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Microsoft Drops More Xbox Series X Tech Specs: Zen 2 + RDNA 2, 12 TFLOPs GPU, HDMI 2.1, & a Custom SSD

First and foremost, Microsoft is now confirming that the console's APU is using AMD's RDNA 2 architecture for the integrated GPU. Information about this architecture is still limited, but AMD previously disclosed that RDNA 2 would include hardware ray tracing functionality – something not present in RDNA (1) – and Microsoft in turn will be tapping this for their next game console. Microsoft, of course, already has significant experience with hardware ray tracing thanks to DirectX's own ray tracing functionality (DXR), so the company will be able to hit the ground running here, albeit with AMD hardware for the first time.

Microsoft's announcement also confirms for the first time that we're getting Variable Rate Shading (VRS) support. This is another feature that has been supported in DirectX for a bit now (and in rivals Intel & NVIDIA's GPUs), but isn't currently available in AMD's RDNA (1) lineup. A sampling optimization of sorts, variable rate shading allows for the shading rate for an area of pixels to be increased or decreased from the normal 1:1 ratio. The net impact is that an area can be oversampled to produce finer details, or undersampled to conserve resources. As the former is more of a niche use case for VR, we're far more likely to see undersampling in day-to-day usage. Especially with complex pixel shaders, when used correctly VRS is intended to give developers a way to improve the performance of their games for little-to-no perceptible impact on image quality.

Finally, as far as overall GPU performance is concerned, Microsoft's latest revelation finally gives us a performance estimate: 12 TFLOPs. While the company doesn't break this down into clockspeed versus compute units, this is none the less twice the GPU performance of the Xbox One X. Or for a more generational comparison, more than 9x the GPU performance of the original Xbox One.

Even at just 2x the performance of the Xbox One X, this is by all objective measures quite a bit of GPU horsepower. To put things in perspective, AMD's current fastest RDNA-based video card, the Radeon RX 5700 XT, only offers 10 TFLOPs of GPU performance. So the Xbox Series X, a device with an integrated GPU, is slated to offer more graphics performance than AMD's current flagship video card. Which, to be sure, doesn't mean the Xbox Series X is going to be more powerful than a PC (there's no getting around the fact that AMD has been trailing NVIDIA here), but it's clear that Microsoft has great ambitions for the console's graphics performance.

The giant APU/SoC inside of the console has been estimated to be around 405 mm². Making millions of the chips will require a significant portion of AMD's allocation of TSMC's "7nm" capacity.

Also at The Verge and Wccftech.

Previously: Microsoft Announces Xbox Series X for Late 2020 Release

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