PS+ It’s that time of the month again! Later this week we’ll find out which PS Plus Essential games will be released for subscribers in October.
Now that there are three tiers of PlayStation Plus it’s all a little more confusing. PS Plus Essential is the base tier that includes access to online gaming and typically three free PS4 and PS5 games each month.
These are usually revealed on the last Wednesday of the month and then released on the first Tuesday of the following month. So we’ll learn which games comprise October’s lineup on Wednesday September 28th, and then on Tuesday October 4th those games will become available.
Bundle: Still on the hunt for a next-gen PlayStation 5? Right now, Sony is selling the disc-based PlayStation 5 with a digital copy of Guerrilla Games’ excellent Horizon Forbidden West for $549.99, which is $10 less than the cost if you were to buy the two individually. The best part? You don’t even have to wait in line in order to pick one up.
Slim: Sony refreshed its PlayStation 5 console about a month ago. Gaming tech enthusiasts have revealed little by little, the underlying changes delivered with the CFI-1202 consoles on the web and social media. The critical difference that precipitated the new compact cooling system and lighter build is Sony’s shiny new Oberon Plus processor inside the refreshed consoles.
The first two revisions of the Sony PlayStation 5 used the same AMD semi-custom processor. Then, what we in the PC world would describe as the ‘APU’ in the PS5, was dubbed Oberon and was fabricated on TSMC’s N7 process. According to Angstronomics’ report, backed up with refreshed APU comparison imagery, the new Oberon Plus is present in the CFI-1202 models, mass-produced by TSMC on the N6 process. It is easy to spot differences in the chip packages, and the source calculates that the newer processor has a die size of below 260mm^2 - quite a reduction from approximately 300mm^2 for the Oberon.
The new Oberon Plus brings practical benefits to the PS5 CFI-1202 models with its die shrink. Officially(opens in new tab), TSMC’s N6 “delivers 18% higher logic density over the N7 process,” as well as being fully design rule compatible with previously produced N7 chips for more straightforward migration. However, TSMC’s linked press release doesn’t mention some of the associated benefits of moving from N7 to N6; as well as the smaller die, a processor can see lower power consumption with better thermals. It is particularly true where the chip designer doesn’t re-spec other aspects of the chip, like its clock speed. This aspect of the CFI-1202 was part of the teardown video earlier in September. The revised PS5 reportedly used 10% less power for the same gaming experience in that video. We have also seen that the 2022 revision had more reductions in cooler system bulk and overall system weight bringing down Sony’s bill-of-materials (BOM)
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