PS5 digital vs disc, PS5 Digital Vs Standard – As we now know Sony have announced that there will be not one, but two PlayStation 5 consoles launching this holiday season. We have the PlayStation 5 digital and the PlayStation 5 standard – but what are the differences? Well, that’s what we’re here for, so to broaden our total PS5 guide, we’ll be going through the differences between the standard PS5 console and the PS5 digital console.
PS5 Digital Console Vs PS5 Standard Console – What’s The Difference?
The biggest difference between the PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition is price. The standard PS5 retails at $499/£449, while the PS5 Digital Edition retails for $399/£359.
The other big difference that we know of so far is that the PS5 digital console will not have a disc drive. As such, this will affect you in the following ways:
- You will not be able to purchase and use physical copies of PlayStation 5 games
- If you have a PS4 physical game that can be upgraded to a PS5 version, this can only be used on the physical console; so you’ll lose out on the upgrade (unless you own a PS4 digital copy)
- Any disc based PlayStation 4 games that you have will not work on the PS5 digital console
- The lack of a disc drive in the PS5 digital will mean that the console ‘could’ run quieter – though confirmation is required here
Other Key PlayStation 5 Links
- Related Content – PlayStation 5 Backwards Compatibility Confirmed
- Related Content – PS5 Vs Xbox Series X Specs Comparison – What We Know So Far
- Related Content – PSVR 2 – Everything We Know About Next Generation PSVR
- Related Content – All Best PS5 Exclusives – A Complete List Of Stunning Exclusive Next Generation Games
- Related Content – PS5 Games – Every PlayStation 5 Title We Know So Far
As such, a direct comparison between the two PlayStation 5 consoles currently looks like this:
| PlayStation 5 Standard | PlayStation 5 Digital |
| CPU | 8x AMD Zen 2 Cores running at 3.5GHz (variable frequency) | 8x AMD Zen 2 Cores running at 3.5GHz (variable frequency) |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | AMD GPU @ 10.28 Teraflops 36 Compute Units at 2.23GHz (variable frequency) | AMD GPU @ 10.28 Teraflops 36 Compute Units at 2.23GHz (variable frequency) |
| GPU Architecture | Custom AMD RDNA 2 w/ hardware Ray Tracing support | Custom AMD RDNA 2 w/ hardware Ray Tracing support |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448GB/s | 448GB/s |
| Internal Storage | Custom 825GB NVMe SSD Solution | Custom 825GB NVMe SSD Solution |
| IO Throughput | 5.5GB/s (Raw), 8-9GB/s (Compressed) | 5.5GB/s (Raw), 8-9GB/s (Compressed) |
| Expandable Storage | NVMe SSD Slot (Proprietary SSD cartridges) | NVMe SSD Slot (Proprietary SSD cartridges) |
| External Storage | USB 2.0, 3.0 HDD Support | USB 2.0, 3.0 HDD Support |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive (100GB optical media support) | None |
| HDMI | 2.1 (4K Resolution @ 120Hz, 8K Resolution, Variable Rate Shading) | 2.1 (4K Resolution @ 120Hz, 8K Resolution, Variable Rate Shading) |
| Backwards compatibility | PlayStation 4 discs + digital | PS4 digital ONLY |
| Price | $499, £449 | $399, £359 |
We hope that you’ve found this guide useful! Stay tuned as we update this guide over the coming days, weeks and months.