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After Xbox revealed brand new details on the Xbox Series X, it's time for Sony to do the same with the PlayStation 5. Mark Cerny will be explaining some new information about the PS5's architecture and technology, giving us an idea of what to expect when the console launches later this year. Get ready to watch the stream with us, when it begins at 9am PT, where we'll be covering all the announcements made during the broadcast.

Live Coverage

In place of their canceled GDC plans, this stream will explain Sony's goals for the PS5's hardware.

They mentioned the difficulty of developing for the PS3, saying that they made sure they listened to the developers for the PS4 and going forward. "Game creators matter".

The most requested feature of a new PlayStation made by developers was to have an SSD. The goal is to create a console that developers can easily get used to, and realize their creations faster.

Here are the specs for the PS5, compared against the PS4 on the right.

The PS5 plans to target 5 GB/s bandwidth, instantaneous seek times, and 0.27 second load times, with no load screens.

PlayStation is explaining how they use strategies to hide load times, or how developers need to compromise their game in order to fit it on a Blu-ray.

The SSD will have a size of 825GB, and those who want more storage can easily add it.

Cerny is now talking about custom decompression methods for game data, and the custom processors in the SSD.

The PS5 will ideally have 100x faster I/O over the PS4.

If you want to use PS4 backwards compatibility, it's recommended to use an external hard drive for your titles as to not encroach on the premium SSD space.

Sony will have an expansion bay for an extra m.2 drive, with supported drives and their physical sizes to be revealed at a later date.

The PS5 will have a custom RDNA GPU. They're working together with AMD.

Not every game will be supported by backwards compatibility, but Cerny says a list of the top 100 PS4 titles will likely be supported by the PS5's launch.

Primitive Shaders allow for on the fly rendering. There's a new feature called the Geometry Engine.

Ray Tracing is supported, though developers don't necessarily need to use it.

Mentioning that previous PlayStation consoles haven't always handled power consumption and overheating issues in the best of ways, the PlayStation 5 will be able to run off a constant amount of power, with the CPU and GPU varying depending on the game, rather than previous generations where systems ran on varying power consumption and a constant CPU/GPU output.

The GPU freq is capped to 2.23Ghz and the CPU is 3.5 GHz. The variable frequencies won't make the system get as hot or loud as the PlayStation 4/Pro did as often.

Audio helps immerse and enhance the gaming experience. That's why the PS5 will have 3D audio that'll assist players in making the best experience possible. In a graph detailing how humans hear sound, Sony explains how they use HRTF to create directional audio.

Tempest 3D AudioTech is what the PS5 will use.

Instead of using Dolby Atmos, Sony wanted to not be held back by licensed use scenarios and limited to the support of specific sound bars.

Audio engineers are implementing digital surround sound, for those that don't have fancier audio setups to make the most of the Tempest Audio Engine.

According to Cerny, PS4 audio sounds "flat" compared to the PS5's audio.

There will be 5 HRTFs to choose from, for players to get their best sound for their personal experience.

 

[64bitmodels]

so basically the same as xbox. no real competition or anything.
don't you miss the days when consoles actually tried to compete in terms of hardware? now it's like they're not even trying
there were whole exclusives that couldn't be done on the other console due to them just being that much more powerful

 

[GeigerCouncilmanX]

By the way, a team of 3-4 people have developed an PS3 emulator for PC, that will soon (let's say in a year) be able to play most of ps3 titles in their native resolution and fps. What's Sony's problem then?

 

[Plasmaster09]

so basically the same as xbox. no real competition or anything.
don't you miss the days when consoles actually tried to compete in terms of hardware? now it's like they're not even trying
there were whole exclusives that couldn't be done on the other console due to them just being that much more powerful

Oh, they're trying. Trying way too hard, to a point where consoles are now all about specs and barely about... well, exclusives, innovation, FUN... the things a console should be about.
Hardware has developed to a point where nobody can actually notice which one's numbers are bigger, but they are marketed almost entirely on that and nothing else.

 

[64bitmodels]

Oh, they're trying. Trying way too hard, to a point where consoles are now all about specs and barely about... well, exclusives, innovation, FUN... the things a console should be about.
Hardware has developed to a point where nobody can actually notice which one's numbers are bigger, but they are marketed almost entirely on that and nothing else.

I mean there's still lots of fun to be had playing a PS4, about as much fun as a switch. you can have good graphics and good gameplay
Consoles just strive to be more powerful than each other, and during that they just stopped competing and focused more on numbers rather than graphics. Back then at least exclusives had a reason to exist that didn't revolve around promoting the other console. A turbografx game couldn't be done on an NES, a SNES game couldn't be done on a genesis, so on and so forth. nowadays, exclusives have no reason to be exclusive rather than money. that's why they're so anticonsumer and bad for the industry.

 

[Andy2001]

That shit was lame AF!

 

[shaunj66]

The disparity between the two systems is interesting. What interests me however is the pricing. We already know the "faster" XSX is in essence Microsoft's "pro" machine , with a slower base system yet to be formerly announced. Yet we only know of a single model PS5. If Sony can nail the price and keep specs way above the Xbox "series S" or whatever then things could get very interesting.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Hmmm...
Nice presentation, but I wanted more.

 

[Dubbicakes]

So, what I got from the presentation was that the PS5 works smarter not harder making the flop gap meaningless.

 

[pedro702]

so they basicaly say the teraflops are worth more so they can be even better than xbox series x and it seems that sony ssd is twice as fast as series x ssd, so unless you get to see a multiplatform game running on both we cant tell who is better they are preety close i guess, maybe xbox series x will have afew more seconds load time.

 

[Espen84]

Wow, that was a snooze fest. And 1 - 0 to Microsoft in my opinion. If xbox could come out with some good ip now. I am getting a xbox. Who am I kidding, I probably get them both at some point. But to me, xbox has the lead for now..

 

[chartube12]

So it’s a very slightly less powerful Xbox. okay not a game breaker. Doesn’t have 100% compatibly for previous playstation titles..bad for those who lack space and want to keep both both library of games. Uses a random audio set of codex to cut cost. So now most sound systems possibly won’t work well, out of the box. To try and cash in on the random codex, they are going to sell the gpu as a graphics card. So they are encouraging modders to create a virtual machine to play ps5 games, which if successful will lead to eventual massive ps5 piracy. My overall response atm is, What the hell Sony!?

(Haven’t watched ps5 video yet. my thoughts atm are purely based on the article written above)

 

[guisadop]

no price tag? that's a bad sign

 

[kumikochan]

So, what I got from the presentation was that the PS5 works smarter not harder making the flop gap meaningless.

Not really because he also said that the frequency number is the highest it can get and it won't constantly run at that freq wich is already lower compared to the Cpu frequency the Series X is running at. Probably it will be running at the same frequency as the Xbox wich also has 52 Compute units compared to 36 compute units the ps5 is going to have. Also what is that movie called again ? I always forget the name of that movie

 

[Shadowfied]

no price tag? that's a bad sign

Personally I feel like a price tag but without even showing the goods would be a way worse sign lol

 

[Bladexdsl]

xbox just got blown out of the water

support for a m.2 drive nice

 

[DANTENDO]

no price tag? that's a bad sign

Why you so concerned lol look whats happening in the world at mo no business is gonna hav concrete details - companies are just grateful people are turning up for work

 

[ImLEBrAn]

xbox just got blown out of the water

support for a m.2 drive nice

I'm sure your annually FIFA game will benefit greatly from an SSD lmao.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Seriously? Limited BC? Via another emulator developed internally? Not to mention, another 1TB SSD? (props to them being straight up about the storage space as opposed to just going with the usual 1TB number when anyone who uses a PC knows that the OS needs space as well) And also those specs...oof. Not exactly going for a grand slam there, eh Sony?

So, how's Orbital and Spine coming along these days? RPCS3 still making progress? What's going on with Play! ? Has Beetle-PSX been made more compatible with pre-RTX Nvidia cards?

The nvme and gpu will have access to pcie4, so there won't be any bottle-necking. It's out there on a few boards and supported only on AMD's latest cpus. Assuming the nvme will be pcie4, it'll allow for quicker loads and os interactions.

The gpu hasn't been released yet to the public (it comes out later this year). You've got to remember that since it's custom, they can remove all the fluff needed for more general purpose stuff required for PCs. A pc with the same specs will not do nearly as well due to code optimization and many other tech benefits. The cpu is also the latest, and is customized to remove the generalized code. It's going to perform far better than it's generalized bretheren in games.

For the price, it's going to be many many years before you can play the same quality on a PC. It's the benefit of having a dedicated machine. I'm sure a 2x 2080ti and the best water-cooled threadripper would be stronger, but you might be surprised by well the ps5/xboxSx will be competing for quite a few years.

For what? A few months?

Remember, the RTX 3000-series video cards from Nvidia are coming around the corner with them having up to a 40% increase in performance from the previous generation. AMD has made some good video cards...that are bogged down by the usual issue of their drivers and general support being facepalm-worthy bad. Not to say Nvidia hasn't had their fuck ups, but they certainly know how to be more consistent than the competition's ever been. In time, games will have trouble running again because devs want to get more out of the hardware than what it can really support to sell something based on its graphics alone. And as for the PCIe 4.0 stuff, that's probably going to be my next PC build anyways one of these days when I feel like upgrading and it's worth it, and I doubt that's gonna be for a long while even if I have been wanting to switch over to AMD's Ryzen after being somewhat skeptical of Zen and Zen+ on an IPC standpoint.

 

[Codemastershock]

The disparity between the two systems is interesting. What interests me however is the pricing. We already know the "faster" XSX is in essence Microsoft's "pro" machine , with a slower base system yet to be formerly announced. Yet we only know of a single model PS5. If Sony can nail the price and keep specs way above the Xbox "series S" or whatever then things could get very interesting.

I dont think anymore that a second, cheaper model will be released.
Having a cheaper model closer to the Xbox One X and focused on Xcloud as rumors stated is kinda useless and it is way harder to show what the next machine is all about.
I think they will sell Xbox One line of consoles way cheaper (or a Xbox One X revised model) and market them as "Xcloud machines" instead of making a second line of Xbox Series at the time. They can make a improved model of the next gen machine like the name implies, but after some time.

 

[Viri]

Cool, I just watched 40 minutes of a guy explaining to me how an SSD works. Does Sony not know that people have been using SSDs for over half a decade? Also, something about 3D audio, and needing pictures of people's ears? I nearly fell asleep half way through.