What CPU is equivalent to the Xbox One?

What CPU is equivalent to the Xbox One? Let's find out

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The Xbox One has been a staple in the console gaming industry for much of the past decade. It continues to offer respectable performance in today’s title at a very budget-friendly price point. Time to find out what CPU is equivalent to the Xbox One.

Now Read: Xbox Series X

Some PC enthusiasts among us would like to replicate the Xbox One in a PC format. So, let’s find out what CPU the Xbox One uses and whether any current CPUs in the market can offer us identical performance – but on PC. 

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The Xbox One’s CPU

The 2013 Xbox One uses an AMD “Jaguar” APU (Accelerated Processing Unit). An APU is simply a CPU and a GPU combined. 

The CPU itself is an AMD custom-made based on the Jaguar architecture. Unfortunately, the Jaguar architecture was designed for use in mobile devices such as laptops, so it doesn’t feature great specs. 

• 8 cores
• 8 threads
• 1.75GHz clock speed

While 8 threads is satisfactory for gaming, the 1.75GHz clock speed is deficient. To give you a better idea of how lacking that is, Intel’s weakest 13th gen core processor, the core i3 13100, has a boost clock of 4.5GHz – over twice that of the Jaguar.

You may be even more surprised to learn that the PS4, the direct competitor to the Xbox One, has an even weaker processor. 

This begs the question: How can consoles game at 1080p, 60fps, with such meager specs?

The main reason a 1.75GHz clock speed is serviceable for the Xbox one is due to excellent software optimization on the part of game developers. 

You see, because the Xbox One only has a single hardware configuration, game developers have a much easier optimizing their games for it. 

Games on PC tend to not be as well-optimized since there are many more hardware configurations to account for. 

Also, not all console games run at 60FPS. The ones that do tend to turn down the CPU-centric graphic settings, such as render distance and crowd density, to a minimum. 

Many games run on 30FPS but use motion blur and precise frame delivery (consistent frame times) to create a seamless user experience. 

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What CPU is equivalent to the Xbox One’s CPU?

The 8-core Jaguar APU consists of two consolidated quad-core modules. Each of these quad-core modules has some resemblance to an overclocked Athlon 5150. Obviously, you can’t use two CPUs on a single consumer system, so we can’t go with the Athlon. 

The Intel Atom c2750 has many of the same specs as the Jaguar (and is just as old) but runs at a higher 2.6GHz boost clock.

You could theoretically underclock it down to a crawl to get the same performance. But obviously, that’s neither practical nor viable. 

The Intel core i3-10100

If you’re looking to build a gaming PC that can emulate the performance offered by the Xbox One, your best bet is the Intel core i3-10100 processor. It has 4 physical cores but can serve 8 threads due to hyperthreading. 

Its 4.3GHz boost clock more than makes up for the lack of the 4 physical cores it would need to have the same core count as the Xbox’s Jaguar. 

The core i3-10100 is an excellent budget-friendly option that pairs perfectly with a mid-range GPU, such as a GTX 1660 or RTX 3050, to offer you 1080p, 60FPS gameplay, much like the Xbox One.