Since the arrival of Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the dividing line between PC and console technology has become more of a blur – both last-gen and current-gen hardware from Microsoft and Sony are effectively integrated, customised PCs. Profoundly illustrating this is the arrival in Far Eastern markets of a PC motherboard that's actually based around the Xbox One processor. We've acquired one, tested it, and even run Cyberpunk 2077 on it – so what we have we learned from this bizarre experience?
While there is convergence in technologies – in terms of AMD CPU and GPU architecture at least – the last-gen consoles were still a novelty in their own way. The AMD Jaguar CPU cores were originally targeting low power laptops and tablets, only reaching the desktop PC market in a quad-core configuration with the AM1 'Kabini' platform, designed for basic tasks and even more basic gaming. Faced with a lack of CPU options that would work within a console, Microsoft and Sony adapted the same solution – strapping two of those quad-core CPU complexes together. If they couldn't have a fast CPU, they'd have a 'wide' one instead. The graphics side of the equation was more easily accommodated, tapping into AMD's new-for-the-time Graphics Core Next architecture.
All of which makes the board based on the Xbox One processor I acquired from AliExpress a somewhat weird proposition: its CPU architecture is extremely slow by PC standards, while its graphics are out of date, to put it kindly. Even more curious is that the processor is the original 28nm 'Durango' offering found in the hulking set-top box Xbox One – not the smaller, cooler, more efficient model found in Xbox One S. Markings on the chip may even suggest that the Chinese boards are built using left-over quality assurances samples – after all, we would assume that this chip left production some time back in 2016.