Microsoft Xbox Series X Development Kit Teardown
Recently, Gamers Nexus purchased an Xbox Series X development kit and disassembled it, which is a special customized platform for game development.
The Microsoft Xbox Series X Development Kit obtained by Gamers Nexus has also become the XDK. It is the 2020 version. It is equipped with an AMD APU codenamed “Scarlett”, an 8-core CPU with Zen 2 architecture, and an RDNA 2 architecture GPU with 56 CUs. In general, the core specifications of the development kit are the same as the normal retail version, but the clock may be different.
After dismantling, it can be seen that the biggest difference between this XDK and the commercially available Xbox Series X console is the memory, which is equipped with 40GB of GDDR6 memory with a speed of 14 Gbps. The larger memory in the development kit is mainly used for debugging, frame rate analysis, and recording detailed logs, and game developers can also decompress game builds. The retail version of the Xbox Series X on the market generally replaces 16GB of memory into three parts: the first is 10GB@320-bit for graphics processing; the second, 3.5GB@192-bit is used as system memory; the third is 2.5GB@192-bit for the operating system. It is not clear whether the division of XDK memory is consistent with the retail Xbox Series X version, or if there is a difference.
In fact, XDK can be seen from time to time on platforms such as eBay, but the price is much more expensive than the retail version. The current price on eBay is about 1350 euros, and it is a version banned by Microsoft. This means that these devices will not work properly, even if you want to run the game offline. For Xbox fans, if you buy this type of device, it can only be used as a collection.
