It's official! Sony have finally released the technical specifications of the new playstation, surprisingly named....wait for it.....Playstation 2.

Rumoured to be released in Japan sometime before March 2000 we will probably have at least until August 2000 to wait here in the Uk. "But how much will it cost me?" I hear you shout. No prices have been mentioned at present but there is little doubt that it will cost a few bob judging by the technical data and the fact that it supports DVD technology. Sony seem to be trying to compete with the PC market with respect to the capability and power of the new PSX but by the time it is released how much more advanced will PC's be?

Anyway, the fact that it will be fully backward compatible is great news and I reckon that providing that the price is right Sony will continue to dominate the console market for the forseeable future. But for now I'm still reveling in my "ancient" original playstation and am sure that there will be plenty to keep me busy until August 2000.

Here is the technical low down:-

CPU 128 Bit "Emotion Engine"
System Clock Frequency 300 MHz
Cache Memory Instruction: 16KB, Data: 8KB + 16KB
(ScrP) Main Memory Direct Rambus (Direct RDRAM)
Memory Size 32MB
Memory Bus Bandwidth 3.2GB per Second
Co-processor FPU (Floating Point Unit)
Floating Point Multiply Accumulator x 1
Floating Point Divider x 1
Vector Units VU0 and VU1
Floating Point Multiply Accumulator x 9
Floating Point Divider x 3
Floating Point Performance 6.2 GFLOPS

3D CG Geometric Transformation 66 Million Polygons per second

Compressed Image Decoder MPEG2

Graphics "Graphics Synthesizer"
Clock Frequency 150MHz
DRAM Bus bandwidth 48GB per Second
DRAM Bus width 2560bits
Pixel Configuration RGB:Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8:32)
Maximum Polygon Rate 75 Million Polygons per Second

Sound "SPU2+CPU"
Number of Voices ADPCM: 48ch on SPU2 plus definable, software programmable voices
Sampling Frequency 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz (selectable)

IOP I/O Processor
CPU Core PlayStation (current) CPU
Clock Frequency 33.8MHz or 37.5MHz (Selectable)
Sub Bus 32 Bit
Interface Types IEEE1394, Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Communication via PC-Card (PCMCIA)

Disc Device CD-ROM and DVD-ROM