DigitalFoundry has confirmed, through performance analysis of Gotham Knights, that PS5 reserves 1.5 cores of its CPU to the operating system and applications. We have known for a long time that Xbox Series X also reserves a core of its CPU and 2.5 GB of unified memory for the operating system and basic applications, but with the Sony console we still did not have that information clear.
The exact amount of unified memory that PS5 reserves for the operating system and its main applications has not yet transpired, but the latest information we had seen pointed to between 2GB and 2.5GB. It is a perfectly credible figure, since PS4 reserved 2.5 GB and therefore had 5.5 GB free for games.
What does this mean and why is it important? Well, it’s very simple, it assumes that developers have available, for games, a 6.5-core CPU running at a maximum of 3.5 GHz (can go below that frequency), and also only have free between 13.5 GB and 14 GB of unified memory, which is used as RAM and VRAM interchangeably.
To all of the above we must also add that the CPU used by PS5 is based on Zen 2, but uses a custom design that trim both FPU and L3 cache. For comparison purposes, a Ryzen 5 3600 processor also uses the Zen 2 architecture, but as we can see in the attached table it has four times more L3 cacheit works at a stable 4 GHz in all its cores and also the design of its FPU is clearly superior.
If we put all this in context, the conclusion that we can draw is very clear, a Ryzen 5 3600 is far superior to the PS5 processorand as I told you at the time, we do not need an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X to have a PC at the level of Sony’s console, no matter how much others insist on wrongly pointing in the opposite direction.
In its review of Batman Arkham Knights, DigitalFoundry used a PC configured with a Ryzen 5 3600 and a GeForce RXT 2060 Superand this one has achieved results far superior to those of PS5 in said game. This also confirms, once again, what I have been telling you practically since the first details of said console began to leak, that a meaningless “hype” had been generated, and that in terms of power the “new generation” it was rather a disappointment.
If you want more information on this topic, I invite you to review this article dedicated to five things you do not need to build a PC at the level of PS5 and Xbox Series X. As for the analysis of Gotham Knights, the game is a real mess and a clear example of how things should not be done. It suffers from a major CPU bottleneck, caused by very poor optimization, and shader loading has been implemented so poorly that the game suffers from constant stuttering. I leave you the video so you can see it in more detail.
