An extensive report addressed a huge PS5 and Xbox Series X specs leaked, providing more details about how those hardware details were uncovered, and explaining the kind of performance expected from this year’s new console. We’ve always known the next PlayStation and Xbox will be a lot more powerful than their predecessors, thanks to a combination of next-gen CPU, GPU, memory, and SSD components, but the leaks explain how massive the speed bump ahead might be. But that’s not all the report revealed, as the same leak seems to have confirmed a PlayStation 5 feature you may want the most.
That’s backward compatibility, of course, something that Sony mentioned when addressing the PS5 in the past. We’ve been expecting the PlayStation 5 to support PS4 games, even though Sony hasn’t fully detailed the PS5’s backward compatibility. In fact, some recent comments from Sony advised fans to wait for more info, as the dev team is working on securing a complete PS4 backward compatibility.
Getting back to recent specs leak, from a Eurogamer report a few days ago, we’ll show you the following specs comparison between the PS5, PS4 Pro, and PS4:
The report makes an interesting note about the rumored PS5 hardware, revealing that the GPU has three different modes to provide hardware backward compatibility with PS4 and PS4 Pro — from the report, emphasis ours:
So how can we be confident that this processor is actually a semi-custom AMD product for Sony and not another partner like Microsoft? The giveaway is the fact that the GPU can be switched to three different modes in order to provide hardware backwards compatibility with PS4 and PS4 Pro. While a 2.0GHz GPU clock is used for what is described as the fully unlocked ‘native’ or ‘Gen2’ mode, the processor is also tested in what is referred to as Gen1 and Gen0 modes. The former is explicitly stated as running with 36 compute units, a 911MHz core clock, 218GB/s of memory bandwidth and 64 ROPs – the exact specifications of PlayStation 4 Pro. The latter Gen0 mode cuts the CU and ROP counts in half and runs at 800MHz, a match for the base PS4. The indications are that back-compat is an integral part of the silicon, which in turn raises some interesting questions about the makeup of the Navi GPU and the extent to which older GCN compatibility may be baked into the design.
Sony is rumored to unveil the PS5 next month, during a PlayStation press event, although the company might talk about the PlayStation 5 during its CES 2020 keynote in just a few days.
