In fairness Steam has about 132M so they are tracking ahead. But yea it's not some monumental gap (and once you add Switch and what's left of XBox, the consoles are still ahead).
PS5 “Power Saver” Mode Tested - Digital Foundry
Bernkastel
Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Boy bawang
Member
Nothing magical, it's just physics. ARM is a more power efficient architecture. There's a reason why you never see phones or tablets using x86.
You can educate yourself on the topic if you want, resources are easily accessible.
Take a deep breath.
Nintendo gave up on making traditional, tethered consoles, and went the hybrid way. Best of both world, they are now the market leader and they have never made so much money.
Zathalus
Member
x86 can match (or come very close to) ARM in power efficiency, but it requires extensive work from AMD and Intel in order to do so, just look at how much more efficient Lunar Lake and Zen 5c are vs previous generations. ARM still leads in power efficiency, but the gap is far smaller than it was just 3-4 years ago. Zen 6c looks to bring another remarkably leap forward in efficiency for x86 as well.
Steamdeck is a crap in comparison to Switch 2 despite being similar in price.
memoryman3
Member
Why not? It would be required for backwards compatibility with PS5 Pro as console software has these upscaling methods "baked in" to the game's shader binaries. PS5/PS5 Pro still have Sony's custom hardware for checkerboard rendering for exactly this reason.
I also don't think Canis/Orion will run stock RDNA5.
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sloppyjoe_gamer
Member
I still don't even know what this feature is supposed to accomplish......is this in to appease the climate change crackpots?
Boy bawang
Member
And yet, Intel had to make such compromises that they are even abandoning lunar lake, while STILL being quite behind the snapdragon equivalent on battery life by at least 30%.
But well, now that we've established that ARM is just more suited for low powered devices, as illustrated by the thousands of phones, tablets, and now low power laptops around (there's a reason why Microsoft is pushing hard windows on arm), let's talk features: Nvidia, with DLSS and rtx cores, is quite ahead of the competition in that regard, and it's a big deal for low power devices especially as we can see with the switch 2.
viveks86
Member
Would those crackpots even know to be appeased though? If not for being on GAF, I honestly wouldn't have heard anything about this feature. For a mainstream gamer that's not so plugged in, this is practically being shadow dropped.
asdasdasdbb
Member
For the hundreth time, it's for the handheld.
Zathalus
Member
ARM is a bit more efficient now but consider that a mere 5 years ago the difference in power consumption was staggering, now Lunar Lake is closing in on Apple Silicon, and Zen 6c Zen 6 LP will close that gap even further. True, ARM will also improve, but the low hanging optimisations have already been plucked, as ARM has been targeting that market for decades, while both AMD and Intel never took it that seriously until recently. I don't think that x86 will ever fully march ARM, but it is miles ahead of where Zen 2 was.
As for Nvidia, absolutely they have had a commanding lead in RT, upscaling, and efficiency for ages now, but if the discussion is about the Sony handheld that is all moot, RDNA5 matches or exceeds Blackwell in those specific metrics.
sloppyjoe_gamer
Member
For the asdasdasdbb th time, what handheld? Oh you mean the hypothetical, and not announced PS6 Jr extreme handheld....ok
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Zathalus
Member
Well it could be for Eco reasons, but the power usage difference isn't exactly enough to significantly change anything. Maybe Sony is using it to meet some sort of internal or investment goal? But there are no regulatory requirements for this.For the asdasdasdbb th time, what handheld? Oh you mean the hypothetical, and not announced PS6 Jr extreme handheld....ok
As of the moment this new mode does offer one minor benefit, allowing for gaming where you might be constrained in power draw, on a generator or battery, but something like that is extremely niche.
Frankly the handheld is the only thing that makes sense, and the existence of it has been confirmed by multiple, independent sources. The CPU reduction is roughly in line with the rumoured handheld, and the memory bandwidth is as well.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
It dropped off from 2023 and bounced back then?
PlayStation set an MAU record in December 2023
A new record - with a new sales milestone.
gamedevreports.substack.com
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Mr Moose
Member
Different Qs.It dropped off from 2023 and bounced back then?
PlayStation set an MAU record in December 2023
A new record - with a new sales milestone.
Neither is it anywhere close to where a Handheld would sit, in any of the metrics.
Also they launched the ECO mode as end-user facing, even on Pro consoles - none of it has any value for a theoretical handheld profile which will target a different TDP, different pixel resolution, on a different CPU, GPU with different performance targets.
The rumor that 'confirms' the Handheld even states "will run PS5 games similarly to PS5 console with 'special support' and lower performance when not". That's the opposite of what the ECO mode does.
The only thing that is similar to what a handheld might do is the bandwidth, which roughly matches high-end handhelds today. But that's just as likely to be coincidental (the broken clock thing), and could end up low-balling hardware in 2-3 years for all we know.
But sure... If Sony's strategy is to market a new Handheld as the 'green way to play PS5 games, badly', the Vita will be viewed as massive success in comparison.
not to mention %80 of steam users are basically same as mobile gamers. playing similar garbage on their dying laptops.
they are not the future of gaming lol
thats some pcmrn delusion.
Zathalus
Member
It's not anywhere close to a handheld in power draw as a PS5 is still fundamentally not designed for lower power consumption. The handheld will use LPDDR instead of GDDR6, a far newer and more efficient GPU and CPU architecture, and 3nm vs 7/6nm. That's just the obvious, the handheld is going to be designed around a 15w APU. I don't think this mode is exclusively for the preparation of a handheld, but as more and more sources confirm the existence and specifications of the handheld, it does stretch the believability of a mere coincidence.
Playing PS5 games badly on a handheld was always going to be the reality for a 2027 handheld, but better than not playing them at all. I'd even argue badly is overstating it a bit, 30fps is perfectly serviceable on a handheld console.
The Steam Survey data is right there and has been for ages, most PC players on Steam have decent GPUs. Almost half have a PS5 or better equivalent. That 132 million number is also 4 years out of date.
That's just circular reasoning.
By now - most of us are accepting the 'likely' handheld/lower power PS SKU existing given the sources of rumors. But nothing is adding credence to this mode being related - not prior ways of adding hw-profiles/SKUs, by Sony or anyone else, not the targets, not the results. And several things are in direct contradiction (like this being aimed squarely at 4k displays, in every supported game).
It's the type of 'connecting the dots' that online conspiracy theorists engage in all the time - but that only serves to reduce credibility of all of it.
Neither is it in any other metrics - that's the point.
Having (tried to)played Jak & Daxter at 20fps on PSVita - I wholly disagree on the latter.
Anyway opinions aside - explain to me how PR angle of linking a new launch hardware to 2-3 year old power-saving mode could in any way be a useable sales point.
Also as a PC handheld user - many modern games today run well using Series S settings, and when adjusted for Handheld resolution targets, they can match or even outperform current gen consoles. And some of the same leakers claim that PS handheld will 'comfortably outperform' these chips.
And again - nothing you see performance wise on PS5 (or PS5 Pro) would apply to the handheld anyway, we just know it will have less watts and completely different hardware.
147M now - but the point is home-consoles are still quite a bit larger - even if you assume some overlap between Nintendo and PS/Xbox MAUs.
kevboard
Member
I think it's 100% for that purpose only.
Noone will actually use any of these modes, or at the very most, maybe less than 1% of users... probably less than 0.1% even.
but what I also think is that these modes aren't an indication to what the handheld can do. these modes still run on PS5 hardware (Zen2, RDNA2) and dev kits.
I assume these are low effort patches to make the games compatible for launch. BUT the PS Handheld will in the end have features these "quick and dirty" updates can not take advantage of.
the handheld will have FSR4/PSSR2 compatibility, while the current dev kits for this mode do not.
the handheld will have far superior RT hardware, while the current patches can't take that into account.
so once the handheld is out, actually fully optimised PS Handheld profiles for upcoming games will probably look completely different and will use the hardware very differently than these patches do right now.
so these patches are just a way to help devs make easy compatibility updates, so that the Handheld has a large library of games at launch.
while anything post launch will actually take full advantage of the hardware... well, as much as they take full advantage of other systems at least... which isn't always optimal lol
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Zathalus
Member
I don't think Sony is using this new mode to get data on how games run, or as an advertising point, but I'd imagine it would be extremely useful in that developers can update games right now (and over the next two years) so they will run much better when the handheld does launch. With the rumoured hardware specs it seems games could either run fine, extremely poorly, or might not even run at all. Games that have this support target lower memory bandwidth, GPU, and CPU requirements, pretty useful if you are launching a weaker handheld console in a few years. As I said, probably not a direct match, but certainly closer than the regular mode.
Not 147 million, all numbers online are from analysts and range from 147 million to over 200 million. Steam hasn't published numbers since 2021. But yes, consoles are likely larger than Steam by itself.
nial
Gold Member
The power save mode is how those PS5 games will be BC on the PS6 Portable (that's how you're linking it on a PR angle as a sales point), and the PS6 Portable won't obviously rely on PS5 games on Power Saver mode to get support. It's that simple...
That is directly contradicted by the types of updates developers have done so far.
So even if Sony actually wanted this - the instructions they gave the developers are clearly not leading to it.
Demon Souls is literally just capping performance mode at 30. You might as well just run the regular mode and see how it performs, it'll be no different. The minimum for this to be 'closer' to handheld would be mandated resolution spec (whatever the display ends up being).Anyway that's besides the point - my original post stands - people are bending themselves into pretzel trying to fit this to 'handheld mode' when all the signs are saying 'it really isn't', and especially isn't helpful for one.
Then why release it user-facing, no developer is using it for that purpose so far (clearly), and if handheld was the purpose all this is achieving is putting negative public attention on the eventual hardware launch.
And devs have been doing hw-profiles for (at least)10 years now, on all 3 platforms, none of this is new or learning experience for them, that excuse might have worked in 2016, but not now.
Also, unless Sony is releasing PSSwitch - why are all of these updated games still targeting/compliant with TV specs? If this 'is' a PSSwitch - welp - Playstation had a good run I guess...
kevboard
Member
beta testing, and "we are so eco friendly!" PR.
it is also an easy way to then, once the handheld is announced, clarify which PS5 games will be compatible on launch.
instead of just saying "we will have a list of compatible games" they can just say "Every game that supports the power saving mode will be compatible day 1! and all PS5 games going forward will too!".
I doubt they expected comprehensive leaks of the handheld hardware, when this plan to do handheld profiles that double as power saving modes was originally finalised.
so they probably also wanted to use this "hey, every power saving mode game will be compatible!" to be big announcement, expecting hundreds of games being supported once the handheld announcement is made, and thereby making clear that support is strong.
it's important to not forget that we're not supposed to know about the Handheld right now. the fact that we know it changes how we look at these patches.
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ReasonBeing
Member
I agree that Sony would have a tough time keeping up with Nintendo's sales figures, but it's not like they still can't have a successful product. I don't see how one could state it's a waste of resources simply due to Sony not moving as many units as the Switch 2. In other words, it's not a zero sum game
Looking at the results, honestly, this thing looks like a headscratcher. If it's barely running performance mode settings of the PS5 at 30fps and still dropping frames when pushed, how the hell are they going to support this thing going forward? Let's assume most games in the future run at 60fps on the ps6 with a reduced settings mode at 30fps mode on the ps5. What the hell happens to the handheld version?
Also, how well will it handle 30fps titles on the PS5? From all the discussion that was being had with the leaks, it was pretty much painting a picture of it running the PS5 version of the game at a lower resolution a streamlined and stable profile, but with it targeting performance mode settings at half the framerate and a lower res on top this becomes a much messier scenario.
If they put in 8 CPU cores, even clocked lower like in the current handhelds, this thing could have scaled much better, considering GPU settings are much easier to scale down, but with 4 CPU cores....honestly, this isn't looking good, and if Sony makes support mandatory for PS6 games, this could be a real anchor on the PS6. Hopefully, the actual device performs better because for me this looks like a headache in the making.
Also, how well will it handle 30fps titles on the PS5? From all the discussion that was being had with the leaks, it was pretty much painting a picture of it running the PS5 version of the game at a lower resolution a streamlined and stable profile, but with it targeting performance mode settings at half the framerate and a lower res on top this becomes a much messier scenario.
If they put in 8 CPU cores, even clocked lower like in the current handhelds, this thing could have scaled much better, considering GPU settings are much easier to scale down, but with 4 CPU cores....honestly, this isn't looking good, and if Sony makes support mandatory for PS6 games, this could be a real anchor on the PS6. Hopefully, the actual device performs better because for me this looks like a headache in the making.
Boy bawang
Member
I think it's a waste because it will not expand their customer base, at least not significantly; people will but the PS6 no matter what, whether it's tethered or hybrid. And worse, it could even damage the brand of it feels like it's holding back the PS6.
we also see with the PS5 that Sony is having a hard time delivering a constant stream of high quality first party releases. Part of that was poor planning, but it's also the fact that developing games taking advantage of modern hardware takes a crazy amount of resources. I don't think that adding a new sku is a good idea.