While Microsoft did briefly talk about the next generation Xbox, Sony did not make a similar announcement about the PlayStation 5 even though we have been getting rumors about it for a long time now. Sources are confirming that the Sony PlayStation 5 will use both AMD Ryzen and Navi but we don’t know if the AMD Navi graphics solution will be a dedicated graphics part or SoC.
While we do not know much about AMD Navi, we know that it will be based on the 7nm process and we also know that AMD has been very successful in optimizing their chips for consoles. According to sources AMD Navi is not just going to be featured in the upcoming Sony PlayStation 5, it was made for Sony and this agreement was made during the time Raja Koduri was at AMD.
In order to make a graphics architecture for Sony, AMD sacrificed a lot when it came to Vega. Two-thirds of Radeon group was allocated to AMD Navi and that is why Vega did not turn out to be what people expected it to be. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su wanted to invest into its semi-custom business, rather than the desktop graphics division.
This means that while the company might support PC gaming now, that was not the initial plan. The company wanted to be part of the console market rather than enter into the PC space. Recently we heard that Navi would be a mid-range GPU at best and won’t be competing with high-end Nvidia graphics cards. If AMD Navi has been designed with Sony in mind then that is what we are going to get as it is not a desktop graphics solution but a console semi-custom chip that will be tweaked for desktops.
If you thought that AMD Navi was going to be everything that Vega could not be and much more then it seems that you will be disappointed yet again. It will be interesting to see how much of all this is true and whether or not Sony is going to allow Microsoft to use the same architecture. If AMD Navi has been designed for Sony, then it is possible that the company has cut a deal that keeps AMD from supplying Microsoft with the same tech.
Let us know what you think about all this and what you think is the reason behind there was no news regarding the Sony PS5 being worked on.
