Former Xbox marketer says he's not disappointed with PS5 and thinks Sony made some smart moves

After yesterday a detailed story about the characteristics of the Sony PlayStation 5 game console former Xbox marketing director Albert Penello decided to say a few words about Sony's next-generation gaming console.

Mr. Penello, who left Microsoft in May 2018 after 17 years of working for the corporation, appeared on the ResetEra forums to talk about the GPU, CPU and SSD in the PS5, following a technical talk by Mark Cerny. First of all, like many, he expressed confusion about the PS5's variable clock speeds on both the GPU and CPU.

“Did I hear correctly? In order for the graphics accelerator to reach 2,3 GHz, the processor cannot operate at its full frequency? — wrote Albert Penello, “I have to admit, I’m confused about how balancing and optimizing energy consumption will work in practice.”

Many took Sony's words to mean that the processor frequency will not always be at 3,5 GHz, and most importantly, the GPU frequency will not always be at 2,23 GHz. However, former Xbox marketer added: “Mark Cerny also said that in “theory” there could be cases where both the PS5 CPU and graphics could run at their maximum frequencies.” Perhaps all this talk about lowering the CPU and GPU frequencies in the PS5 is just talk about energy savings in the new console, and not about performance limitations? At least, Mr. Cerny said during the presentation that most games that need the full power of the system will be able to use it without regard to energy efficiency.

Mr. Penello was also asked if he was impressed with the technical specifications that Sony revealed yesterday, after which he said that he was not disappointed with Sony's presentation, as he never expected the PS5's performance to be much higher than 9 teraflops.

"I think they're making really smart moves," he answered. - Remember, I was convinced that the console would not be able to offer much more than 9 teraflops, so I am not disappointed. If this system really costs $399, I think it will be a great deal."

By the way, the performance of the PS4 is 1,84 teraflops, the PS4 Pro is 4,2 teraflops, the base Xbox One is 1,31 teraflops, the Xbox One S is 1,4 teraflops, and the Xbox One X is 6 teraflops. That is, the new Microsoft and Sony consoles will be approximately twice as powerful as the most advanced systems of the previous generation in terms of direct GPU performance. However, the next generation of consoles also includes ray tracing hardware, which could fundamentally change the picture.

In addition, both systems support Variable Rate Shading technology (NVIDIA calls it Adaptive Shading), which is designed to save graphics card resources and reduce accuracy when rendering peripheral objects and secondary zones (in shadows, fast-moving objects, and so on). At the same time, the technology allows increasing detail where it is necessary. This can give a significant increase in speed. In addition, PS5 and Xbox Series X will probably be able to offer other innovations that will further improve calculation performance.

Later in the discussion thread, Albert Penello touched on the insanely fast SSD in the PS5, and was asked to compare this solution with the SSD in the upcoming Microsoft console (5,5 GB/s or 8-9 GB/s with data compression on the PS5 vs. 2,4/s). 4,8 GB/s for Xbox Series X). He answered: “Well, Xbox offers a proprietary unit, and the built-in SSD is soldered on the board, so I’m not sure which is better or worse.”

Source: 3dnews.ru