Consoles currently use the same components as a gaming computer. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X use an AMD processor and graphics card that are based on solutions developed for PC gaming. But what gaming graphics card is equivalent to the one used by the PS5?
We must emphasize that the Sony console does not use a graphics card as such. It makes use of an AMD APU, which is basically uniting a processor and a graphics card in the same package. This makes it difficult to compare the performance of this graphics card with a dedicated graphics card.
How powerful is the graphics of the PS5?
This Sony console makes use of a graphics card (as well as its processor) developed by AMD. They are so-called semi-custom solutions offered by AMD to adapt to the needs of any client. For this platform, a graphics card based on the RDNA2 architecture has been used , the same one used by the RX 6000 Series graphics cards. This architecture is used because it is the most modern, it offers support for DX12 Ultimate and Ray Tracing, as well as support for AMD FSR.
When the PS5 was launched , Sony indicated what the specifications of the graphics card are. These are:
- Stream Processors: 2.304 shaders
- TMU: 144 textured units
- ROP: 64 raster units
- Memory bus: 256 bits and GDDR6 memory at 14 GHz, which leaves us with a bandwidth of 448 GB/s
- Frequency: up to 2.23GHz
- Compute Power: 10.29 TFLOPs
In order to make a simple comparison , we are going to keep the value of computing power , which in the case of the PS5 is 10.29 TFLOPs . This value tells us how many mathematical calculations it can perform per second, in this case, the graphics card. It is the best method of comparison, since all the graphics cards on the market have a value expressed in this way.
Graphics cards of similar power to the PS5
We have been searching and have found several models of graphics cards by computing power, equivalent to the PS5. According to the chosen scale, these are the equivalences:
- RTX 2080: It was one of the first graphics cards on the market to support Ray Tracing and other new NVIDIA technologies. The graphics card was launched in September 2018. It offers us a power of 10.07 TFLOPS , being the closest to the graphics included in the Sony console
- RX 5700 XT: This AMD graphics card was released in July 2019 and is rated at 9,754 TFLOPS . It’s slightly underpowered than Sony’s console, but it’s a very good graphics card.
- RTX 3060: Available from February 2021 and is one of the best sellers on the market today. It offers us a power of 12.74 TFLOPS , much more than the console of the Japanese company
- RX 6600 XT: One of the best graphics cards in terms of quality/price that was launched in August 2021. It offers us a power of 10.6 TFLOPS and would be, in theory, the one on which the GPU of the PS5 console would be based
- RTX 3050: Launched on the market in early 2022, it is quite recent and is one of the cheapest from NVIDIA. It has a power of 9,098 TFLOPS , being the least powerful of all that we have seen with a graphic power close to the PS5
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Gaming OC 12GB GDDR6
buy it at
EUR
459,90
XFX SWFT210 RX 6600 8GB GDDR6
buy it at
EUR
352,24
Conclusions we can draw
The ones that have the closest performance in terms of power based on mathematical operations, are the NVIDIA RTX 2080 and RX 6600 XT. What’s more, theoretically it would be the basis for the console graphics integrated into the PS5. Note that the RTX 3060 would be a better option than the RTX 2080, because it is more modern and much more powerful.
We must say that there is no absolute truth in this type of equivalence. There are many factors that we could call secondary, which can be observed and taken into account. One of them could be that it is easier to develop for a console than for a PC, since on consoles there is only one hardware configuration and on computers there are many.