The advance of COVID-19 has altered all plans tied to conventions and exhibitions this year, leaving major companies with only one alternative: streaming announcements. One of those companies is Sony, which had some very juicy things prepared for GDC. However, in a presentation of almost an hour published yesterday, Mark Cerny himself, chief designer and architect for the PlayStation 5, shared multiple technical characteristics of the console, including frequencies, bandwidth, estimated performance, and more.
Ladies and gentlemen, a new war in the digital entertainment space is approaching. A war that will be fought not so much with exclusive titles, but with pure hardware, high definition, and extreme framerates. The next generation of consoles will have nothing to envy high-performance computers, and in some cases, they will surpass them completely. There are still details to be resolved, especially regarding the final price, and a certain nefarious visitor that is on everyone's lips has only complicated things... but the duel is on its way.
It was only a matter of one player showing their cards. With chief architect Mark Cerny at the helm, Sony finally confirmed the official specifications of the PlayStation 5. The presentation lasts almost an hour, and its technical profile is quite deep, a detail that not all users have approved. However, we must not forget that from a certain point of view, the video replaces what Sony had planned to show at the Game Developers Conference.
The technical presentation
Cerny dedicated several minutes to exploring the limitations of traditional hard drives, the benefits we can expect with the help of solid state, and what the requirements will be for commercial expansion units (they must be as fast as internal storage, and Cerny confirmed physical restrictions).
In my personal opinion, I recommend watching several passages of the video, but if you want to go straight to the trenches and learn the core of the PlayStation 5's technical characteristics... we'll give you the pleasure.
- CPU based on the AMD Zen 2 architecture, with 8 cores / 16 threads at 3.5 GHz, and variable frequency support
- Custom GPU based on the AMD RDNA 2 architecture, 10.28 TFLOPs and 36 CUs at 2.23 GHz, with variable frequency support
- System memory of 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM, with a 256-bit bus
- Memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s
- Custom solid-state storage, 825 GB capacity
- I/O performance of 5.5 GB/s raw, 8-9 GB/s compressed
- NVMe expansion slot, and USB support for external drives
- 4K UHD Blu-ray optical drive
- Tempest Engine 3D audio system, with processing for hundreds of sources
- Backward compatibility (almost all of PS4's Top 100 will be available at launch)
The leap over PlayStation 4
Compared to what the PlayStation 4 can offer today, the differences are gigantic. The replacement of Jaguar cores with Zen 2, double the RAM (and with new technology), 2.5 times the bandwidth, and the elimination of the hard drive as a bottleneck place the PlayStation 5 at a definitively superior level. Another interesting aspect is the use of variable frequencies, since they adopt a different strategy than we are used to seeing in processors, smartphones, and graphics cards.
In relaxed terms, a conventional system modifies and defines maximum power depending on the workload and the available thermal threshold (Cerny gave the example of God of War on PS4, which fires up its fan in the most demanding parts), but the PlayStation 5 flips the equation, and keeps power intact (directly linked to the thermal limit in the console), letting the frequency change according to the workload. That way, Sony hopes that all PlayStation 5 units can process the same loads with the same performance level, regardless of factors like ambient temperature (explore minute 35 of the video for more details).
The duel with Xbox Series X
All very nice so far... but what about the duel? How ready is the PlayStation 5 to face the Xbox Series X? Well... let's see:
I'm sorry to disagree with what some colleague sites have said, but the differences... are not that big. Microsoft maintains a slight advantage in maximum CPU frequency and teraflops for its video solution, while Sony clearly distances itself in I/O performance. An extra dose of FPS versus shorter load times? The user will be the one to define what is more important. And now... to wait. Sony kept the release date (for now), and Redmond directly points to Black Friday with a debut on Thanksgiving, next November 26.
Official announcement: Click here
Source: Eurogamer
