Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox One won’t be getting the 12GB of RAM upgrade that was recently rumoured.
It was hinted that the Xbox One would get a RAM spec boost from 8GB to 12GB to help the next-generation console battle the PS4 come launch.
However, Microsoft’s Product Planning Manager Albert Penello has now put that rumour to bed,
“Glad you all like the headset. We’re not going to 12GB, just to be clear. Feeling great about game performance – stuff is looking killer”, Penello tweeted.
He asserted that the Xbox One specs sheet may well change before launch, seeing as that November window is still a few months away yet.
“There are several months until the consoles launch, and [as] any student of the industry will remember, specs change,” wrote Penello on NeoGaf. “I believe the debate on this could give some light to why we don’t want to engage in a specification debate until both boxes are final and shipping.”
Although the Xbox One won’t be getting a RAM upgrade, Microsoft has confirmed that its next-generation console will receive a GPU tweak prior to its November launch.
Marc Whitten, Chief Product Officer for Xbox One and Corporate Vice President of Xbox, has announced during a Major Nelson podcast that the Xbox One GPU speed has been increased by around 6.6 per cent.
“Since E3, an example is we’ve dropped in what we internally call our mono driver. It’s our graphics driver that really is 100 per cent optimised for the Xbox One hardware,” said Whitten. “Almost all of our content partners have picked it up now and I think it’s made a really nice improvement.”
The new mono driver will help illuminate any potential performance issues, coupled with the new eSRAM which has a higher speed with a lower latency to help combat the lower speed RAM contained within the Xbox One in comparison to the PS4.
“That’s the time where you start tweaking the knobs. Either your theory was right dead on, or you were a little too conservative, or you were a little too aggressive. It’s actually been really good news for us, an example of that is we’ve tweaked up the clock speed on our GPU from 800MHz to 853MHz.”
Next read our Xbox One vs PS4 comparison.
