Well well … it’s no wonder AMD is slowly gaining ground in the GPU as well as CPU market.
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?
