provided by higan!