Sony has broken its silence. PlayStation 5 specifications are now out in the open with system architect Mark Cerny delivering a deep dive presentation into the nature of the new hardware and the ways in which we should expect a true generational leap over PlayStation 4. Digital Foundry had the chance to watch the lecture a couple of days ahead of time and had the opportunity to talk to Cerny in more depth afterwards about the nature of the custom PlayStation hardware and the philosophy behind its design.
As you'll appreciate when you see the deep-dive presentation released today, there's a wealth of new information about Sony's next-generation console plans here, and that's before we go really in-depth with the information Mark Cerny shared with us beyond the content of today's presentation. With that in mind, we'll be presenting our content in two chunks. Today, we'll be looking at what we've learned from Sony's video broadcast, and a little further on down the road, we'll go deeper and share even more detail around the central pillars. In summary, however, these are the core details covered today:
The specs
From the gamer's perspective, we know from our audience that there's an almost rabid hunger for the core technical specifications of the PlayStation 5 processor - and thanks to this presentation, we now know much more about the custom AMD processor at the heart of PlayStation 5. In truth, though, Cerny's focus in his presentation is more about the experience delivered by key features such as the SSD storage and the new Tempest audio engine - which is truly exciting stuff - but the anticipation level for the spec is such that this is where we'll start.
On a basic level, we already know that PlayStation 5 uses AMD's excellent Zen 2 CPU technology with prior communications confirming eight physical cores and 16 threads - but now we know how fast they are clocked, with PS5 delivering frequencies up to 3.5GHz. Discussing the nature of CPU and GPU clock speeds is going to require some careful explanation because Cerny actually described frequencies as being 'capped'. For the CPU, 3.5GHz is at the top end of the spectrum, and he also suggests that this is the typical speed - but under certain conditions, it can run slower.
More details, and PS5 features at the following link:
As you'll appreciate when you see the deep-dive presentation released today, there's a wealth of new information about Sony's next-generation console plans here, and that's before we go really in-depth with the information Mark Cerny shared with us beyond the content of today's presentation. With that in mind, we'll be presenting our content in two chunks. Today, we'll be looking at what we've learned from Sony's video broadcast, and a little further on down the road, we'll go deeper and share even more detail around the central pillars. In summary, however, these are the core details covered today:
- The technical specifications of PlayStation 5 and its innovative 'boost' approach to core clocks;
- The features of the PlayStation 5 GPU;
- How the SSD helps deliver the next-generation dream;
- How Sony tackles expandable storage;
- Unprecedented 3D audio fidelity via the Tempest 3D Audio Engine.
The specs
From the gamer's perspective, we know from our audience that there's an almost rabid hunger for the core technical specifications of the PlayStation 5 processor - and thanks to this presentation, we now know much more about the custom AMD processor at the heart of PlayStation 5. In truth, though, Cerny's focus in his presentation is more about the experience delivered by key features such as the SSD storage and the new Tempest audio engine - which is truly exciting stuff - but the anticipation level for the spec is such that this is where we'll start.
On a basic level, we already know that PlayStation 5 uses AMD's excellent Zen 2 CPU technology with prior communications confirming eight physical cores and 16 threads - but now we know how fast they are clocked, with PS5 delivering frequencies up to 3.5GHz. Discussing the nature of CPU and GPU clock speeds is going to require some careful explanation because Cerny actually described frequencies as being 'capped'. For the CPU, 3.5GHz is at the top end of the spectrum, and he also suggests that this is the typical speed - but under certain conditions, it can run slower.
| PlayStation 5 | PlayStation 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz with SMT (variable frequency) | 8x Jaguar Cores at 1.6GHz |
| GPU | 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency) | 1.84 TFLOPs, 18 CUs at 800MHz |
| GPU Architecture | Custom RDNA 2 | Custom GCN |
| Memory/Interface | 16GB GDDR6/256-bit | 8GB GDDR5/256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448GB/s | 176GB/s |
| Internal Storage | Custom 825GB SSD | 500GB HDD |
| IO Throughput | 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed) | Approx 50-100MB/s (dependent on data location on HDD) |
| Expandable Storage | NVMe SSD Slot | Replaceable internal HDD |
| External Storage | USB HDD Support | USB HDD Support |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive | Blu-ray Drive |
More details, and PS5 features at the following link:
