New rumours claim that Sony’s upcoming portable console may put even living room machines to shame. Powered by an AMD Radeon GPU, the next PSP will benefit from the years of technology advancements separating it from its predecessor.
According to leaker KeplerL2 on the NeoGAF forums, PlayStation 6 Portable will be powered by a 15W SoC built using a 3nm manufacturing process. This chip is said to pack less than 40CUs (Compute Units), possibly 36 like current PS5 consoles. That said, while the portable could use an unreleased RDNA GPU architecture, its memory bandwidth is seemingly too restrained to reach PS5-level performance.
It goes without saying that Xbox Series X is similarly out of reach for the mysterious portable, but another rumour puts Sony’s handheld ahead of Xbox Series S. Of course, it’s far too soon to tell, but this will be an impressive feat if true. After all, Series S sips just as much power as the 15W SoC when it enters sleep mode, ramping all the way to 74W under load – just short of five times as much.
Depending on the type of screen, speakers, and features Sony selects, the portable PS6 could end up taking about 20W or 25W in total. Naturally, battery capacity will play a major role in this, but it’s tough to see this as anything other than a win for those who like to play on the go.
Now the important question is, what kinds of games will it run? It seems that the machine has enough horsepower to run PS5 titles, but at reduced resolution, graphics, and frame rates. The combination of a limited power budget and memory bandwidth doesn’t help.
It’s possible that dedicated versions of PS5 and PS6 titles will crop up for the battery-powered machine but I don’t envision it going the way of PS Vita. Multi-platform games often cut content to cater to limitations, but this strategy doesn’t work as well in the age of cross-play.
Kepler L2 has indicated that the underlying chip has entered pre-silicon validation, hinting at a potential launch in 2027. So, we still have a long time to wait.
