Sony PlayStation 6 Handheld Specifications Leak
Specifications for Sony’s PlayStation 6 handheld have leaked, and they are impressive
If there’s anything that the Valve Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 prove, it’s that you can fit a lot of gaming power within the handheld form factor. Even Xbox has jumped on this bandwagon with the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally. Now, Sony is jumping on the handheld train with a PlayStation 6 handheld model, and specifications for this device have leaked.
KeplerL2, a prominent hardware leaker, has detailed the specifications of Sony’s PS6 Handheld. This system will act as Sony’s lower-end next-generation console, with a higher-end home console also being in the works. Think of it like Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, with the Series S variant being a Switch-like handheld.
Sony’s PlayStation 6 Handheld (PlayStation 6 Portable?) console has been designed with PlayStation 6 compatibility in mind. With this in mind, many of this device’s specifications match those of the PlayStation 5. For starters, the system should feature 16GB of memory and a GPU with 36 Compute Units. This matches PlayStation 5. That said, the PS6 Portable will use slower LPDDR5X memory, reportedly giving this system only a third of the PlayStation 5’s available memory bandwidth.
Less bandwidth? No problem!
To counter their portable system’s lowered memory bandwidth, Sony’s upcoming handheld has several mitigations. For starters, the device utilises a new RDNA 5/UDNA graphics chip, which reportedly features enhanced memory compression technology. AMD’s current-generation RDNA 4 GPUs already feature improved memory compression tech when compared to the PS5’s RDNA 2 GPU. We know this because AMD’s RX 9000 series GPUs can deliver higher performance levels than many older Radeon GPUs with much less raw memory bandwidth. RDNA5/UDNA should improve things further for AMD, which is great news for Sony and their upcoming handheld.
Next, Sony’s handheld reportedly features a “16MB MALL Cache”, which lowers load on the console’s memory bus. Frequently accessed data can be stored in this cache to reduce bandwidth requirements. This works similarly to AMD’s Infinity Cache tech. Finally, Sony’s new console is also likely to use new Zen-based AMD CPU cores, which will likely feature their own cache improvements, lowering bandwidth requirements.
(PS6 Handheld Specifications – from KeplerL2, compiled on Reddit)
Sony’s PlayStation 6 Handheld will be an impressive system
In many respects, Sony’s PlayStation 6 handheld will be more impressive than PlayStation 5. Using newer hardware architectures will result in increased hardware efficiency. That said, the constraints of the handheld form factor will restrict the overall performance of this system. Will it be able to play all PlayStation 5 games without any issues? If it does, Sony will have achieved a feat that many would consider impossible. That said, it remains to be seen if AMD and Sony can condense the PlayStation 5 experience into the handheld form factor.
Sony’s plans for PlayStation 6 are ambitious, but can they really achieve full backwards compatibility with PS5 with a handheld?
You can join the discussion on Sony’s PlayStation 6 Portable console on the OC3D Forums.
