As predicted, Sony’s presentation was more dry and technical this morning, which won’t please a lot of people. Sony has revealed the full PS5 specs and it’s an extremely similar story to that of the Xbox Series X. The PS5 has a slower CPU and GPU (it’s an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 10.28 TFLOPS compared to XSX 12 TFLOPS), but it’s putting all of its money on its SSD drive.
PS5 SPECS
| PlayStation 5 | PlayStation 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (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 |
INTERNAL SSD
The PlayStation 5’s SSD is nearly twice as fast as that of the Xbox Series X, but it’s only 825GB (compared to the Xbox Series X) in storage. Sony says that the PS5 SSD can load 2gb in 0.27 seconds compared to 1gb in 20 seconds on the PS4 currently.
The SSD will work to make load screens a thing of the past, booting instant, making patch installs seamless ad de-duplicate game data.
EXTERNAL STORAGE
When it comes to external storage, Sony is not using a propriety port. Instead, you’ll be able to buy a NVME SSD drive off the shelf (that complies what Sony’s specification) in order to expand your storage. Sony says that they won’t be telling customers which SSD drives will work before launch, as they’re waiting for these to hit the market over the next few months, so don’t run out and buy one.
Similar to the Xbox Series X, you’ll be able to plugin a USB HDD, but you’ll only be able to play PlayStation 4 games off this device. This is because the internal SSD is that fast, that you’d never be able to play games in the way Sony intends in a slower HDD.
BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
Weirdly enough, the PS5 will only be compatible with the “top 100 PS4 games” at launch. You can find out more about that right HERE.
3D AUDIO
Sony is also banking on 3D audio to pave the wave for next-gen. It’s extremely complex to explain, but Cerny says that if you’re playing a game with rain, you can expect to feel like you’re standing in the middle of it based on audio positioning. Dead Space was used in the demo to showcase how there could be one enemy left that you can’t find, but this kind of technology will let you know exactly where an enemy is.
XBOX SERIES X SPECS FOR COMPARISON
| CPU | 8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.66 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU |
| GPU | 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU |
| Die Size | 360.45 mm2 |
| Process | 7nm Enhanced |
| Memory | 16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320mb bus |
| Memory Bandwidth | 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s |
| Internal Storage | 1 TB Custom NVME SSD |
| I/O Throughput | 2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block) |
| Expandable Storage | 1 TB Expansion Card (matches internal storage exactly) |
| External Storage | USB 3.2 External HDD Support |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive |
| Performance Target | 4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS |
Whilst we don’t know a whole lot about what the PS5 will look like on our screens (outside of incredibly fast load times), Digital Foundry has done a big deep dive on what this all means, which you should definitely read.
Ultimately, you can watch Sony’s stream here, but it still would be a little bit confusing for most.
