News [Wired] PS5 confirmed to use 7nm Zen 2, Navi, SSD

NTMBK

Lifer
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PlayStation’s next-generation console ticks all those boxes, starting with an AMD chip at the heart of the device. (Warning: some alphabet soup follows.) The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments.

https://www.wired.com/story/exclusive-sony-next-gen-console/
 
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VirtualLarry

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At the moment, Sony won’t cop to exact details about the SSD—who makes it, whether it utilizes the new PCIe 4.0 standard—but Cerny claims that it has a raw bandwidth higher than any SSD available for PCs.
For example, the next-gen console will still accept physical media; it won’t be a download-only machine. Because it’s based in part on the PS4’s architecture, it will also be backward-compatible with games for that console.

Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.
Why would you put a sata SSD in a machine designed for an NVME SSD ? Its like 10 times faster.
 

gorobei

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Jan 7, 2007
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Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.
consoles will always be hindered by the tdp. the size of the coolers and the psu along with the fact that it is a soc means they can never get big enough to rival a pc system because sony/ms cant have noisy overheating hardware like xb360 rrod or ps3 fail warranty return/repairs/shipping eating into their profits . whether optimization for single configuration of hardware and direct access to silicon api can compensate for the thermal limit to get close to parity is the question.
 

BigDaveX

Senior member
Jun 12, 2014
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Why would you put a sata SSD in a machine designed for an NVME SSD ? Its like 10 times faster.
Ten times faster on paper, but in practice, I'd wager many users wouldn't notice the difference between an NVMe SSD and a decent SATA one, especially if they were coming from an older system with a mechanical hard drive.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Why would you put a sata SSD in a machine designed for an NVME SSD ? Its like 10 times faster.
Well, because of several reasons. 1) I already have the 480GB-class SATA SSDs, and I'm paying for most of this PC for my friend. 2) NVMe SSDs for Steam game storage are, IMHO, a waste, unless you have money to burn (or "invest" in a 660p, which is sadly QLC), and 3) The primary PCI-E x16 slot is hosed on that board, and I never tested the primary PCI-E NVMe socket, it's possible that it doesn't work either, while I know the SATA ports still work OK.

If my friend had money for a PC, and was willing to pay "full rate" for parts, then sure, I'd put in an EX920 or something,, or maybe a WD Blue NVMe SSD. But I'm the one footing the bill for most of this for him.

Oh, and as far as benchmarks go, aside from any sort of RAM-cache benchmarks (which Samsung is famous for pushing), an NVMe SSD is barely 3x, maybe in extreme circumstances, 4x faster than SATA. That may change with PCI-E 4.0's introduction. But that's where it stands today. And 4KQD1 performance, is barely 50% better between a "good" NVMe and a "good" SATA SSD, and that benchmark most closely tracks with daily "seat of the pants" feel for SSDs.

IOW, the user wouldn't "feel" even 2x faster with an NVMe SSD, except for benchmarks, and possibly boot-up times.


Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of NVMe SSDs, they do "feel" a little bit faster to me, in daily usage, but I certainly don't notice that things are "10x faster". Hardly. And until very recently, they carried a fairly significant price premium (about 2x the cost of a "good" SATA SSD). The no additional cables is nice, though.
 
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Shlong

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Mar 14, 2002
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consoles will always be hindered by the tdp. the size of the coolers and the psu along with the fact that it is a soc means they can never get big enough to rival a pc system because sony/ms cant have noisy overheating hardware like xb360 rrod or ps3 fail warranty return/repairs/shipping eating into their profits . whether optimization for single configuration of hardware and direct access to silicon api can compensate for the thermal limit to get close to parity is the question.

But consoles will have the advantage of not having the overhead of Windows.
 

rainy

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Jul 17, 2013
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Why would you put a sata SSD in a machine designed for an NVME SSD ? Its like 10 times faster.

It could have 10 times higher read/write speed, however in normal usage you can hardly see a real difference.
When you're doing a serious video edition, then it would be helpful of course.
 

krumme

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Oct 9, 2009
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Let us hope audio at last takes a huge step forward for hardware as well as software. The ps5 might be the driver for it.
 

SPBHM

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all expected, apart from the focus on high performance SSD, it makes perfect sense, but with the high capacity games are requiring, releasing the PS5 with anything less than 1 tb would be really strange, so high performance + capacity for an SSD still feels fairly expensive, but thinking of a 5 years life cycle perhaps it makes sense to go that route, even it's very costly initially
 

maddie

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Well, because of several reasons. 1) I already have the 480GB-class SATA SSDs, and I'm paying for most of this PC for my friend. 2) NVMe SSDs for Steam game storage are, IMHO, a waste, unless you have money to burn (or "invest" in a 660p, which is sadly QLC), and 3) The primary PCI-E x16 slot is hosed on that board, and I never tested the primary PCI-E NVMe socket, it's possible that it doesn't work either, while I know the SATA ports still work OK.

If my friend had money for a PC, and was willing to pay "full rate" for parts, then sure, I'd put in an EX920 or something,, or maybe a WD Blue NVMe SSD. But I'm the one footing the bill for most of this for him.

Oh, and as far as benchmarks go, aside from any sort of RAM-cache benchmarks (which Samsung is famous for pushing), an NVMe SSD is barely 3x, maybe in extreme circumstances, 4x faster than SATA. That may change with PCI-E 4.0's introduction. But that's where it stands today. And 4KQD1 performance, is barely 50% better between a "good" NVMe and a "good" SATA SSD, and that benchmark most closely tracks with daily "seat of the pants" feel for SSDs.

IOW, the user wouldn't "feel" even 2x faster with an NVMe SSD, except for benchmarks, and possibly boot-up times.


Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of NVMe SSDs, they do "feel" a little bit faster to me, in daily usage, but I certainly don't notice that things are "10x faster". Hardly. And until very recently, they carried a fairly significant price premium (about 2x the cost of a "good" SATA SSD). The no additional cables is nice, though.
If you covering most of the cost, then why in the world would he be pissed if the next gen consoles outpace this system. Is this a facebook friend?
 

krumme

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Oct 9, 2009
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And let us hope it is a navi variant as that would hopefully imply it's a capable arch so we can get some very needed competition at the gpu field ! The last years since Maxwell have been a meager period.
 

maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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Let us hope audio at last takes a huge step forward for hardware as well as software. The ps5 might be the driver for it.
For certain, multicore gaming is in for a big stimulus with the work happening right now in preparation for the launch. Looking forward to the audio work also.

8C16T CPU minimum desired in 2021?
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
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And let us hope it is a navi variant as that would hopefully imply it's a capable arch so we can get some very needed competition at the gpu field ! The last years since Maxwell have been a meager period.
I guess you didn't read the article, it is Navi based.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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If you covering most of the cost, then why in the world would he be pissed if the next gen consoles outpace this system. Is this a facebook friend?
Eh, he's "like that". I've known him for quite a few years, no, he's not a "facebook friend".
 

JasonLD

Senior member
Aug 22, 2017
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Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.

Looks like PS5 won't be out til late 2020 at the earliest, I wouldn't worry that much.
 

RadiclDreamer

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2004
8,622
40
91
Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.

Consoles sometimes are a good value in terms of performance for the cost when they first come out, but give it 6-12 months after release and most any pc is going to destroy the PS5
 

krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
5,952
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I guess you didn't read the article, it is Navi based.
Yes I did :) where do you think I got the audio comment from? Btw its said it's a navi variant but anyways we will see. Might be just marketing talk.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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Something between the lines here :

I believe 99% chance that the new storage setup for PS5 SSD is just the Ryzen 2 using X4 PCIe 4.0 via m.2 (so it can be upgraded, and so an entire expensive component isn't trashed/poor yield should you have a bad nand cell).

However, a current driver of cost on NVME SSDs is the good ones have fairly stout little processors on them, storage controllers like the Samsung Polaris, which requires a more complex m.2 PCB, more traces, etc. So I'm thinking maybe Sony, which has been known to have been working alongside AMD for quite some time on this new APU design, may have this controller actually baked into the core silicon itself. It would barely take any room on a 7nm die, and that would allow for cheap controllerless nand m.2 cards to be used for OEM. Plug in one with its own controller and perhaps that overrides it.

Either way, I saw some shock about how the PS5 SSD is faster than current PC SSD tech, and honestly that should not surprise absolutely anyone following this tech, because it's just due to PCIe 3.0 (ancient, and a bottleneck here) vs 4.0 (coming very soon with Ryzen 3000). So, it's technically true as a statement today, but by the time PS5 hits the streets in November 2020, the state of PC SSDs should be well into the 6000+ MB/sec.

But what would really excite me is if perhaps in future Ryzen refresh, if they do have an on-die controller for SSD, that we could also have access to huge, dirt cheap SSDs that were controllerless. That would truly be the nail in the coffin for spinners outright.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
20,736
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Edit: I've got a thread in Computer Building, where I'm trying to decide how to help my friend with the Athlon II X4 upgrade his rig.

By the sounds of it, that "PS5" won't be out in 2019, but soon after, and it sounds like, if I upgrade him to a 2019 Ryzen 2nd-gen rig, and a SATA SSD, that it's entirely possible that with those specs, Sony might up-end the whole PCMR/Console balance, and if my friend gets a PS5 in early 2020, that his PS5 might actually be MORE POWERFUL than his 2019 Ryzen PC (if that's what I build for him, let's say 6C/12T Ryzen R5 1600 OCed to 3.80Ghz on stock cooler, 2x8GB DDR4-3000, RX 570 4GB GPU, 480GB SATA SSD for Steam). At that point, I don't know if he will be pissed at me for building him such an "obsolete" PC (even though I'm probably going to end up paying for 90% of the parts, or already have at this point), or what.

The TDP limit on console package should mean your box should hold up just fine on the CPU side.

I expect the 8C/16T Zen 2 in PS5 to float around 1.8-2.2Ghz in most cases with a very flexible turbo/C state setup. Perhaps short bursts here and there on busy cores up to 3Ghz or so, but nothing earth shattering. In any case, still something like 10-20X faster than the absolute trash that is the Jaguar uarch.

The GPU side of things, yes, the RX570 will probably be pretty wiped out of multiplats within a short time of PS5 launch. Probably outright obsolete for that purpose by fall 2021 (eg; PS5 runs AC:2021 at 4k/60, RX570 runs it on PC at 900p/20-25). This is just a rough guess and example, but if 14.2TF holds up for the PS5 GPU, combined with much faster vram access/bandwidth, well .. yeah.

However, the great thing about PCs is our fun and ease with tinkering and upgrades. So, he should be golden with the 570 for a good while, just have him plan on dropping in a contemporary GPU around that time frame, and pray that there's no stupid power virus energy wasting GPU mining craze at the time.

Current GPUs that should hold up well for PS5 multiplats for the first 2-3 years : 8-11GB premium GPUs such as Vega 7, 1080ti, 2080+.

I think 1070ti, Vega 56/64, RTX 2060-2070 will be pretty borderline pretty quick for the bigger AAA multiplats. I mean already this is a challenge to run at 4k/60 without a lot of cutbacks, but once games are aiming at so much higher of a baseline, it's going to be time to make some upgrades, or accept lower resolutions, turning AA/shadows down a bit more, etc to keep things smooth.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,487
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I expect the 8C/16T Zen 2 in PS5 to float around 1.8-2.2Ghz in most cases with a very flexible turbo/C state setup. Perhaps short bursts here and there on busy cores up to 3Ghz or so, but nothing earth shattering. In any case, still something like 10-20X faster than the absolute trash that is the Jaguar uarch.

Consoles typically run at a static clock speed, no power saving beyond shutting down idle cores. The rumor actually has been for around 3 ghz.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
20,736
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Consoles typically run at a static clock speed, no power saving beyond shutting down idle cores. The rumor actually has been for around 3 ghz.

This is definitely true, though I think there are going to be good reasons for this to change.

At 8C/16T, 3Ghz may be quite a bit of TDP (in terms of the overall budget at 7nm in a smallish console box). In isolation, obviously it would have plenty of room to do so even without exotic cooling such as in the X1X.

However, they're also seemingly cramming a 14.2TF Navi custom GPU into the APU, and wanting that to be clocked as highly as possible in contrast to the CPU portion, as that's by far what will make it impressive visually, while even at ~2Ghz, a Ryzen2 is an absolutely monumental improvement over Jag.

Finally, in terms of what has come before :

PS2/OG Xbox/GC/Wii, were all far too old and low power to worry about power/heat.

PS3 had Cell+RSX, and ~2005-era didn't have much in the way of power modes really, besides, the 8 cell 'cores' were also frequently used as extra graphics compute (eg; with Naughty Dog titles most notably). So no real need or ease of implementation for power states here.

X360 had a similar situation with PS3, gen7 you pretty much wanted your max CPU anyway, so no power modes.

PS4/X1, now we're talking a gen where it could have come in handy. Well that is, if they hadn't gone with the ultimate potato processor. Even maxed out at 1.6 (PS4), 1.75 (X1), 1.83 (X1S), 2.1 (Pro), or 2.3 (X1X), there was never really room to give up any CPU performance. They were essentially 8-Core netbook ultra low power processors, designed to fit into little tiny mobiles and tablets, and the potential savings would be nominal if any, at the cost of going from atrocious performance to completely unacceptable performance.

Now with Ryzen2 sharing space with a sizable Navi portion, you're talking a full fat desktop CPU that calculates out to a pretty reasonable performance level, and with a bit of extra power draw at higher clocks. Of course we also know that game code often gets into situations where one or two cores are extremely loaded, while others are nearly idling. Or, you have some background OS/friends list/minor tasks that don't need full performance from a core/thread.

I'm not saying 100% that it will have modular power states such as per core turbo/dynamic clocks, but it would honestly surprise me if it didn't, for two reasons :

It would allow for quieter/cooler/more efficient use, thus also being more reliable with less constant full clock heat.

It would allow for more effective use of a given TDP. Eg; 4 threads @ 3.4Ghz, 8 threads @ 2.2Ghz, 4 threads at 1.4Ghz, in a given example where draw/need was strongest and weakest. As long as the thermal design is capable of running all 8C at some reasonable max if absolutely necessary (albeit possibly with some extra fan noise), I think this is a good way of setting it up.

Just my thoughts, YMMV :)
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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Looks like PS5 won't be out til late 2020 at the earliest, I wouldn't worry that much.

Agree. With these specs late 2020 is the earliest this will be out. Or else it will simply cost close to $1000. Console hardware talk usually start over a year before release.