Do you know what’s at the heart of PlayStation 5? There’s a seriously powerful machine that takes console gaming to a much higher level than its predecessors. Underneath the sleek design, you’ll find a specially designed graphics card from AMD, built on the not-so-latest RDNA 2 architecture. Despite the older architecture, these graphics are like a powerful engine, as they can power through even the most demanding gaming titles, even in 4K at a stable 60 frames per second (FPS). Die-hard gamers will argue that 60 FPS is just a weak concoction, but PlayStation owners will surely give us the benefit of the doubt that it’s an incomparable difference from previous versions.
Comparison of PS5 and modern PC performance
Having said that, the question that may be on your mind is how the PS5 compares to modern PCs. The truth is that on paper it can be beaten by a number of graphics cards in a similar price range, but the PlayStation 5 has one huge ace up its sleeve. While in the numbers it doesn’t look like the PlayStation 5 is going to wow gamers with its performance, in reality it can often offer a better and smoother gaming experience than most overpriced PC lineups. Why, you ask?
Think of PlayStation 5 as a perfectly orchestrated orchestra, where every instrument knows exactly when to sound and exactly what to do. All the parts of the console work together in perfect harmony, meaning nothing jams, nothing hinders the surrounding components. Unlike PCs, where developers have to adapt to hundreds of different set-ups and hardware combinations, on PlayStation5 they can design their game to be exactly tailored to that one console. So they can use every watt of power and every bit of memory to the fullest. It’s because of this unique optimization that PlayStation 5 can often offer gamers a much smoother, more beautiful and overall richer gaming experience than you’d expect from the technical numbers alone.
If we were to compare it to a PC, it’s similar to an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card. It has 36 compute units that work together at up to 2.23 GHz. All this power gives the PS5 a power of approximately 10.28 teraflops. That’s a hefty dose of power that you can afford to dream big with! For readers craving more information, we’ve also included a short video where the author compares the AMD RX 6700 graphics card, which is the fastest sister card, and the PS5 graphics card. And the difference ? judge for yourself.
The super-fast SSD, which is one of the fastest in the console world and has made boring loading screens disappear, also plays an important role. Instead of waiting, you’re instantly in the thick of the action, jumping between worlds and watching as new details appear before you. Meanwhile, the graphics are beautifully smooth even in large, open environments. For a better visualisation, let’s take a concrete example. On PS4, FallOut 4 had an average wait time of something like 30-50 seconds in loading, depending on a number of factors, but in the latest PS5 version, the wait time has been reduced to a whopping 10-15 seconds, which means many of you won’t even have time to read the tooltips that appear while the game is loading.
What’s under the hood? CPU and playstation graphics card
And what’s going on “under the hood”? The PS5 also has a powerful AMD Zen 2 processor with eight cores and sixteen threads. In practice, this means that the console can handle not only beautiful graphics, but also demanding calculations whether it’s artificial intelligence, physics in games or complex simulations.
The PlayStation 5 has 16GB of fast GDDR6 memory, which NARAZ uses for both the processor and graphics card, offering the PlayStation 5 a huge advantage over PC builds. This means both components access one shared memory directly and without delay, much faster than having to copy data between separate RAM and graphics card memory on a regular PC. This clever concept results in smoother gameplay and more efficient operation of the entire console. In addition, the PS5’s unique data transfer system allows data from the ultra-fast SSD to go directly to the graphics card without unnecessary delays through the CPU. Thanks to this, games load at lightning speed and you can enjoy smooth and beautiful game worlds without waiting.
Why does PlayStation 5 offer a smoother gaming experience than PC?
So we’ve explained why games on PlayStation 5 feel so smooth, modern and often look better than they do on PC. The developers have everything under control, they can get the most out of the system and that’s reflected in your gaming experience. All the things that annoyed gamers on the previous console such as annoying loading times, graphics imperfections and so on are all a thing of the past with the arrival of PlayStation 5.
If you own both a PC lineup and a PS5 let us know in the comments what your take is on this eternal controversy in the gaming world . And if this article appealed to you, feel free to read our other articles and soak up lots more information from the world of graphics cards.