PlayStation 5 – For The Ultimate Next-Gen Gaming Experience!

Sony launched the Fifth Iteration of its best-selling Playstation as the Playstation 5 in November 2020. The Playstation 5 and its direct competitor from Microsoft, the Xbox Series X mark the ninth generation of video game consoles. The Playstation 5 was highly anticipated after the original Playstation 4 was released 7 years ago in 2013 with the Playstation 4 Pro launching in 2016 as a mid-generation upgrade.

The primary push of the Playstation 5 was its availability to run games at a 4K resolution and to also utilize the ray tracing technology. Both of them were too great tasks to be handled by the predecessors and are the technology that is currently pushing forward video game research. This article will list everything you need to know about the Playstation 5!

Hardware:

The SoC or System on Chip that powers the PS5 was made by the collaborative effort of Sony and AMD. It is running on a custom 7nm version of AMD’s Ryzen Zen 2 CPU. It is an octa-core processor that can run at a maximum frequency of 3.5ghz. The display is powered by a GPU of AMD RDNA 2 architecture, running 36 compute units at a frequency of 2.23ghz. There are 16 GBs of superfast GDDR6 RAM.

Sony has also put an 825 GB solid-state drive for storage. It is able to provide blisteringly fast read and write speeds, meaning quick boot-ups and game loading. The entire system is cooled by a dual fan setup and a large copper heat sink. There is also a version of the PS5 that can support a disk drive that reads Ultra HD Blu-Ray optical disks each of which can hold up to 100 GB.

Design:

In the design department, Sony has tried to be really new and innovative, completely refreshing the PS5’s looks. The Console is primarily white and black in color with blue accents. The central console that is black in color is covered by two horizontal plates at the top and bottom, which resemble two white wings.

The PS5 can be kept both vertically and horizontally. The front side of the console has two USB ports, while the rear sports two more USB ports, an HDMI port, a gigabit ethernet port for LAN, and a power cable. The air intake vents are present on the front panel, while the heat exhausts come from the rear side above the ports.

Software:

The PS5 is not just an evolution of the PS4 software interface but is a completely different reimagination on improving its design and usability. The PS4 UI feels slow and sluggish compared to this new design. The entire user interface has been rendered in Ultra HD 4K resolution along with High Dynamic Range, so it looks visually stunning even outside games.

The software allows you to usually set the PS5 in either a performance or visual fidelity mode, depending on the game. The resolution mode runs the game on 4K resolution but with lower framerates. The performance mode comprises the resolution to a lower 1440p but bumps up the framerate to consistently over 60fps. Players can choose to set it at their discretion.

DualSense Controllers:

The newest evolution of the game console’s controller is the DualSense controller. Similar to the console itself, it is designed with a white and black color theme with blue lighting. The DualSense controller really detaches itself from the design of the previous DualShock controllers. For starters, it has a more curved and less angular, and uniform lining along with the division of the buttons.

Secondly, the haptic feedback system is still present, but the new feature added is that of the adaptive triggers. The R1, R2, and L1, L2 shoulder buttons have been upgraded to adaptively give resistance and haptic feedback based on the actions being done on the screen. There is a myriad range of possible applications to this technology. A great example was seen in Call of Duty where the triggers would get stiffer when firing heavy weapons.

Ray Tracing:

Dynamic ray tracing is a system where the lighting in any scene is actively and dynamically interacting with a present light source. Compared to older technology, light is not static anymore and actually interacts with the surfaces in its environments. Ray tracing provides a new level of visual fidelity to make games extremely photorealistic.

The PS5 supports hardware-driven ray tracing. Secondary use of ray tracing is also to use it to create realistic graphics for shadows and surface reflections. Examples of games that currently have ray tracing support in the PS5 include Demon Souls, Devil May Cry 5, Call of Duty Black Ops: Call of Duty, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Backwards Compatibility:

The PS5 supports a variety of backward compatible games from previous PlayStation generations. The vast majority of PS4 games are already available, and can already run on a higher resolution and framerate. Other games can only run on their original 1080p resolution with a locked framerate.

All of the PlayStation VR games are compatible with the PS5 as well. However, models older than the PS4 such as the PS3, PS2, PS1, and the PSP are not backwards supportable because they were all made on a different hardware architecture that cannot be translated or ported to the AMD Zen 2 chip without third party recording.

Pricing and Availability of PlayStation 5:

For those who want to buy Playstation 5 online, The Playstation 5 is available at $399 for the Digital-only version and $499 for the Blu-ray Disc version. However, the sales of PS5 are in a problematic situation because they are being bought in bulk by scalper groups. Scalper groups buy products on a large scale and then sell them off to customers at jacked-up pricing. This middleman has made it very difficult to find the PS5 in stock at retail stores for a reasonable price.

We hope this article has told you everything you needed to know about the PlayStation 5 and we hope you are able to buy one very soon!

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