Maximum PC - USA (2019-06)

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maximumpc.com JUN 2019 MAXIMUMPC 15


Jarred Walton


TECH TALK


Jarred Walton


TECH TALK


Jarred Walton has been a
PC and gaming enthusiast
for over 30 years.

Sony’s PlayStation 5


Is Even More PC


The current PS4 and Xbox One consoles (and
their updated variant) already largely consist of
hardware with its roots in the PC space, but the
next iteration will further blur the lines. Sony is
partnering with AMD again, moving from 2013-
era hardware to the modern age. The heart of the
PS5 will consist of an eight-core/16-thread Zen 2
(Ryzen 3000) CPU, with a Navi GPU that supports
ray tracing, and an SSD for storage.
Both the CPU and GPU will use TSMC’s 7nm
lithography, and instead of a single custom chip,
the PS5 will likely have separate CPU and GPU
chips in a single package. Sony hasn’t given details
on the memory, but 16GB of GDDR6 seems likely—
or possibly HBM2, but that would be more costly
and isn’t really necessary. Even with modern
processors, however, Sony and AMD can only push
performance within a console form factor.
Consoles are primarily designed for the living
room, which means big boxes and massive power
requirements are out of the question. Current
consoles use 140–160W, about half of what a high-
end graphics card requires. No one wants loud
fans and tons of heat venting into an enter tainment
center, so I expect power use to fall below 250W,
and even that’s a bit high. What sort of performance
could Sony wring from a 150–250W console?
Given the CPU and GPU are from AMD using
its upcoming architectures, it’s not difficult to


IT’S THE MIDDLE OF 2019, and Sony just dropped a bombshell and revealed


many of the specs for its next-gen console, which we’ll assume will be


called the PlayStation 5. Even more surprising is the revelation that it’s


not coming in 2019, which means late 2020 instead. That’s a long time to


wait, but what will the next-gen consoles provide compared to PCs?


guess at what we can expect. The
Zen 2 CPU will be a substantial
upgrade from the PS4’s eight-core
Jaguar design, and should be at
least two times faster, probably
more. The GPU will also be a
significant upgrade, likely double
the performance of the PS4 Pro—
Sony claims 8K resolution suppor t,
but I assume that’s for output (via
HDMI 2.1), not that the console will
manage 8K at 60fps. The Navi 20
architecture also adds support for
hardware ray tracing, and as that
feature will be present on all PS5s,
it should see more uptake than
Nvidia’s first RTX cards.
I’m also excited to see Sony
adding an SSD. It will be some
form of NVMe storage, based on
early storage performance claims,
but capacity hasn’t been disclosed.
Perhaps Sony will use an SSD
caching solution, however, as
games are becoming quite large.
Sony could just stuff in a 1TB SSD,
but that will increase the cost.
All this sounds good, but it’s
basically just a specialized PC
running Sony’s OS. At least it will
be backward compatible with PS
games. I don’t expect it to be a
massive upgrade compared to a
modern PC. In fact, given the likely
TDP, it will probably end up with
performance similar to a Ryzen
CPU with an RTX 2060 graphics

card. That’s what happened with
the PS4 as well: Rather than
matching a high-end PC, it was
more like the previous year’s mid-
range PC, with a reasonable price.
The early announcement of the
PS5 hardware again emphasizes
how the PC is the leader in pushing
hardware and software. PCs have
led the transition from physical
media to digital downloads, and
storage is moving away from
spinning platters to SSDs. Special-
purpose processors like the
PS3’s Cell have been supplanted
by generic x86 CPUs. And as for
graphics, PCs have had ray-tracing
GPUs from Nvidia for nine months
already, and it will be two years by
the time the PS5 arrives.
None of this is surprising.
Researching and creating new,
higher performance processors
takes time and money. It’s possible
to create new architectures that
might be a bit faster than PCs
already have, but is it worth doing?
Sony apparently doesn’t think so,
and Microsoft will probably take
a similar approach. We’re all just
one big PC family now—except the
consoles are locked down, so you
can’t easily install your own OS.

It will probably end up with


performance similar to a Ryzen


CPU with an RTX 2060.


The next PlayStation will likely put
the CPU and GPU into one package.
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