Sony has broken its silence. PlayStation 5 specifications are now out in the open with system architect Mark Cerny delivering a deep dive presentation into the nature of the new hardware and the ways in which we should expect a true generational leap over PlayStation 4. Digital Foundry had the chance to watch the lecture a couple of days ahead of time and had the opportunity to talk to Cerny in more depth afterwards about the nature of the custom PlayStation hardware and the philosophy behind its design.
And just as with the Xbox Series X, specifications are meaningless without the games to back them up.
Just like the last gen, the PS5 and XBX are roughly identical machines. This makes it easier on devs, but also means that who “wins” will come down to who has the better games, and who has the better “experience” with their online shop and community.
There were GPU power differences this gen of about 30% in Sony’s favour, and it seems the next gen could be ~20% the other way. But yes, in-game differences will still be minimal because the hardware is otherwise very similar, and modern game engines are much more scalable. So we will need pixel-peeping to detect resolution scaling differences, plus counting dropped frames.
Assuming both consoles can hit a key performance metric like 4k60fps, I think people will buy based on things other than performance, such as existing library size, next gen exclusives, price, and form factor. I can see the Xbox form factor being a sticking point for a few people.
They can probably get away with using pure software emulation for the PS1/PS2. The PS3 maybe intractable to do without a Cell chip in it.
Looking at the specs, I noticed that Xbox Seris X I/O throughput is half of what the PS5 can deliver, i.e. xbox: 2.4GB/s(Raw), 4.8GB/s(zlib/BCPack compressed) vs. PS5: 5.5GB/s(Raw), 8-9GB/s(zlib/Kraken compressed), even though both platforms are using custom I/O units, PCIe 4.0. What is going on here? Are we likely hearing about the difference between Sony using a 12-channel interface achieving a bandwidth 5.5GB/s using Samsung controllers, whereas Microsoft is using a 8-channel interface, possibly Phison controllers?
Another thing, Sony is quite fond of a new 3D Audio engine called Tempest 3D Audiotech. Sony likes to come up with proprietary formats. If 3D audio is such a priority, why not support Dirac, increasing the appeal to audio consumer markets? It would be great, if Dirac was supported by either platforms.
There is more the NVME performance than the theoretical upper speed limits.
They slow down (significantly) due to:
– Heat
– Loss of cache
Anandtech had a very good breakdown: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759/comparing-adata-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950/2
A 3GB/s drive can go down to 500MB/s for long periods, until the cache is rebuilt.
I had mine go even lower when installed on the back of the motherboard, which did not have ventilation (due to cramped ITX setup).
So 5.5GB/s number is not very meaningful util we see longer term performance characteristics.
(Side note: This is why I think Xbox has a special form factor for the expansion. They might be considering thermals in the equation).
>> They might be considering thermals in the equation
Do you think MS or Sony engineers are dumb? Like they didn’t even thought about thermals?
Console hardware is designed to work under the load for days, unlike some PC laptop that overheats in 30sec and throttling down immediately.
How quickly people forget the Xbox red-ring-of-death fiasco…