31 Days Later
HWM Singapore|February 2021
Microsoft Xbox Series X
Aaron Yip
31 Days Later

AT A GLANCE

CPU Custom AMD Zen 2, 3.8GHz, 7nm

GPU Custom AMD RDNA 2, 12 TFLOPS

MEMORY 16GB GDDR6

STORAGE 1TB NVME SSD

PRICE $699

Reviewing a gaming console isn’t quite the same as, say, reviewing a graphics card or a smartphone. A new machine is traditionally launched every five years; the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro were mid-life upgrades, extending that generation’s life cycle to eight years.

So, with the Xbox Series X, I took a longer-term approach to reviewing it so as to have a better gauge on how it fares (I’m doing the same for the PlayStation 5 as well, so do stay tuned for that one).

Personally, I’m a big fan of the Xbox Series X’s boxy monolithic design. The look and feel are clearly an evolution of the existing Xbox One X. My only concern was that the ‘proper’ vertical placement of the console meant it might not fit in TV consoles or Hi-Fi racks.

The Xbox Series X is powered by an AMD custom Zen CPU with eight cores at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT) and a custom RDNA 2 Navi GPU with 12 teraflops, 52 CUs at 1.825GHz. It is an impressively powerful console, but the CPU and GPU only tell half the story.

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