And the crowd goes wild for the PlayStation 5 specs reveal. No, wait, they don’t, because they don’t appear to be real people?
Sony’s PlayStation 5 specs reveal has been a weird old event. It was originally set to be a GDC presentation, so that means two things:
- It was meant to be delivered in front of a live audience
- That audience was meant to be made up of very nerdy video game developers
That means that gamers tuning into the stream expecting a Nintendo Direct-style presentation, filled with game announcements and surprises, were in fact met with a very dry technical explainer from PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny.
(And for reasons we can’t adequately explain, it was “performed” in front of an “audience” of silhouettes. It was a very strange affair all round.)
But the important thing – after Microsoft just revealed the Xbox Series X specs – is exactly what hardware is inside the PlayStation 5. And with Mark Cerny on stage, technical specs are what you’re going to get. Here’s the full run-down of the PS5 specs.
PlayStation 5 specs
- CPU: 8x Cores “variable frequency up to” 3.5 GHz, Ryzen 2
- GPU: 10.2 TFLOPs, 36 CUs “variable frequency up to” 2.23 GHz Custom RDNA 2
- Die Size: Unconfirmed
- Process: Unconfirmed – assumed 7nm based on architecture
- Memory: 16 GB GDDR6 w/ 256b bus
- Memory Bandwidth: 448 GB/s
- Internal Storage: 825 GB SSD
- I/O Throughput: 5.5 GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
- Expandable Storage: NVMe expansion slot
- External Storage: USB External HDD Support
- Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive
- Performance Target: Support of 4K 120Hz TVs, 8K TVs, variable refresh rates
- Dimensions: Who knows?
Headline items and key takeaways here?
At 10.2 TFLOPs, the PS5’s GPU is slightly less powerful than the Xbox Series X’s, even though they’re likely custom versions of a very similar part from AMD. The PlayStation 5’s GPU has noticeably fewer Compute Units, but has a higher maximum clock speed to compensate.
Where the PlayStation 5 specs really focus is on storage. The 5.5 GB/s raw I/O throughput on the PS5’s SSD is more than double that of the Xbox Series X’s NVMe drive. And unlike the new Xbox, the PS5 also looks like it will feature off-the-peg M2 had drive expansion, rather than a custom expansion unit. That’s a bonus for customisation and cost-effectiveness, sure, but might lead to a disparity between internal and expansion storage.
What’s most frustrating about the PlayStation 5 spec reveal, however, is we still haven’t seen the bloody thing. That’s why the “dimensions” field above is so passive-aggressive. We just wish they’d reveal what it looked like so people would stop circulating terrible amateur renders.
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