Quietly in the background, plausible technical specifications for Sony’s next generation handheld have come to light. Bearing in mind that we’re likely years away from release, the plausibility of these specs has to be questioned but at the same time, the source of the leak – KeplerL2 – has proven to be a highly reliable source for all sorts of AMD information. He was also first to corroborate the PlayStation 5 Pro spec leaks and his information turned out to be very, very close to what we received as final hardware. His Sony handheld specs are unusually detailed for a project so far out, but to be fair, they do lack highly important context: the chip at the heart of the machine is built on AMD’s new graphics architecture – known by some as UDNA – but nobody quite knows what it is capable of. Therefore, getting a grip on what this machine is capable of will prove challenging.
Based on Kepler’s information though, the in-development APU has 16 UDNA compute units and 32 ROPs – similar in configuration terms to the Strix Point processor we’ll see this year in the ROG Xbox Ally X and the plethora of Chinese handhelds built on existing versions of the same core processor. There are key differences though – and these could prove crucial.
First of all, as mentioned, the Sony handheld’s use of the UDNA architecture gives it a generational leap or two over Strix Point, which is using RDNA 3.5. Secondly, memory bandwidth has historically been a defining limiting factor for AMD handhelds – it’s one of the key reasons why Steam Deck continues to measure up fairly well against much more modern AMD-based handhelds. According to Kepler’s information, Sony attempts to address this with two improvements: faster LPDDR5X memory (9600MT/s vs 8000MT/s) along with an additional memory cache on the processor itself: 16MB of MALL (Memory Access at Last Level) cache. This will deliver one third of existing PS5 bandwidth, but the MALL plus architectural improvements should make a difference.
0:00:00 Introduction0:00:48 News 1: MindsEye suffers troubled launch0:20:27 News 2: Switch 2 sells 3.5 million units in first four days0:28:45 News 3: Next-gen PlayStation handheld specs rumoured0:41:29 News 4: Stellar Blade PC delivers good performance0:51:39 News 5: RetroArch Afterplay enables web browser emulation0:58:27 News 6: Mortal Kombat 2 ported to 3DO1:05:20 Supporter Q1: Will next-gen Xbox be third party like the Xbox Ally?1:12:13 Supporter Q2: What Switch games would you like to see patched for Switch 2?1:17:43 Supporter Q3: How widespread is DLSS on Switch 2?1:29:25 Supporter Q4: What happens to game rendering when you change the output resolution on your console?1:33:07 Supporter Q5: Could Microsoft have bluffed their way to success with Xbox One?
Unfortunately, Sony hasn’t chosen to use a 256-bit memory interface – the mystery processor described by Kepler uses the same 128-bit interface as current AMD handhelds – but 16GB of memory is mooted for the handheld. That’s the same as Steam Deck, but more pertinently, the same as PlayStation 5. Beyond that, it’s suggested that the processor is fabricated on TSMC’s 3nm process. That’s very expensive for now, but likely to be more affordable for a console manufacturer a few years down the road.