After months of silent PlayStation 5, Sony suddenly broke the silence at 5 p.m. yesterday by revealing the full technical specs of the PS5. On the basis of lead system architect Mark Cerny, we were treated to a technical deep dive into the future of PlayStation.
The presentation we saw yesterday was actually intended for the GDC (Game Developers Conference) that should have taken place this week. As you can probably predict, it could not continue because of the corona virus. Sony therefore decided to put the presentation online via a livestream on the official PlayStation YouTube channel. But was that a smart move or not?
Xbox Series X seems more powerful than PlayStation 5
The PS5 gets a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU with 8 cores clocked at a maximum of 3.5 GHz. The GPU is also a custom AMD RDNA 2 with 36 compute units clocked at a maximum of 2.23 GHz. This is a lot faster than the 1.8 GHz of the Xbox Series X, but it has 52 CUs. All in all, the bottom line is that the PlayStation 5 has “only” 10.3 teraflops of power. That is a bit lower than the Xbox Series X, but whether that is the case in practice remains to be seen. Sony has some tricks up its sleeve (not that Xbox can’t have them of course).
The SSD plays a key role for the PS5
Much of the presentation was devoted to the SSD. The SSD will play a central role in the future of the PS5. For example, there should be no more loading times and the SSD can also be used as an extension of the working memory due to the high speed. The SSD is therefore very fast, twice as fast as the Xbox Series X even. There are also some disadvantages. For example, the PS5 will only have 825 GB of storage, the OS still has to be installed so that you have even less. You will also be limited in terms of expansion options. Although you can expand the system with PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives, not all of them work due to the very high specifications of the console.
Xbox Series X
Earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled the full specifications of the Xbox Series X with some new features. Did you miss this? Then be sure to check out our video about this!
All in all, the presentation was not particularly popular with the community. The chat during the live stream went completely loose and the number of dislikes on the video is also very high. What did you think of the presentation? Did it change your mind or did you make your choice a long time ago? Let us know in the comments below!
Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 both showed their muscles this week, have you made a decision yet?
– Gamekings (@Gamekings) March 19, 2020
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