The Sony PS5's Power Efficiency Could Be One Of Its Best Killer Features
As part of the "Playing for the Planet" initiative, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan talked up the efficiency of the upcoming PlayStation 5, and the numbers are quite astounding. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the original PlayStation 4 consumes 8.5 watts in standby mode. The PlayStation 5, on the other hand, will drop that figure down to an incredibly low 0.5 watts when gameplay is suspended according to Ryan.
"If just one million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes," Ryan added.
The PlayStation 5 will be able to achieve this dramatic drop in power consumption thanks in part to the die shrink to 7nm for the octa-core Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 processor and Navi GPU. The PlayStation 5 also employs efficient power scaling and energy efficient suspend-to-RAM capabilities.
To date, Sony says that it has cut its carbon emissions by an estimated 16 million metric tons, and expects to increase that total to 29 metric tons over the next decade based on current projections.
The aforementioned Zen 2/Navi APU will form the heart of the PlayStation 5, but equally important will be its brand-new storage system which will leverage an incredibly fast solid-state drive (SSD). According to game developer BoxFrog, the PlayStation 5's SSD is going to revolutionize gaming thanks to ultra-quick loading speeds, which will contribute to deeper, immersive gaming more than "a lot of people realize."
