Xbox One Update January 2015: Performance Up With New SDK, 7th CPU Core

The Microsoft Xbox One console is expected to have a special enhancement soon -- and everyone is excitedly waiting.

Eurogamer wrote that in the previous months, the Xbox One reserved two of eight CPU cores to run the background operating system together with games. In October 2014, Microsoft allowed game developers to access 50 to 80 percent of a seventh processing core. As a result of the access, a few multi-platform games released during the end of 2014 may have shown superior performance, compared to their PlayStation 4 versions in some scenes. Microsoft continues to withdraw the reservation on the background system, allowing game makers more processing power. Xbox One fans benefit by experiencing enhanced performance in certain parts of some games.

Despite the 50 to 80 percent power access from the seventh CPU core, games will still not run at 1080p. Various aspects might noticeably have faster rendering. Kotaku reported that such access also has drawbacks. When a game developer accesses the seventh CPU core, their game will not allow the use of custom voice or motion-based commands via Kinect. General console-level commands will still be available if Kinect is connected to the console but if the gamer uses such commands, the total power made available to the game will be limited. Without Kinect, the console would reportedly get 10 percent more GPU power.

Tech Times reported that Microsoft provided higher CPU performance to game developers through a new software development kit or SDK. It is not yet confirmed how much performance will be improved but it is expected to be adequate for developers to achieve some of their objectives.

In 2013, Microsoft has been showing hints of withdrawing reservations that hindered CPU and GPU performance, such as rolling back on allocations for Kinect. The release of the previously reserved seventh CPU core will be a good boost for game developers and will give an advantage to the Xbox One over its rival, the PlayStation 4. In the Xbox One, Microsoft overclocked the CPU to make it perform better than the PS4.

Some gamers are also wondering whether Microsoft will continue freeing up and start giving access to the eighth core soon, according to the same report by Tech Times. The company is set to release DirectX 12 to update its graphics API, so a major SDK update is also expected before 2015 ends. This new update might not benefit the Xbox One much, but PC gaming will no doubt significantly be enhanced.