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The next generation of consoles is upon us. Just a couple of days ago, Microsoft revealed the specifications for Xbox Series X. And now last night, their competitor Sony revealed the PS5 specs. While we do not know what it will look like (officially), the details regarding its hardware and technology were announced. Let's have a look at the specifications first:
CPU—8x cores @ 3.5GHz (variable frequency), custom Zen 2
GPU—36 CUs @ 2.23GHz (variable), 10.28 TFLOPs, custom RDNA 2
Memory—16GB GDDR5 w/ 256-bit bus
Memory bandwidth—448GB/s
Storage—825GB SSD
I/O throughput—5.5GB/s (raw), 8-9GB/s (compressed)
Expandable storage—NVMe SSD slot
External storage—USB HDD support
Optical drive—4K UHD
The Xbox Series X specifications dropped like a bomb. Many PS fans were however left disappointed with these underwhelming PS5 Specs.
The CPU for PS5 will have 8 cores clocked at 3.5 GHz, while Series X’s cores will be clocked at 3.8 GHz or 3.66 GHz with SMT. It will be custom built by AMD on their Zen 2 architecture.
Coming to GPU, this will also be custom built by AMD for Sony based on RDNA 2. But compared to Xbox, it is a downgrade. Where Xbox has 52 CUs and 12 TFLOPs of Graphics processing power, PS5 has 36 CUs and 10.28 TFLOPs of processing power.
Where PS5 takes the cake though is in storage speed and power. The proprietary SSD will have a raw power of 5.5GB/s which is even more than what is available on PC. They believe this will lead of much faster load times and are banking on them being up to 1 second, or in some cases even instantaneous. The also said that the SSD will be able to load 2GB of data in 0.27 seconds.
Whether the edge in storage will be enough to take on Xbox Series X remains to be seen. It is quite possible that PS5 might be priced lower than Xbox Series X. Also, keep in mind that performance is in no way an indicator of commercial success; Xbox One is more powerful than PS4, yet PS4 has been largely successful. In the end, it will all come down to exclusives and marketing.