PS5 Review: What to Expect from the Next Generation PlayStation
Its 2020 and the war of consoles has been intensified especially with the giants, Sony and Microsoft, set to release new consoles this year. Although the PS5 console has remained enshrouded in a bit of mystery, Sony has been revealing juicy details bit by bit, and by now it’s pretty clear just what to expect. Originally referred to as the Next Generation PlayStation, the PS5 comes with cutting edge features. It represents the best of the 25 years of the evolution of the PlayStation. Find out what to expect in this in-depth review.
PS5 Hardware Features
1. Ultra-High-Speed SSDsharksavewriters.com/arthur-holly-compton
The SSD is pivotal to the PlayStation 5 experience. It allows for faster loading and bigger open worlds. Unlike when using mechanical hard drives, developers don’t need to make the games with smaller worlds. Having more bandwidth, loading of data from SSDs is faster. What all these mean is that booting up from standby will be faster and if you use a game’s fast travel option, load times will be immensely reduced. Game data processing speeds will be approximately 100 times faster than those of PS4.
PS5 has an inbuilt internal storage of 825GB for the custom SSD, which is adequate for all your gaming needs. Although lower than what you expect in the Xbox Series X, it’s quite competitive. You can use NVMe PC drives to expand the storage as long as they have PCIe 4.0 interface and are capable of at least 5.5GB/s transfer speed.
2. Haptic Feedback
Gameplay will be next to the next level by the haptic feedback feature, which the Dual Sense PS5controller boasts of besides the adaptive triggers and a built-in mic. The haptic feedback is in the L2 and R2 shoulder buttons which are going to be adaptive.
Adaptive triggers let you feel the tension of your actions; for instance when drawing a bow to shoot an arrow. It comes in handy for developers as they can program the resistance of the triggers to simulate actions accurately.
3. Hardware-Based Ray Tracing
The console also comes with hardware-based ray tracing which makes gaming more immersive. In this next-generation PlayStation, ray tracing is used in:
- Audio
- Global illumination
- Shadows
- Reflections
- Full ray tracing
As expected, the AMD-Accelerated Ray Tracing will be revolutionary. Currently, only Nvidia RTX graphics cards do support ray tracing. Some of the games that take advantage of Nvidia’s RTX ray tracing include Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Deliver us to the Moon, MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
4. 3D Audio
When it comes to sound, the console will support the 3D audio courtesy of the new Tempest Engine. This PS5’s Tempest Engine supports hundreds of sound sources which is way beyond what the PSVR’s distinct audio system does.
To help you wrap your head around this feature, imagine the sound of rainfall. Currently, it’s a single audio track, but with PS5, you will be able to hear individual raindrops in relation to the position of the player character. The new console, therefore, delivers diverse and sophisticated 3D audio experiences. You will be able to experience sound that moves in from front to behind, above to below, and all around you. It’s the evolution of sound.
5. Ultra HD Blu-Ray
Finally, in the hardware specs, the console will come with a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive. You, therefore, don’t have to buy a separate 4K Blu-ray player which is currently short in supply due to more and more people relying on TV Streaming services. The new console will, therefore, allow you to enjoy truly high-quality viewing. It will keep the high-quality disc formats alive for longer.
Performance
If you thought the hardware specs were mind-blowing wait until you see the performance of this next-generation console. In a nutshell, the performance is as follows:
- CPU: AMD Zen 2-based CPU having 8 cores at 3.5GHz
- GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36CUs at 2.23GHz
- GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2
- Memory interface 16GB GDDR6/ 256-bit
- Memory bandwidth: 448GB/s
- IO throughput 5.5GB/s(raw), but typically 8-9GB/s (compressed)
As you can see, the console packs some serious performance capabilities that are expected to take gaming to a whole new level. It will easily tame any game no matter how heavy it may seem for previous consoles.
Backward Compatibility
The PS5 will easily handle PS4 backward compatibility through the GPU architecture rather than through hours of coding. You will be able to play almost all the top 100 PS4 games on this console at launch. Although the technology might not allow the adding of HDR to the previously HDR-less titles like the Xbox Series X will, it will be nice to be able to play all your favorite games on this new console.
PS5 Design
Although Sony has not revealed the PS5 design, there have been speculations online of how it will look like. However, the final design has allegedly been leaked online. The PS5 is said to retain the distinctive V shape of the devkit but scaled down.
The design features a slanted top that peaks at the back of the PS5 console before it drops down towards the front. At the front panel, there is the disc drive at the center and Sony and PS5 logos on each side. It is generally aesthetically pleasing. Ventilation gaps are distributed at the centre while there are horizontal openings on the sides to aid in air circulation. However, these are just speculations, and it will only be definite when Sony announces.
PS5 Release Date
The release date is set for a date which is ‘in time for Holiday 2020’ according to official reports by Sony. However, the exact date has not been announced yet. Most likely, it will fall between October and December 2020. It will obviously be in time for Christmas.
Final Thoughts
The PS5 console seems worth looking forward to as it promises some serious revolution in gaming. From hardware features to performance, the console is set to continue Sony’s domination of the gaming world. Although the release window falls around the same time Xbox Series X will be released, Sony is pretty confident it will not be a challenge. All that can be done right now is to wait and see as more details are revealed and the final launch.