Sony unveiled in March the technical data of the PlayStation 5which is broadly behind the Xbox Series X have to stand back. The boss has that XboxDivision, Phil Spencer, too made for joy. However, Digital Foundry’s colleagues were able to have a deeper conversation about the platform with PS5’s lead developer, Mark Cerny.
Cerny also emphasized that he would continue to adhere to the concept of classic console generations – i.e. a clean transition. Microsoft is now doing it differently and is making Xbox One and Xbox Series X flow into each other much more fluently, which should also be reflected in the fact that there will initially be no exclusive titles for the newer platform. Nevertheless, developers do not want to make it too difficult for Sony, because according to Cerny it will be easy for the studios to use their experience with the PS4 as the basis for PS5 development.
The PS5 was approached differently, especially in the area of cooling – a criticism of the PS4, which could be very warm and loud, which also affects the Pro version. So the PS5 has a maximum electricity budget that can be used by the hardware. Problem: In contrast to a smartphone, the PS5 cannot simply clock down during operation to meet the budget and to ensure cooling. Because gamers would not accept that.
This would also cause problems for developers, they need general knowledge about how the PlayStation 5 behaves in terms of performance – there may be no deviations on individual models, because one PS5 may get warmer in a cupboard than another one that is open. That’s why the PS5 has short-term, high boost clock rates. In addition, the PS5 AMDs technology supports SmartShift. The CPU and GPU share their power budget. If the CPU now needs less power, but the GPU has to calculate hard, then you can split it up appropriately.
Mark Cerny also explains that it is important to use the CPU and GPU correctly. For example, it would not work if the GPU had to expect wildly high clock rates and high power consumption – but then bum around in idle mode. Cerny calls this phenomenon “Race to Idle”. The PS5, on the other hand, has been optimized so that developers can consistently utilize the CPU and GPU consistently without such a change from peak performance and idleness.
Regarding the SSD, Cerny says that the classic concept of folders and file names has been overboard. Instead, you work with IDs, which speeds up the process of finding data. This also relieves the RAM of the PlayStation 5, since the console can pull data from the SSD faster and that data would not have to be kept in RAM. However, installations should also benefit from the speed of the SSD: Since stored data can be accessed more quickly, you no longer have to store such large amounts of data – data was often duplicated or tripled to find it faster when it was needed in games. This is no longer necessary.
Mark Cerny also commented on the audio capabilities of the PlayStation 5. In the beginning, they will only be fully used via headphones. The Sony manager also indicated that we will see a teardown of the PS5 in the near future, which will finally show us the hardware and the design. In addition, many questions remain: So far, we have never seen a single game that would really show us the performance of the PS5. Hopefully Sony will follow suit soon.
–
