Looks really good. On sale on live for only $25 this week too. Gonna pick this up for sure considering how good the reviews are.

Drift, the most probable reason for many of the enhanced Xbox One X games still having similar frame rate, frame pacing or stuttering problems as the regular Xbox One is the CPU. While Xbox One X's CPU runs faster, it's still the same as the one in the regular Xbox One. That's most likely the bottleneck.

While there are a lot of games that have an increase in frame rate even without any patch, it's probably due to those games' engines performance being more tied to the GPU than the CPU. Like The Witcher 3, which relies far more on the GPU than on the CPU and it's why the original unpatched version was able to hit 60fps on Xbox One X, because the GPU was far more powerful than the one in the regular XB1.

Another example is Project Cars 2, while I don't know much about its engine, Digital Foundry's tests show its physics systems struggle with the somewhat limited hardware power of the regular PS4 and XB1, with the PS4 Pro version being the best at launch - before XB1X's release. The higher CPU clock is most likely the biggest factor responsible for the better frame rate. Even unpatched you saw that PC2 got a very good frame rate which stayed much more close to the 60fps target, while patched it's almost perfect.

Of course, with great optimization these games shouldn't be having problems even on the base hardware, let alone the PS4 Pro and even less the XB1X, but most developers today are far less worried about if their games are having rock-solid frame rates or not. At least not enough to put in the effort required to optimixe and fix these problems. Same story with PC games, Switch games, etc.

I don't believe that this "culture" will change, so these issues will still remain even with a console as powerful as the XB1X for many games, whether they're patched or not. Still, better to have a game with a slight better frame rate and much better image quality than not. Whether that's worth $200-250 more, depends on the person.

I'm sure you know all of this already, I just mentioned it because others might not know. I also understand that from a journalist's perspective, you have a duty and responsibility to report whether certain issues on the base hardware still happen on the enhanced hardware. Hence why you always mention it when it's better or the same.

Still, every time I see that in the description of a game on XB1X, I immediately remember how underpowered these consoles' CPUs are, they were low-tier CPUs for laptops even back in 2013. In 2017 - almost 2018 - they're almost completely obsolete.

I felt disappointed by the XB1X's CPU ever since Microsoft revealed the official specs and when I saw that it would still use AMD's Jaguar CPU. That's without a doubt the worst part of XB1X. I get how expensive the console would be if they used a new CPU architecture, so it was done to keep prices down and they did enhance the CPU in a few ways - probably as much as they could without raising the price.

No matter how much you overclock or change a low-tier piece of technology, it will never be the same as a new piece of hardware, which of course Microsoft's hardware engineers knew, but couldn't do much about it. I kinda feel for them, they made this truly amazing kit of hardware with so much passion and effort, but still had to put a very bad piece of hardware in it.

PS. I know you will scold me for this, since you've already said you lost your disc, but I would still love to know how much of an improvement Assassin's Creed: Unity would get on XB1X. All those thousands of NPCs, the image quality, how much it pushed PS4 and XB1 to their limits back then, it's the perfect game for it imho. Like the biggest proof of concept of what the XB1X can do that the regular XB1 couldn't.

Bought the game earlier and I can’t stop playing it. It has some odd sound issues and not much to adjust gamma levels etc but damn the gameplay and challenge is fucking awesome! So glad I gave this game a try. Every bump in the road you feel. Rally fun at its best!
P.s. looks beautiful on the one X

might have to get this one. looks really good.

I wish Dirt Rally would get an X patch.

I feel the same way but no kidding this game is close to being as good. I love it.

Not a bad rally game at all .The main issue is the 30 fps on consoles which is unacceptable for any racer that it is not purely arcade .And unfortunately neither the Pro or the X got a 60 fps patch.Because of that i had to trade it in for Dirt 4 which ,despite its issues, manages to hit the 60 fps target on the Pro.

That's a bold claim. ;)

It is indeed but you’d be surprised just how good and challenging this game is!