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Xbox One S Console Vertical Right Angle

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One S and Xbox Scorpio earlier this year, the company's strategy raised more than a few eyebrows. While the Xbox One midlife refresh was widely expected, there'southward the run a risk Xbox One Southward sales volition suffer if customers choose to wait for the significantly more powerful Project Scorpio, which is currently expected to launch at Christmas, 2017. Now that the refresh has dropped, does the Xbox One S pack enough improvements to justify its purchase?

The Xbox One South SoC has been overhauled and is at present congenital on a 16nm FinFET process at TSMC. Die size has decreased from 363mmtwo to 240mm2. The new flake also includes an updated HEVC decoder, HDMI two.0 back up, and HDCP 2.2. All of these changes were integrated on-die, though the GPU is yet based on AMD's earlier GCN architectures rather than Polaris.

XboneS-Eurogamer

The Xbox One S's motherboard. Image past Eurogamer

Microsoft has said very picayune about whatsoever operation improvements in the Xbox One S, merely extensive testing by Eurogamer has shown that the SoC's GPU is sometimes faster than its predecessor. The GPU'due south base clock has been increased to 914MHz, up from 853MHz in the original console. This small-scale boost as well increased the maximum theoretical bandwidth of the Xbox One's ESRAM cache, up to 219GB/s from 204GB/s (really accomplished bandwidth in games is typically much lower).

The reason Microsoft didn't advertise these changes is considering the operation gains are game-specific and difficult to quantify. Average improvements were around seven%, Eurogamer reports, while specific in-the-moment boosts could be much college, up to 11%. Specifically, information technology saw a 7% comeback in Project Cars, an 8.i% improvement in Hitman (in some stages, 2.v% in others), a vii% comeback in Rise of the Tomb Raider, four% in Arkham Knight, and admittedly no improvement in Fallout iv, where the Xbox One Due south and Xbox 1 performed identically. With no way to declare the Xbox Ane South unilaterally faster in any given configuration, Microsoft downplayed the improvements altogether.

HDR, 4K, and organisation pattern

Ars Technica has also published a review of the Xbox One, just while they similar a number of changes that the new console offers, the Christmas 2017 release date for Scorpio makes it harder to recommend the Xbox 1 Due south today. The XBoneS has a number of improvements, including a xl% smaller chassis, significantly quieter operation, a vertical stand up option, 4K Blu-ray (UHD Blu-ray), 4K streaming support from services like Netflix, and support for high dynamic range (HDR) content. The controller has also been reworked slightly, and the box is, on the whole, significantly nicer than it was before. Ars wasn't able to test HDR, unfortunately; the HDR-capable brandish that Dell sent over refused to play overnice with the new platform.

Correct at present, the simply Xbox Ane Southward on auction is the 2TB model for $399, a 500GB variant will ship for $299 on August 27. After reading multiple reviews on the platform, we're not sure we'd recommend information technology, either. If you but want a basic console, the one-time variant of the Xbox I has been discounted to $249. A seven% operation improvement in some games simply isn't worth the xx% cost deviation between the old panel and the 500GB variant of the Xbox One South. Microsoft could always sweeten the pot with game deals, but nosotros're strictly comparison the hardware specs and prices.

The Xbox One Southward makes a lot more sense if you've already started investing in 4K, HDR, and UHD Blu-ray support, but it's really only a short-term rough-and-tumble. Microsoft is technically enabling 4K games on the Xbox One Due south, but yous'd have to use very simple graphics to render in that mode with acceptable performance, and uncomplicated graphics don't tend to benefit much from 4K in the starting time place. It'south not clear if even Scorpio will be able to hit 4K natively, but information technology should at to the lowest degree offer essentially better performance in 1080p. The Xbox I South only really offers half of the equation.

Microsoft's hardcore fans should find enough hither to satisfy them. Just gamers on a tight upkeep should be well-served by the cheaper $249 Xbox One, or by keeping the Xbox One they already have, while those who care about game performance should wait for either the PlayStation Neo or Projection Scorpio itself.