PC Worlds The Full Nerd YouTube show had Frank Azor on recently who now works for AMD. They talk a bunch about AMD SmartShift tech along with some other PC tech info, though he doesn't exactly give any PS5 info out, at least not directly.
Frank mentions the reason SmartShift is being marketed now, is because it's design features that are already in the APU's core design, are being implemented into discreet CPU and GPU solutions now. I can't help but wonder, with the PS4's, XB1's, and XBSX being APU's that we know for certain, which should naturally have SmartShift already, could the fact that SNY is marketing SmartShift for PS5, be a hint that it's actually going to be a discreet CPU and GPU? Basically a semi custom Ryzen 3700 and Radeon '6700'?
It's also mentioned that in laptops, the Radeon 5600 was expected to be GTX 1660Ti performance that should boost to RTX 2060, but it's closer to RTX 2060 that can boost to RTX 2070. CPU intensive games drop performance to a 1660Ti level though. With the PS5 GPU basically being a Radeon '6700' (next gen RDNA 5700), the performance of that should be really darn impressive.
Frank also points out how much money in general SmartShift can save on hardware design. Instead of beefing up your hardware, since games tend to favor the CPU or GPU, you can use SmartShift on 'lesser' hardware and still get beefier hardware like performance, while also saving money by not having to use beefier hardware that's not being put to full use. This could mean PS5 may perform closer to XBSX than we might assume, while also helping to keep the PS5 price down.
Much of this is talked about in the first 15 minutes, though the SmarShift talk extends throughout the first half of the episode.
44:00 - 47:00 is where he is specifically asked about PS5. He makes a point about the current consoles having monolithic APU's and laptops having discreet CPU and GPU, and says because of that PS5 may have a custom implementation of SmartShift for an APU architecture. Though he also says, you can assume that based on how the consoles have been architected up until now. So does "up until now" mean that PS5 no longer follows that same monolithic APU design? He already mentioned SmartShift is in APU's as part of their core design, so why would SNY market that if PS5 had an APU?
