GamersNexus has confirmed in a teardown video that the Xbox Series X Devkits have 40 GB of GDDR6 memory on the motherboard.
Xbox Series X devkits confirmed to feature 40GB GDDR6 memory in 20 Samsung, teardown reveals
Currently, the Microsoft Xbox Series X consoles feature 16GB of full system memory for shipping to gamers around the world. While the memory is all GDDR6, it is divided into two segments, a faster 10 GB segment that operates at 560 Gbps (14 Gbps @ 320-bit), and a slower 6 GB segment that operates at 336 Gbps ( 14) Gbps @ 192-bit). This configuration is used in all XSX consoles, but the Developer Kit has more than twice as much memory as the top-tier console.
In the tear-down, you can see Steve Burke being shocked by the fact that the Xbox Series X also has 10 GDDR6 memory chips on the back and 10 on the front. These specific dyes, labeled as ‘K4ZAF325BM-HC14’ SKUs, provide 16 Gb (2GB) of capacity per die and memory speeds of up to 14 Gbps. These memory chips operate in a 320-bit bus interface and provide bandwidth of up to 560 Gb/s. This is the same bandwidth as the Xbox Series X, but instead of using the segmented approach as in the retail unit, it splits all the memory.
Xbox Series X DevKit PCB Shots (Image Credit: GamersNexus):
Now the primary reason the Xbox Series X DevKit has such a large pool of memory is clear. They are designed for developers and the 40GB GDDR6 buffer can help debug games with uncompressed textures, while it’s still not optimized. It’s a huge memory buffer for anything aside from what the developer is using. The current flagship gaming desktop graphics card comes with 24GB of GDDR6 memory capacity, so the XSX DevKit provides 66% of its memory. Only a workstation card such as the RTX A6000 offers the same amount of memory at 48 GB GDDR6 and that thing costs about $5000 US.
Aside from the huge memory pool, some of the other interesting parts of the Xbox Series X DevKit teardown are its cooling design. The enclosure, which looks similar to the Xbox One console, has a larger blower-style and a smaller blower-type cooler that blows air out of the chassis. The large blower sits atop a large heatsink that covers the Xbox Series X ‘Project Scarlett’ SOC. It consists of a copper block made of aluminum fin and copper heat pipe. The whole block is a large vapor chamber and has padded surfaces that make contact with the GDDR6 memory.
Series X DevKit Cooling Teardown (Image Credit: GamersNexus):
Unfortunately, these specifications and designs are limited to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X DevKit only and even if you can snag one of the online listings, you still won’t be able to play any games on it because the system will lock you out immediately. ,
