New video shows off the PlayStation 5’s SSD in action

We are still a while off from the launch of Sony's next-gen PlayStation but we already began hearing about the console's hardware specs back in April. At the time, Sony's lead architect on the PS5, Mark Cerny, talked up the console's SSD capabilities but some of it was difficult to believe without seeing it in action. Now today, Sony has shown off the console's rapid loading in a video comparison.

The PlayStation 5 will utilise a 3rd Gen Ryzen CPU and a Navi GPU, both from AMD. Sony has also been hard at work on creating ‘3D audio' technology and is exploring ray-tracing support. On the SSD front though, Sony will be using a custom design- we don't know the exact specs, but in action, it does appear to be incredibly quick:

Sony's official video comparing performance of PS4 Pro vs next-gen PlayStation pic.twitter.com/2eUROxKFLq

— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) May 21, 2019

In the video we can see that in Spider-Man, the game can load in less than one second, while the PS4 with an SSD takes a lot longer. Beyond that, when you remove the camera movement speed limit, the PS5 is able to keep up and render the game at breakneck speeds, while the PS4 chugs and freezes.

Sony hasn’t revealed the specs for its SSD yet but since the PS5 has I/O designed for high-speed SSDs, and a software stack designed to take advantage of it, the PS5 will be much faster than a PS4 Pro with an SSD thrown in. This has a bigger impact beyond loading times though, and can create a situation where more developers are creating games with SSDs in mind. This can lead to larger, more detailed open worlds, more realistic simulation games and other improvements.

The PS5 does not have a release date yet, we don't even know that it will definitely be labelled as the ‘PlayStation 5'. However, rumours indicate that we are looking at a Holiday 2020 release.

KitGuru Says: The PlayStation 5 is looking promising and with SSD prices coming down for higher capacities, it is looking more likely that solid-state drives will become the new standard for games. In this case, Sony has the benefit of being able to produce its own SSDs. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to see what Microsoft does for the next Xbox.

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