Sony has held its press event detailing the specifications for the PlayStation 5 as Mark Cerny, lead system architect, broke down the system’s specifics which involved a lot of customisation of the architecture to remove all the bottlenecks it can, along with providing some unique approaches to boost clocking, but all of it in a way it’s handled by the system rather than developers.
Specifically PCs and older consoles run on the idea of running at a constant frequency and varying power levels based on workload, which is why they get louder and hotter due to more intensive games. PS5 does the opposite, running at essentially constant power and let the frequency vary based on the workload.
This allows the GPU to hit frequencies way higher than expected and also renders the TFLOPS measure unhelpful as the configuration and customisation within is far more efficient than not just consoles but PCs as well, it effectively swaps raw power for more efficient use of a slightly smaller power.
In essence, it means we’re not really going to know how these consoles compare until we see the same game played on both running alongside each other and see how they handle frame rate and rendering. The result though from the sounds of it is going to be comparable.
We’ll get a better idea when a tear down video of the console’s workings goes up which should be shortly. For now, here’s the basic specs:
CPU: AMD 7nm Zen 2 CPU (8 cores). 3.5Ghz variable.
GPU: Custom AMD RNDA 2-Based processor with 36 Compute Units at 2.23Ghz. 10.28 TFLOPS. Ray Tracing Support same as AMD’s upcoming PC GPUs.
VIDEO OUTPUT: 4K @ 120Hz, 8K support.
MEMORY: 16Gb GDDR6/256-bit RAM at 448Gb/s.
HARD DISK: Custom 825Gb SSD @ 5.5 GB/s (raw) and 8-9GB/s (compressed) over a 12-channel interface. Support for selected third-party M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs at same speed in expansion slot, and more regular external HDDs at 100Mb/s.
AUDIO: Tempest Engine to deliver ‘better than Atmos’ sound through almost any sound source.
4K UHD Blu-ray Drive
Backwards Compatability: PS4, PS4 Pro
No pricing as yet or reveal of the PS5 design. Both consoles were originally targeting a Fall 2020 release but are now expected to arrive early 2021.
