While a recent report by Moore’s Law is Dead gave us a decent idea of what kind of power we can expect from the PS6, the YouTuber has also analyzed what he believes will be the core specifications powering Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox, dubbed Project Helix. Along with having focused on the performance differences between Project Helix’s AMD Magnus APU and the PS6’s Orion chip, he has gone into detail about what kind of a power boost the new console will offer over the Xbox Series X.
In performance terms, while Magnus will only have roughly 30 percent more compute units than its predecessor, enhancements brought in thanks to the newer RDNA 5 architecture account for a major boost. The report notes that each compute unit will be roughly 65 percent faster than those present in the Xbox Series X. Thanks to this, Moore’s Law is Dead also expects Microsoft to target frame rates beyond 120 FPS.
When it comes to pricing, Microsoft hasn’t been shy in the past about calling its next-generation hardware release a “premium” one. Considering the bill of materials for the Magnus APU, and the fact that AMD is targeting a $550 price tag for its next-gen graphics card based on similar technology, Microsoft could charge around $900 for the console if it were to sell it at cost. If the company actually wanted profits, however, expect the console to cost between $999 and $1200.
In the same video, the YouTuber had also spoken about the PS6. Comparing the two next-generation consoles, his report indicated that the Orion APU will be significantly smaller than Magnus, coming in at 280 mm-squared, compared to Magnus taking up 408 mm-squared. The latter’s larger footprint will also result in a higher bill of materials when compared to Orion, however.
The CPU of the Magnus APU is also expected to be more powerful than what we will see in the PS6, thanks to its inclusion of full Zen 6 cores rather than the competitor’s use of Zen 6c. Despite this, however, the practical power difference isn’t expected to be too large, since Microsoft is reportedly expecting quite a bit of software overhead due to Project Helix’s rumored hybrid nature of being halfway between a console and a gaming PC.
The GPU powering Magnus will have 68 RDNA 5 compute units, equipped with 4 shader engines, each of which has two shader arrays. The GPU will also have access to at least 24 MB of L2 cache. To take advantage of this, the APU as a whole will be equipped with a 192-bit memory bus with the possibility of up to 48 GB of GDDR7 RAM. There will also be a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of 110 TOPS (trillion operations per second) when running at 6 watts, and 46 TOPS when running at 1.2 watts.
Both Microsoft and Sony are reportedly also still assessing whether or not they want to delay their respective next-generation consoles. According to Moore’s Law is Dead, it tends to be more expensive for companies to change their plans, and rumors are indicating that the memory shortage situation will improve by the end of next year.
