PS6: what the latest leaks say about its power

Could the PS6 really be faster than a GeForce RTX 5080? The question has been doing the rounds for days, revived on 3 October by French site jeuxvideo.com, and it rests on figures that have been circulating since late September. Sony has said nothing about its next console yet, so everything below is rumour. The sources behind those figures are well known: the leaker Kepler_L2, who specialises in AMD chips, and an estimate from Russian site GameGPU. Their conclusions overlap on some points and part ways sharply on others, starting with the comparison with Nvidia’s graphics cards.

At a glance

What Kepler_L2 says about the PS6’s power

Kepler_L2, a leaker known for information on AMD chips, is behind the most widely quoted leak. According to Wccftech, which rounded up his posts on 23 September, AMD’s chips for the PS6 and for the next Xbox, codenamed Helix, have reportedly finished their design phase. Kepler_L2 puts the PS6 at 40 TFLOPS and the Xbox Helix at 56, a 40% gap on paper in Microsoft’s favour.

At 40 TFLOPS, the console would sit neatly in line with earlier leaks. Wccftech notes that the console is said to have 52 active compute units, which works out at a clock speed of roughly 3GHz, at the top of the 2.6 to 3GHz range reported so far. This picture has been building for well over a year, largely from leaked AMD documents shared by Kepler_L2 and another leaker, Moore’s Law Is Dead.

On timing, the leaks offer some clues too. Kepler_L2 and Moore’s Law Is Dead both say chip production is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027, which points to a late 2027 launch over 2028. Spanish site MuyComputer adds that Sony chief executive Hiroki Totoki has confirmed in an interview that no official date has been set yet.

Where the RTX 5080 comparison comes from

To find the eye-catching number, you have to look elsewhere. On 20 September, GameGPU published an estimate suggesting the PS6 could reach 68 to 80 TFLOPS thanks to an AMD technology called Dual Issue, which lets the chip run more calculations at once. A GeForce RTX 5080 sits at around 56 TFLOPS, hence the headlines about Sony’s next console outpacing Nvidia’s card.

Those 80 TFLOPS are a theoretical peak, though. iXBT Games points out that GameGPU’s baseline estimate is still 34 to 40 TFLOPS in conventional terms, and urges readers to treat all of these calculations with scepticism. Both sources land in roughly the same ballpark for real-world power, and only the way of counting differs.

GameGPU goes into further detail: a 3nm chip made by TSMC, 54 compute units, clock speeds of up to 3.6GHz and a power draw of 160W. That unit count differs slightly from Kepler_L2’s, a reminder of how fuzzy these numbers remain. The console would also get PSSR 3, the next version of Sony’s AI upscaling, which has already reached the standard PS5 in another form.

A PS6 whose price is already a worry

Beyond raw power, the leaks also talk money. Wccftech reports that in March Kepler_L2 put the console’s bill of materials at around $760, which still left room for a $699 retail price. Three months later, the same leaker put it closer to $960, a 26% jump driven by soaring memory prices. Wccftech also recalls that Sony’s chief executive has acknowledged memory prices will stay very high through the 2027 financial year.

For the Xbox Helix, the bill would be steeper still, above $1,000 according to Kepler_L2, while Moore’s Law Is Dead suggests $999 as a floor and $1,200 as the more likely price. Four-figure price tags are therefore a real possibility for both next-generation consoles, at a time when Sony is already asking players about the future of discs.

Until Sony, Microsoft and AMD confirm anything, these PS6 figures can’t be verified. Kepler_L2 and Moore’s Law Is Dead have tracked these chips for a long time, yet their information comes from unofficial documents, and a console’s specifications can still change right up to its reveal.