Sony PS4K is codenamed NEO, features upgraded CPU, GPU, RAM—report

PS4 NEO said to feature AMD's new Polaris architecture.

Mark Walton

Sony may be tight-lipped for now, but it's looking increasingly likely that the company will release an updated version of the PlayStation 4 later this year. So far, the rumoured console has gone under the moniker PS4K or PS4.5, but a new report from gaming site GiantBomb suggests that the codename for the console is "NEO," and it even provides hardware specs for the PlayStation 4's improved CPU, GPU, and higher bandwidth memory.

	Original PS4	NEO
CPU	8 Jaguar Cores @ 1.6GHz	8 Jaguar Cores @ 2.1GHz
GPU	AMD GCN, 18 CUs @ 800MHz	Improved AMD GCN, 36 CUs @ 911MHz
Memory	8GB GDDR5, 176GB/s	8GB GDDR5, 218GB/s

Those specs include a CPU clock speed bump from 1.6GHz to 2.1Ghz, an improved AMD GPU with 36 Compute Units (CU) running at 911MHz, and a memory bandwidth bump up to 218GB/s. While GiantBomb noted that the CPU cores remain based on AMD's Jaguar architecture—which was originally a chip developed for laptops—the GPU specs tie into recent rumours that AMD had landed big design wins for its new Polaris architecture.
Should the PS4 NEO GPU feature 36 CUs, that would mean around 2304 stream processors—effectively doubling the amount from the old chip. According to TechPowerUp, those specs are extremely similar to AMD's Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" chip, which is rumoured to be used in an upcoming standalone Radeon R9 480 graphics card. While AMD has refused to comment on the scuttlebutt—telling Ars, "We do not comment on rumour or speculation"—the company has noted in the past that the focus of Polaris is on power efficiency and "console-class gaming on a thin-and-light notebook."

Enlarge / AMD's recent product roadmap indicated that Polaris will be used in mid-range parts.

Further Reading

AMD GPU roadmap reveals HBM2-powered Vega and Navi

But AMD's Raja Koduri hints Polaris may be limited to GDDR5 and HBM1.

Indeed, a product roadmap shown in March at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco indicated that AMD will swiftly follow up Polaris with Vega, a higher-performance part featuring second-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2).
Using a more efficient Polaris GPU might be necessary, not only for performance but to keep the power envelope of the PS4 NEO down. While Sony has already updated the internals of the PS4 since launch with the CUH-1200 model—reducing the amount of memory chips and fitting a more efficient power supply—the APU itself remains unchanged and is based on the same 28nm manufacturing process.
Anandtech's analysis of the Jaguar architecture before the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One suggested that the PS4's 1.6GHz clock speed was the "sweet spot" for Jaguar, with a boost up to 2GHz requiring a 66 percent increase in TDP. That's more power for the PS4 NEO to suck down and more heat to try to remove, something that Sony is unlikely to want after quieting down the console with the CUH-1200 updates. However, that potential power increase could be offset by a move to a more efficient 14nm process, which Polaris is already confirmed to be based on.

But what does this mean for games?

Technical details aside, GiantBomb's industry sources had some other titbits about how the PS4 NEO might work. Starting in October—the rumoured announcement/release date for the new console—every PS4 game will be required to run in a "Base Mode" designed for older hardware, and a "NEO Mode" for the updated hardware. NEO Mode games will be able to make use of the faster CPU and GPU in the PS4 NEO, as well as an additional 512MB of memory budget. The idea will be to give 1080p games a frame rate and visual fidelity boost, while also giving developers the option to upscale games to 4K or render them natively at the resolution.
GiantBomb claimed documents it had received detail suggestions for how developers can build games in 4K, all of which explicitly state that "the frame rate of games in NEO Mode must meet or exceed the frame rate of the game on the original PS4 system." While the upgraded CPU, GPU, and memory bandwidth will help performance, the PS4's GPU would still lag behind current generation high-end parts from AMD and Nvidia, all of which struggle to render games natively at 4K on PC.

Enlarge / Sony's PSVR will work with both the original PS4 and the NEO model.

Those worried about fragmenting developer support can rest easy for the moment: GiantBomb's sources suggested that Sony will not allow any NEO-only games to be developed or allow the two userbases to be separated in any way. Peripherals also have to be supported across both consoles, which means that PSVR will work on the old PS4. Potentially, the PS4 NEO might not need the breakout box that ships with PSVR—though Sony has gone on record to say that the breakout box contains little in the way of processing power, despite being actively cooled.
Games released on PS4 from October on will need to support both the original console and NEO, according to GiantBomb, with games released in September receiving day-one patches to bring them up to NEO standards. Older games are said to require a patch to take advantage of the improved hardware, too, so don't expect that they'll suddenly run better on the new hardware.

Further Reading

Xbox boss backtracks on “Xbox One and a half” upgrade rumours

"If we're moving forward, I want to move forward in big numbers," says Phil Spencer.

Ars sought comment from Sony on the rumoured PS4 NEO, but it hadn't responded to our request at the time of publication. But given the sheer amount of details that have leaked over the past few weeks—including a recent Wall Street Journal report suggesting an October announcement—a new console of some kind is probably on the way. The question, of course, is how much will it cost? And because it will probably be more expensive than the current £280/$350 PS4 price, will anyone want to buy one?
Three years isn't a long time in a console lifecycle—the PS3 lasted from 2006 to 2015—but it's old when it comes to PC hardware and mobile. Sony is taking a big gamble in the hopes that it can encourage consumers to upgrade their console more frequently—a gamble that rival Microsoft seems to be quite happy to leave in Sony's hands, despite earlier statements to the contrary. If Sony's gamble does pay off, expect Microsoft to follow suit—and for all us to be buying consoles on a far more frequent basis.