PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X specs detailed in new leak

Next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft are both due in late 2020 and while neither company has confirmed specific hardware specifications, we know quite a bit already. Thanks to various leaks and some additional confirmation from the folks at Digital Foundry, we now have our best approximation of performance and hardware spec for both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X.

The PS5 leak is the most concrete so far thanks to references found on GitHub, seemingly posted by someone at AMD's ASIC validation department to store testing data for a range of in-progress projects. As reported by Digital Foundry this week, this data was first stored around six months ago and while architecture changes are unlikely at this point, clock speeds could still be adjusted as the PS5 APU continues to be tuned and refined ahead of next year's launch.

So on to the specs, which primarily refer to the GPU as CPU specific details are still unconfirmed even through leaks. The current testing leaks show the PS5 GPU using 36 Navi compute units clocked at 2GHz, which would approximately lead to 9.2 TFLOPS in overall performance. The leak also points to GDDR6 memory being used with a rated bandwidth of 448GB/s.

The reason we can attribute this data to Sony's next-gen system is due to the additional modes. As part of an effort to support backwards compatibility with PS4, the PS5 chip has two additional operation modes, each of which match the performance of a PS4 and PS4 Pro console respectively.

The testing data also contains fragments of information on what appears to be the Xbox Series X chip, with mention of 3584 shaders, or 56 compute units. Running at 1700MHz, this chip should be capable of 12.2 TFLOPS of overall compute performance, which lines up with previous leaks that stated a 12 TFLOP performance target for Microsoft's top-end next-gen console. GDDR6 memory with 560GB/s bandwidth is also mentioned.

A chip with this specification would be significantly more expensive to manufacture, raising questions around just how much the Xbox Series X will cost at launch.

Both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 are expected to also utilise eight-core Zen 2 processors with simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) enabled. Both consoles will also be making the jump to SSDs, so assuming each comes with a 1TB NVMe SSD, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X may end up being very high-end, although so far, the PS5 stands a better chance of hitting a more palatable launch price point.

Of course, all of this is early and unconfirmed information based on just fragments of testing data, so it doesn't paint the full picture. In the months to come, we will be learning a lot more about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, with more in-depth unveiling for both systems set to take place.

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KitGuru Says: The next-gen console race is shaping up to be much more exciting this time around and the addition of higher-power CPUs should help more developers achieve 60 frames per second while maintaining a high bar for graphical fidelity. Are any of you thinking about getting one of these next-gen consoles in 2020? Which one are you looking forward to the most? 

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