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733 MHz Clock Speed
According to the What Console website, "The Xbox runs at 733 MHz, which is twice the speed of the PlayStation's graphics and aims to do 150 to 200 million polygons per sec compared to 66 million or so that the PlayStation 2 can realistically do." Comparatively, the PlayStation 2 had a clock speed of only 294 MHz.
Pentium III Processor
The Pentium III processor inside the Xbox was actually custom-built for the console. In this case, the processing power lay somewhere between the standard Pentium III processor and the Pentium Celeron laptop processor.
Nvidia Graphics
The Xbox always had a good chance to blow the market competition out of the water with its access to Nvidia, the leading graphics card manufacturers for the PC. The main market competition -- the PlayStation 2 -- could only muster a 147 MHz Sony graphics chip. In response to this, Nvidia joined with Microsoft to produce the NV2A Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). Like an Nvidia graphics card, this particular graphics chip was tailored specifically for the Xbox and outputted at 233 MHz -- 87 MHz more than the PlayStation 2.
Other Console Specs
The Xbox also boasted 64-bit audio and 64 MB of RAM. The PlayStation 2, on the other hand, could maintain only 32 MB of RAM. The hard drive of the Xbox console was 8 GB, which meant that users could save their games directly into the console; PlayStation users would have to save their game data on external memory cards. The maximum resolution of the Xbox display output was 1920 by 1080 pixels.
Xbox vs. PlayStation 2
Despite the obvious improvements in power and graphics the Xbox arrived on the market long after the PlayStation 2, which was released in 2000. The What Console website explains that the Xbox "had successfully implemented a reliable online system and was a very good alternative to the PS2, but a little too late to make a massive dent in Sony's sales."