The Xbox Series S, aka Xbox Lockhart, is less powerful than the Xbox One X and may struggle with next-generation games.

This can be inferred from a somewhat vague tweet on Twitter by The Verge journalist Tom Warren, who "just stopped by to say 20 CUs. Given that he has been tweeting about the rumored console for the past few days, this may refer to the 20 compute units that the Xbox Series S graphics accelerator may feature. [This console will be an entry-level next-gen console, priced lower than the Series X, and will appeal to people who don't want to shell out $400+ for a new system.

Looking deeper into the 20 CU spec, we can speculate that the Xbox Series S GPU may use AMD's RDNA graphics architecture, which underpins the Xbox Series X GPU.

These graphics specifications correspond to the level of the AMD Radeon RX 5500XT with 22 CUs; the Radeon RX 5500XT is a very high-performance graphics card that can run games at solid frame rates at full HD resolutions. However, it is hardly a next-generation graphics card.

As such, it is unlikely that a GPU with slightly fewer cores than the RX 5500XT will perform better than the current generation of gaming consoles. It is also possible that the Xbox Series S may actually struggle to run future games at fast 1080p frame rates.

Given that the Xbox One X has 40 CUs, it is possible that the Xbox Series S will be slower than Microsoft's current top-of-the-line systems. However, it is worth noting that the Xbox One X uses the older AMD graphics architecture, so the CUs in the Lockhart machine are more efficient and could provide better performance.

This is because it seems very odd that Microsoft would release a next-generation console that performs less well than the Xbox One X and may struggle to run high-fidelity games in the future. The only game the Xbox One X can run at 4K 30fps is "Red Dead Redemption 2 ' is the only one, and this is a current generation title.

However, the RDNA graphics architecture is much more efficient than the Graphics Core Next architecture that underpins the GPUs on the Xbox One console and PS4. So while the Xbox Series S may look low-spec on paper, it has the potential to deliver solid 1080p performance in the real world.

Of course, these are all speculations and estimates based on leaks we have seen so far. At the very least, we will have to wait until August, when the Xbox Series S is said to be announced, before we get more solid information on what kind of performance the second next-generation Xbox will have.