It might only have 10.28 teraflops to the Xbox Series X’s 12, but the PlayStation 5 is still a pretty powerful machine. Check out the hardware powering Sony’s next-gen console, including its custom AMD Zen 2 CPU and super-fast SSD.
As PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny does a deep dive into the engineering behind Sony’s next-generation console on YouTube, Eurogamer has posted an extensive look at the hardware powering the PS5. First we have the basic rundown of the hardware.
PlayStation 5 Specs
- CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (variable frequency)
- GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency)
- GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2
- Memory/Interface: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 448GB/s
- Internal Storage: Custom 825GB SSD
- IO Throughput: 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
- Expandable Storage: NVMe SSD Slot
- External Storage: USB HDD Support
- Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive
It’s not far off from what Microsoft announced earlier this week for the Xbox Series X. The speeds may be a bit slower, but the 8x Zen 2 custom CPU and custom RDNA 2 GPU are incredibly similar. The Xbox CPU runs att 3.66Ghz to the PlayStation 5's 3.5GHz, and the GPU pushes a few more teraflops.
What the PlayStation 5 lacks in power, which really isn’t much, it makes up fro in versatility. Using a technology called Boost, the system will be able to adjust CPU and GPU usage on-the-fly, adjusting to the needs of the game being run. Developers will be able to finely tune game performance. It also does ray-tracing, because it pretty much has to.
The similarities in hardware between the two consoles should make for an interesting next-general, with plenty of potential for cross-play and big multiplatform games.