PlayStation handheld: More details about its Canis SoC revealed by a new leak

Moore's Law is Dead previously revealed the full specifications of the chip that powers Sony's upcoming handheld gaming console called Canis. Some of it was speculative and included ranges for values. Now, the leaker has filled in some gaps, giving us a much better look at it. Some earlier specs have also been revised.

For starters, Canis will feature a six-core CPU with four Zen 6c cores and two Zen 6 Low Power cores. While up to 48 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 RAM is supported, the actual value might be lower. Tom estimated its manufacturing costs and concluded Sony could easily put 40 GB without any issues. Based on his calculations, it could cost between $549 and $ 699, but that figure could probably be higher when it launches in a year or two.

On the GPU side, Canis will launch with a 16 CU RDNA 5 iGPU with a handheld clock of 1.2 GHz (1.65 GHz docked). It is backwards compatible with PS4 and PS5 titles and can deliver up to 75% of the latter's rasterisation performance when docked. Ray-tracing is even more impressive, with Canis offering an alleged 2.6x uplift. Not all games will be able to run smoothly on the handheld. Many will require a patch to facilitate a proper handheld experience.

In a recent PlayStation beta update, Sony added a 'low power mode' for a tabletop console that doesn't run on battery. Even though the official reason was stated to be power savings, Sony likely wants to test how PS5 games work in a power-restrained environment, allowing developers to tweak their titles accordingly.