Playstation 5 all of the confirmed facts

Not too long ago, we published a piece gathering up all the rumours surrounding the PS5 and since then a lot of new info has arrived directly from the mouth of Mark Cerny, the lead system architect. Let’s stack this new info against the rumours and see just how wrong we are. 

When is it out? 

Nothing new has changed since our previous article. There is no definitive information on a release date but Sony have confirmed that there will not be a delay due to the Coronavirus as of yet. We expect it to launch around mid-November 2020. Early leaks pointed towards an October release, though that is looking less likely with each passing week.

How much will it cost? 

Again, there is no indication of a price. All the previous rumours pointed towards a £449.99 price point but given the current situation, even speculating would be tough. Given the hardware, we’re about to discuss, I wouldn’t expect to see this below £400, I’d expect something closer to £500.

CPU

The previous rumours proved to be correct. The PS5 will have 8 of AMD’s Zen2 cores, capped at 3.5GHz. This is a massive increase over the 8 Jaguar cores of the PS4 clocked at 1.6GHz, which have proven to struggle with newer titles. This CPU uses AMD’s SmartShift technology, which allows unused CPU power to go to the GPU, allowing for better graphical performance. This is a massive evolution in processing, something developers have been eagerly anticipating for generations.

RAM

Again the rumours are proven correct as the PS5 will boast 16GB of GDDR6 RAM. This is going to be a massive boost to those wanting to play in 4K.

GPU

Unfortunately, the rumours of a 10 Teraflop machine were unfounded…..only because the PS5 has 10.28 Teraflops of power. Again, this will use RDNA2 feature sets and have 36 CUs at 2.23GHz, destroying the 1.84 Tflops and 18CUs clocked at 800MHz the PS4 had. While it was announced as a feature, it’s important to reiterate that the PS5 will support Ray-Tracing. This new real-time lighting system makes games look glorious and it’s a huge win for the system.

Storage 

While we knew the PS5 would utilise an SSD for this generation, we didn’t know it would only be a paltry 825GB one! Sony have a trick up their sleeve though as this SSD is something pretty special indeed. The PS4 has a Read/Write speed of 560MBs/510MBs and the PS5 has a new system that is equivalent to 5.5GBs. While you are losing a little bit of storage space, the speed improvements of the storage drive will be moving 2GB of data, every 0.25 of a second. This will make installing and re-installing games far quicker.

Sony are using this SSD for far more than just storage, as this little device will improve everything from UI, to boot speeds and game performance. In fact, Cerny confirmed the system could read information 100x faster than the PS4. If you want to upgrade your storage space, you will need an SSD of similar speed. These are hard to get and quite expensive. Sony will announce more on that front later.

3D Audio 

It’s nice to see faster and better-looking games but audio is something that hasn’t seen a big evolution. Sony looks to change that with their new feature. This advanced audio system is pretty crazy, in a sequence with rainfall, each individual raindrop will have unique sounds depending on where it hits. Cerny mentioned that they are looking at ways of mapping these sounds to your ear, yes your own individual ear. The rollout for this technology will debut with headphones and then be compatible through TV speakers and eventually surround sound systems. This is a really interesting feature and I can’t wait to hear more.

Anything Else? 

The confirmation still stands with all peripherals, including PVSR working on the system stand true. There was some confusion with backwards compatibility being for only 100 PS4 titles but Sony were quick to confirm the system is on track to support almost 4000 PS4 titles. There was no mention of previous generations being supported for backwards compatibility as the rumour suggests. A new Dualshock is in development, but nothing is confirmed yet. Also, Sony have been reluctant to show off the system itself. With rumour of a new PSVR system being released at launch got no mentions and given the current climate, it’s hard to see that happening.

Does this new information sway you to Team Blue? Are you going to stay with what you have? Let us know on Twitter.