We finally know what it looks like… the full spec list for PS5. As we suspected, Sony was not going to go into the details related to the final appearance of the console or other details closer to the consumer (for a reason it was a talk for the GDC). The reason for this call was to talk about the technical potential that the new console will offer, and that is just what we are going to tell you.
10 teraflops that will speak
Can a console justify its potential with a number? Get ready because this year we are going to listen to many battles related to the famous teraflops. The fault will be the figures, and that is that Sony has announced that its PS5 will have a total of 10.2 teraflops of power offered by its GPU AMD RDNA 2 with 36 computing units at 2.23 GHz.
Compared to the competition? Xbox Series X mounts a GPU with the same architecture, with the difference of having 52 computing units at 1,825 GHz, which manages to offer 12 teraflops. Remember the Microsoft announcement with the phrase “the world’s most powerful console”?
You will return to the game as soon as you die
With that example, Mark Cerny wanted to describe how fast the PS5 experience will be. To do so, they have designed their own 825 GB SDD that promises to achieve extremely fast read speeds of no less than 5.5 GB / s, a figure that is especially striking when compared to the 2.4 GB / s that drives the Xbox Series X in RAW.
This storage unit can be expanded using NVMe SSD M.2 drives, but it will have to pass a certification to be able to be used on PS5, so Cerny has recommended that users do not buy units until Sony clarifies more about it.
Realistic graphics with ray tracing
Yes, it was to be expected. PS5 will also feature ray tracing technology, which will allow it to represent in a way closer to reality how light and reflections behave on surfaces represented in the game. This will allow obtaining a much more realistic or much more striking representation in games, and yes, we can say that it has become one of the base characteristics of this generation, since Xbox Series X will also offer it.
Will I be able to play the games of previous generations?
For now, PS5 will be compatible with PS4 Pro and PS4 games, since Sony has not gone into detail about the rumored backward compatibility with the first three generations. When PS5 hits stores, the top 100 most played games in the previous generation will automatically be backwards compatible, however the rest will have to wait for tweaks and modifications as PS5 is too fast and games would malfunction.
Audio will be very important
Sound will be one of the key points when it comes to receiving PS5. Sony has developed the Tempest Engine chip, which will be able to handle hundreds of different sound sources. Having a wide range of sound sources would be useless if the console fails to project sound adequately to the user, and that’s where a series of problems come in that are insurmountable for now, such as the shape of the head and ears of each player.
The idea is that in the middle of the game we know how to locate exactly the origin of each sound, regardless of the objects that are presented in the scenes or the number of sounds that are played. Tempsest Engine will be able to analyze all that, but the next challenge comes when it comes to bringing it to the user. Headphones would be the best solution, but keep in mind that many users play directly with television speakers, so in that case the manufacturer would use sound virtualization technology, a technology that is not available in all market televisions.
To solve the problem of the shape of the ears, Cerny has commented that an application could be used to take a photo of the ears and configure a profile preconfigured by the brand that will be automatically selected after analyzing the image in a neural network. It is not officially the solution that they are going to implement, but it has left the idea in the air (remember that Sony already offers something similar with its 360 Reality Audio technology).
PS5 official features
After all these details, the official list of the technical characteristics of PS5 remains as follows:
- CPU: 3.5 GHz 8-core AMD Zen 2 (variable frequency)
- GPU: RDNA 2 with 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23 GHz
- RAM: 16GB GDDR6 / 256-bit
- Optical drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray
- Internal storage: 825GB proprietary SSD hard drive
- External storage: NVMe SSD slot
PS5 or Xbox Series X? Which is more powerful?
If you are asking yourself this question, let me tell you that you are completely wrong. Given what has been seen, even though both consoles technically share the core of the hardware, each one is orienting its way of seeing the new generation in a completely different way, and that is the best news we could have.
While Xbox offers more raw graphics power at the teraflops level, PS5 seems to focus on speed per graphics core. In addition, PS5 has confirmed to have a noticeably faster storage option than Xbox Series X, so this could offer a completely different gaming experience in aspects that until now went completely unnoticed, such as that annoying pause in loading times.
The future of both consoles is exciting, so we are looking forward to continue seeing more details to continue enjoying the show.