Xbox One S is 7.1 percent faster than Xbox One, but it’s complicated

Microsoft announced its new Xbox One S console back at E3 in June, and began immediately downplaying the amount of Eurogamer's Digital Foundry has spent the last few days testing the new Xbox One S to unveil the exact performance boosts. The Xbox One S has a GPU clock-speed of 914Mhz, which is 7.1 percent faster than the 853Mhz on the original Xbox One.

Combined with some ESRAM bandwidth increases, that takes the compute performance up to 1.4 teraflops, up from the 1.31 teraflops in the original Xbox One. Sony's PlayStation 4 is still ahead with a 1.84 teraflop GPU, but Microsoft's increase isn't insignificant. While the raw power has increased, that doesn't necessarily translate into better gameplay in existing titles. Digital Foundry tested a variety of games and found that the improvement to games really depends on the title, and exactly what kind of gameplay is being performed.

The performance boost addresses some frame rate drops in titles locked at 30fps, and boosts frame rates by up to 9fps in some other games, but these are merely benchmark numbers. In real-world tests it's unlikely that most players would even notice the small boost, let alone be able to pick out scenes where it truly makes a difference. Microsoft was probably right to downplay the increase, and the company is now focused on its next Project Scorpio console. Project Scorpio looks set to bring a real performance increase that you can bet Microsoft will be quick to boast about next year.