Xbox Series S vs Series X spec-by-spec comparison

[enemys]

Great, a "next gen" console that has less GPU power and less RAM than what's available today.

That seems like it'll age well and convince developers to increase graphics fidelity and make bigger more expansive world's, oh wait...

Honestly don't care for the price, the point of a "next gen" console to to up the game again, move technology on and get developers to build something that was not possible before.

This box is just an Xbox One X with an SSD and better CPU basically.

Yup, you only get better IO and CPU and a slight cutback in RAM. GPU is actually about the same as X1X, since RDNA has much better real world performance per FLOPS than Polaris. And that is basically ALL that is needed for "bigger, more expansive worlds" and "something that was not possible before" - current-gen games aren't particularly limited by graphics, but by storage speed and CPU power. A bit more RAM might have been useful, too, but supposedly Sampler Feedback brings big savings here, so effectively games should be less memory limited as well. And while it might not benefit graphic fidelity much, it will certainly improve framerates by removing any CPU bottlenecks.

So... The Series S does exactly what you want, minus major graphic improvements - but that's the point of the console, get next-gen solutions cheaper by sacrificing some graphic quality. Why are you mad, exactly?

 

[Burty117]

Why are you mad, exactly?

Not mad, disappointed, each new gen of consoles has brought with it some pretty major graphical improvements, I guess this will be the gen where games don't really look much better than the last, just run better.

My real gripe is, Developers always program around the weakest machine, everyone else gets at most some better shadows and a better resolution. It's bad enough PC has to endure mostly rubbish console ports but now, going into the "next gen" it won't even look any better.

 

[neeyik]

This box is just an Xbox One X with an SSD and better CPU basically.

I would argue that it's definitely not as straight forward a comparison as that. Yes the paper specs (see above) don't look great but RDNA is a hugely better architecture than GCN 4.0 (Polaris). The latter is found in the likes of the Radeon RX 590, and if you look at how well the RX 5500 does against it, despite having half the shaders, you can see that the Series S shouldn't be as bad as it does look, at first glance:

 

[Irata]

Not mad, disappointed, each new gen of consoles has brought with it some pretty major graphical improvements, I guess this will be the gen where games don't really look much better than the last, just run better.

My real gripe is, Developers always program around the weakest machine, everyone else gets at most some better shadows and a better resolution. It's bad enough PC has to endure mostly rubbish console ports but now, going into the "next gen" it won't even look any better.

But it‘s essentially the same CPU, just clocked slightly lower. It has less memory due to the lower resolution, SSD is probably also a bit slower but it needs to load smaller textures. The rest of the features are the same as far as I can see.

 

[enemys]

Not mad, disappointed, each new gen of consoles has brought with it some pretty major graphical improvements, I guess this will be the gen where games don't really look much better than the last, just run better.

My real gripe is, Developers always program around the weakest machine, everyone else gets at most some better shadows and a better resolution. It's bad enough PC has to endure mostly rubbish console ports but now, going into the "next gen" it won't even look any better.

Most of the time better shadows, assets, draw distance, object count and resolution/framerate are just about everything that the higher GPU power brings. Look at Switch games - even though its GPU is very slow, you can still find Switch titles with ambient occlusion, volumetric lighting, per-pixel motion blur, depth of field, TAA, screen space reflections and other effects. The graphic effects variety can be mostly retained - it's the quality that takes the hit. And in the case of XSS vs XSX and PS5 we have 100% same hardware capabilities - their GPUs differ only in power, not in feature set. Outside of some computationally expensive eye candy, you should get the same effects across the board, just differing in quality and displayed at different framerate/resolution/draw distance/LOD.

 

[bexwhitt]

There's an awful lot of moaning in this thread. I for one avoided buying physical media as I can't do with the faff, also I don't have any blu-rays and have no desire to play them or DVD's. The 512 GB is a bit skimpy by modern standards but SSD chips at that speed are not cheap.

 

[dnous]

Great, a "next gen" console that has less GPU power and less RAM than what's available today.

That seems like it'll age well and convince developers to increase graphics fidelity and make bigger more expansive world's, oh wait...

Honestly don't care for the price, the point of a "next gen" console is to up the game again, move technology on and get developers to build something that was not possible before.

This box is just an Xbox One X with an SSD and better CPU basically.

That is a very simple way of looking at it. There is no doubt that there is a vast difference in CPU power. Microsoft basically went from netbook lever CPU (Jaguar) to regular desktop CPU (Zen2). That alone is a vast difference, as it removes a serious bottleneck when comparing it to the Xbox One X.

A good indication of how TFLOPS are irrelevant beteween architectures is by taking a look at the RX580 (6.17 TFLOPS) vs the 5500XT (5.2 TFLOPS). According to Anandtech's review of the Sapphire card it is on average 8% faster than the RX580 even though it has less TFLOPS.

If you look at the XSS as a total package, you are looking at a system that can deliver a whole lot more performance, due to the removal of bottlenecks (CPU and HDD) and an increase in GPU power. How much improvement the new architecture can bring is something we will find out on October 28th.

 

[EdmondRC]

The XSS sounds like a great deal at $299 if you don't plan on upgrading to a 4K television anytime soon. It makes even more sense if MS and Sony keep up with the mid-gen consoles. Then if you do upgrade to 4K you can get an even better version 2 years from now without missing out on much of anything. That being said, marrying it to a 4K television will still likely result in decent looking games. However, being primarily a PC gamer and having a 9 + TF graphics card currently in my build, I don't believe that this 4TF card is going to really deliver 1440p @ 60fps. Now I know that TF ratings are not necessary indicative of actual performance, especially when the gap isn't that large. But, there are already titles out that I can't play at Ultra settings and 1440p resolution. And that's without any ray tracing capabilities at all. At 1080p I think the XSS will be fine (performance at 1080p might even be better than the XSX at 4K), but 1440p is likely to stretch its capabilities. There is still a huge performance difference between 1080p and 1440p as 1440p is nearly twice the pixels to fill.

 

[Aryassen]

Wow...I'm impressed with the specs for the bigger brother, and like mentioned above, I couldn't build a PC with similar performace anywhere near that price. Will be interesting to see how power consumption and noise will turn out during the tests, and if that stupid "split" memory structure is going to create any problems in real life (I hope not, and I guess they must have had their reasons, but seriously, WTF? 10GB at 560GB/s and 6GB at 336GB/s???). Looking forward to see the first independent testings, and how it would compare to PS5...will bring popcorn

 

[gamerk2]

Most of the time better shadows, assets, draw distance, object count and resolution/framerate are just about everything that the higher GPU power brings. Look at Switch games - even though its GPU is very slow, you can still find Switch titles with ambient occlusion, volumetric lighting, per-pixel motion blur, depth of field, TAA, screen space reflections and other effects. The graphic effects variety can be mostly retained - it's the quality that takes the hit. And in the case of XSS vs XSX and PS5 we have 100% same hardware capabilities - their GPUs differ only in power, not in feature set. Outside of some computationally expensive eye candy, you should get the same effects across the board, just differing in quality and displayed at different framerate/resolution/draw distance/LOD.

Right. The question is, are the devs going to put in the effort to include those higher quality assets, or just dumb the entire generation down to XSS specs?

Microsofts entire strategy revolves around making devs do more work. Historically, that doesn't end up working well.

 

[3volv3d]

I think the look of the SX is quite alright, the SS is terrible looking and priced in my opinion, $299 for a digital only console? The fact it exists its not a problem, not everyone can afford a $499 console but $299 for this ugly looking thing without blue ray drive.... definitely not

I have to disagree. Firstly that digital only model is ugly, the grill is minging. Who in that meeting was like "yeah John that is a sweet grill, banging mate, you nailed it" and didn't sense the saracasm.
I bet they were like "F me John, did you really push that crap through to production, you dumb F... how we gonna market this usless donkey!"
Because secondly, I can imagine a smeg ton of children getting that for Xmas and crying that it ain't got the same power as the bigger one.
Competing with yourself when you are already competing with Sony just doesn't seem a smart move. That's Nintendos job to innovate and come up with new ideas.
Sony and MS have done well to copy anything Nintendo so far, but to try anything before Nintendo do well you Nintendon't !
I just can't see any reason for it's existence other than to make some people envious of those with the X, and then both are just gonna be jelly bout those with a PS5 hehehe. =P

 

[Tom Yum]

Xbox Series S would be a no-brainer for me, if it had a blu-ray drive. I don't need the processing power of the X (I have a PC for that), but the Series S looks to provide enough power for my couch gaming needs, except I refuse to be stuck with an internet only, we can take your games away at any time device. The cost of blu-ray drives can't be more than $50 or so at this sort of manufacturing scale.

 

[enemys]

Right. The question is, are the devs going to put in the effort to include those higher quality assets, or just dumb the entire generation down to XSS specs?

Microsofts entire strategy revolves around making devs do more work. Historically, that doesn't end up working well.

Yeah, that is a valid concern - something like that already happened at least a few times with X1X and PS4 Pro versions. This shouldn't be a big problem right away, as XSS is able to handle current high quality assets quite well, but it might be in a few years.

 

[Bamda]

The pricing honestly seems off to me. Theyre cutting A LOT of features. If it was 200usd I could see it but 300usd? Meh.

Really, please explain how you could build a system that can game at 1440p having a 8-Core CPU @ 3.6GHz, 512GB NVMe SSD, and GPU and system with 10GB GDDR6 RAM that cost $300. I will look forward to your amazing system build.

 

[Bamda]

Great, a "next gen" console that has less GPU power and less RAM than what's available today.

That seems like it'll age well and convince developers to increase graphics fidelity and make bigger more expansive world's, oh wait...

Honestly don't care for the price, the point of a "next gen" console is to up the game again, move technology on and get developers to build something that was not possible before.

This box is just an Xbox One X with an SSD and better CPU basically.

You are so out of touch its funny!

 

[Burty117]

You are so out of touch its funny!

How? Just look at literally every console launch up to now. It's a single console and it's the best the company can do at the time, it sets the bar for that generation.

However, since I posted in here I found out some more info, Microsoft is planning to give these away if you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, So that's their ultimate goal, make everything a subscription. They have been doing it with everything else in their product stack so it makes sense they're going in that direction.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Wow next gen console without 4K... great job on the digital one. Is that even considered next gen really? Still getting the PS5 over this again this gen.

 

[Bamda]

How? Just look at literally every console launch up to now. It's a single console and it's the best the company can do at the time, it sets the bar for that generation.

However, since I posted in here I found out some more info, Microsoft is planning to give these away if you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, So that's their ultimate goal, make everything a subscription. They have been doing it with everything else in their product stack so it makes sense they're going in that direction.

And that is a bad thing? I looked at those deals are sweet deals for the consumers to into one of these consoles.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Based on those comparisons S is a rip, should be $249 at most, I would get the full enchilada for sure. S should have had 26CUs, 6TFlops, 1.7GHz clocks for $299.

 

[Burty117]

And that is a bad thing? I looked at those deals are sweet deals for the consumers to into one of these consoles.

Well you're locked in for 2 years normally, so you're paying £600 for a half that, and then some console, I would say having access to the games pass as a bonus but the console only has 512GB SSD that's probably 400GB after formatting and OS so that's CoD and a couple of other games. I guess just pray internet is fast in your area so you can get through games quickly?

 

[Bamda]

Well you're locked in for 2 years normally, so you're paying £600 for a half that, and then some console, I would say having access to the games pass as a bonus but the console only has 512GB SSD that's probably 400GB after formatting and OS so that's CoD and a couple of other games. I guess just pray internet is fast in your area so you can get through games quickly?

The download of games is irrelevant since you are going to have to do that when you purchase one of these consoles. You save $45 on the Xbox S bundled deal, which is a great deal to get the console and games for the next two years.

 

[Burty117]

The download of games is irrelevant since you are going to have to do that when you purchase one of these consoles. You save $45 on the Xbox S bundled deal, which is a great deal to get the console and games for the next two years.

That seems like a terrible deal to me. Over £600 spent after 2 years and you have (by far) the least powerful "Next Gen" console and no space to store any of the games that come with the subscription...

 

[Kirby1]

Man a lot of people here have zero clue what they're talking about. We are in an era now where it makes sense to have different options for different resolutions. 1080p is still fine for smaller screens or people on a budget. All that developers are going to do for x/s games is change the resolution. Anything the series x can do at 4k, the s will be able to do at 1080p. It's just that simple. Doesn't need as much ram to run at as lower resolutions. Vram needs go up a lot at higher resolution which is why the series s has less ram, it's not targeting higher resolutions. The cpu is 97% the same on both series x/s consoles which is definitely not the case with the one x and the newer consoles, so any comparison there is just foolish. The SSD is the same speed on both series consoles, the s is just smaller.

Any pc gamer should know by now that the only difference between smooth performance at 1080p vs 4k is GPU power and a machine targeting 1080p doesn't need much power.

 

[Bamda]

That seems like a terrible deal to me. Over £600 spent after 2 years and you have (by far) the least powerful "Next Gen" console and no space to store any of the games that come with the subscription...

The number of games that can be installed on a 512GB SSD with an OS will be in the range of 6 to 10 games depending on the game size.

 

[Burty117]

The number of games that can be installed on a 512GB SSD with an OS will be in the range of 6 to 10 games depending on the game size.

Well no, 3-200 games depending on game. The SSD will be around 400-450GB usable to start with. CoD-200GB, Borderlands 3-112GB, Halo Collection-85GB.
That's 3 games. The whole point is, it's way too small. And rumour has it that the 1TB memory expansion modules are going to be north of $200.

So in order to hold any reasonable amount of games on it, you'd have spent over $800 for the weakest console in the "next gen". Yeah... Great Value...