The Xbox One X Review: Putting A Spotlight On Gaming
by Brett Howse on November 3, 2017 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Consoles
- Microsoft
- Xbox One
- Xbox
- Xbox One X
Additional Gameplay Footage
We've only had a few days with the console, but we have had a chance to try out some of the games. Using the Xbox Game Capture features, some gameplay was captured to get a sample of some of the performance and quality gains could be made with the Xbox One X. The Game Capture does compress the video though, so it is not as pristine as it would be while playing, and it also converts the HDR video to SDR to allow for the proper colors to be seen when you share the clips, although if you look at the following clips, it doesn't do a great job with the transition to SDR from HDR.
Not all of the games are yet ready for the Xbox One X yet though, with only a handful that have the Xbox One X Enhanced logo ready to go for the review. Gears of War 4 was one of the games, which we showed some images of earlier, and there were a couple more ready as well, including Disneyland Adventures.
Although it may seem like a game that wouldn't stress a system, in 4K and HDR, the textures and high resolution made an impact. Here's a quick video of the intro of this game on both the Xbox One, and the Xbox One X.
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One X in 4K HDR
One thing you notice playing the game is just how much more sharp everything is, especially things in the background. The castle comes into focus much earlier on the Xbox One X version of this video. As with Gears of War 4, there's still some issues with coloring on the HDR converted video. If you are doing a lot of gameplay capture, it may be best to set HDR to off. Also, there's a small hiccup at the start of the Xbox One X video, as the game is just finishing loading. This doesn't appear to happen once that load is complete.
Here's another clip from Forza Motorsports 7, which is one of the launch titles for 4K and HDR, but as of this review, the 4K support is not yet added, so this will be a demo of playing a title without the Enhanced option available. This is from the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, on the Curva Parabolica.
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One X
Even though the 4K support is not there, the game does support HDR, which improves the look of the game quite a bit, even though you can't see it in the SDR converted video. Forza is a pretty lean engine, so the developers are targetting 4K60 for this title. The aliasing of 1080p content in this game is pretty strong, so it will benefit a lot from the 4K update when it arrives. When it's available, we'll post another clip to show the differences.
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cmdrdredd - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
PS4 is doing the same thing.ncsaephanh - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Very cool how they basically put a 480's worth of gpu performance and still are able to run the console as quietly as they do. More competition is always a good thing, and I can't wait to see where we are 5 years from now.Drumsticks - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Thanks for the review, it was a nice read.Look at that power draw in Gears of War 4 (172W). I know that we can't make direct comparisons, but I wish we could find out if the One X was pegging the GPU at full load during that time. If so, a fully loaded GPU with slightly more hardware (6TF vs like 5.6?), and an 8 core CPU is drawing less power from the wall than an RX 480/580 draws by itself?
It's hard to say for sure unless we could somehow view GPU/CPU load at the same time, but still, how? It's hard to not come to the conclusion that this APU is much more efficient than Polaris. Just how much worse is GloFo versus TSMC Finfet?
InlineV - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Microsoft has developed a process for matching the power supply to the CPU/GPU to optimize the power profile at the factory. They haven't released details for how they do that but the results seem to speak for themselves.Stochastic - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
I just wanted to chime in and say well done! It's great to see Anandtech publish articles on popular consumer tech in a timely fashion. This is the best Xbox One X review I've seen yet--all the details you include are the reason I've continued reading Anandtech after all these years.Brett Howse - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Thanks!Wolfpup - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Fantastic article, as we expect from Anandtech!So bizarre about that Netflix bug, that they haven't fixed it (how hard can it be?) and replicated it on the PS4 Pro?!?
I love that the Xbox One has at least some backwards compatibility. Love that they're worrying about noise the system makes. Love the use of normal non-proprietary batteries.
Only aspects of the design I don't like are the non-replaceable hard drive (makes me parinoid it's going to die...although IF they do backwards compatibility from here on out, that's less of an issue) and the weird save system. I like being able to manually back up my saves! These cloud servies are flaky in my experience, and that's besides that I might not always want a save on someone's server, nor to use GB of bandwidth backing up saves (and how much space do they give us?)
But mostly it's a great design, and pretty darned exciting.
I'm controlling myself and not buying it until next year, as I've got a huge backlog, and among other things want to get through my PS4 exclusives first, but I'm going to standardize on Xbox One X for the backwards compatibility and controller with normal batteries.
Chad - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Great article!!Very impressed with msft right now, it seems they really took their time and properly engineered this thing. Low power, low noise, compact and efficient design packing a ton of power. Both hardware and software (the new OS) are homeruns for a (relatively) low cost. Impressive!
Rufnek - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
This would have been more impressive if they had attempted to do this for the actual One release.Instead the users got a HUGE console, with external power brick, a useless Kinect and garbage DDR3 ram with a 'special' 32mb bandwidth boost. What a joke that was compared to the smaller, faster, power brick included, GDDR5 console. The X is what M$ should have been aiming for. Hind sight is 20/20
Brett Howse - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Yes I'd like them to add removable storage, but I can also understand they want the packaging as clean as they can make it. USB storage is simple and effective.I've never had an issue with game backups to Xbox Live and to be honest I kind of prefer having it synced, especially with Play Anywhere now being a thing.