Xbox One X is now available across the world, and it’s the newest member of the Xbox family that Microsoft is positioning to bring true 4K gaming and entertainment to the living room.
The only problem at this point in time is that the list of Xbox One X Enhanced titles still short. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t be able to take advantage of the console’s powerful hardware.
Xbox One X is member of the Xbox family, which means that your entire library of games will work in the new console. Furthermore, every compatible game will be automatically enhanced in some way, thanks to the impressive new hardware.
Xbox One X makes existing games run better
On Xbox One X, you can expect the following improvements for existing games:
- Faster loading times.
- Smoother frame rates.
- Improved textures filtering.
- Higher resolution on games that employ dynamic scaling.
Alongside these improvements, the console will enforce Vertical Sync (Vsync), which means no more tearing in games. However, those 720p and 900p games will need to get updates to achieve higher pixel counts.
Better texture filtering and higher resolution
While there is no doubt that the graphics performance is pretty massive, you shouldn’t expect the full 6 teraflops on existing games, because it’s not going to happen. Actually, you should only expect up to 3 teraflops of graphical power for existing games. However, there are a number of improvements to note.
For example, every game you play on Xbox One X has 16 times anisotropic filtering, which is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures, and that’s a welcome feature in a lot of games.
In the case of Halo 5, an update will be available to support 4K, but even without the patch, the game already looks better than before without dynamic scaling.
Xbox One X faster loading times
Xbox One X loads games a lot faster, and it does this in three different ways. First, the hard drive included in the new console has a maximum bandwidth of 60 megabytes per second, up against the 40 megabytes per second found in the Xbox One S.
Second, the 8-core custom AMD Jaguar processor is 31 percent faster, which translates in quicker assets decompression, and third, games load faster because of the extra gigabytes of GDDR5 memory, which the console uses to cache content using the free memory as RAM Disk.
Although loading times will vary on every game, you should expect up to twice the loading speed compared to the Xbox One S for existing games.
Frame rates improvements
In addition, the new console delivers better lock target frame rates. While you’ll see games locked at 30fps on both consoles, some games will start dropping frame rates in the based model. However, on Xbox One X using scaling to a higher resolution will still maintain the target frame rates.
Although backward compatible games will run faster on Xbox One X, their performance will always depend on the game, but you can expect frame rates with improvements of up to 80 percent.
When looking into the processor, the new Xbox still boost performance, but you can expect it to be between 20 to 35 percent faster than Xbox One S.
On graphics that’s where Xbox One X shines. On this new console, you can expect up to twice the performance of the based model.
However, only expect 3 teraflops for backward compatible games, not the full 6 teraflops, and some games are locked at 30fps, as such don’t expect them to run a 60fps. Though, games with unlocked frame rates may perform better, and even more if they receive patches to increase their frame rates.
Wrapping things up
While existing games won’t magically run at 60fps and use the 6 teraflops of graphic power on Xbox One X, what’s important to note here is that your entire library will be improved if they didn’t hit their performance targets for Xbox One S.
However, it’s worth noting that not every game will hit their target frame rates, but in more games, the performance will be much better; they’ll show better image quality, and faster loading times.
Xbox One X is available now worldwide, and you can get yours from one of these retailers:
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].