Sony’s rumored plan to “downgrade” PS5 performance might actually be genius — here’s why Leave a comment
Fearful about these PlayStation efficiency downgrade rumors? Issues aren’t fairly as grim as they seem.
Final week, reports surfaced that Sony is briefing developers on a new “low energy” mode for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Professional consoles. Whereas these rumors do seem a bit regarding for the way forward for Sony consoles, they might really trace on the upcoming PlayStation 6 handheld.
Oh that is 100% an emulated efficiency profile for the Handheld, for the reason that greatest weak spot of that APU is reminiscence bandwidth and this profile is decreasing PS5 bandwidth in half as you stated.June 6, 2025
As we have beforehand reported, the PlayStation 6 is rumored to come in a home console and a handheld variant.
Because of the preliminary report from Moore’s Regulation is Lifeless and follow-up feedback by veteran AMD leaker KeplerL2, we now know extra concerning the AMD APU that might be powering the rumored PlayStation handheld. And it seems to be extra cutting-edge than anticipated.
However do not simply take my phrase for it. Listed here are the PS6 handheld specs we all know to date.
Sony’s efficiency “downgrade” hints at a cutting-edge handheld as an alternative
The PlayStation handheld might be powered by an upcoming AMD APU that will have AI upscaling features, with 16GB of DDR5 onboard reminiscence, and 4MB of L2 cache and 16MB of MALL cache on the APU’s graphics tile.
The unnamed AMD APU will allegedly be based mostly on the gfx13 (RDNA5/UDNA) architecture.
“However, Madeline”, you ask, “what does that really imply?”
AMD’s current-gen Radeon RX 9000 GPUs use RDNA 4 graphics structure. The PlayStation 6 APU’s use of the following era of AMD structure aligns nicely with the console’s anticipated launch date in fall 2027.
The AMD APU powering the present gen of PlayStation consoles (PS5 and PS5 Professional) has 4MB of L2 cache, however no MALL cache.
So, even with a constrained 16GB of reminiscence bandwidth, the PS6 handheld would have further graphics energy, due to the 16MB MALL cache, which can reduce the need for a large memory bandwidth on a GPU. Primarily, it provides the PlayStation handheld extra leverage over its decrease RAM specs.
Based mostly on these preliminary specs, it doesn’t seem that the PS6 handheld might be powered by AMD’s recently updated Ryzen AI Z2 lineup. As an alternative, this can doubtless be a next-gen chipset.
When can we anticipate the brand new PlayStation handheld console?
Earlier stories pegged the PlayStation and Xbox “Gen 10” launch to 2028, although new rumors have moved that timeline up. Presently, the PlayStation 6 console is expected to launch in September 2027.
The alleged PlayStation handheld is predicted to launch in tandem with the house console.
In fact, none of that is confirmed, and we’re over two years from the anticipated launch date, so plans can all the time change.
Sony might even go the same route as Microsoft and cancel its plans for a proprietary handheld console.
Nonetheless, Sony is much much less prone to work with a PC producer like Asus on a Windows handheld, so there’s a greater probability that Sony will come out with a correct handheld console.
It would not be the primary Sony handheld by far, in spite of everything.