PlayStation 5 "Gonzalo" APU Features "PS4" and "PS4 Pro" Modes for Backwards Compatibility

Tsing

The FPS Review
Staff member
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
12,595
Points
113
According to Digital Foundry, PlayStation 5's APU/GPU will have three different modes to ensure backwards compatibility with the previous generation.

The console's native mode ("Gen2") will be blessed with a 2.0 GHz GPU clock, but under the PS4 Pro mode ("Gen1"), the APU will dial down to 911 MHz with 36 compute units (CUs), 218 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 64 render output units (ROPs).

In PS4 mode ("Gen0"), the processor will reduce its performance even further to 800 MHz and run with half the CU (18) and ROP (32) count.

These metrics are consistent with the capabilities of Sony's current consoles, which seems to confirm that "Gonzalo" is, in fact, the graphical muscle behind the PS5.

It also alludes to a highly customized contribution from AMD.

The indications are that back-compat is an integral part of the silicon, which in turn raises some interesting questions about the makeup of the Navi GPU and the extent to which older GCN compatibility may be baked into the design.
 
But why throttle down, why not use the extra horsepower to sharpen or uprez the gfx or something.

OTOH I guess we should just be glad Sony is finally giving us BC and shut the hell up? :cool:
 
  • Like
Reactions: _k_
Then you have the new Xbox, which will be backwards compatible with One S/X, 360 and the original Xbox. For once M$ does something right.
 
Rumors right now have PS5 at 9.2 TF and XB at 12.0 TF.

That’s a big performance disparity, and potentially cost and cooling disparity.

The current 1X is at 6.0 and PS4Pro is 4.2. So I guess percentage-wise it’s about the same as it is currently.... maybe a bit better than currently.
 
But why throttle down, why not use the extra horsepower to sharpen or uprez the gfx or something.

OTOH I guess we should just be glad Sony is finally giving us BC and shut the hell up? :cool:

I'm guessing it's a way/validation sort of thing - easier to do that than it is to test every game ever released....

Though, on much older consoles things like the game speed were tied to frame rate, so double your frame rate and everything goes faster...
 
Become a Patron!
Back
Top