PlayStation 4 Technical Specifications Officially Detailed

Post by Dan @ 03:07pm 21/02/13 | 62 Comments

Following the extensive press conference event held this morning in New York City, that demonstrated many of the features and upcoming games for the freshly announced PlayStation 4, Sony has now followed up with some finer details on the console.

A press release offers a formal confirmation of most of the machine's technical specifications, confirming an 8 core x86-64 CPU from AMD codenamed "Jaguar", and a Radeon-based GPU said to be capable of 1.84TFLOPs.

As mentioned in the media briefing, the machine will sport a healthy 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, and the release confirms that it will also come with a built-in HDD (no specified capacity), a Blu-ray optical drive, USB 3.0, gigabit ethernet, Wireless b/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.1.

Images of the console design itself are still being kept under wraps, but you can check out some close-ups of the DualShock 4 controller, and the new look PlayStation Eye camera here in this gallery.

The PlayStation 4 is due in holiday season 2013, but we have yet to receive confirmation as to whether this will include the Australian market, so it's still possible that we won't see a local release until early 2014. That hasn't stopped some Australian retailers taking pre-orders however, as local EBGames outlets are now taking names at a AU$899 price point --which we also presume is just them being over-cautious, rather than having any actual target pricing data from Sony).

playstation 4 sony

Latest Comments

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ravn0s
Posted 03:25pm 21/2/13

i really like the look of the new controller.

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MARLINBLADE
Posted 03:30pm 21/2/13

I'd be super keen for this if it came with kb/mouse support out of the box as an optional control method... but i doubt that will be the case and looking at the movement in the Killzone demo footage, it really turns me off what will no doubt be another bluray player, social media come game console, with some gimmicky movement controls thrown in for good measure

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eski
Posted 03:32pm 21/2/13

I'd be super keen for this if it came with kb/mouse support out of the box as an optional control method.

Seems pretty likely given that the PS3 could do it.

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thermite
Posted 03:40pm 21/2/13

oh s*** that's better than any PC i've ever used :/

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Spook
Posted 03:51pm 21/2/13

with that much processing power, this is going to have the most fun games evar!!!!

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Tribal07
Posted 03:56pm 21/2/13

EBgames has a preorder value of $899.00 AUD for the ps4 (official price yet to be announced) Well looks like my preorder is tomorrow..., i did a bit of research on the cpu (nothing on the gpu as of yet) seems pretty decent and they speculate the next xbox will utilize the same type of CPU.
Watchdogs, the next final fantasy and the ease of streaming/recording and the social/facebook benefits sold me instantly (i mean really when your stuck in a game and live streaming the people watching can give you extra potions or weapon or advice? Awesome.) I believe xbox is gonna have to pull something amazing to get a sale out of me again (had 3 xbox 360's, i blame my collectors edition itch for those consoles<.<) Hell i will buy both if the xbox is decent enough.

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Eorl
Posted 03:59pm 21/2/13

I think I'll wait this time around unless there is some extravagant looking games for sale. I've got my Wii U and PC to keep me company for a good few years, but it is nice to see a catch up technology wise which will hopefully bleed into PC ports.

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Trauma
Posted 04:22pm 21/2/13

Only thing that caught my eye was the 8gb of GRAM.

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BladeRunner
Posted 07:48pm 21/2/13

I wish they had the left thumb stick like in the xbox style.

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AngusHades
Posted 08:52pm 21/2/13

well i would pay more then $400 for it as it a gutless console but the good thing is that porting from it shouldn't be so hard as its just a pc.

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WirlWind
Posted 09:12pm 21/2/13

The trouble is "only 8gb of RAM"?

I'm assuming some of that is dedicated towards the GPU? So basically, they're just catching up. When tech surges ahead again with all the new games challenging it, it'll probably get left behind again pretty quickly.

And the AMD CPU's are known for being pretty under-powered as well, though hopefully they're utilized properly.

I dunno, not gonna rush out and buy. Probably be a "buy it for $160 from the hock-shop" down the track like the PS3 was for me.

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kos
Posted 09:18pm 21/2/13

Really don't like the "Share" button on the DS4, if I ever get a PS4 I expect to use that button about zero times. I mean I understand the appeal of sharing and the social side of things to many people, but I don't see the need for a dedicated physical button on the controller for that. Hopefully games can use the Share button for whatever they like and it's not hardcoded to the OS or something.

Happy to see them falling into line with x86 architecture though, stands to benefit both Sony and us.

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glynd
Posted 09:15pm 21/2/13

The trouble is "only 8gb of RAM"

That's 8 GB DDR5 which is insane.

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WirlWind
Posted 09:30pm 21/2/13

That's 8 GB DDR5 which is insane.

But again, if it's working like I think it does and 2048 (that's a guesstimate number) of that 8gb is dedicated to graphics memory, it wont take long before they're hitting points where games are stagnating due to lack of memory on consoles.

I mean, there are some games now that will use up a good 2gb of RAM on PC and we've been held back by old hardware on consoles.

With this new tech, they should be able to actually start working on game tech again, but how long before they reach a point where the 6gb free isn't enough?

Of course, we could never reach a point where that is the case, but I'm kinda worried.

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Trauma
Posted 09:37pm 21/2/13

I assumed that meant 8GB of RAM for graphics only. That sounds great.

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kos
Posted 10:09pm 21/2/13

I'm pretty sure it means 8GB total system RAM, but all of it super fast GDDR5.

Edit: in the announcement they called it "8GB Unified Memory".

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badfunkstripe
Posted 09:49pm 21/2/13

Aren't graphics like 2.4 gig?

Anyway I have to say I am not impressed by the screens we've seen so far. Looks in some cases worse than screens from BF3 and Crysis 3. It really is just going to where PC gaming can go. Hopefully with out worrying about limits for consoles it'll be a jump. however really it just looks like fairly standard game engine with better lighting.

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Trauma
Posted 10:08pm 21/2/13

I'm pretty sure it means 8GB total system RAM, but all of it super fast GDDR5.Edit: in the announcement they called it "8GB Unified Memory".

Ah well then consider me unimpressed.

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Raven
Posted 10:13pm 21/2/13

You need to remember that consoles don't have all that OS overhead and other crap that adds a need for such vast amounts of RAM we have in PCs. It means they can do all kinds of funky space-saving things and not need the ability for the system to do all this abstract crap that requires maybe 1.6-3.5x the amount of RAM as doing it on a dedicated, low-level system.

I'm stunned that it's x64.

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skythra
Posted 10:34pm 21/2/13

Is it DDR5 or GDDR5 because GDDR5 is DDR3 base.

I double checked with wikipedia, and it is.

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ravn0s
Posted 10:35pm 21/2/13

the specs:

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Mantorok
Posted 10:38pm 21/2/13

I'm pretty sure it means 8GB total system RAM, but all of it super fast GDDR5.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the main advantage with GDDR5 related to the bus width? So performance is similar to DDR3 on a 32-bit bus, but on a GPU with a 256-bit bus, there's a massive improvement in transfer speeds?

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Hastarin
Posted 10:35pm 21/2/13

So unless I misunderstand those specs, and apart from more cores, my current gaming/HTPC already out specs this. Looks like I'll be sticking to PC gaming for some time to come.

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ravn0s
Posted 10:38pm 21/2/13

i'm glad they bumped the bluray drive up to 6x

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Eorl
Posted 10:41pm 21/2/13

Compared to say Windows 8, would there really be that much of a difference in overhead? I mean sure there wouldn't be as many processes going on in the background, but it wouldn't be that different? Considering how many things are going on with the console in regards to continuously recording your game, ability to pause/resume on will, background applications, controller inputs, the new Eyetoy function etc. it would have to be using a good 3-4GB just for the system?

I could maybe see 2GB being given to games, 2GB for GPU and the rest is OS/capture device. I might be totally wrong here, but hey at least we are getting BF3 quality games on the PS4/720 now, so maybe we can finally have cross-platform play.

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skythra
Posted 10:44pm 21/2/13

Yeah on the Tflops side, my last generation 580 calculates 1.5tflops and i've got two. So.. i'm not sure you want to be going around throwing those specs up haha :)

From a RAM point of view, with all these chrome tabs open, skype, msn, yahoo, notepad, word, etc my RAM usage is 2.5gb and my CPU is 3%.. I don't know what the PS3 overlay is like, but it's got to manage similar things, it probably closes the browser down though when you leave it.. but your friends and achievements and your PSN status and all that has to remain ready so i wouldn't see that being less than 1gb..

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ravn0s
Posted 10:44pm 21/2/13

I might be totally wrong here, but hey at least we are getting BF3 quality games on the PS4/720 now, so maybe we can finally have cross-platform play.

maybe for non-fps games.

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Vash
Posted 10:49pm 21/2/13

Consoles will always be behind PC technology. I'm not surprised.
They're nice for some of the (unfortunately) exclusive games that come out, but thats the only reason to buy these consoles. If games were platform universal, there would be no reason to buy a console.

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kos
Posted 10:56pm 21/2/13

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the main advantage with GDDR5 related to the bus width? So on a 32-bit bus performance is similar to DDR3, but on a GPU with a 256-bit bus, there's a massive improvement in transfer speeds?

I don't know enough about it to be confident, but my understanding is that yes, GDDR5's advantage is in its much higher bandwidth. I don't know how a unified memory would work and if there will be multiple memory controllers, but I'd assume that the speed will be limited by the bus size of whatever memory controller is utilising the RAM.

That said, I think GDDR is usually split up into more modules which means more channels, so that lower system bus could potential be multiplied by more than the usual 2 or 3 channels and still have an advantage over regular PCs with DDR.

Maybe someone a bit more knowledgeable can shed some light on this?

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Resonate
Posted 11:09pm 21/2/13

Considering the ps3 only has 256mb of system memory and 256mb of video memory yet can still bring out decent looking games like The Last of Us, 8 gig should be fine.

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LightAssassin
Posted 11:15pm 21/2/13

Kos you're pretty much on the ball.

All to do with voltages and I/O memory controllers. Depending on setup it will have a faster rate than the fastest DDR3 for pcs, but also run at a higher voltage (depending). Without knowing the memory controller and the voltage/frequencies used you can only really guess.

Just like the CPU... 8 cores of what? How good is the multithreading? etc...

Personally I'm more interested in the cooling setup they plan to go for. And of course the games!

I had a Xbox 360 for 2 years and sold before they started dropping big in price, but this time I think a PS4 will be better. Paying for Xbox live and getting ad spam for the effort turned me off big time.

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Eorl
Posted 11:25pm 21/2/13

Yeah I definitely won't be getting any of these next-gen consoles for the tech, I'll get them instead for the games, its why I purchased a Wii U because I like Nintendo's first-party line-up. Though I'll definitely be waiting until a good year or two into the cycle as I have more than enough games coming to Wii U and a soon-to-be purchased 3DS. Monster Hunter alone will keep me for a good 300 hours.

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skythra
Posted 11:40pm 21/2/13

But with the apparent backflip in development kit ideal, where last time they went "F*** you devs, console buyers this purchase will last 10 years because we hamstrung the devkit" this time it's the whole "Uh, it's easy now" meaning PS4 games > PC are higher chance unless Sony starts paying for full ownership of an IP?

Which means not getting it at all and probably playing the same game (albeit 3months later) will be a norm?

I mean it's speculation but if you have a PC it seems like the PS4 will have massive diminishing returns. If you don't have one, go balls out crazy because it's a fair bit of tech for sub 1k!

I've not doubt modern games will run great on it, and future games will run great too, but what will they be compromising on? For PS3 that was generally shaders and polygon counts plus the resolution of many games were limited at 720p which is half the pixel count of a 1080p game.

Thankfully we're currently limited by the slowdown of TV's again, and i don't see 4k tv's hitting it off mainstream anytime soon. Last time there was the whole TV revolution going from a max of 480p (560? interlaced? max?) to 720 or 1080 this time we won't see resolutions blowing out of the water compared to PS2 vs PS3.

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Khel
Posted 12:52am 22/2/13

If games were platform universal, there would be no reason to buy a console.

Sure there is. Just because theres no reason for you to buy a console, doesn't mean theres no reasons to anyone to buy one.

The move to X86 is great, tonnes of advantages from a development point of view, the biggest downside it seems so far is the fanboys comparing its specs on paper (in a vaccuum and irrespective of any of the other features of the console), with an equivalent specced PC and writing it off. Shame it doesn't work that way, but whatever makes you happy I guess.

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tel
Posted 11:02am 22/2/13

Until Sony makes a console that connects to the brain like in the matrix movies, i think i'll pass on this console and stick with my PC. I've had all the PS consoles, and they have all gone the the same way, gaining dust. My PS3 has become an expensive blueray player. So i have finally learned my lesson and putting any money i would use to buy a console into updating my PC. Saying that, i did enjoy the PS4 event. As PC's are usually linked to consoles for alot of games (multiplatform), i'm really excited at the great games we will be playing in the few years.

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ravn0s
Posted 12:41pm 22/2/13

Until Sony makes a console that connects to the brain like in the matrix movies, i think i'll pass on this console and stick with my PC.

they have, it's called the playstation 9.

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kos
Posted 08:03pm 22/2/13

"The PlayStation 9" sounds more to me like a name the media would give to a group of 9 school kids they claim were inspired by violent PlayStation games to commit a school massacre...

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DM
Posted 10:01pm 22/2/13

so $900 console with $120 games? If that is the real price then get f***ed.

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simul
Posted 03:22am 23/2/13

It will be fine, it will destroy any PC for quite a number of years in game performance, because:

- devs can optimise the s*** out of the engine specifically for the exact hardware - tweak every little thing
- iirc it was apu ala cpu/gpu on a single die? this combined with massive memory bandwidth could be an analogy of IDE vs SSD for your cpu/gpu/ram
- no redundant OS overhead - again, optimised to the s*** for the purpose of playing games
- 8gb of ram in a console is insane! - the ps3 has 256mb of ram, the xbox 360 has 512mb of ram - its a massive leap (see same point as below on cpu)
- comparing cpu speed is a joke: - ps2 "emotion engine" was running at 300mhz, no 300mhz pc's would run any of the ps2's games (P3-600mhz were available for PC a year before the PS2 was released). The benefit of going with x86 architecture is that you don't have the little endian/big endian issues, risc/cisc, dealing with different instruction sets etc. Hell, the PS1 was running at 33mhz.
- A large side benefit (that they haven't covered yet) is by going x86, devkits can theoretically be COTS (off the shelf), so more beneficial to indie devs (I heard friends doing ps3 dev having to burn to test)
- Having the 2nd cpu that deals with background processing / downloading means that the entire APU is given to the game - the OS can run comfortably on the aside cpu, devs don't have to consider it - personal note I cannot wait until smartphones do this

< / ramble >

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skythra
Posted 04:21am 23/2/13

with an equivalent specced PC and writing it off. Shame it doesn't work that way, but whatever makes you happy I guess.

Wait, you said fanbois. Can you clarify which ones? Because i'm pretty sure the most hardcore fanboys aren't PC fanboys... and so we're now choosing straws about what your entire point is about.

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paveway
Posted 09:23am 23/2/13

Because i'm pretty sure the most hardcore fanboys aren't PC fanboys

haha have you read any of this or the other ps4 threads or any thread about consoles

all i'm reading is this:

fanboys comparing its specs on paper (in a vaccuum and irrespective of any of the other features of the console), with an equivalent specced PC and writing it off

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skythra
Posted 10:29am 23/2/13

And i'm telling you that you could pretty much interchange the word PC and PS4 for anything and the entire argument could be copy pasted into almost any thread of android vs iphone, windows vs mac, toyota vs nissan etc.

or another point is when there's nothing but the facts given to you, and that's what they have released to their media, then that's what they want you to compare. Otherwise they wouldn't have released the specs and actually released completely different things like the size and shape of the console.

What am i supposed to argue about when the only information available is the specs? There's only some scripted game trailers that don't look better or worse than modern day computer rendered images and that's it.

Should we all just be silent and not talk about this?

Should we just be randomly speculating on stuff that isn't the thread topic? Like "I think it's going to be f*****g massive and that's balls. I can't believe sony would do that" because i don't see how that's any better to talk about.

I think it's just that we're making comparisons to existing technology and many of us are saying that we're unconvinced by the specifications for a reason to buy it, but it's not like we're closed to any more information, there just ISN'T any other information to base any other decision on.

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Khel
Posted 02:18pm 23/2/13

What I mean is what simul was pointing out, you can't compare its specs to a PCs specs in any real sort od direct way, theres so many other factors that come into play. And thats even disregarding any software-level features that set it apart as something different as well.

I mean for me, probably the coolest parts of that whole presentation were the bits about the spectating and the remote play stuff, and the potential to cloud stream PS1, PS2 and PS3 games to the PS4 and other devices. Granted its highly unlikely that s*** will even work here and it still sounds like its, in large part, still a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, but its a very cool insight into where things are heading. Thats the sort of stuff I want to hear more about and see more of in the next generation of consoles.

I'm not necessarily championing one over the other and I'll have both anyway, all I'm saying is its not really a fair comparison when all you're doing is putting PS4 specs on one in one column and PC specs in the other and basing it off that.

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Khel
Posted 05:42pm 23/2/13

Well done for completely missing the point

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AngusHades
Posted 07:45pm 23/2/13

I wasn't going to read what you wrote.

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kos
Posted 07:50pm 23/2/13

Well untech savy console fanboy think that got a better gaming rig for $450 when that clearly don't understand jack s***. Oh and "simul" the AMD 8 core is apples to apples in a PC so yes it is S***, but again for $450 it is value. The extra with that uploading crap is just a software feature, nothing fancy. Origin has twitch Tv thing now and steam will mostly follow with something too, as for the GDDR5 well the CPU isn't going to use that so much, as its slow anyhow ,its not like its going to be able to boost performance to 200% its mostly for the GPU. 8Gb GPU ram yea thats pretty good for textures and what not but next gen AMD or Nvidia could be stock 4Gb so again its old tech. Now the only good thing about these so called NEX Gen console is that its X86 CPu but i see alot of hacking will be happening and as its going to be Open GL 3.2 Blabla it is very close or is DX11. One thing for sure it is a PC hands down with a unix based OS and integrated MOBO, atleast porting with UDK or whatever , games should be easier to run on windows based desktop. oh and one last thing windows and dx API wouldn't be much of a cripple to a modern day PC with an intel core in it.

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paveway
Posted 08:40pm 23/2/13

haha replies to post without reading post

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Dazhel
Posted 09:05pm 23/2/13

I wasn't going to read what you wrote.

Welcome to the forum, I can tell already you'll fit right in.

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Ha
Posted 09:05pm 23/2/13

good summary of what we know about the ps4 thus far

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Khel
Posted 09:21pm 23/2/13

I guess when mummy and daddy are paying for it, you can only afford one platform to game on so you have to rubbish the others to make yourself feel better? People with real jobs on the other hand have more options.

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kos
Posted 10:17pm 23/2/13

Haha Angus created a second account just to agree with himself.

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Khel
Posted 10:44pm 23/2/13

Now I look like I'm just being a d*** for no apparent reason :(

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ravn0s
Posted 11:03pm 23/2/13

don't be so hard on yourself khel.

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parabol
Posted 12:11am 24/2/13

^ I generally don't like consoles as I believe they are mostly responsible for the dumbing down of PC games (e.g. final boss fights of many AAA titles resorting more and more to quick-time events...), but the above post is just retarded.

Why is there a sudden influx of children on this forum lately?

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fpot
Posted 12:10am 24/2/13

Baby bonus?

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Infidel
Posted 12:43am 24/2/13

Doenst have steam so no good for me

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Resonate
Posted 12:47am 24/2/13

Meathead has just verified Khel's argument above.

While i do 95% of my gaming on my PC, i still own a ps3 to play the exclusives that i cant play on PC. For me it was metal gear solid 4, gran turismo 5, uncharted series, ni no kuni, red dead redemption etc. Granted my ps3 has been collecting dust for a year or so, but i dont regret buying it just because it is not as powerful as my PC.

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