Xbox One X vs Xbox One S: Is an Upgrade Worth It?

By Edward Leano, Christian Post Contributor Wednesday, July 12, 2017

The Xbox One X, formerly known as Microsoft's Project Scorpio, has been revealed by the company at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June. For Xbox One S owners, is the new console, dubbed "The World's Most Powerful Console," worth the $500 to upgrade to?

The comparison is worth it for Xbox fans with 4K televisions, as the compelling feature of the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S is their ability to play games at 4K resolution. A display capable of 4K is needed to take full advantage of the two consoles.

4K resolution is also called Ultra High Definition and has four times the number of pixels of the standard High Definition display, or 1080p.

At 3,840 by 2,160 pixels, 4K games need a lot of computing power from consoles, and the new Xbox One X promises "true 4K" resolution gaming while putting out consistent frame rates for supported games.

To run games at 4K resolution without resorting to upscaling, the Xbox One X has specs similar to some of the top end PC builds at this time. The new console has 128 GB of Graphics Double Data Rate Type 5 (GDDR5) memory feeding data to an eight core Advanced Micro Devices processor running at 2.3 GHz.

The console also includes a custom graphics processing unit capable of 6 Teraflops to render scenes at full 4K.

Meanwhile, the specs of the older Xbox One S look downright modest when compared side by side with the new console. Its custom AMD processor runs at 1.75 GHZ, with 8 GB of DDR3 memory.

The Radeon GPU of the Xbox One S is capable of 1.23 Teraflops of computing performance, making it capable of upscaled 4K scenes at a decent frame rate.

The Xbox One X is worth $499 when it becomes available on Nov. 7. It's almost double the price of the Xbox One S, which is now worth $249 for its cheapest bundles.