PlayStation 5 Specifications Revealed

by Petar Vukobrat in General | Mar, 18th 2020

Just mere days ago, Microsoft revealed the full hardware sheet of their upcoming Xbox Series X. It was basically a full reveal, which meant it was about time for Sony to react and give fans something to chew on. As planned, they revealed a lot during today’s conference such as the PS5 specs, but it didn’t exactly come in the form many of us were expecting.

Instead of having a flashy reveal, perhaps some slick renders and whatnot, we were given a fairly slow, almost hypnotizing presentation by PlayStation hardware lead Mark Cerny. Heck, maybe “lecture” is the correct term here. Now, if you’re super into IT and hardware, this was like a fascinating masterclass brimming with tech spiel and super-complicated phrases and terminology. If you’re just a regular dude who wants to blow stuff up in the latest Killzone, this was about as exciting as an algebra class.

Still, Cerny told us a lot (for better or worse), so there’s more than enough information to process.

PS5 Features & Highlights

We’ll focus on the most important things, but if you’re interested in learning how the upcoming PlayStation 5 will function, you can watch the full “lecture” here.

• The PlayStation 5 will have a super-fast, custom-built NVMe SSD that’s supposed to achieve speeds up to 5.5 GB per second. Much like the Xbox Series X, this will allow developers to shorten load times and make in-game transitions (from one part of the virtual world to another) practically seamless.
• The console will still support standard USB external hard drives although they’ll be used exclusively for backward compatible titles. This means if you want to play a PS5 game, it’ll have to be stored locally.
• Almost all of your favorite PS4 titles will be backward compatible from the very get-go.
• It seems that Sony will allow for standard NVMe SSDs when it comes to future upgrades, but they still need to figure stuff out when it comes to compatibility.
• The PS5 specs are weaker when compared to the Xbox Series X, although it remains to be seen whether we’re talking about a palpable difference when it comes to gaming. We have a lot of numbers but comparing one console to another is a fairly complicated task and it won’t necessarily produce concrete, usable results. The Xbox Series X will have an output of around 12 TFLOPs whereas the PlayStation 5 should cap out at a bit over 10 TFLOPs. The Xbox One X, for example, has around 6.
• The PS5 will practically have the exact same internals as Microsoft’s next-gen console. It will utilize AMD Smartshift which means the console will shift unused CPU power to the GPU (and vice versa) whenever possible, therefore providing the player with a higher frame rate.
• For comparison, the upcoming Xbox will have a CPU that’s clocked at 3.8 Ghz with a GPU clocked at a bit over 1.8 Ghz. The PS5, on the other hand, comes in at 3.5 Ghz and 2.23 Ghz, respectively. The higher GPU clock rate doesn’t mean it’ll have more graphical power as it’ll ship with fewer execution units (36 CUs instead of 52 CUs). The console will ship with a 825 GB internal NVMe drive, which is noticeably less when compared to what Microsoft is offering (1 TB).
• Other than that, both consoles will give you all the latest bells and whistles like ray tracking, “3D audio,” cutting-edge CPU and GPU technology (that’s not even on the market right now), and so on.
• Even though it’ll have slightly weaker internals, it should still be more than capable of reaching 4K 60 FPS with ease. Sony is aiming 120 Hz at 4K although whether or not that’s attainable still remains to be seen.

It’s fair to say that Sony didn’t exactly hit a home run with the PS5 specs. They only gave fans a fairly boring spec sheet and nothing else. To make matters even worse, their next-gen console is literally weaker in every regard except for a noticeably faster SSD. Obviously, the PlayStation 5 will cost less when compared to the Xbox Series X, but this is still a fairly underwhelming announcement.

To have such a dry presentation, devoid of any entertainment, is not exactly a debacle, but if you’ve yet to show your console to the world, then this is definitely the wrong course of action. Cerny also finished multiple announcements with a question mark of sorts. It is as if no one at Sony is quite sure what to do and is trailing behind Microsoft every step of the way.

With no official image, reveal, render, or anything similar, it’s hard to get excited for a product that — for all intents and purposes — only exists on paper. Microsoft, on the other hand, has already shown everything they have and they have a lot. We’re talking about a beastly home console that’ll be much stronger than most gaming PCs.

Of course, Sony has more than enough game developers by their side who’ll create mind-blowing exclusives but one has to wonder: Will it be enough? At this point in time, Microsoft is obviously the leader when it comes to console gaming and will definitely have the edge coming into the 2020 holiday season.