A new report suggests that the PlayStation 4 release date could see Sony release a console that is technologically superior to the Xbox 720. Find out what we learned from today's "Orbis" dev kit tech spec leak. (Photo: Flickr / Ian Muttoo)

Only a week after a similarly detailed report emerged on the Xbox 720 "Durango" dev kit, one of the most well-known repositories of gaming leaks in the world has revealed a surprising amount of new information about Sony's "Orbis" dev kit for the PlayStation 4.

Follow Us

After releasing the most detailed report to date about the Xbox 720 developer's kit -- believed to be codenamed "Durango" by Microsoft staff -- the folks at VGLeaks are back with a full breakdown of the system specs for the PlayStation 3 dev kit too.

According to VGLeaks, the PlayStation 4 release date will bring Sony's first octo-core console into the hands of consumers around the globe, with today's report claiming that the "Orbis" dev kits contain "eight Jaguar cores at 1.6GHz" arranged into two distinctive clusters with shared 2MB L2 caches. 

In fact,  the "Orbis" tech specs released this morning (if accurate) certainly seem to suggest that the PlayStation 4 will outperform the Xbox 720 (on paper) when they're presumably released sometime later this year. Unfortunately, if the VG Leaks crew knows anything else about the PlayStation 4 release date, they aren't letting anyone else in on the secret at this time. 

 A firm PlayStation 4 release date continues to elude anxious fans and gamers everywhere, though Sony executives have teased a variety of announcement possibilities during recent interviews with international media outlets. Earlier this month, Sony Home Entertainment executive Hiroshi Sakamoto told Chilean news site Emol.com that the PlayStation 4 release date announcement would likely come at E3 2013; however, Sony CEO Kaz Hirai later told The Times that the company might even hold off on unveiling the PlayStation 4 until after Microsoft has publicly announced/revealed the Xbox 720.

Of course, some reports also suggested that the PlayStation 4 release date announcement could be coming as early as next month, during the February "Destination PlayStation" even being hosted by Sony. While that particular rumor does seem rather unlikely, it's certainly a nice thought, isn't it?

For now, we guess we'll just have to settle for new information the PlayStation 4 dev kits.

Here's the full "Orbis" dev kit spec sheet, courtesy of VGLeaks.com.

LIVERPOOL SOC:

• Custom implementation of AMD Fusion APU Arquitecture (Accelerated Processing Unit)
• Provides good performance with low power consumtion
• Integrated CPU and GPU
• Considerably bigger and more powerful than AMD's other APUs

CPU:

• Orbis contains eight Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz, arranged as two "clusters"
• Each cluster contains 4 cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache
• 256-bit SIMD operations, 128-bit SIMD ALU
• SSE up to SSE4, as well as Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
• One hardware thread per core
• Decodes, executes and retires at up to two intructions/cycle
• Out of order execution
• Per-core dedicated L1-I and L1-D cache (32Kb each)
• Two pipes per core yield 12,8 GFlops performance
• 102.4 GFlops for system

GPU:

• GPU is based on AMD's "R10XX" (Southern Islands) architecture
• DirectX 11.1+ feature set
• Liverpool is an enhanced version of the architecture
• 18 Compute Units (CUs)
• Hardware balanced at 14 CUs
• Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
• 800 Mhz
• 1.843 Tflops, 922 GigaOps/s
• Dual shader engines
• 18 texture units
• 8 Render backends

Memory:

• 4 GB unified system memory, 176 GB/s
• 3.5 available to games (estimate)

Storage:

- High speed Blu-ray drive

• single layer (25 GB) or dual layer (50 GB) discs
• Partial constant angular velocity (PCAV)
• Outer half of disc 6x (27 MB/s)
• Inner half varies, 3.3x to 6x

- Internal mass storage

• One SKU at launch: 500 GB HDD
• There may also be a Flash drive SKU in the future

Networking:

• 1 Gb/s Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WIFI, and Bluetooth

Peripherals:

• Evolved Dualshock controller
• Dual Camera
• Move controller

Extra:

• Audio Processor (ACP)
• Video encode and decode (VCE/UVD) units
• Display ScanOut Engine (DCE)
• Zlib Decompression Hardware

Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com or follow Scott on Twitter for all the latest on the PlayStation 4 ahead of the console's release date later this year.