Rumor: Xbox Series S to Include 4TF GPU for $299 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 August 2020 / 5,454 Views
There is a rumor going around that Microsoft is working on a weaker next generation console to compliment the more powerful Xbox Series X. The console has been codenamed Lockhart, but is expected to have the name of Xbox Series S if the rumors are true.
Sources speaking with Chinese site MyDrivers say that the Xbox Series S will cost $299 at launch. For that price it won't include an optical drive, which is the same as the cheaper Xbox One S model - the All-Digital Edition. The other big difference is the far weaker GPU where it will have 4 teraflops of power, compared to the 12 teraflops of the Xbox Series X. It will also include 16 GB of RAM, 12 GB for the GPU and 4 GB for the OS, as well as an AMD Ryzen APU with 4 GHz of power.
Despite the $299 price thanks to AMD's RDNA technology it will be more powerful than the current most powerful console on the market, the Xbox One X. This is despite the Xbox Series S having 4 teraflops of GPU power, compared to the Xbox One 6 teraflops.
This should be treated as a rumor until Microsoft confirms the Xbox Series S is a real console. 
Thanks NotebookCheck.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Digital Foundry did a great article on this, and I was shocked by the results, since I didn't think the 4TF Series S rumor made any sense either. They took a bunch of PC games, and ran them at the Xbox One X equivalent settings. In most cases this was the HIgh/Very High PC setting. They then ran it on two different Radeon GPUs, one older card at roughly 4TF and then the Radeon 5700 XT, a 10TF card. The ran the older card at 1080p, and the Radeon 5700 XT at full 4K.
The results were crazy. The 5700 XT at 4K usually did 50-70 fps. So an Xbox Series X, at 12TF with a newer GPU architecture, would have no problem at locked 60fps/4K using those settings. And the surprise to me was the older card, running every game at high/very high settings at 1080p, did 60-100 fps in every title. This all but proves this strategy could work for Microsoft. The games could have literally the exact same graphics settings, but Series X running at fixed 4K and Series S at fixed 1080p, both 60 fps. Microsoft could even make that a mandatory settings requirement for the developers.
It's also worth considering any game a 9TF PS5 could run at 4K, the Series S could potentially run at 1440p. If the Series S have X1X GPU power, then it will still do 4K in some content as well.
1080p more like the lower end of what we expect from it, in practice it may have resolutions often higher than 1080p.
If the PS5 is more than $399, this could be a really good move for MS. Especially if MS hammers it will play many of the same popular games with similar visuals and performance, albeit with a lower resolution. The more expensive PS5 is, the more appealing Series S could look.
It explains why Sony arent revealing the price yet.
There are rumors Sony is also doing two consoles as well I read. I don't think anyone comes into this gen with an advantage though. With BC being on both system who's going to want to leave their trophies and games behind? You'd have to give them some really good reasons to do so. I only left MS because of how bad the reveal was but once they reversed course it was to late I didn't trust them.
@Azzanation - Nobody has talked price, but rumors thus far seem to be mostly accurate.
@method114 - MS can't make a significant number of people jump ship from Sony. But maybe some users will buy a Series S to access more games. A cheaper Series S option may also encourage users to move from 8th gen to 9th gen faster.
Personally as a consumer, I think a cheaper PS5 would be a great idea as well. I skipped the Pro because it was a modest upgrade. A low end PS5 would be a significant upgrade though.
@Method114 You just anwsered your own post. You changed ship so that means gamers can and will.
You know what gamers do, they buy consoles based on games and if Xbox offers great games than expect those gamers to invest. Remember you cannot play 1st party MS games on PS (aside from Minecraft)
@azzanation yes but it took me losing all my old games and realizing I can't buy used games anymore (something I relied on heavily back then) to switch. I didn't want to switch. I wanted to keep my achievements. Now with Sony I have to give up my trophies and I have to give up my old games as well. I have hundreds of games on my ps4 I'd lose so much switching at this point. BC wasn't a thing when the new consoles came out before and it will be much harder to get people to switch because of it. I'm not saying no one will switch I Just doubt we see many people switch and I think BC will be a big reason for that.
@Method114 People can have two accounts, its not like when you switch over your Xbox or PS account deactivate. Gamers have been changing platforms all the time and nothing is telling people you cannot have both eventually. You are looking at it as you can only have 1 system.
I have dozen accounts for all platforms and ill use them when i feel the times are right.
@Azzanation I agree with everything you said. My statements are simply about what's more likely to happen. What's more likely to happen IMO is people buy 1 console and they decide to keep the one that lets them transfer all their games from the previous system to the new one. Sure people can have multiple systems that's what I have. Switch, Gaming PC, and Ps4 Pro. Every single person I game with though only has 1. Not everyone is into gaming the way we are on this site. My point is simply that Xbox has a hard road ahead of them getting people to switch over. Which is why I think it was smart of them to move away from trying to compete with Sony and Nintendo and focus on just expanding as much as they can. If the studios they bought can deliver great games next gen well then I'm about to have one of the best gens in gaming between my PS5 and gaming PC.
Same graphics as Series X but at 1080p at the least, depending on the game of course. If true this could be a big advantage for those who don’t care too much about 4K.
I have to admire the XB strategy here. They seem to be going for both the power and price crowns. I have no idea if that will work, or just confuse the market. But, I like the fact that they're trying a different approach (apparently).
The market still buys base consoles over upgrades because it's cheaper. Much of the market is also digital sales now. Therefore they can just treat the Series S as base specs but is only digital, it seems pretty low risk at this point.
I don't get how they will have games that can run on both without holding games back to support the 4TF version.
The easiest comparison would be a PC running all the same specs except graphics card. As long as all other specs are the same, its simply a matter of adjusting the graphics settings for the capabilities of the card.
That can be done by simply lowering the resolution or even some of the graphics settings if necessary. That's pretty much what developers did for X1's lower GPU power compared to PS4. Developers could create anything they wanted with PS4 as the lead, while the X1 release often had some visual compromises.
Reduce the resolution from 4k to 1080p and you already saved yourself 4x the GPU power, now take out things like Raytracing and you again saved yourself a butt ton of power. Series S will be like a low/mid PC, will run the games just not at its highest.
MS is making it sound like people don't get the concept of a new console generation. Everybody understands that support for their current consoles will dry out and that the new consoles will have a tolerable price that's in line with what they paid before (somewhere between $399 and $499). So why all this cross-gen stuff, and why release a weak sauce $299 console and a super premium $599+ at the same time? The 2 consoles will just get in each other way, while Sony steam rolls them with a "normal" next gen console. It just makes no sense lol.
The reason 4TF can beat the 6TF that you find in the XBone X is because of the CPU. Those Jaguar CPUs found in the XBone and PS4 are hot trash by today's standards.... The extra RAM and the SSD are the icing on the cake. Remember that TFLOPS are only referring to the GPU.... Memory bandwidth anyone?
12 GB for the GPU and 4 GB for the OS? What about the CPU?
There should just be one console version. If there is going to be an underpowered version, that will just hold back full potential of the high end version. You'd want games taking full advantage of the gpu/cpu, not scaled back to work on the other.
It won't hold anything back. Resolution eats up a ton of GPU power. Lowering the resolution is a great way to get a game to run on any old potato.
4TF? Might as well stick with the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X at that power range.
So true, please excuse the tears on others behalf.
4tf are fine, on pc even demanding games run fine with a 4tf card on 1080. ps4 / xbox one s biggest bottleneck is the cpu, even the cheaper ryzen cpus are much better than the old jaguar ones. and this will make the biggest difference the next generation.
@withdreday did you even read the article? Clearly stats the 4TF will outpreform the Pro and X.
If it was actually equal to Pro's 4TF that would be a big problem. Fortunately it's not.
Sounds trash, not many people will buy without optical either.
Half of console games sales have suddenly become digital. To be fair though, that's likely because better deals and the data on discs is becoming increasingly useless.
We are getting to a point where owning a game means you have some sort of DRM free or pirated copy.
Essay Pro