PlayStation 4 processing power revealed

Sources have cracked open details on the PlayStation 4 and a rainbow of tech goodness has spilled out. The GPU is a Radeon HD 7670. The CPU is AMD’s quad-core 2.9Ghz A8-3850. This is hardware which is currently available, so does it have the oomph to power the next-gen PlayStation?

A quick glance at AMD’s product sheets reveals the tasty details. The Accelerating Processing Unit (APU) comes with an on-board Radeon GPU, the 6550D. While definitely not as powerful as the HD 7670, the 6550D while most likely work in conduction with the main GPU for added processing power. The on-board L2 cache is 4MB and for those in the dark, L2 cache stores repeated instructions for faster GPU responses.

The HD 7670 GPU is a monster of a graphics card, and close in with 1GHZ and a 1GB VRAM. It’s a “budget” GPU and generally retails for US$179. It’s doubtful that the PS4 will use “retail” hardware and the chosen GPU/APU will most likely be custom-tooled for the luxurious innards of the PS4.

Word on the street is that the next-gen Xbox will share a very similar GPU chipset, namely a dual Radeon 7000 series setup. As much as fan boys hate to admit it, the two consoles may finally be able to shake hands and win the battle based on gaming titles alone, not arbitrary hardware specs.

Any of the above-mentioned specs are subject to change before launch, says the nameless source. With these specs, codename “Orbis” is already sounding like a console ready for the future of gaming.