Interesting. I'm genuinely surprised that I think both systems seem to be going to have 1TB of NAND built-in with expansion capability. I had a hunch we'd see a much smaller amount (like ~100GB), with an expansion.
Is the quick response from Sony going to be damage control or steal MS' thunder?
I can't imagine the underlying tech is going to be all that different, I figure the mix of base components will change.
Let's see...
I don't think it is a quick response, and I don't think there was a chance Sony would really steal thunder. I've posted this multiple times, but I think the Series X was actually targeted to be quite a bit more powerful (closer to 14-15TF) but after Microsoft found out the PS5 would be closer to 10TF they relaxed clock speeds since they didn't need to push as much. I have a hunch (which, I might be wrong, but I think others maybe like Digital Foundry posited it too), that they have been looking at reworking the streaming console that was supposed to launch alongside the Series X, and were looking at beefing it up to match the PS5 sometime in 2021, at a significantly reduced price.
I've seen some of where the leaks for the specs of Oberon and Arden came from (AMD, if you're reading this, keep putting your regression test results on Github, they make for some interesting reads, kthxbye), and I still think 36CUs clocked at 2GHz is the most likely scenario for the PS5. As such, it will probably not be as performant as the Series X. I look forwards to seeing whether or not the PS5 uses RDNA1 with RDNA2 features like VRS and HW RTRT (like how last gen consoles had RPM from Vega), or it's actually RDNA2. I hope it is the second, because in which case, both consoles will likely be 2080 tier or higher, and that would be fantastic.
Seems you were pretty on the mark (regards to CUs and clock speeds, with Sony having a "Boost" where it can go higher). I have a hunch the PS5 is more unique this time around. This looks like its a reversal of the PS4/One era, where this time Sony went more custom and less powerful, while Microsoft just went for strong specs across the board, with fairly common components (so no weird stuff that developers have to specifically work around). I have a feeling its more original Navi/RDNA1 with some extra features (that aren't necessarily the same as RDNA2, even if they're for the same things, like the ray-tracing), which if RDNA2 is a big leap over RDNA1 then it might be extra problematic for Sony.
Its frankly a bit baffling at Sony's direction here, its like they didn't learn anything from the previous gen. Then again, that seems to be a recurring problem for them (see their hubris after PS1 sales, then they ignored PS2 hardware complaints because of sales and then it bit them pretty hard with the PS3). Which, this seems more like Microsoft with the One, where they tried to come up with novel solutions, when the technology ended up providing those solutions (namely fast SSD, Sony appears to have come up with some solution themselves when PCIe 4.0 can outdo it while Microsoft is just rolling with NVMe stuff which is plenty capable while being able to offer stuff like the external expansion although it seems Sony is going pretty standard with their expansion which is refreshing especially considering there were rumors they were going to do their own proprietary thing; I get the same feeling with regards to the GPU, Sony customized it, when RDNA2 is going to end up offering that capability plus possibly more). Microsoft just went with fairly standard stuff and so seems to have the simpler, common, and more powerful hardware.
One thing I'm not sure about is their audio solution. There was talk that it was based on path tracing, which perhaps it is, but this just sounds like yet another attempt at HRTF for the masses (which just about every company seems to have tried). I like that they're aiming to make it so it adapts to your speaker config (and out of the gate seems like headphones is the initial focus, mostly because its the most controllable). I worry though this will be half-baked, and then canned (much like so many others have been), or potentially even worse that maybe we'll see some patent spat clip it (as happened with Aureal and then say Doom 3). Plus, there's the issue of compatibility with other formats. But maybe it'll be different, maybe path tracing will be able to finally get things there.
Weren't the rumors that there was going to be both a base model and a pro model at launch? They could just unveil the pro model specs to match the XSX, after all even the XSX is supposed to have a lower end "Lockhart" model with only a 4TF GPU.
There's been rumors that there's two versions of the PS5. But from what I can gather, that likely came from there being two dev kits or dev kit modes where they clocked differently. Seems that final hardware will offer both essentially. My guess is Sony floated the idea, but decided to go with one system instead. I've seen rumors saying there's actually quite a bit of strife happening at Sony as some are demanding profitability, while others are trying to I think make the case that some compromise on price/setup would be more palatable in the market (so having one single system instead of two at launch; I'd guess that the pressure of the more powerful Xbox made that argument almost null though, they couldn't come out with less than 10TF; I thought we might have seen the base system have some CUs disabled, lower clocks, and so it'd offer ~10TF, with binned fully enabled chips being more expensive but the combination being able to offer ~20% higher performance, but seems the more powerful one is what will offer the ~10TF). Supposedly price is a big issue right now with Sony unable to hit the price point they think is good (which, for some reason I have a hunch is $499 and not $399, meaning, we might see a $549 or even $599 launch price if the profit always people win out; and I think the gaming market people can see that going above $499 is likely going to hurt them in sales, especially against a more powerful system).
I think Microsoft themselves has said Lockhart, at least in the form it was intended to be (hybrid streaming focused system) is cancelled. Not sure it was publicly to gamers (think it might've just been in like investors conference call or something?). I theorized that Microsoft might be retooling that console though, to more closely match the PS5 (so lower spec). But then I thought the Series X would be closer to 15TF. My thoughts being that Microsoft was going big, then found out Sony was only ~10TF with the PS5, so feeling they could rework Lockhart as a full console but less powerful (closer to 10TF) and bring it out next year at a lower price. I think they probably decided to just roll with what they have, relax clock speeds a bit and see how things go. They can probably match Sony's price (won't be surprised if they undercut it either), while being significantly more powerful. If they need to, perhaps they can do an update that will bump clock speeds higher. Or if they feel the need they could launch a more affordable cheaper system (drop the optical drive, smaller amount of flash or maybe they don't even have flash and instead rely on their new external thing). Hit $499 with the Series x and $349 for the lower end one. My guess is now, they just wait. If the PS5 jumps out to a big sales lead, they greenlight the cheaper system. If they get a good lead, they hold off and plan for like 2-3 years down the road, where they can make the Series X the cheaper system (with some tweaks), and then launch a higher spec'ed one. Or if streaming becomes more viable perhaps they go the opposite route and just keep the Series X but then offer a much smaller system that just streams for like $199 or maybe even $99.
So it was 36 CUs but they are quoting performance at 2.23ghz in order to close the gap with XSX, but admitted the GPU may have to down lock. With hdmi 2.1 VRR the difference between these two may be academic either way, unless we get an actual 40% difference in performance in some games.
I don't think it'll be academic (looks like the PS5 will have the more unique architecture - which generally isn't a good thing especially if its less powerful; I won't be surprised if early games the Xbox has a sizable performance advantage, which could matter for people on older TVs stuck between 30 or 60 Hz), but I'm not sure it'll matter that much. Unless one of them has a lot higher sales than the other, it probably won't matter a lot, as games have been designed for a wider variety of hardware now, and they'll still be releasing most games on the previous gen systems, so they'll just get scaled to what the hardware offers.
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