I can post takes on GitHub too
Liabe Brave said:
Yes, I very much expect this. Indeed, it even affects my thoughts about nextgen in general. The recent GitHub leak of testing notes were for what is surely PS5 APU hardware running in three modes: 18 CU at 800 MHz, 36 CU at 911 Mhz, and 36 CU at 2.0 GHz.The first mode corresponds exactly to PS4, and the second mode exactly to PS4 Pro, which is why we know this is PS5 hardware. The third mode is referred to as "native" or "full chip", so many have assumed this is the complete capability of PS5. They're thus disappointed because twice the Pro power--plus architectural improvements--is lower than often hoped or rumored.
However, my thinking is that the PS5 OS will feature a "Boost Mode" setting, like Pro does. This makes sense to me because of simple precedent, but also because PS5 will have backwards compatibility so there's even more of a use case. Without user-selectable Boost Mode, either PS5 would play PS4 games worse than PS4 Pro does, which would be pretty weird.
Or it'd play them better automatically, which also doesn't fit Sony's recent MO. They seem institutionally concerned with ensuring good compatibility, which is why Boost Mode wasn't there to begin with, and why it's still optional with a warning message, even though almost no games react poorly.
On Pro, the boost is achieved by running 18 CUs at 911 MHz; that is, deactivating CUs to match the target platform, but leaving the clocks native. It doesn't seem likely to me that PS5 will completely ignore Pro-enhanced titles, though. They can have dynamic resolutions or unstable framerates too, so why wouldn't you boost them as well? To do that, you'd again deactivate CUs to match the target platform, but leave the clocks native. With the target being Pro, that could mean 36 CU at 2.0 GHz. Just like the Pro's 18 CUs at 911 MHz, this isn't the true physical setup of the GPU, but chosen for compatibility.
This leaves the physical setup or maximum capability of the PS5 APU unknown, just as we wouldn't know the full size and power of Pro's GPU if all we looked at was its BC modes. Pro is actually twice as powerful as its "full" compatibility mode. There are various other reasons why PS5 almost certainly is not. But again, I think merely looking at how Boost Mode works, and likely will work, we can see that there's a gap in our knowledge.
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This makes the most sense to me.