Next-gen PS4 Orbis and Xbox Durango hardware details

Both the next-gen PlayStation and Xbox will feature 8-core CPUs clocked at 1.6GHz, built on technology from AMD codenamed Jaguar.

This is according to sources trusted by the hardware-sleuths at Digital Foundry (the technical division over on Eurogamer).

Apparently the Jaguar architecture offers low-power processor cores which are aimed at the entry-level laptop and tablet PC market, therefore offering a good power to performance ratio.

Information on the GPU setup for the PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) is a little more mystical at this stage. Digital Foundry states that the Orbis will feature a Radeon HD GPU (possibly based on the mobile “Pitcairn” 7970M chip), but with an 800MHz clock and 18 AMD “Graphics Core Next” compute units.

Digital Foundry said that the Orbis will use a “bespoke GPU-like ‘compute’ module” designed to ease the burden on the CPU and GPU cores. All of the PlayStation Orbis processing units are packed into a single piece of silicon, and the internal condename for the processing unit design is “Liverpool”.

Digital Foundry could not confirm the GPU design for the Xbox Durango, and tempers previous Xbox 720 performance rumours that pegged the PlayStion Orbis as more powerful in raw compute power by suggesting that the Xbox Durango relies on task-specific hardware to help out the GPU.

According to Digital Foundry, the PlayStation Orbis features 4GB of GDDR5 – an extremely fast type of RAM that usually ships with PC graphics cards. 512MB is reserved for the operating system.

The Xbox Durango, on the other hand, is believed to contain 8GB of DDR3 RAM – offsetting the slower RAM speed with volume. Sources suggest that 3GB of the RAM will be reserved for the OS.

It is suggested that the Durango could reserve two CPU processing cores for running various apps in parallel to games. With no apparent plays from Sony to do something similar, this could give it a processing power advantage.

Website, VGleaks, is claiming to have the full-spec of the Xbox Durango, and Digital Foundry seems mostly convinced by the information as key elements match their sources, and the information leaker has come forward with proof of the origin of the info.

Xbox Durango leaked design – VGleaks

Digital Foundry identifies interesting elements of the design, including separate audio and video codec processors. HDMI input is noted (not merely output) suggesting media-centric uses for the Xbox Durango.

“Data Moves Engines” are identified, but no information on their purpose is availble.

Kinect has its own input and USB ports are version 3.0, and a 500GB hard drive is suggested to be the minimum by Digital Foundry sources.

A 6x Blu-ray drive is confirmed (yup, for the Xbox Durango), which supports 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray discs. 1Gbps Ethernet and Wi-Fi Direct round off the connectivity.

The final consideration, as put forward by Digital Foundry, is that the information from Xbox Durango VGleaks could be up to 9 months old. However, due to the drawn-out research and design process involved, it is possible that very few changes will have been made at this stage.