The Xbox Series X developer kit shows up in teardown with a display and 40 GB of GDDR6 VRAM

Gamers Nexus has managed to get its hands on an Xbox Series X Developer Kit, XDK for short. Purchased by auction, the YouTube channel was unable to test the XDK because of a ban for 'terms of use violations'. With that option off the table, Gamers Nexus decided to tear down the XDK to determine how it differed from retail Xbox Series X units.

At first glance, the XDK looks more like an Xbox One X  than an Xbox Series X. However, Microsoft has equipped the former with a multifunctional display, along with several buttons not present on retail consoles. Similarly, the XDK has a 10 Gbit/s Ethernet connection for debugging that Microsoft has not repurposed for retail units. As Gamers Nexus shows in the video below, the XDK can even render content on its small display, again for debugging purposes.

Internally, the XDK has two fans and a vapour chamber cooling system, unlike the Xbox Series X. Moreover, the XDK has 40 GB of GDDR6 VRAM operating on a 320-bit memory interface. Hence, the XDK delivers 560 GB/s of memory bandwidth, necessary for running debugging software alongside pre-release games. Unfortunately, the hardware ban makes the XDK a large paperweight that will never be able to play games.

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