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PlayStation 5 Hardware Specifications Officially Revealed

An official PlayStation 5 event was held today at 9am Pacific Time (about 4pm in the UK) promising to go “under the hood” on the PS5’s specs and features, with the event livestreamed on the PlayStation Blog and YouTube. The event was fronted by the PlayStation 5’s lead system architect Mark Cerny, and what he revealed can be watched directly below.

Following the official PS5 event video, is an in-brief rundown of what was revealed, followed by everything we already know about the PlayStation 5 console to date. Nearly a year after Sony first began discussing its next-generation console, the company provided detailed information on the PlayStation 5’s system architecture in a dry technical presentation on Wednesday by Mark Cerny, lead system architect for both the PlayStation 4 and PS5. The livestreamed talk was accompanied by an in-depth Digital Foundry piece based on an interview with Cerny.

PlayStation 5 hardware specifications:

CPU x86-64-AMD Ryzen™ “Zen 2” 8 Cores / 16 Threads Variable frequency, up to 3.5 GHz GPU AMD Radeon™ RDNA 2-based graphics engine Ray Tracing Acceleration Variable frequency, up to 2.23 GHz (10.3 TFLOPS) System Memory GDDR6 16GB 448GB/s Bandwidth SSD 825GB 5.5GB/s Read Bandwidth (Raw) PS5 Game Disc Ultra HD Blu-ray™, up to 100GB/disc Video Out Support of 4K 120Hz TVs, 8K TVs, VRR (specified by HDMI ver.2.1) Audio “Tempest” 3D AudioTech

PS5 will also allow games to offer a much deeper sense of immersion through 3D audio. Visuals are of course imperative to the gaming experience, but we believe audio plays a crucial role as well. We wanted to deliver a compelling audio experience for all users, not just those who own high-end speaker systems. So we designed and built a custom engine for 3D audio that is equipped with the power and efficiency for ideal audio rendering. With 3D audio on PS5, the sounds you hear while playing will offer a greater sense of presence and locality. You’ll be able to hear raindrops hitting different surfaces all around you, and you can hear and precisely locate where an enemy is lurking behind you.

Lastly, we’re excited to confirm that the backwards compatibility features are working well. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by play time, and we’re expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5. With more than 4000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backwards compatibility coverage over time.

With more known now about both Xbox Series X and PS5, it’s become clear that consumers will have their hands full attempting to choose between the two systems. Both companies have opted to push the technological envelope further than any consoles have before and, with both specs more closely resembling high-end gaming PCs than ever before, it’s hard to speculate on whether there’s going to be a wrong answer when it comes to power. With that said, exclusives will play a huge role in the build-up to the launch of the PS5, and if Sony can do with its next console what it did with the stellar PS4 exclusive library, it might not even matter whose console ends up more technologically impressive.

Sony is planning to launch the PS5 in the 2020 holiday season, which is the same release window that Microsoft has given for the Xbox Series X.