Product details
The PlayStation 5 features a custom system on a chip (SoC) developed by AMD in collaboration with Sony, integrating both the CPU and GPU.[48] The eight-core CPU is based on AMD’s Zen 2 architecture and built on a 7 nm process, operating at a variable frequency up to 3.5 GHz.[21] The GPU is based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture,[49] with 36 compute units running at up to 2.23 GHz, delivering a theoretical peak performance of 10.28 teraFLOPS.[50][51][52] It also supports hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, a technique that simulates how light interacts with objects to produce more realistic lighting and shadows.[16] The GPU is programmed via Sony’s new graphics API named AGC.[53][54] The PlayStation 5 includes a custom “boost” system based on AMD’s SmartShift technology. This system dynamically adjusts the CPU and GPU speeds depending on what the game or application needs, balancing performance and power consumption.[55][56]
The console’s cooling system uses a double-sided intake fan that is 120 mm (4.7 in) in diameter and 45 mm (1.8 in) thick, paired with a large heat sink utilizing a heat pipe design that Sony claims has a “shape and airflow [which] make it possible to achieve the same performance as a vapor chamber”. A layer of liquid metal between the chip and the heat sink improves heat transfer.[57][58][59][60] The console uses a 350-watt internal power supply and is designed to consume less energy while in rest mode compared to the PlayStation 4.[61]
The PlayStation 5 includes 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM connected via a 256-bit interface and capable of reaching a peak bandwidth of 448 GB/s. This unified memory pool is shared between the CPU and GPU.[21] The console supports Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax).[62] The console has a new audio processing system called the Tempest Engine, which supports hundreds of simultaneous sound sources, compared to 50 on the PlayStation 4.[21]
