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[thelastword]

Sony opted for some bold choices when it comes to the design of its upcoming PlayStation 5 console, and we don't mean just visually. The hardware features a 'revolutionary' storage solution, according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, and we've covered that at length already.

But that's not the most surprising feature of the PlayStation 5 hardware. When the full specifications of the gaming system were revealed, we learned that the CPU and GPU both featured a 'boost clock' design based on AMD's SmartShift technology. That means the frequencies are variable, though they are capped at 3.5 GHz for the CPU and 2.23 GHz for the GPU.

This is certainly unusual for a console. Microsoft, for instance, opted to have fixed frequencies on its Xbox Series X and recently threw a jab at the rival on this very topic.

What do game developers think of the way the PlayStation 5 has been built? We asked Ryan Shah, CEO and Lead Programmer of UK indie studio Kitatus and Friends.

I think it's a bit like when developing for PC, where you have access to all that different hardware and you can kind of tune things based on your needs. And what Sony are essentially saying are, here's your tool of options, you can absolutely throttle to the max. We prefer if you didn't, but if there's like a fringe case where you're just off that tiny bit of performance you need, we will let you squeeze a little bit extra. It also opens up a lot of different opportunities such as, say that you wanted to take rendering for some specific thing like a particle and you wanted to run it through something like the CPU for a specific cutscene, that'd be possible now whereas historically you had to be really careful that you didn't flood a specific thread. It opens up a lot of interesting opportunities of offloading that kind of stuff elsewhere on the machine, which is something that's getting less and less common, to offload other parts of the machine, but it seems like especially from PlayStation 5's technical conference by Mark Cerny a few weeks back, they're really pushing for that 'Here's the hardware. Here's how you access what you need, go in and make something beautiful' kind of mantra.

The PlayStation 5 doesn't have a release date or price yet. However, several retailers across multiple countries have now added dedicated PlayStation 5 pre-order pages, which may suggest that pre-orders will start soon. When they do, we should also get the final release date and/or pricing details.

Check back later this week for our full interview with Ryan Shah on the studio's debut title, Nth^0: Infinity Reborn, scheduled for a February 2021 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC.


https://wccftech.com/playstation-5-boost-clock-design-opens-up-a-lot-of-opportunities-says-dev/

 

[godhandiscen]

Yeah. I am against the marketing angle of this feature, but boost clocks can indeed provide benefits.
Looking at them closely, I realize they weren’t an afterthought. Watch them become standard next gen.

 

[Entroyp]

Oh no

 

[bitbydeath]

Yeah. I am against the marketing angle of this feature, but boost clocks can indeed provide benefits.
Looking at them closely, I realize they weren’t an afterthought. Watch them become standard next gen.

Yep. Watch it become standard in RDNA3.

 

[Dnice1]

Weird example, but ok. Reminds me in the DF when Cerny repeatedly said developer would have to learn to optimize for smart shift.

 

[Dory16]

Boosting from what performance? What is the performance that this architecture can actually sustain? And needing to boost to the max means you would be working below the 10.2TF max performance the whole time and only boost to that so you can "overachieve"? And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?
As for the link between variable clock rates and better asynchronous programming this guy needs to make a better attempt at explaining it, because he rambled a lot and said nothing.

 

[Entroyp]

Yea this makes things confusing again.

 

[Thugnificient]

If the salesman has to constantly remind me how amazing the product is, then it probably isn’t that amazing.

 

[bitbydeath]

Boosting from what performance? What is the performance that this architecture can actually sustain? And needing to boost to the max means you would be working below the 10.2TF max performance the whole time and only boost to that so you can "overachieve"? And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?
As for the link between variable clock rates and better asynchronous programming this guy needs to make a better attempt at explaining it, because he rambled a lot and said nothing.

From what I understand (and I could be wrong). It’s about shifting power from CPU to GPU and vice versa. So for example in times when the CPU is under utilised it can shift its remaining power to the GPU enhancing it beyond its top power level.

It can of course shift the other way too when devs require it.

 

[Dnice1]

Boosting from what performance? What is the performance that this architecture can actually sustain? And needing to boost to the max means you would be working below the 10.2TF max performance the whole time and only boost to that so you can "overachieve"? And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?
As for the link between variable clock rates and better asynchronous programming this guy needs to make a better attempt at explaining it, because he rambled a lot and said nothing.

Lol, kind of scary sometimes to hit reply. Cerny did say a 10% drop in power would equate to a couple percentage drop in frequency. What he didn't say is that it only takes a 3% drop to bring the gpu under 10TF.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

What doesnt?

 

[MasterCornholio]

Lol, kind of scary sometimes to hit reply. Cerny did say a 10% drop in power would equate to a couple percentage drop in frequency. What he didn't say is that it only takes a 3% drop to bring the gpu under 10TF.

Depends on how rare and severe the drops are. Nobody has proof of that yet.

 

[JTCx]

And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?

 

[Bryank75]

We have to realize even if it dropped below 10 at an extreme.... this is still RDNA 2.

10Tflops is like 14 tflops of the old GCN flops.

It's a huge step up and there will be a mid-gen upgrade on the PlayStation side, it was important to get the SSD right now, so all games can use that.... the resolution, fps and raytracing can be scaled up on later models.

If the SSD was not integrated at the beginning of the gen, then we would get a very small difference in game design. Nobody wants all those lifts and cracks in walls anymore....

There is also the need to make entry into next gen affordable to everyone, PlayStation wants everyone at the same level... at least at the beginning.

 

[Guilty_AI]

These talks could be extremely interesting if:
a)There wasn't a army of people waiting to either blow it out of proportion or pointlessly diminish it over console wars
b)It weren't obvious the main reason they're making these articles is for positive PR

 

[MasterCornholio]

And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?

You have a chance to prove it.

So ps5 is basically 9.2tf?

Hasn't been proven to be a 9.2TF system. Unless your suggesting that it is so we need some proof for that claim.

 

[Murder187]

So ps5 is basically 9.2tf?

 

[replicant-]

But what about the opportunities opened up by Mark Cerny's growing collection of ears?

 

[thelastword]

If the salesman has to constantly remind me how amazing the product is, then it probably isn’t that amazing.

Except that he is not a PlayStation salesman, neither does he work for Sony. As a dev working on Series X, PC and PS5, he gave his take on the benefits of Sony's boost clock design. You really shouldn't worry about PS5 sales though, I think you know very well, that PS5 will light the sales torch on fire. People are boosted and enthused to buy the new machine mainly based on the bevy of games that keeps on flowing on PS4 even now, near PS5's release. The fact that multiple devs enjoy the hardware, it's design etc.....is just gravy on this indomitable train......

 

[Deleted member 471617]

Hopefully, one of those opportunities includes giving us gamers a 60FPS option.

 

[Thugnificient]

Except that he is not a PlayStation salesman, neither does he work for Sony. As a dev working on Series X, PC and PS5, he gave his take on the benefits of Sony's boost clock design. You really shouldn't worry about PS5 sales though, I think you know very well, that PS5 will light the sales torch on fire. People are boosted and enthused to buy the new machine mainly based on the bevy of games that keeps on flowing on PS4 even now, near PS5's release. The fact that multiple devs enjoy the hardware, it's design etc.....is just gravy on this indomitable train......

And here comes the defense force missing the obvious point.

 

[Vasto]

Then where is the 60FPS performance?

 

[Infamy v1]

What do game developers think of the way the PlayStation 5 has been built? We asked Ryan Shah, CEO and Lead Programmer of UK indie studio Kitatus and Friends.

Lol, topic backfire

Is it me, or is The Last Word and co. getting a bit desperate lately?

Wcctech asks a random indie developer nobody here has ever heard of a question and makes their usual sensationalist clickbait title that people here usually mock, except not this time (I wonder why ), with emphasis on the word "DeVeLoPeR"

I bet TLW will reply to someone with a:

"but many "devs" said..."
"but muh 'devs'..."

Quote me on that.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Then where is the 60FPS performance?

Developers choice.

 

[Hendrick's]

So what is it boosting from?

 

[thelastword]

And here comes the defense force missing the obvious point.

What point? That many devs love the boost clock design and they have more control of what specifics they can push in realtime, tailoring more to their design and vision?

Then where is the 60FPS performance?

LBP is 60fps, Destruction All Stars is 60fps. Your COD, BF and fighters will all be 60fps. Besides, not all launch and launch window games are revealed yet. Some games even have 120fps modes. I don't see a worry for framerate yet.

 

[IntentionalPun]

WTF are they talking about?

The dev has no choice to "throttle to the max".. they don't choose anything about the speed of the CPU/GPU..

 

[sonomamashine]

And what Sony are essentially saying are, here's your tool of options, you can absolutely throttle to the max. We prefer if you didn't, but if there's like a fringe case where you're just off that tiny bit of performance you need, we will let you squeeze a little bit extra.
I'm concern'd...

 

[Thugnificient]

What point? That many devs love the boost clock design and they have more control of what specifics they can push in realtime, tailoring more to their design and vision?

The point that we get that the PS5 is amazing and all this talk is just hot air until we actually see the games delivering.

 

[Infamy v1]

I bet TLW will reply to someone with a:

"but many "devs" said..."
"but muh 'devs'..."

Quote me on that.

Holy shit LOL, so predictable. Right before my post:

The fact that multiple devs enjoy the hardware, it's design etc.....is just gravy on this indomitable train......

And right after my post:

What point? That many devs love the boost clock design and they have more control of what specifics they can push in realtime, tailoring more to their design and vision?

I really feel bad for corporate slaves. Truly do.

 

[Iced Arcade]

So ps5 is basically 9.2tf?

The ghost of Chad warden is going to come for you now

 

[FranXico]

This indie developer has no idea what he is talking about, does he? There is no useful information whatsoever in that article.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

The point that we get that the PS5 is amazing and all this talk is just hot air until we actually see the games delivering.

PlayStation has been delivering on that front for the past 7 years.
So again what is your point?

 

[Thugnificient]

PlayStation has been delivering on that front for the past 7 years.
So again what is your point?

And has PS5 delivered anything yet? No it hasn’t. I have little doubt it will but every two days we need to be reminded how amazing it is.

 

[Grinchy]

The only two sources I will trust for PS5 technical breakdowns are Hellpoint devs and DynamiteCop!

 

[sonomamashine]

The ghost of Chad warden is going to come for you now

It's about context, if you read OP you can ask the question.

 

[Amiga]

Boosting from what performance? What is the performance that this architecture can actually sustain? And needing to boost to the max means you would be working below the 10.2TF max performance the whole time and only boost to that so you can "overachieve"? And I'm risking a ban for saying that this thing is not a 10TF console?
As for the link between variable clock rates and better asynchronous programming this guy needs to make a better attempt at explaining it, because he rambled a lot and said nothing.

TF not an issue. most of the PS5 technical design is for the benefit of development environment. Sony deliberately prioritized that over maximum potential. it's like the opposite of what they did with the PS3. VC is to give devs flexibility with game code, SSD/IO is flexibility with data streaming.

 

[thelastword]

Lol, topic backfire

Is it me, or is The Last Word and co. getting a bit desperate lately?

Wcctech asks a random indie developer nobody here has ever heard of a question and makes their usual sensationalist clickbait title that people here usually mock, except not this time (I wonder why ), with emphasis on the word "DeVeLoPeR"

I bet TLW will reply to someone with a:

"but many "devs" said..."
"but muh 'devs'..."

Quote me on that.

Whenever I see a Neo Member these days, I'm wary, since you know me so very well huh! and of course, there have been a bevy of alts......

Still, that word in your post I bolded means something and guess what, if he was a PS exclusive developer, you know what the responses would be. Now a developer who is devving on all platforms speaks what all the tech savvy folk here have been saying. Obviously, we cant dismiss him as biased, so we dismiss him as "he don't know what he is talking about". In essence, you will take Dory16's take over an actual multiplatform developer who is actually writing code...

So what is it boosting from?

It doesn't need to boost from anything. A game will use what it needs, as long as it hits it's target. No need for extra heat and extra processing, till it's needed.....It's a smart design and it will help with cooling and the longevity of the machine.

To make it simple, if I am porting Pong to PS5, I don't need the clocks at max. I can set the PS5 to run Pong with only the processing power it needs. Now if Pong happens to be pushing lots of physics and it looks twice what the Unreal demo looks like, then I know It's necessary to push PS5 to it max clocks....

 

[Hawking Radiation]

And has PS5 delivered anything yet? No it hasn’t. I have little doubt it will but every two days we need to be reminded how amazing it is.

There is a record of Sony games delivering. Check the sales of their exclusvies.
Many of their big exclusives will carry over to PS5 so you can get an idea of how well the console will be doing. They just upped their PS5 capacity by 50%. Again that is an idication of how confident they are in the product. Social media engagement numbers has also been through the roof for the PS5 so its really not that difficult to put 2 and 2 together.

Regarding the developers talking about hardware: This happens before the start of every new generation of hardware so have no idea where you have been but this is normal practice. Developers are allowed to be enthused about new hardware. Are they not?

 

[DynamiteCop!]

In terms of performance there's no tangible benefit to boosting than getting more out of less for short periods of time. That's it.

Fixed frequencies are better for developers, there's no variance, it's predictable, optimization is easier. This isn't even debatable.

 

[Ritsumei2020]

I love the 9.2 TERAFLOPS cry.

9.2 TERAFLOPS! Ahaha Sony you are shit, go home! You suck!

Oh and btw, all next gen Xbox games will also have to run on 4TF hardware! But THAT DOESN'T MATTER! Sony 9.2 TERAFLOPS ahahah!

 

[Thugnificient]

Regarding the developers talking about hardware: This happens before the start of every new generation of hardware so have no idea where you have been but this is normal practice.

Not to that extent which at this point sounds more like reinsurance than genuine excitement.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

But that's not the most surprising feature of the PlayStation 5 hardware. When the full specifications of the gaming system were revealed, we learned that the CPU and GPU both featured a 'boost clock' design based on AMD's SmartShift technology. That means the frequencies are variable, though they are capped at 3.5 GHz for the CPU and 2.23 GHz for the GPU.

I think it's a bit like when developing for PC, where you have access to all that different hardware and you can kind of tune things based on your needs. And what Sony are essentially saying are, here's your tool of options, you can absolutely throttle to the max. We prefer if you didn't, but if there's like a fringe case where you're just off that tiny bit of performance you need, we will let you squeeze a little bit extra.

I thought PS5's CPU and GPU weren't about boosts and throttling?

 

[eastwood333]

Boost mode in itself reveals limitations to its design.

 

[thelastword]

And has PS5 delivered anything yet? No it hasn’t. I have little doubt it will but every two days we need to be reminded how amazing it is.

PS5 has shown us some spell binding visuals, that finally made people say OMG "Next gen is finally here". In case you missed it, the Unreal demo (real-time), Horizon 2, Kena, Ratchet and Clank, Demon Souls, Ghost Wire, Pragmata, just to name a few.....We have already been privy to next gen visuals. They were astonishing and yet they are still early, like the Unreal demo running at only a fraction of the GPU speed at 4.5ms.....

You may not be stoked, that's fine, but what's with the party pooping attitude. If there is something you are more enthused for then share it we can discuss it, but a dev who is agnostic and he is not the first platform agnostic dev that is excited and speaking positives on PS5's design, but it seems you'd rather bury him at the far/dark corners of the earth.....

 

[Thugnificient]

PS5 has shown us some spell binding visuals, that finally made people say OMG "Next gen is finally here". In case you missed it, the Unreal demo (real-time), Horizon 2, Kena, Ratchet and Clank, Demon Souls, Ghost Wire, Pragmata, just to name a few.....We have already been privy to next gen visuals. They were astonishing and yet they are still early, like the Unreal demo running at only a fraction of the GPU speed at 4.5ms.....

You may not be stoked, that's fine, but what's with the party pooping attitude. If there is something you are more enthused for then share it we can discuss it, but a dev who is agnostic and he is not the first platform agnostic dev that is excited and speaking positives on PS5's design, but it seems you'd rather bury him at the far/dark corners of the earth.....

I haven't seen these "spell binding visuals". I have however seen a lot of people being underwhelmed by them because of unrealistic expectations.

I personally wasn't underwhelmed because I know the generational leaps we've seen from PS2 to PS3 or PS1 to PS2 aren't happening anymore. Most of the games shown thus far didn't look dramatically ahead of their PS4 counterparts save for the obvious massive boost in resolution. PS5 games looked every bit as good as I expected them to. They didn't exceed my expectations.

 

[eastwood333]

PS5 has shown us some spell binding visuals, that finally made people say OMG "Next gen is finally here". In case you missed it, the Unreal demo (real-time), Horizon 2, Kena, Ratchet and Clank, Demon Souls, Ghost Wire, Pragmata, just to name a few.....We have already been privy to next gen visuals. They were astonishing and yet they are still early, like the Unreal demo running at only a fraction of the GPU speed at 4.5ms.....

You may not be stoked, that's fine, but what's with the party pooping attitude. If there is something you are more enthused for then share it we can discuss it, but a dev who is agnostic and he is not the first platform agnostic dev that is excited and speaking positives on PS5's design, but it seems you'd rather bury him at the far/dark corners of the earth.....

I argue the exact opposite. None of the games shown at the sony event including 1st party wowed anybody. In fact, the overhyping of the SSD died right after the event. In fact, i argue many looked cross gen.

 

[Rossco EZ]

so is the ps5’s boost mode exactly the same as amd’s smartshift tech?

 

[Bryank75]

Pointless conversation... we have to wait to see if there are limitations and how each console performs. Both consoles will be great, you'll earn nothing from putting eachother down except maybe a ban... be careful cause I want you all to be around for a long time. I enjoy our conversations!

We are all going to be happy later this year, it's a great time for consoles.

 

[Jigga117]

Are they trying to say they have boost capability on top of the system being overclocked??? Also we already know how the cpu/.gpu work that both of them are not max by the explantion of Cerny with it being variable. If the CPU is maxed the GPU is not and vice versa. So what exactly is the boost supposed to in this scenario to squeeze out what?