Insider hints at PS6, Xbox Helix performance as they progress towards 2027 launch

Speculations and leaks about the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft have been circulating for quite a while. Two leakers have been consistently sharing information about the expected specifications, release window, and more. One of the leakers, Kepler_L2, has now shared the compute power for both platforms, as well as what stage they are in.

Over on the NeoGAF forum, Kepler_L2 responded to a comment with some performance numbers for the PS6 and Project Helix. He claims that the PS6 will feature 40 TFLOPS (tera floating-point operations per second) while Helix will come with 56 TFLOPS. This is a measure of raw compute power for the APUs that will power each console. Project Helix is said to be powered by the Magnus APU while the PS6 is said to be powered by the Orion APU, both of which are developed by AMD.

While these numbers are solid indicators of raw performance, real-world gaming performance is affected by several other factors. We know that Xbox is going for a hybrid PC/console approach with Project Helix, whereas Sony doesn’t have the same goal with the PS6.

Furthermore, Kepler_L2 also gave some insight into what stage of development these chips are in. Both are said to have passed the ‘tape-out’ stage, which is when the design and layout of the chip have been finalized and sent over to the manufacturer. This suggests both next-gen consoles should launch next year, with November most likely being the reveal window. That’s also when the current-gen consoles would have completed their typical seven-year cycle.