Fresh PlayStation 5 leak suggests AMD 8-core Zen CPU, Navi-based GPU
The first concrete details about the specifications that will feature at the heart of the Sony PlayStation 5 have surfaced. With Dev Kits rumored to have been seeded to developers last month, it was only a matter of time before we started to learn more about Sony’s plans. Based on the latest rumors, the next-generational leap for the PlayStation platform will be heavily centered on delivering a supercharged VR experience.
The current PS4 and PS4 Pro, like the Xbox One, are both powered by AMD’s Jaguar architecture, which is a low-power design originally targeted at ultrabooks. The PlayStation 5 will ramp things up considerably with an all-new octa-core APU featuring AMD’s vaunted Zen microarchitecture. Designed to run in desktops and on performance-based mobile platforms, Zen-based chips are newer and more significantly more powerful.
The integrated GPU will be based on AMD’s latest iteration of its GCN microarchitecture codenamed Navi (possibly the last of the GCN-based GPUs), which is expected to reach consumers sometime in the second-half of 2018 to compete with Nvidia’s next-gen Volta or Turing-based GTX 11-series GPUs. This will help the PlayStation 5 deliver the kind of VR performance seen in the new HTC Vive Pro.
Early speculation around a launch time frame for the PS5 seems to settle around a fall 2019 window. Given that AMD will only be ramping up its production of consumer-grade GPU Navi GPUs in the second-half of this year, mass production of Zen-based APUs featuring Navi GPU cores are more likely to crop up from mid to late 2019.
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