NX Gamer: PS5 Full Spec Analysis | A new generation is Born

[Ateron]

Let's just cancel the ps5. Every thread on ps5 is a shitshow and for good reason, it's a fact that we're gonna be playing at 900p/24 fps while the series X will be 8k/480 fps full path raytracing.

This is getting annoying. I don't see the reason why people have to try to bring others down over a piece of plastic. Let's wait for the games, they'll do the talking.

 

[Yautja_Warrior]

Let's just cancel the ps5. Every thread on ps5 is a shitshow and for good reason, it's a fact that we're gonna be playing at 900p/24 fps while the series X will be 8k/480 fps full path raytracing.

This is getting annoying. I don't see the reason why people have to try to bring others down over a piece of plastic. Let's wait for the games, they'll do the talking.

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Yeah it's starting to get embarrassing, people have gone Tflop crazy or something lol I mean, the gap in power is even smaller than the Pro vs Xbox One X......

The PS5 specs look great. It's really powerful for a console, Series X having a bit more power doesn't change that.

 

[RivalGT]

Good spot, that's another complicating factor in the comparison for sure.

It would be interesting if someone could 'somehow' replicate the setups in PS5/XSX with Navi cards, and investigate the perf scaling on PC with them. That might be easier said than done for the moment though.

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I think most 5700 XT cards would have trouble hitting the clock speeds of what the PS5 is running, maybe someone who has a 5700 XT can share what type of performance gains you get when overclocking the cards. Stock speeds is 1605-1750 mhz.

Here at techpowerup, a overclocked 5700 XT at 1935mhz boost shows small 1-3 fps increase in most games at 4k resolution, biggest gains came in DMC5 with almost 9 fps gains, but that seems to be rare.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/xfx-radeon-rx-5700-xt-thicc-iii-ultra/16.html

 

[AegonSnake]

I don't think back in 2016 (or whenever they started making the PS5) Cerny said to his team, "ok, let's get this thing to 2.2Ghz" either.

I do believe that being able to clock as high as 2.2Ghz was a result of whatever work they put into their cooling solution. So basically, we are at an impasse. If the PS5 comes and sounds like a jet engine and we are having overheating issues, then you are right. If it comes and is whisper quiet and no overheating issues, then I gues we can put the whole clocked that high for PR sake thing to bed.

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whats crazy to me is that 2.2 ghz would be a 150w gpu by itself. with the cpu we are looking at an 180w apu. their cooling solution must be super cheap and extremely efficient to allow them to hit those clocks.

the only problem i have with this is that they are passing the costs to the consumer. MS's more powerful console is likely around 200w while i can see sony's console pushing 250w.

 

[AegonSnake]

I think most 5700 XT cards would have trouble hitting the clock speeds of what the PS5 is running, maybe someone who has a 5700 XT can share what type of performance gains you get when overclocking the cards. Stock speeds is 1605-1750 mhz.

Here at techpowerup, a overclocked 5700 XT at 1935mhz boost shows small 1-3 fps increase in most games at 4k resolution, biggest gains came in DMC5 with almost 9 fps gains, but that seems to be rare.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/xfx-radeon-rx-5700-xt-thicc-iii-ultra/16.html

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performance scales linearly with clocks. its the temperatures that do not.

those in game results are off because 5700xt is bad at rendering games at 4k. maybe its the bandwidth or some other limitation elsewhere. a better test would be to test games at 1440p.

the firestrike scores scale linearly as you increase clocks.

 

[nib95]

performance scales linearly with clocks. its the temperatures that do not.

those in game results are off because 5700xt is bad at rendering games at 4k. maybe its the bandwidth or some other limitation elsewhere. a better test would be to test games at 1440p.

the firestrike scores scale linearly as you increase clocks.

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It's possible there's also a power draw limitation with the 5700 XT. The 5700 standard scales better with overclocks when its voltages are adjusted.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

whats crazy to me is that 2.2 ghz would be a 150w gpu by itself. with the cpu we are looking at an 180w apu. their cooling solution must be super cheap and extremely efficient to allow them to hit those clocks.

the only problem i have with this is that they are passing the costs to the consumer. MS's more powerful console is likely around 200w while i can see sony's console pushing 250w.

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That is a good point,
I assume RDNA2 has lower power requirements and lower heat output than RDNA 1, but even with smart system design similar to the XSX, the PS5 will undoubtedly need a better cooling solution, which means the cooling itself could be more expensive (or perhaps we will get an external power brick?). Perhaps they have a cheap watercooling solution, but that seems unlikely, and would still add costs, let alone potentially exasperate 3-year failure rates.

Normally I would assume that with the more powerful GPU PS5 could come in at $100 cheaper, but the little things add up. PS5 needing potentially more expensive cooling, SSD cooling, more expensive SSD (unless the smaller size offsets this), specialized architectural changes and extra processing. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual build costs are a lot closer than we would expect.

 

[Crayon]

I'm tellin yah the cooling and psu will be cheaper! I'm pretty sure the power scheme is about pushing the price down as far as the can on the cooler, psu, and apu. There's only one reason they'd be goofing around with the power limiting stuff and it's not noise. They didn't go through all that trouble because they wanted a less powerful, hotter running system for the same price.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

That is a good point,
I assume RDNA2 has lower power requirements and lower heat output than RDNA 1, but even with smart system design similar to the XSX, the PS5 will undoubtedly need a better cooling solution, which means the cooling itself could be more expensive (or perhaps we will get an external power brick?). Perhaps they have a cheap watercooling solution, but that seems unlikely, and would still add costs, let alone potentially exasperate 3-year failure rates.

Normally I would assume that with the more powerful GPU PS5 could come in at $100 cheaper, but the little things add up. PS5 needing potentially more expensive cooling, SSD cooling, more expensive SSD (unless the smaller size offsets this), specialized architectural changes and extra processing. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual build costs are a lot closer than we would expect.

Click to shrink...

Don't see why the SSD will be more expensive .
It's smaller than XSX and they both using a controller yeah they add specialized stuff but it should not cost much .
There SSD patent from last yeah give you a good idea how they did this and how they also try to cut cost with it.

Truth is the two most expensive parts of the system will be the Ram and APU and MS set up will cost more. (the question is how much more)
As for cooling we have to see the break down but it's not like MS cooling solution is cheap so it could end up being a wash .

 

[AegonSnake]

That is a good point,
I assume RDNA2 has lower power requirements and lower heat output than RDNA 1, but even with smart system design similar to the XSX, the PS5 will undoubtedly need a better cooling solution, which means the cooling itself could be more expensive (or perhaps we will get an external power brick?). Perhaps they have a cheap watercooling solution, but that seems unlikely, and would still add costs, let alone potentially exasperate 3-year failure rates.

Normally I would assume that with the more powerful GPU PS5 could come in at $100 cheaper, but the little things add up. PS5 needing potentially more expensive cooling, SSD cooling, more expensive SSD (unless the smaller size offsets this), specialized architectural changes and extra processing. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual build costs are a lot closer than we would expect.

Click to shrink...

i think this is a very real possibility. this might not be a $399 console like we are all expecting to be seeing as how effectively all specs are worse aside from the ssd speed.

the cooling solution simply has to be dirt cheap. like $20 cheaper than the vapor chamber cooling for sony to justify saving money on a 10% smaller apu. otherwise whatever money they save from a smaller die goes into the cooling solution leaving them at the same price point as the xbox series x and a potentially disastrous pr debacle waiting to happen.

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

they will need to save $20 from the apu, $20 from the ssd, $20 from the cooling solution and another $40 from the ram in order to come in a $100 cheaper than the series x, and tbh, i dont see that happening. they will probably be able to save $50 max in the best case scenario.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Don't see why the SSD will be more expensive .
It's smaller than XSX and they both using a controller yeah they add specialized stuff but it should not cost much .
There SSD patent from last yeah give you a good idea how they did this and how they also try to cut cost with it.

Truth is the two most expensive parts of the system will be the Ram and APU and MS set up will cost more. (the question is how much more)
As for cooling we have to see the break down but it's not like MS cooling solution is cheap so it could end up being a wash .

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This would be a tough thing to price out, if anyone else can find a good example for this feel free to chime in.

But in my experience, faster NVMEs fetch higher prices. Given that the Series X still went with Gen3 NVMe speeds, when their tech clearly supports Gen4, I can't imagine any other reason MS would shy away from going for a 4-5GB/s NVMe.

For example, the Seagate Firecuda series
- Fircuda 510 1TB (3.2GB/s) - $150 USD

Seagate BarraCuda 510 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

- Firecuda 520 1TB (5GB/s) -$227 USD

Seagate FireCuda 520 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

The SSDs in these machines certainly have to be one of the most expensive components outside of the APU itself.

i think this is a very real possibility. this might not be a $399 console like we are all expecting to be seeing as how effectively all specs are worse aside from the ssd speed.

the cooling solution simply has to be dirt cheap. like $20 cheaper than the vapor chamber cooling for sony to justify saving money on a 10% smaller apu. otherwise whatever money they save from a smaller die goes into the cooling solution leaving them at the same price point as the xbox series x and a potentially disastrous pr debacle waiting to happen.

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

they will need to save $20 from the apu, $20 from the ssd, $20 from the cooling solution and another $40 from the ram in order to come in a $100 cheaper than the series x, and tbh, i dont see that happening. they will probably be able to save $50 max in the best case scenario.

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I totally agree, so perhaps at that point, it's down to who is willing to take the bigger loss. I wouldn't underestimate Sony in any case.

 

[Crayon]

i think this is a very real possibility. this might not be a $399 console like we are all expecting to be seeing as how effectively all specs are worse aside from the ssd speed.

the cooling solution simply has to be dirt cheap. like $20 cheaper than the vapor chamber cooling for sony to justify saving money on a 10% smaller apu. otherwise whatever money they save from a smaller die goes into the cooling solution leaving them at the same price point as the xbox series x and a potentially disastrous pr debacle waiting to happen.

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

they will need to save $20 from the apu, $20 from the ssd, $20 from the cooling solution and another $40 from the ram in order to come in a $100 cheaper than the series x, and tbh, i dont see that happening. they will probably be able to save $50 max in the best case scenario.

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You forgot the power supply. Like the cooler, it can be specced right up to the power budget without haveing to keep much headroom. I have no idea what this stuff would actually cost. They have to pick up $5 here, $3 there, all over the thing to add up to a hundred. Seems like a tretch with the performance so close but crazier things have happenned I guess. If they come in at the same price tho wtf lol.

 

[Crayon]

For example, the Seagate Firecuda series
- Fircuda 510 1TB (3.2GB/s) - $150 USD

Seagate BarraCuda 510 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

- Firecuda 520 1TB (5GB/s) -$227 USD

Seagate FireCuda 520 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

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Holy shit that's way more difference than I thought. If sony comes in same price that fuckin ssd better make you breakfast in bed.

 

[Chettlar]

Yeah well that would be the most common thing, but then you have oddities like RE3 demo running better on PS4Pro or earlier in the gen AC:Unity running better on XB1 because of the slightly better CPU. I think we can expect every single difference between PS5 and XSX to show up one way or another, including 15% better resolution or resolution parity but better effects/shadows or whatever on XSX and any advantage the SSD can bring to the table for PS5. DF is going to have the time of their life, and we should too. Parity is boring.

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Uh, that's not an oddity. RE3 runs at a much higher resolution on xbox one x.

 

[Deleted member 6539]

It's not like it can be proven either way. Believe what you want to believe. Any speculation is fair game.

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Some of that "speculation" only makes sense if you believe Sony has a time machine though.

 

[ThatNerdGUI]

As I mention above, the 5700 vs 5700 Xt is a poor comparison to the XSX and PS5 GPUs. The 5700 vs 5700 XT is likely much more indicative of performance advantages of Sony overclocking the PS5 GPU. If there are points where performance of the two is narrower than expected, it's likely because they are essentially identical cards. That also shows that overclocking won't help performance in every scenario, causing a bigger performance divide between the systems at times.

As for your Tflops difference point, I think you do have a point. Even though it's still not a perfect example, perhaps the 2070 super vs the 2080 super is a better comparison:

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I did some legwork before. These are Time Spy results, all of them using a 3800X.

Spoiler: here

 

[gundamkyoukai]

This would be a tough thing to price out, if anyone else can find a good example for this feel free to chime in.

But in my experience, faster NVMEs fetch higher prices. Given that the Series X still went with Gen3 NVMe speeds, when their tech clearly supports Gen4, I can't imagine any other reason MS would shy away from going for a 4-5GB/s NVMe.

For example, the Seagate Firecuda series
- Fircuda 510 1TB (3.2GB/s) - $150 USD

Seagate BarraCuda 510 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

- Firecuda 520 1TB (5GB/s) -$227 USD

Seagate FireCuda 520 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

pcpartpicker.com

The SSDs in these machines certainly have to be one of the most expensive components outside of the APU itself.

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You are looking at selling price never do when you are trying get a idea of a BOM.
What you need to be looking at is the price of the chips that go into the SSD.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

I did some legwork before. These are Time Spy results, all of them using a 3800X.

Spoiler: here

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Thanks for sharing this, that is an interesting example. Does timespy let you adjust resolution?

You are looking at selling price never do when you are trying get a idea of a BOM.
What you need to be looking at is the price of the chips that go into the SSD.

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For sure, but I have no idea where to get those numbers, so if you can find a reference point, let us know. I have to imagine the cost of production is also going to be somewhat in-line with the retail price.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

For sure, but I have no idea where to get those numbers, so if you can find a reference point, let us know. I have to imagine the cost of production is also going to be somewhat in-line with the retail price.

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DRAMeXchange - World leading DRAM and NAND Flash market research firm, with more than a decade of most authoritative database

DRAM, NAND Flash, SSD, Module and Memory card, and provides market research on spot and contract prices, daily news, market views and reports, and monthly datasheets of semiconductor industry.集邦科技

www.dramexchange.com

 

[ThatNerdGUI]

Thanks for sharing this, that is an interesting example. Does timespy let you adjust resolution?

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Yes. All the settings of the benchmark can be adjusted. These use default setting though.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

You are looking at selling price never do when you are trying get a idea of a BOM.
What you need to be looking at is the price of the chips that go into the SSD.

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Thanks for this, but admittedly I have no idea how to read it yet. If you have any idea how to parse out differences similar to the PS5 and XSX SSDs, that would be awesome.

Yes. All the settings of the benchmark can be adjusted. These use default setting though.

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Not trying to give you extra work, but it would be interesting to see the difference between 1440p and 4k if you have the time ;)

 

[TuMekeNZ]

You are kind of saying it: that they changed because marketing and perception vs XsX. That is not how things work, you don't compromise design and reliability of a product you have to manufacture and sell in millions for years because it doesn't fit marketing.
If it was that easy to adjust, MS could easily boost theirs and widen the gap again.

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Pretty sure the design of the PS5 dev kit points to the fact high clocks were always on the cards as part of the original design. It may not be as powerful on paper (and probably in practice) as the XSX, but I find it cool that Cerny and co have gone for a design that is different. I have faith Cerny knows what he is doing and that we'll get fantastic games out of the system.

And before anyone starts, XSX will produce some truly amazing games too. Lets just enjoy the new gen excitement!

 

[Pheonix]

they will need to save $20 from the apu, $20 from the ssd, $20 from the cooling solution and another $40 from the ram in order to come in a $100 cheaper than the series x, and tbh, i dont see that happening. they will probably be able to save $50 max in the best case scenario.

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Not quite like that. They don't have to have a $100 lower BOM to sell at $100 less. At the end of the day it just comes down to who is willing to take a hit. And long term costs would go into making that decision.

If sony ends up wth a BOM of $450-$470, and they believe that by next year the cost of their SSD flash chips would e 20% less, and the cost of their RAM would be 20% less, then taking a $100 loss now and coming in at $399 would be n easy choice for them.

If MS BOMis around $520 - $540, then they could drop only as far as $449 if they have to after making the same considerations sony made. It does, however, mean that they are likely to be selling at a loss for as much as 3 years. That's even worse if they try and match sony's price and also sell at $399. That wouldn't they are taking around a $160 loss/unit to sony's $100/unit loss.

My guess is that MS doesn't budge on that $499 entry cost, they should know full well that they would sell very well the first 3 months regardless and can drop their price a year later when some of their components cost less to acquire.

 

[DangerMouse]

No doubt it was deliberate

Highest power per cost, high emphasis on speed (clocks). You can see that approach everywhere in the design. They had a certain power footprint and wanted to fab the smallest chip possible at the highest speed to bring down cost and increase volume of chips they could produce

2.23 GHz isn't too crazy with RDNA2

They also prioritized SSD speed as something they can do unique that will radically improve memory management, basically that component is their 8GB GDDR5 announcement

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Yup. It's really all over every aspect of the design.

Pretty sure the design of the PS5 dev kit points to the fact high clocks were always on the cards as part of the original design. It may not be as powerful on paper (and probably in practice) as the XSX, but I find it cool that Cerny and co have gone for a design that is different. I have faith Cerny knows what he is doing and that we'll get fantastic games out of the system.

And before anyone starts, XSX will produce some truly amazing games too. Lets just enjoy the new gen excitement!

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Yeah. It's very clear from the whole design that Cerny and his team were targeting this kind of design and he's very good at this so I trust the areas he made different choices and approaches on and am excited to see what devs do with it, and both designs should lead to great performance.

 

[Lady Gaia]

Their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

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They're both interesting approaches with valid underlying rationale. With a pure cost-focused lens, however, the lower chip count and narrower bus for Sony's design will likely cost reduce more aggressively over time. Even if it doesn't save them a lot today, their retail launch price is likely driven more by the cost of producing units averaged over the first couple of years rather than the literal day one BOM cost.

What effect the higher-bandwidth portion of the Series X memory arrangement has on titles depends on a lot of other factors that contribute to bandwidth utilization. We'll know more with time but I don't expect to have a definitive view of what decisions work best for developers for quite a while, likely well into next year when GDC talks start digging into these kinds of details.

 

[lukeskymac]

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not here to convince anyone that the PS5 doesn't sound like a great system. I think it's a very exciting system, and I hope the SSD speeds amount to some great features.Price will be a big selling point for both systems.

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I don't think anyone here is saying that there is no gap, just that a 18% advantage in TFLOPs != a 18% better GPU.

 

[androvsky]

whats crazy to me is that 2.2 ghz would be a 150w gpu by itself. with the cpu we are looking at an 180w apu. their cooling solution must be super cheap and extremely efficient to allow them to hit those clocks.

the only problem i have with this is that they are passing the costs to the consumer. MS's more powerful console is likely around 200w while i can see sony's console pushing 250w.

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The wattage you quote is, I'm guessing, the peak under max load, correct? Sony's clocking solution is supposed to drop the clock when the load maxes out, so I'm looking forward to how much of their ability to hit 2.2 GHz is dynamic clocking and how much is the actual cooler. I'd assume the peak Sony allows is well under 200 Watts, and they should be able to get under that without having to be very aggressive on the clocks. They're even using power management tricks from laptops, like the CPU/GPU power load balancing.

On a related note, did anyone ever figure out where the fan(s) go in the PS5 V-shaped dev kits? Has anyone reliable commented on the fans in the dev kit at all?

 

[OnPorpoise]

Sony had access to AMD's upcoming technologies, and likely would have been able to surmise the general performance potential of different configurations.

My guess is Sony had a good idea of the top end performance for the console-space, and just opted for a design that got them close enough to that range without sacrificing other equally important goals.

 

[TheAmazingSpiderMan]

Let's just cancel the ps5. Every thread on ps5 is a shitshow and for good reason, it's a fact that we're gonna be playing at 900p/24 fps while the series X will be 8k/480 fps full path raytracing.

This is getting annoying. I don't see the reason why people have to try to bring others down over a piece of plastic. Let's wait for the games, they'll do the talking.

Click to shrink...

Lol 7 years of hurt coming thick and fast 😂

 

[lukeskymac]

The wattage you quote is, I'm guessing, the peak under max load, correct? Sony's clocking solution is supposed to drop the clock when the load maxes out, so I'm looking forward to how much of their ability to hit 2.2 GHz is dynamic clocking and how much is the actual cooler. I'd assume the peak Sony allows is well under 200 Watts, and they should be able to get under that without having to be very aggressive on the clocks. They're even using power management tricks from laptops, like the CPU/GPU power load balancing.

On a related note, did anyone ever figure out where the fan(s) go in the PS5 V-shaped dev kits? Has anyone reliable commented on the fans in the dev kit at all?

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Umm... no? The entire point is that they know the cooling system needs to dissipate 200W no matter the room temperature (I'm assuming up to 40C) so they can keep it there constantly. Edit: unless it hits the caps of course. Then it can get under 200W.

 

[ThatNerdGUI]

Not trying to give you extra work, but it would be interesting to see the difference between 1440p and 4k if you have the time ;)

Click to shrink...

at 4K

Spoiler: 4k

 

[Dave.]

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

Click to shrink...

You misunderstand how MS is doing their RAM - they aren't buying 10GB of top end high speed ram and 6GB of cheap crap, they are buying exactly the same 14Gbps chips as Sony is doing (if we are to believe that is indeed what Sony is buying). The difference is Sony uses 8x 2GB chips to make 16GB, whereas MS uses 10x chips total - 6x 2GB chips and 4x 1GB chips. So for MS, 10GB is spread across all 320 bits of interface (every chip they are using has the 1st 1GB), but 6GB is made up of the "extra" GB on the 2GB chips so it only connects to a 192 bit interface.

It is therefore not possible for MS's RAM chips to be cheaper than Sony's. Sony needs less chips in total, and have more flexibility (they could use 16x1GB in clamshell if the 1GB units are cheaper/GB). And then MS needs a more traces on the mainboard, and more memory controllers on the APU also.

 

[Pheonix]

Sony had access to AMD's upcoming technologies, and likely would have been able to surmise the general performance potential of different configurations.

My guess is Sony had a good idea of the top end performance for the console-space, and just opted for a design that got them close enough to that range without sacrificing other equally important goals.

Click to shrink...

And that sums this all up in a nutshell.

The wattage you quote is, I'm guessing, the peak under max load, correct? Sony's clocking solution is supposed to drop the clock when the load maxes out, so I'm looking forward to how much of their ability to hit 2.2 GHz is dynamic clocking and how much is the actual cooler. I'd assume the peak Sony allows is well under 200 Watts, and they should be able to get under that without having to be very aggressive on the clocks. They're even using power management tricks from laptops, like the CPU/GPU power load balancing.

On a related note, did anyone ever figure out where the fan(s) go in the PS5 V-shaped dev kits? Has anyone reliable commented on the fans in the dev kit at all?

Click to shrink...

In a conventional console; you fix clocks, but your clock doesn't determine how much power you draw. That depends on the load. So as Cerny said, you look at a range and kinda guess what kinda TDP you are going to have to cool and build a cooling solution for that. The problem though, and why its a guess, is that you would never know when and for how long your system would be running at max load and drawing max power. When that happens, it's likely to overwhelm your cooling solution (if you guessed wrong) and you end up overheating.

In the PS5, power is locked. The APU cannot draw more than a set amount of power at any time. regardless of what kinda load its under. So sony can build a cooling solution for that specific power point. The PS5 would never exceed a certain temp because its cooling solution is designed to keep it right there and power draw is not unpredictable. Now, based on whatever that set power draw is, they are able to give enough power to the CPU and GPU for them to run at 3.5Ghz and 2.2Ghz respectively. Now even at 3.5Ghz, the CPU is likely never going to be at 100% saturation, so it would not be using as much power that's been allocated to it, so it would pass of the excess power to the GPU to keep that running at 2.2Ghz in spite of its load. If however, the GPU comes across that game that saturates it to 100% load (which is extremely rare) making it exceed its power budget, then it would be clocked down by a "couple" of percent (2- 5%) thus reducing the amount of power it draws.

The PS5's ability to sustain that clock is tied to its load. Not the Cooler and not the dynamic clocking (unless at the time the CPU doesn't need the power). And as Cerny pointed out, the things that usually make GPUs go crazy are actually the simple to render things. The things that don't need that much power to begin with and aren't very complex.

 

[Windrunner]

i think this is a very real possibility. this might not be a $399 console like we are all expecting to be seeing as how effectively all specs are worse aside from the ssd speed.

the cooling solution simply has to be dirt cheap. like $20 cheaper than the vapor chamber cooling for sony to justify saving money on a 10% smaller apu. otherwise whatever money they save from a smaller die goes into the cooling solution leaving them at the same price point as the xbox series x and a potentially disastrous pr debacle waiting to happen.

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

they will need to save $20 from the apu, $20 from the ssd, $20 from the cooling solution and another $40 from the ram in order to come in a $100 cheaper than the series x, and tbh, i dont see that happening. they will probably be able to save $50 max in the best case scenario.

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That's what I can't get my head around: the XSX cooling is no joke, what will the PS5 require with those GPU clocks for it to not sound like an airport? A bleeding edge SSD will add significant expense relative to the perfectly adequate one the XSX uses too. On the surface I am not sure if the balance is right if it might end up the same price as the XSX despite the power delta.

 

[beta]

their ram should be cheaper but we dont know if MS's split ram solution is just as cheap. after all MS is paying full price for only 10gb of the 16 gb ram. maybe their 6 gb of 334 gbps ram is so cost effective, it averages out the same as Sony's 448gbps chips. it could very well be a comedy of errors on sony's part as their attempts to control costs end up biting them in the ass similar to what happened with the xbox one back in 2013.

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The XSX's memory system varies the density of the chips not the speed of them. They would be paying full price for all the chips. All the chips are rated at the same speed, whilst the less dense chips are probably cheaper, they still run at the same speed as the higher density chips.

 

[Pheonix]

That's what I can't get my head around: the XSX cooling is no joke, what will the PS5 require with those GPU clocks for it to not sound like an airport? A bleeding edge SSD will add significant expense relative to the perfectly adequate one the XSX uses too. On the surface I am not sure if the balance is right if it might end up the same price as the XSX despite the power delta.

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That right there would be the joke of this gen to me. And why I am almost certain sony sells the PS5 for less than the XSX even if its just to save face.

How messed up is that if they end up making a similarly priced console that ends up with a weaker CPU, weaker GPU, lower bandwidth and smaller SSD. And all they have to say for themselves is our SSD is 2x as fast??

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

at 4K

Spoiler: 4k

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Nice, thanks for doing these. Seems like it's about a 5-6fps difference. which is in-line with what I'd expect.

 

[ThatNerdGUI]

Nice, thanks for doing these. Seems like it's about a 5-6fps difference. which is in-line with what I'd expect.

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In the real world the performance difference might be a bit higher. We know RDNA2 have some power efficiency increase, but we don't know how will be the efficiency of a GPU with 36CU running at 2.23GHz would be. At those frequencies the power required will be high and is the GPU is "power starved" the high clock speeds wont make much difference.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

That's what I can't get my head around: the XSX cooling is no joke, what will the PS5 require with those GPU clocks for it to not sound like an airport? A bleeding edge SSD will add significant expense relative to the perfectly adequate one the XSX uses too. On the surface I am not sure if the balance is right if it might end up the same price as the XSX despite the power delta.

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Well the XSX APU is 45% bigger on the GPU side even if it clock lower .
We also have to see how RDNA 2 is heat wise .
Going to be interesting to see the tear down.

Also with Sony working on this SSD since 2016 i sure they thought of every cost saving thing they can do while getting that speed.

 

[2Blackcats]

That right there would be the joke of this gen to me. And why I am almost certain sony sells the PS5 for less than the XSX even if its just to save face.

How messed up is that if they end up making a similarly priced console that ends up with a weaker CPU, weaker GPU, lower bandwidth and smaller SSD. And all they have to say for themselves is our SSD is 2x as fast??

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I really think we should wait to see what these machines do before judging their engineering chops.

I'm expecting both to be 499, if either is over or under that I'll be surprised.

 

[Windrunner]

That right there would be the joke of this gen to me. And why I am almost certain sony sells the PS5 for less than the XSX even if its just to save face.

How messed up is that if they end up making a similarly priced console that ends up with a weaker CPU, weaker GPU, lower bandwidth and smaller SSD. And all they have to say for themselves is our SSD is 2x as fast??

Click to shrink...

It's exciting to see it play out in real-time. If Sony can sell the PS5 cheaper than the XSX and the power difference translates to just more consistent frame rates and variable resolutions (but same targets) and better shadows, effects and raytracing while the PS5 loads faster and has an amazing first party game that nobody can be without then they will have played a blinder. More than any other generation it feels like the margin between gaffe and masterstroke is thinner than ever before.

 

[Lady Gaia]

That's what I can't get my head around: the XSX cooling is no joke, what will the PS5 require with those GPU clocks for it to not sound like an airport?

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That's the $64k question, isn't it? There's always the possibility of some relief from analysis of running chips and small thermal optimizations to minimize proximity of hot spots on the die, or to spread active workload around more effectively. That's likely part of the reason for so many revisions as discussed leading up to the reveal. So we don't really know in practice what kind of power it needs to dissipate. We don't even know that for the Series X just yet.

The dev kit was always a very blatant clue that something unusual was going on with the cooling solution. They were never going to do something so exotic just for the dev kit, it had to be a trial run for something interesting in the retail product. Whether the design has to shed huge amounts of heat, or is just designed to manage a more conventional power budget more quietly, is something I'm keen to learn more about.

A bleeding edge SSD will add significant expense relative to the perfectly adequate one the XSX uses too.

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Not necessarily. If it's all custom silicon then there's definitely one-time design cost, but volume production isn't guaranteed to be especially pricey compared to sourcing parts from another vendor looking to make a profit of their own. It's not like Sony is using more flash storage than the Series X. In fact, it's slightly less. The additional board traces and probable use of additional packages for the wide I/O design add to the overall expense, but I wouldn't claim to know if all told it's a more expensive solution or not.

 

[Iwao]

That right there would be the joke of this gen to me. And why I am almost certain sony sells the PS5 for less than the XSX even if its just to save face.

How messed up is that if they end up making a similarly priced console that ends up with a weaker CPU, weaker GPU, lower bandwidth and smaller SSD. And all they have to say for themselves is our SSD is 2x as fast??

Click to shrink...

It would be a joke if they sold their console for more not the same. Regardless, I'm sure not that many will be laughing upon discovering how closely games look and perform on both machines, and upon discovering what games are on their way and what the PS5 looks like and what OS features it has. It's as Moore's Law is Dead said, people need to remove emotion from their initial gut reactions. Less than halfway through the upcoming generation nobody is going to be holding Sony accountable for some relatively marginally lower specs or the fact that they had price parity with Xbox.

 

[Simuly]

That right there would be the joke of this gen to me. And why I am almost certain sony sells the PS5 for less than the XSX even if its just to save face.

How messed up is that if they end up making a similarly priced console that ends up with a weaker CPU, weaker GPU, lower bandwidth and smaller SSD. And all they have to say for themselves is our SSD is 2x as fast??

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Do you play specs? What they'll have to say for themselves is 'look at our exclusive games', which is what will sell these machines. 99% of people that will end up buying one won't care for small differences in specs.

 

[ShapeGSX]

Are people still trying to spin the narrative that Sony upped their clocks at the last minute because of the XsX? That's ridiculous and it really doesn't work that way. You Can't just change everything at the last minute. These things have been planned out long in advance and in the case of Sony and the PS5 it is clear that they decided on affordability while still pushing for a powerful machine which resulted in the situation we have now. Thing is that besides affordability there were other reasons where narrow and fast could prove useful and Cerny clearly talked about those things. I think he even said that they were aiming even higher but found that they ran into limitations elsewhere.

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Companies have competition profiles. They predict, based on cost and available technology what they feel the competition will be targeting in a competitive product. Chip design and heatsinks have a certain amount of headroom. Microsoft, for instance, decided that they could increase the clock speed of the Xbox One without impacting reliability, cooling, or acoustics VERY late before launch.

What you have stated about things being planned out very far in advance is certainty true. However, they also certainly planned in a bit of headroom if the competition decided to go "all in." Things are not as concrete 6 to 9 months before launch as you seem to think they are. When Sony started to get word that Microsoft may be targeting 12TF, they definitely could have adjusted their plans.

What could they do at that point? Well, their power envelope based frequency control hardware is done and can't be modified. Clearly they were aiming for a high frequency. We already saw this in the GitHub leak where they were operating the chip at 2.0GHz. But they can adjust the parameters that are fed to to the frequency control, such as max frequency. They can select higher frequency bins during chip fabrication which will essentially lower their yield and increase cost. But even if they don't do this, they probably had some extra headroom for clock increases that would still work with their chosen cooling solution, just as Microsoft did with the Xbox One.

I've stated this several times in various threads but it keeps on coming up. Is it a certainty that Sony did adjust the frequency after learning of Microsoft's targets? No, of course not. But it's also not impossible, as you stated.

 

[RivalGT]

I dont think cooling will be as expensive for the PS5 as some here are making it out to be. Keep in mind the XSX is clocked a lot higher than what most here thought it be at, 1825mhz on a 52 CU GPU, PS5 is clocked 400mhz higher on a much smaller chip. Depending on how efficient RDNA2 is the cooling on PS5 wont necessarily need to be as expensive as whats on XSX, or maybe on par if RDNA2 isn't designed to be clocked that high. If the idea for PS5 was always be clocked that high, then I dont see the cooling being an issue.

 

[Pheonix]

Do you play specs? What they'll have to say for themselves is 'look at our exclusive games', which is what will sell these machines. 99% of people that will end up buying one won't care for small differences in specs.

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True. To the mass market, all these spec stuff wouldn't matter and it always boils down to the games. And you are preaching to the choir cause I am buying a PS5 regardless. Already too entrenched into the ecosystem to back out now.

Just speaking from technology and design perspective. Of how weird it would be if sony made a machine that is weaker in every way except the SSD but still ends up costing the same with the XSX. That to me seems like what is a major design gaffe. I would feel better about my purchase if I felt I was by one hell of a $399 console, as opposed to me buying an overpriced "premium" $499 console.

At that point, it becomes like an apple and PC argument.

"But I have better specs at the same price, more flexibility and support to more advanced features and hardware"

"yh, but I am apple".

 

[AegonSnake]

That's what I can't get my head around: the XSX cooling is no joke, what will the PS5 require with those GPU clocks for it to not sound like an airport? A bleeding edge SSD will add significant expense relative to the perfectly adequate one the XSX uses too. On the surface I am not sure if the balance is right if it might end up the same price as the XSX despite the power delta.

Click to shrink...

their ssd requires lots of extra little things on the apu die as well. there is a good chance that it might be around the same size as the xbox series x.

supposedly, MS also as SRAM on their apu, but sony's solution seems to be far more complex and im afraid they used precious transistors for the ssd instead of the graphics card.

 

[Pheonix]

their ssd requires lots of extra little things on the apu die as well. there is a good chance that it might be around the same size as the xbox series x.

supposedly, MS also as SRAM on their apu, but sony's solution seems to be far more complex and im afraid they used precious transistors for the ssd instead of the graphics card.

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Lol... current-gen MSused up silicon space to host memory bandwidth. Net gen sony used up space to boost SSD.

I guess its too much to ask for a perfect no-compromise console.

 

[AegonSnake]

Lol... current-gen MSused up silicon space to host memory bandwidth. Net gen sony used up space to boost SSD.

I guess its too much to ask for a perfect no-compromise console.

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tbh, thats the series x. MS has done a fantastic job packing in 2080 ti performance in a $500 box (hopefully) with an ssd that should be 50x faster than last gen, a super fast 8 core 16 thread cpu, fast ram with some really intelligent ways to use ssd as virtual ram, and even a dedicated audio chip to make sure nothing in that system is a bottleneck.

the 10 gb of vram is the only bottleneck i can see, but the virtual ram stuff they have in there should work much like cerny's even if it's not as mind blowing.

also, if the 12 tflops gpu is offering 17 turing tflops performance than the 10 tflops gpu* should be around a 2080 super. it will be interesting to see just how efficient these rdna 2.0 tflops are.

* if it does stay at 10 tflops consistently. im not sold just yet.