Microsoft has confirmed widespread suspicions by naming the Xbox Series X's GPU power - all 12 teraflops of it. A blog post from Phil Spencer has given a whole load more technical details than we've previously had access to, as well. 

The headliner is that the Xbox Series X will use both of AMD's new Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures under the hood, with a custom processor. That translates to twice the power of the Xbox One, and means that developers can "leverage 12 TFLOPs of GPU".

That should, in theory, translate to better framerates, and larger game worlds with higher levels of detail, according to the Xbox team. The Series X will also boast Variable Rate Shading, letting its hardware intelligently prioritise certain effects and details without impacting on the visual quality for the player, while improving performance. 

Finally, the much-discussed vogue for raytracing rears its head again, in the good sense - Microsoft says, as it has before, that hardware-accelerated DirectX raytracing will be possible, which could mean the most realistic and immersive lighting we've yet seen from a console. 

Microsoft confirms 12 teraflops of power and more technical specs for Xbox Series X image 2
Microsoft

Microsoft has also confirmed again that you'll be able to quickly hop between games held in paused states, meaning that long startup loading screens might be a thing of the past for your most-played games. There will be an SSD on board, regardless, to speed those loads up in the first place. 

The Series X will also take advantage of Dynamic Latency Input to make sure that your button presses on the controller are translated without any perceptible lag, while HDMI 2.1 will let the console automatically tell your TV to use its lowest latency mode when it's in use, to similarly minimise any possible visual interference. 

All this will be in service of visual performance that Microsoft says could let developers untether their framerates and reach heights of up to 120fps if they so desire. 

Cross-compatibility

The other main system that Microsoft fleshed out in its post is how cross-generational game support will work for the Series X, and it's sounding enticing for players. A new system it's calling Smart Delivery will mean that whenever you buy a Microsoft Game Studios game for Xbox, you'll own it for any console in the Xbox ecosystem that supports it, from the Xbox One onwards. 

The system will be available to all developers if they'd like to use it, and you'd assume those that do will be popular, since it effectively would bring an end to having to buy a game a second time to play it on a more powerful, later system. 

The juicy blog post promises more details on the console relatively soon, in the months to come, so we might not have long to wait to find out more.