This past week Sony took a major step toward the next generation of PlayStation consoles, officially announcing thePS5by name and confirming that it’s launching during the holiday season in 2020. Sony had previously announced it was working on a next-generation console, even confirming some hardware details, but thePS5 name and launch windowwere only just confirmed. Continuing from those new revelations, Sony has more to share. New details about the PS5 hardware, namely its CPU, are now available.
In a report from Japanese magazine Famitsu, the outlet confirmednew information about the PS5. The report comes from official information shared on Sony’s Japanese website for the PS5. The new console’s CPU is now said to be an x86-64-AMD Ryzen Zen 2. The Zen 2 CPU in the PS5 will feature 8 total cores, the same as the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but will have 16 total threads. This will allow developers, theoretically, to perform more processes at once.
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The CPU’s clock speed remains unannounced, but there is some educated speculation to be shared. The Zen 2 lineup of PC CPUs already on the market could offer an idea of the PS5’s clock speed. For example, the Ryzen 7 3700X also features 8 cores and 16 threads. This CPU has a base clock of 3.6GHz. On the server side, the EPYC 7232P 8-core, 16-thread CPU has a base clock of 3.1GHz. ThePS5 CPUlikely rests somewhere within this range, between these two Zen 2-based processors.
Rumors have previously been surprisingly accurate regarding the PS5’s CPU, likely because the rumors have been coming from developers working onPS5 devkit hardware. The clock rate being shared in some rumors is 3.2GHz, a healthy step up from the PS4 Pro’s 2.13GHz and the PS4’s 1.6GHz. If PS4 hardware can jump from 1080p to 4K resolution with just .5GHz improvement in CPU, imagine what opportunities another full GHz will offer in the PS5.
Technically, most of today’s new information isn’t wholly new. Sony officially stated that itsnext console’s CPUwould be based on AMD’s Zen 2 architecture pack in April. It also confirmed that it would be an 8-core CPU. Today’s announcement reaffirmed that information with more specific details. That the PS5 CPU has 16 threads is new information, but could have been assumed since all Zen 2 CPUs feature two threads per core.
Nevertheless, the more information about the PS5 to consider and analyze, the better. Next-generation consoles are just over a year away from release and hype for their potential is already building.
