Sony Announces PlayStation 5 (PS5); See Release Specifications

PlayStation 5 (PS5) is official. Sony has just announced on 18th March 2020 the new console that arrives seven years after the launch of its predecessor PlayStation 4 (PS4). The presentation took place during an online broadcast on the PlayStation Blog, under the command of Mark Cerny, chief architect of the device. In live streaming, the brand released specifications from the Xbox Series X competitor, but the price and design remained a mystery. Its datasheet draws attention for the AMD Zen 2 CPU with 3.5 GHz, 10.28 Teraflops and super-fast SSD which according to the manufacturer, can make it the “fastest video game in the world”.

It is worth remembering that the PS5 is expected to reach the market by the end of 2020. The expectation is that it will be available on the shelves in a period close to Christmas, to take advantage of the festive sales.

The presentation started with a focus on PlayStation game developers. According to Mark Cerny, the company’s idea is for the producers to be comfortable with the PS5 hardware and understand the basic operation of the new generation and thus be able to easily access the CPU, GPU and storage resources (SSD) – before exploring the new features of the console.

The first specification revealed is that the PlayStation 5 arrives with a custom 825GB of SSD storage, promising to be up to 100 times faster than the 500GB PS4 hard drive. Its Zen 2 CPU from AMD offers frequencies up to 3.5GHz. The 10.28 Teraflops graphics processor, at 2.23 GHz, indicates a lower visual power generation capacity than the Xbox Series X, its main competitor, which comes equipped with 12 TFLOPs.

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However, according to Sony, a smaller and more effective GPU can mean a more agile GPU. The PS5 graphics core is expected to deliver more performance than expected from the number of Teraflops, which does not accurately encompass all GPU features. The manufacturer also explains that the new console is capable of processing game images with the same level of performance anywhere, regardless of the temperature of the environment, without any drop in game frame rates.

“The performance is remarkably different because ‘Teraflops’ is defined as the computational capability of the ALU vector. This is only a part of the GPU. There are many other units – and these other features work faster when the GPU’s frequency is higher,” Cerny says during the presentation. “With a 33% higher frequency, rasterization is 33% faster, command buffer processing is much faster, L1 and L2 caches have much higher bandwidth, and so on,” he adds.

Also, the AMD GPU can run PS4 games, that is, there is the backward compatibility technology to play games of the current generation in the next video game. Another hardware highlight is the Tempest Engine, a 3D audio system that promises fidelity and sound quality with a high level of detail.

About the storage, in case the 825 GB custom SSD becomes full, it is worth mentioning that it is expandable and compatible with previous versions of the console. You can then save space by playing your older games from standard external storage. The manufacturer points out that this is slower than booting from the internal SSD, but the goal is to free up memory for next-generation games, which are probably heavy.

PS5 Specifications

	CPU		x86-64-AMD Ryzen™ “Zen 2” / 8 Threads / 16 fundamental / variable frequency, up to 3.5 GHz
	GPU		AMD-based graphics engine Radeon™ RDNA 2 / Acceleration ray tracing / variable frequency, up to 2.23 GHz (10.3 TFLOPS)
	System Memory		GDDR6 16 GB / 448 GB/s bandwidth
	SSD		825 GB / 5.5 GB/sec read bandwidth (Raw)
	PS5 Game Disc		Ultra HD Blu-ray, up to 100 GB/disk
	Video Output		support 120Hz 4K TVs, 8K TVs, VRR (specified by HDMI version 2.1)
	Audio		Tempest 3D AudioTech

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Recall Rumors

Without being mentioned in the presentation, the design of PlayStation 5 remains a mystery. Rumour has it that the video game comes in a “V” format, which is the Roman numeral for “five”, referring to the PlayStation edition. The development kits, which are sent to the producers to create PS5 games, have already arrived with similar characteristics.

Regarding the control, a supposedly leaked image displayed the new Sony video game joystick, which should be called DualShock 5. The model is quite similar to the current DualShock 4 of PlayStation 4 (PS4). The only visible difference is in the touch panel that is in the center of the control.

The accessory is slightly tilted and has no rounded tip at the end – a feature that is also present in a recent patent registered by Sony in Japan in November. The photo also shows that the joystick buttons are smooth and do not have the traditional Square, Cross, Ball and Triangle symbols.

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