Sony’s console has been on the market since November 2020, which means it will soon be four years old. Despite all the time that has passed, it still exists big misinformation even in the “specialist” tech media about the PS5 CPU and what its real equivalent would be if we tried to port it to PC.

With the announcement of the PS5 Pro, this misinformation became even more evident. I’ve seen some media trying to configure PCs “equivalent” to said console by mounting a Ryzen 7 5700X or Ryzen 7 5800X, I’ve also seen DDR5 memory recommended when these processors They only support DDR4 memoryall of this has left me with a very bad feeling as it only supports the lies about the PS5 that we already have to get over.

For this reason, I thought it necessary to write an article dedicated to it thoroughly analyze the PS5 and PS5 Pro CPU, reviewing all its technical details and specifications and ending with a list of possible PC equivalents. Note that whenever we talk about equivalents of a console component in compatible components, we are referring to the closest, i.e. most similar, as there are normally no direct equivalents.

Both PS5 and PS5 Pro are used same CPU. The only difference between the two is at the operating frequency, so there are no changes either at the architectural level or in the kernel configuration. Therefore, everything I say about the first will apply directly to the second. This allows me to simplify the article quite a bit and make it much more fun and easy to read.

PS5 and PS5 Pro CPU: design

The PS5 CPU only occupies a small portion on the far left.

The processor of both consoles is integrated as an APU and has an o monolithic corewhich means that all elements of the processor are on the same silicon chip. This has positive features compared to the chiplet design, as it is not necessary to use an intercom system to connect several chips, with the increased latency in two-way communication that this entails.

However, it also has a downside, that the space at the silicon level that is free for the processor is very small because it is an APU it shares a silicon chip with the GPU. Most of that space is taken up by the GPU, forcing AMD to simplify and cut corners on the CPU to “fit” that silicon chip.

This is much more important than it seems. The footprint at the silicon level significantly affects the complexity of the chip, its success on the wafer and at costs to be borne by Sony. Greater efficiency in this sense helps the Japanese company reduce costs, and it goes without saying that this has always been one of its priorities.

On the other hand, it must be clear that an APU with a CPU on the level of Ryzen 7 7700X with a GPU on the same level as integrated in the PS5 is not viable. A chip with this configuration would be huge, extremely complex and expensive to manufactureat least with the technologies and nodes we have right now.

Custom Zen 2 architecture and modified

Zen 2 CPU FPU vs PS5 CPU Comparison.

It’s no secret, the PS5 CPU uses AMD’s Zen 2 architecture, the architecture of the PS5 Pro repeats the same architecture. To understand what this means in terms of IPC (instructions per clock), it is necessary to look at the evolution it represented compared to previous architectures:

• Zen increased IPC by 52% compared to Excavator, the successor to Piledriver, used in the FX 8300, 6300 and 4300. This architecture already had a much higher IPC than Jaguar, the architecture that used the PS4 CPU. It had 16 MB of L3 cache.
• Zen+ was a simple improvement over Zen It achieved an average CPI improvement of 3%, so it can be considered a minor evolution. 16 MB L3 cache configuration preserved.
• Zen 2 increased IPC by 13% over Zen+, which is 18% more IPC over Zen Increase L3 cache to 32MB.
• Zen 3 represented a 19% increase in IPC compared to Zen 2. It retained the 32MB of L3 cache for each 8-core chiplet, but made an important change in that all cores could now access these 32 indiscriminately. MB.

The PS5 and PS5 Pro CPU has 8 cores. It can work with 16 wires thanks to SMT technology, but this forces to reduce the clock frequency, so it was not used. Both operate at a maximum speed of 3.5 GHz and 3.85 GHz, which are very low values ​​by today’s PC standards, where it is common to exceed 5 GHz without a problem.

It has a Zen 2 PC processor with 8 cores and 16 threads 32 MB of L3 cachebut PS5 and PS5 Pro CPUs It has only 8 MB of L3 cache. There is an explanation for this, which is that it is integrated into the APU with a monolithic design, which greatly reduces the available space at the silicon level. In other words, AMD didn’t have room to put more L3 cache into the PS5 APU, or the PS5 Pro.

There is a huge difference in the amount of L3 cache available as well as the operating frequencies. Even the budget Zen 2 APU already has 16 MB of L3 cache, but these are not the only differences. PS5 and PS5 Pro CPUs come with extremely trimmed floating point units, and in terms of space.

The Zen 2 architecture uses 512 KB L2 cache per core. This memory is integrated into each core and is accessible only to it. The CPU of both consoles keeps the 512 KB, so no change in that sense. The Ryzen 7 3700X has 8 cores and 16 threads at 3.6GHz-4.4GHz and has 32MB of L3 cache, so it would be well above the CPU of these consoles.

PS5 and PS5 Pro CPU performance and things to keep in mind

We have already seen that the processor of both consoles, due to its specifications, does not have IPC or raw performance comparable to what the Zen 2 architecture offers in its base. It is far below because of all the cuts it makes in terms of frequencies, L3 cache and floating point units.

That means that it makes no sense to compare with Ryzen 7 3700Xso imagine how absurd it is that some media will come to give the equivalent of the Ryzen 7 5800X, which has an IPC improvement of 19% compared to the Zen 2, and which also runs at a higher frequency, which means higher raw performance.

On the other hand, it should be taken into account that the PS5 and PS5 Pro processors reserve some of the cores they have for the operating system and system applications. Digital Foundry actually commented on this Of its 8 cores, only 6.5 are free for games.

This explains that processors with 4 cores and 8 threads they still work so well in games current generation and that we are more than fine with a 6 cores and 12 threads processor as long as the IPC supports it, something that is essential when we talk about games because they usually scale poorly when we go beyond six physical cores or eight threads.

The processor of both consoles has IPC halfway between Zen+ and Zen 2, but it does not reach the level of the other. This may seem like a negative fact, but in fairness it should be recognized that this is a huge leap compared to the previous generation of consoles that used processors based on the AMD Jaguar architecture, a low-power solution comparable to Intel Atom more than 12 years ago.

It offers much better gaming performance compared to the previous generation, no doubt about it, in fact the jump to the Zen 2 CPU was necessary to create the 60 FPS performance mode, but that does not change the fact that the version used by the PS5 and PS5 Pro is a very trimmed and tight solution that is closer to Zen+ than Zen 2.

What CPU is the PS5 and PS5 Pro CPU equivalent?

Image courtesy of Digital Foundry.

The truth is that there is no direct equivalence, but the closest thing would be a CPU Ryzen 5 4600Gwhich has a 6-core and 12-thread processor at 3.7 GHz-4.2 GHz This one also has 8 MB of L3 cache and is based on the Zen 2 architecture, but since it is an APU, it uses the same monolithic core. design that the PS5 processor has.

If you’re wondering about the PS5 Pro’s CPU equivalent, the answer is very simple, it would also be the Ryzen 5 4600G, since the said console uses the same processor as the PS5. The only difference between the two will be the speed of work which it will go from 3.5 GHz to 3.85 GHz. With this increase in speed to 385 MHz, we can expect a fairly small increase in performance.

I know what you’re thinking, so why did I read or hear that the PS5 has a Ryzen 7 5800X equivalent processor? Because you read it or heard it from a person who unfortunately He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We all make mistakes, me for one, but the fact that these types of equivalences are still being made at this point says a lot about the reliability of some media.

Processor performance isn’t just measured in cores and MHz. For example, consider the huge difference in performance between Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen 7 5700X, even if we run both at a fixed frequency of 4 GHz, the performance difference in favor of the other will still be enormous, and this is due to the role that things like architecture, units with floating point and L3 cache size when it comes to gaming.

Topic occupation of hardware in consoles This is another problem that is usually not taken into account, and is also very important if we want to refine the equivalences. As I said, the PS5 reserves 1.5 cores for the system and core apps, and the same should happen with the PS5 Pro, so realistically both consoles only have 6.5 cores free for games. For that reason, we should not look for equivalence in 8-core Ryzen processors, but in six-core models.

Today it is very easy for us to get a processor better than PS5 and PS5 Pro and we won’t have to make a big investment. Starting with Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i5-10400F, we will have a more powerful chip. Both can be purchased for less than 100 euros, Although depending on the platform, it is better to choose an AMD chip because it offers more expansion options thanks to the Ryzen 5000X3D.

At the time, I shared a guide dedicated to building a PC higher than the PS5, which although outdated As for the GPU and other components, it was absolutely correct in the closest equivalence at the CPU level, because I chose exactly the Ryzen 5 5500, a processor that it performs as well as the Ryzen 5 3600 in games. Today, a PC with a Radeon RX 6700 or GeForce RTX 4060 would already be much better than the PS5, keeping the Ryzen 5 3600.