Sony is preparing a handheld with brutal performance! It will be able to run PS5 games and surprise with ray-tracing

PlayStation Portal was rather a disappointment for many gamers – the streaming console requires an internet connection to connect to a server and has (almost) no performance on its own. But now, the specifications of a handheld codenamed Canis have leaked, and it looks like Sony has finally learned its lesson. No streaming, no compromises. Just a full-fledged handheld console that can run most PlayStation 5 games when docked. And that’s not an exaggeration – a chip combining Zen 6 with RDNA 5 has what it takes to become the most powerful handheld on the market.

Zen 6 and RDNA 5 as the foundation of performance

The heart of the new handheld will be a processor combining four Zen 6c cores and two power-efficient Zen 6 LP cores. While the power-efficient cores will handle the system and common tasks, the more powerful cores will be fully available for games.

Even more interesting is the memory configuration. The handheld is expected to support up to 48 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory with 60% higher bandwidth than the ROG Ally X. Realistically, Sony will probably equip “only” 40 GB, which is still a brutal number for a handheld. For comparison – the Steam Deck has 16 GB and can run the vast majority of PC games.

Graphics that will surprise, especially with ray-tracing

The graphics chip with 16 RDNA 5 compute units will run at 1.2 GHz in handheld mode. However, when connected to the dock, it will ramp up to 1.65 GHz, meaning a performance increase of almost 40%. Combined with the improved RDNA 5 architecture, which is expected to be 40-50% more powerful per unit than RDNA 3.5, we will get 55-75% of the base PlayStation 5’s performance in dock mode.

Where Canis truly excels, however, is ray tracing. There, it is expected to offer up to 2.6 times the performance of the PS5. This makes sense – AMD has significantly improved its RT units in the meantime, and RDNA 5 should be the first generation to catch up with Nvidia in this area.

Backward compatibility, but with a catch

Sony is reportedly focusing on full compatibility with PS4 and PS5 games. But beware – not all games will run smoothly right from the start. Many titles will require a patch to adapt graphics and performance for handheld mode. Sony is already testing a “low power mode” in a beta version of the PS5 firmware, suggesting that developers will receive optimization tools in advance.

What’s missing from the list? PS3 games. The Cell processor architecture is so different that emulation would be too demanding.

New PSP will be more expensive than Switch 2

According to analysts’ calculations, the price should range between 550 to 700 dollars (approximately 11,500 – 15,700 CZK without tax). This is significantly more than, for example, the Nintendo Switch 2, but less than the ROG Ally X, which costs 800 dollars (23,500 CZK in our country).

The premiere is expected no earlier than late 2027, possibly even in 2028. A lot can change by then – the competition is not idle, and Valve is already working on Steam Deck 2.

After years of ignoring the handheld market (PSP and PS Vita were great, but Sony left them to their fate), the Japanese giant has finally woken up. Canis looks like a handheld that makes sense – it will offer solid performance on the go, handle most PS5 games in the dock, and thanks to AMD FSR 4 upscaling, it should maintain reasonable battery life.

Would you buy a portable Playstation?

Source: tweaktown, Moore’s Law Is Dead