PlayStation 5 Hardware Rumors | Specs, features, CPU, GPU, storage, and more

While the original article was deleted for various reasons, someone was able to save an archive of the original article. This is purely a rumor, and the source was deleted from the main website. This could be because of a multitude of reasons, but I'm posting this here so you can be made aware of a potential rumor. None of this is verified and it may all be fake, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Highlights from the article include that there are no plans for a 2019 release of the "next-gen" console, which will probably just be named PlayStation 5. An educated guess would place the console's release at holiday season 2020. PlayStation 4 launched in mid-November, 2013. That would give the PlayStation 4 a seven year life span, which just so happens to perfectly align with the PlayStation 3's life span of seven years. That would also fit well with the article's claim that developers are already working with something that resembles the next generation PlayStation's hardware.

Speaking of hardware, the next PlayStation seems to be a huge upgrade. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One currently use an AMD Jaguar as a CPU, one which was used in low end laptops and net books in the past. The rumor is that the PlayStation 5's CPU will be far superior, instead being based off of a 7nm Ryzen CPU. AMD Ryzen, if you're not aware, is in a completely different market than AMD Jaguar, which powers current gen PlayStation and Xbox, is. AMD Ryzen is a high performance desktop processor, which is extremely competitive with Intel's desktop offerings. Meanwhile, when Jaguar released, it was competitive with Intel's netbook offerings. The article claims we will see 8 of these Ryzen cores. While it's the same core count as the AMD Jaguar in current consoles, each core will be significantly more powerful in the Ryzen CPU. There is no word on clock speeds, but it won't take much to trounce the AMD Jaguar in current consoles.

For the GPU, which handles graphics, the article claims a semi-custom Navi GPU from AMD. Navi is not yet released on desktop yet (AMD tends to put their console GPU architectures out on PC too), which indicates that AMD may be more focused on next gen consoles than PC right now (for the time being). Navi is supposed to be a huge step up from what's currently available, which should be a massive upgrade from current generation consoles.

Interestingly, the article also claims there will be ray tracing. Ray tracing is far more accurate at depicting reflections and other things that rays of light do in the real world. Modern lighting in video games is more or less faking it, it's why shadows can look wrong, reflections in glass, water, mirrors, etc can have completely unexpected results, etc. Ray tracing resolves that, but it's extremely difficult to do with current hardware while getting a decent frame rate. You may be familiar with it if you have read about Nvidia's RTX technology. It's the same concept.

There are claims that the audio system will be massively improved. This will probably only affect those who have high end headphones or a home theater set up, but if you have one, there's some potential here.

Backwards compatibility is also a rumor, and it's easy to believe. The CPU and GPU in PlayStation 4 and the rumored PlayStation 5 specs are very similar. Traditionally, a new console would change a CPU and GPU to the point where programs wouldn't run on other CPUs, because they were so different. But, the jump from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5, while bringing big performance improvements, still uses a similar enough CPU and GPU that existing games and software should have little problems running on the new platform. I can see backwards compatibility being a huge goal for a new console. Modern games take a lot of resources to make, which causes the beginning of a console's lifespan to be mostly devoid of quality games. By adding backwards compatibility, it lets the console have the previous generation's library of games (which is often huge) while allowing for new games.

An SSD is claimed to be added, which will massively help with load times.

The article was mostly about the hardware, but it touches on the idea that we'll see games released on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, probably some games that have a lot of hype but still no clear release date (like Death Stranding).

These are all what I'm treating as a rumor based on the original article, so please, take it with a grain of salt. It seems like Sony isn't ready to talk about their next console yet. If these rumors are true, though, the transition from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 will be very smooth.