GamersNexus confirmed in a teardown video that the Xbox Series X development kit features 40 GB of GDDR6 memory on the motherboard.
Xbox Series X Devkits confirmed to feature 40 GB of GDDR6 memory in 20 Samsung chips, teardown reveals
Currently, the Microsoft Xbox Series X console for gamers around the world comes with 16 GB of full system memory. While the memory is all GDDR6, it is divided into two segments, a faster 10 GB segment running at 560 GB/s (14 Gbps @ 320-bit) and a slower 6 GB segment running at 336 GB /s (14 Gbps @ 192 bits). This is the configuration used by all XSX consoles, but the developer kit has more than double the memory of the top console.
In the teardown, you can see that Steve Burke is shocked by the fact that the Xbox Series X has 10 GDDR6 memory chips on the back and 10 on the front. Labeled as the “K4ZAF325BM-HC14” SKU, these specific dies offer 16 Gb (2 GB) capacity and memory speeds of up to 14 Gbps per die. These memory chips operate over a 320-bit bus interface and provide up to 560 GB/s of bandwidth. This is the same bandwidth as the Xbox Series X, but split across all memory chips instead of using a segmented approach as retail units.
Xbox Series X Devkit PCB photos (Image credit: GamersNexus):
Now, the main reason for having such a large memory pool on the Xbox Series X dev kit is obvious. They are designed for developers, and the 40 GB GDDR6 buffer can help debug games with uncompressed textures, which are still unoptimized. Except for developer use, it’s a ridiculously large memory buffer. Current flagship gaming desktop graphics cards come with 24 GB GDDR6 memory capacity, so the XSX Devkit provides 66% more memory. Only workstation cards like the RTX A6000 offer a similar amount of memory at 48 GB GDDR6, and that stuff costs a fortune (around $5000).
Aside from the huge memory pool, some other interesting parts of the Xbox Series X Devkit teardown are its cooling design. The case, which looks similar to the Xbox One console, has a large blower-style cooler and a smaller blower-style cooler that directs air out of the case. The larger blower sits on top of the large heatsink that covers the Xbox Series X ‘Project Scarlett’ SOC. It consists of a copper block consisting of aluminum fins and copper heat pipes. The entire block is a large vapor chamber with a padded surface that contacts the GDDR6 memory chips.
X-Series Devkit Cool Teardown (Image credit: GamersNexus):
Unfortunately, these specs and designs are limited to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X dev kit, and even if you were able to find one from an online listing, you wouldn’t be able to play any games on it, as the system would immediately lock you in.
