Aiming to release the next-generation home consoles this holiday season, Sony finally unveiled the specifications and hardware details for the PlayStation 5.
The PS5 graphics core
Featuring an eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU clocked at 3.5GHz (variable frequency) and a GPU based on AMD's rDNA 2 architecture hardware that promises 10.28 teraflops and 36 compute units clocked at 2.23GHz and it will also have 16GB of GDDR6 RAM and a custom 825GB SSD. As previously promised by Sony PS5 will offer super-fast loading times in gameplay, via Eurogamer.
Expandable storage
Announced last year, PS5 will be switched to SSD storage as console's main hard drive resulting in faster load times as previously showed in a demo of Spider-Man loading levels only took less than a second compared to near eight seconds when PS4 was used.
Mark Cerny the architect of PS5, detailed those SSD goals at the announcement wherein he had a comparison of PS4 who took 20 seconds to load a gigabyte of data compared to his goal with PS5's SSD which can load five gigabytes in just a second.
Read also: How to Prevent Your Online Data from Cyberattacks in 2020?
Optical Drive
Aside from the SSD update, PS5 will have a USB hard drive support for backward-compatible PS4 games and will feature a 4k Blu-ray drive that will support discs but those games should be installed in the internal SSD. Allowing future upgrades, the custom SSD uses a standard NVMe
but in order to do that, SSD should meet Sony's high-spec of at least 5.5GB per second.
'Boost' for PS5
Despite Sony's efforts, looking at just raw number, Microsoft's next-generation consoles Xbox Series X is ahead compared to PS5, offering an eight-core processor at 3.8GHz, A GPU with 15 teraflops and 52 compute units each clocked at 1.825GHz, 16GB of GDDR6 ram, and a 1TB SSD but Sony's CPU and GPU will be the game-changer.
It will be running at variable frequencies based on CPU and GPU demand which means unused CPU power to be shifted to GPU allowing Sony's maximum speed and eventually when more demanding games will rise in the upcoming years, the CPU and GPU won't always hit those 3.5GHz and 2.23GHz numbers, but Cerny shared to Eurogamer that he expects a downclocking happening but when it does it is just minor.
With the updates and upgrades made for the PlayStation predecessor, the new hardware will be supporting both 8K and 4K gaming at 120Hz and there's also a plan adding a 3D audio for more impressive sound and to improve the overall gaming experience. And since major upgrades were made they are also planning for the low power consumption mode to save energy and backward compatibility with PS4 titles.
According to Cerny, what was introduced for PS5 was a blueprint that encompasses both evolution and revolution. It is obvious that Sony still has some cards to close to its chest, thus, there might be more that they are to offer that chose to keep under wraps for now.
Related news: To Upcoming Technologies That May Change The World
