Tuesday, April 16th 2019
Sony PlayStation 5 Console Confirmed Powered by 8-core Zen 2 CPU, Navi and Ray Tracing Confirmed
Sony's own lead system architect Mark Cerny spilled the beans on the company's upcoming "PlayStation 5" games console - the name isn't confirmed, but it's a PlayStation, and it's the fifth, so, following from the previous nomenclature just makes sense, doesn't it? One particular detail, however, is of most interest to us PC hardware junkies, and that one little fact is the confirmed Navi GPU that will power it. This is, almost certainly, a semi-custom Navi-based GPU, however; but the tidbit that PlayStation 5 will have raytracing support is the one game changer for hardware expectations - on paper, at least.
Of course, Navi is expected to debut much sooner in the consumer space than on next-gen consoles, but the fact that PlayStation 5 development kits are already being seeded - and an increasing rate, according to Sony - bodes well for the feature's inclusion on AMD's consumer-based cards. Either that or the company is taking a software approach to raytracing, which, if NVIDIA's 1000 and 10*0 series is any indication, wouldn't go very well with performance intentions. This does mean that raytracing is about to receive a much-needed market penetration boost for its adoption by developers. NVIDIA will of course be able to wave the flag of having been the first company to introduce the technology to consumers.
Another thing of interest for us is the fact that Cerny said that 3D audio will finally have its own dedicated hardware, which Sony wants to leverage in bringing a qualitative leap in audio quality compared to the PS3 and PS4 (on which audio stayed basically the same).
Other interesting tidbits that have been confirmed is the usage of an AMD 8-core, Zen 2 CPU, alongside 8K resolution support (note that "support" doesn't equal "output") and a faster-than-SSD storage subsystem that is much faster, according to Cerny, than current consumer-grade SSD solutions. Backwards compatibility is, of course, a must by now - Microsoft has made it so with their push that spans the entirety of Xbox's lifetime. Excited already?
Source:
Wired
Of course, Navi is expected to debut much sooner in the consumer space than on next-gen consoles, but the fact that PlayStation 5 development kits are already being seeded - and an increasing rate, according to Sony - bodes well for the feature's inclusion on AMD's consumer-based cards. Either that or the company is taking a software approach to raytracing, which, if NVIDIA's 1000 and 10*0 series is any indication, wouldn't go very well with performance intentions. This does mean that raytracing is about to receive a much-needed market penetration boost for its adoption by developers. NVIDIA will of course be able to wave the flag of having been the first company to introduce the technology to consumers.
Other interesting tidbits that have been confirmed is the usage of an AMD 8-core, Zen 2 CPU, alongside 8K resolution support (note that "support" doesn't equal "output") and a faster-than-SSD storage subsystem that is much faster, according to Cerny, than current consumer-grade SSD solutions. Backwards compatibility is, of course, a must by now - Microsoft has made it so with their push that spans the entirety of Xbox's lifetime. Excited already?
66 Comments on Sony PlayStation 5 Console Confirmed Powered by 8-core Zen 2 CPU, Navi and Ray Tracing Confirmed
How much will cost.
But if people can't play older games then not worth.
Another thing, maybe they will use at least 32GB of GDDR5x or GDDR6 this time, to finally have some decent textures quality!
But knowing Sony, they will most likely go for 16GB, if not even less.... Yeah, they are that cheap and greedy.
16 GiB is more than the Xbox One X has and, frankly, it's enough.
www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-how-the-crew-was-ported-to-playstation-4
Here's the diagram:
TL;DR: CPU memory bandwidth is very, very low (20 GB/s) compared to GPU memory bandwidth (176 GB/s) even though they're accessing the same chips. If you have the wrong assets in the wrong memory, performance tanks. Like all PlayStations before it, developers have to be acutely aware of how memory is being spent.16 GiB GDDR6 hooked up to Navi memory controller and 4 GiB DDR4 hooked up to the Ryzen memory controller.
Honestly that sounds like overkill. Maybe 12+4 or 8+8. Simply separating OS dedicated memory from game memory would make a lot of developers pleased.
Since AMD Navi is going agenst Nvidia Tuning TU106 (2070 & 2060)
AMD Radeon 7 is vs Nvidia Tuning TU104 (2080 & 2070Ti)
AMD has nothing against Nvidia Tuning TU102 (Titan RTX & 2080Ti)
The only place the console isn't dead is mobile.
People are still falling for the trick. It's sad but me complaining won't raise the average IQ. Sony and MS will sell us anti-consumer redundancy for as long as we're stupid enough to pay a premium for a disadvantage. Every alleged advantage non-mobile "consoles" have is available on the "PC" platform, especially now that developers can use Linux + Vulkan + OpenGL to bypass the MS tax.
— update, since I was downvoted without an attempt to discuss the issue:
Logic?
claim A: It's good to standardize the hardware. Let's move from dozens of proprietary platforms to x86.
claim B: It's not good to standardize the software. Let's keep three software platforms on x86 that are artificially incompatible, even though two of them only have to do one thing: gaming.
That sounds like development joy indeed, Lex. The only joy involved is for the fewer who benefit from this absurd situation. The majority of people don't because it's an example of gross inefficiency. Also, I doubt being limited by Jaguar (a chip that wouldn't have gone anywhere significant in the market without being propped up by the "console" peddlers) qualifies as joyous for a lot of game developers.
Development joy would be having a single software platform to deal with to go with a single hardware platform, not a lot of extra nonsense designed to extract profit via the peddling of entropy.
1) Compact desktop form factors exist on the "PC" platform.
Other form factors, including any of the "console" form factors can be deployed without special software walled gardens accompanying them. Any form factor can exist on the PC platform.
2) The "PC" platform can hit any price point any serious so-called console can. In fact, without the unnecessary costs of the redundancies, the price points should be lower. That's why most everyone, even Apple, decided to ditch proprietary hardware in favor of x86.
3) The "PC" platform can do anything with its hardware that any serious so-called console can. This has been true since non-x86 parts like Cell were dumped in favor of the same x86 platform that ate all of the incompatible personal computer hardware standards, one by one.
4) The easy-to-use factor is actually worse with three incompatible software platforms, not superior. Additionally, there is nothing stopping anyone from replicating their software walled gardens on a common underlying software platform that runs atop the already standard x86 hardware platform.
Having to buy and deal with 3 boxes for gaming is hardly easy nor cheap.
Having to develop for 3 platforms for gaming is hardly easy nor cheap, particularly given Jaguar's weakness.
Adopting Zen 2 doesn't retroactively eliminate all of the pain and stupidity Jaguar "consoles" have caused, nor does it prevent a similar situation from occurring later, so long as the unnecessary redundancies continue.
4) Porting from Linux to Windows, provided the games utilize Vulkan and/or OpenGL is hardly as onerous as dealing with three platforms plus Linux.
5) Having Linux be the dominant gaming platform gives momentum to getting software like AutoCAD and Adobe CC/CS ported, making Linux a more useful desktop OS. That's a win for the PC platform because MS Windows 10's anti-consumer practices, like force-feeding opaque monolithic updates and relentless spyware, can be bypassed. Another example is refusing to get current DX to run on the previous iteration.
6) There used to be dozens and dozens of incompatible microcomputers and quite a few consoles on the market simultaneously. While it was interesting it was highly inefficient overall, which even led to crashes. Sometimes, back in the day, a console wasn't much of a computer rather than being a computer in disguise. However, there were exceptions (e.g. Atari 5200). A true console has a unique hardware platform. A console isn't credibly defined by the existence of a thin proprietary software layer upon the world-standard x86 platform, particularly since even proprietary ports for controllers have gone the way of the dodo.
There was justification for "the console" (outside of special mobile form factors like Switch which are slightly more credible as separate entities vis-à-vis the PC platform) back when they had special radically-nonx86 CPUs (e.g. Cell) in particular. There was justification for "the console" back when microcomputers were either too expensive for just gaming and/or too primitive to deliver an experience that was on par with a color TV-oriented machine (a console) that possessed things like sprites, scrolling in hardware, sound (the $10,000 Lisa had none), color, etc.
Back when we had a situation where one console used a 6502 derivative, its competitor used a Z-80A, and the PC platform used an 80286 — we had a situation in which consoles were relevant. Adding a mushy cheap keyboard to a cheap gaming-oriented 8-bit computer (i.e. Atari XE) wasn't even close to replicating the PC platform in a "console" and vice-versa (in terms of price tag, primarily). Back when we had actual special sauce consoles were relevant (e.g. Cell and the Emotion Engine). But the market has spoken and it has found that the inefficiency of having incompatible hardware for cheap gaming PCs ("consoles") isn't worthwhile. It's time for the market to figure out that the same inefficiency in software isn't worthwhile either. In our tech world, which is dominated by monopoly, duopoly, and similar, however — efficiency isn't necessary the goal.
PS5 is using Navi 12 witch is RTX 2060 performance
Nvidia will release new TU104 GPUs the RTX 2070Ti and 2080+ to fight Navi 10 and 20