Sony’s Mark Cerny states some PlayStation 5 Hardware Specifications.

Thanks to an interview between Wired and Mark Cerny (Sony’s Lead System Architect) we have some more sumptuous information on what’s most likely going to be on the inside of the next-gen PlayStation Console.

The current generation of both Microsoft and Sony’s consoles were dropped on the general public late 2013, early 2014, but taking a detour from the usual lifespan of gaming consoles in the last two decades, both companies opted for a mid-term refresh of their systems and introduced more powerful updates in the form of the PlayStation 4-Pro and the Xbox One X. This was done to capitalise on the popularity of the growing trend for 4K and HDR gameplay on PC that the current consoles at that time could not accomplish due to hardware constraints.

With “Moore’s Law” still managing to predict the growth in CPU/GPU architecture, it’s time to up the generation again and allow players to experience gaming in 8K resolutions with an emphasis on also being able to provide features like “Ray Tracing” – TV’s and Monitors allowing of course.

Well, the first major bit of news is that Sony plan to remove the bottleneck that is the 5400rpm 2.5″ mechanical hard-drives and replace them finally with Solid State Drives that will be able to increase loading times of games dramatically. Owners of both consoles have already been dabbling with replacing the HDD’s of their consoles with bigger and faster storage options to try and improve performance and this is a highly welcomed addition, but they are expensive and what size of SSD will be included in the system will be on everybody’s radar.

The new PlayStations CPU will be 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. 

Mark Cerny also stated that the new system will be backwards compatible allowing the use of PS4 games on the system and that an emphasis will be placed on providing enhanced hardware-based audio solutions to keep the sound in tune with the upgraded visuals. Great news for those who use home cinema setups for their gaming.

All in all, it sounds very promising in these early stages. So I guess we all better get saving so that the next console in the PlayStation stable can find a new home in our gaming setups. With a possible release in 2020, it’s not long to wait.