Key Points
- PlayStation 4 GPU equivalents are no longer produced and circulated, so they can be quite challenging and costly to procure.
- To determine how powerful a GPU is, you can assess its physical components and theoretical performance rating.
- Shading units, raster operations pipelines, texture mapping units, memory, and clock speed are important factors to consider when evaluating the strength of a graphics card.
- The NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti and the AMD Radeon HD 6950 are the direct PlayStation 4 GPU equivalents for PC, but they are outdated compared to more recent cards at the same price point.
For gamers, there’s nothing more important than the graphics of their favorite games. A system that can process the latest and greatest in graphics technology is one of the primary factors gamers look at when choosing their system. While it may no longer be a relevant system to benchmark against, the PlayStation 4 was a ground-breaking system that represented an absolute powerhouse in console graphics. If you’re looking for a PlayStation 4 GPU equivalent for PC, unfortunately, you’d be much better served by purchasing a stronger GPU.
PlayStation 4 GPU equivalents are no longer produced and circulated. So, they can be quite challenging and costly to procure. In situations like these, we recommend purchasing a more recent GPU. More recent GPUs are going to be more powerful than previous generation equivalents.
How to Know if Your GPU Is Powerful
You can determine how powerful a GPU is by assessing its physical components and its theoretical performance rating. For most GPUs, this information is available on the listing, or the packaging if you are in a store. If not, there are aggregator websites like TechPowerUp that collect and display information about PC parts so you can make the best purchasing choices when buying parts for your PC.
Shading Units
Shading units are one of the core components of a GPU. Several types of shading cores are responsible for different graphics processing operations. Processes like vertex, geometry, and pixel shading get processed by the shading units.
Modern GPUs have shading units in the thousands. However, the actual number of shading units in a GPU isn’t an exceptionally good indicator of a GPUs practical power. When determining how powerful a GPU is, it’s better to take shading units as a part of the whole, rather than a single statistic with meaning.
Raster Operations Pipelines
Raster operations pipelines (ROPs), also known as render output units, perform one of the final steps of graphics processing, known as rasterization. Rasterization takes pixel and texel information and turns it into a final pixel or depth value using specific vector and matrix operations.
ROPs are also responsible for antialiasing, which reduces image distortion by combining multiple samples into a single pixel value. ROPs achieve rasterization by performing transactions between buffers in the computer’s local memory.
Texture Mapping Units
Texture mapping units, or TMUs, are processing cores installed on the printed circuit board (PCB) of a GPU. These units are designed to resize, rotate, and distort bitmap images over 3D polygons and planes. They layer 2D textures over 3D objects to distinguish 3D models from each other and 3D environments.
Without TMUs and the textures they work with, you’d only have plain grey 3D polygons and environments in your games. TMUs bring color and life to the 3D environments and models that make up the games you’re playing.
Memory
Memory is probably the most straightforward metric by which you can measure the strength of a graphics card. Just as your computer has random access memory (RAM) installed on the motherboard, the GPU’s PCB has video random access memory (VRAM) installed.
To determine how strong your memory is, you just have to look for a large number! The more VRAM is installed on your GPU, the more things can be saved to your GPU’s VRAM and accessed when processing graphics. By saving graphical assets to your VRAM, your GPU can access and load them without reprocessing them from scratch.
However, there is one thing you’ll want also to consider when looking at your VRAM. Size is important, but you’ll also want to check the memory’s clock speed. This statistic is typically listed with the processor chip’s clock speed, bringing us to our next point.
Clock Speed
Two clock speeds are relevant to GPUs — the processor chip’s clock speed and the memory’s clock speed. Both are traditionally measured in megahertz (MHz). However, it’s becoming more common for memory clock speeds to include an “effective clock” in gigabits per second (Gbps).
The GPU processor chip’s clock speed represents how many processing cycles the processor can complete in a second. So, the more cycles the processor can complete, the more data it can process. More processing cycles means that the graphics that can be processed will be smoother and of higher quality.
The memory’s clock speed represents how fast the VRAM can read and write data. This clock speed represents how quickly your GPU can store and retrieve assets in the VRAM. Faster memory clock speeds mean lower load times.
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Theoretical Performance
Theoretical performance is the most important statistic to look at when looking at graphics cards. This is the best indicator of how strong a graphics card is and what it will be able to handle regarding graphical processing. However, it is crucial to remember that theoretical performance is theoretical, not practical. While the graphics card you purchase may be able to hit these theoretical benchmarks, you should not expect it to run at these speeds in practical use. These are the maximum theoretical benchmarks hit during stress testing.
Theoretical performance is measured in teraflops or gigaflops, usually shortened to TFLOPS or GFLOPS. “FLOPS” is short for “floating point operations” and represents a complex mathematical equation performed by the graphics processor during graphics processing.
There are three types of floating point operations performed by modern GPUs. FP16 operations are half-precision. In these operations, the numbers in the operation are heavily approximated, so the outcomes of the equation are less accurate. FP32 operations are single-precision operations. FP32 operations represent the majority of floating point operations and are performed with some, but not heavy, approximation. FP64 operations are double-precision operations. These operations use far more detailed numbers that are less approximated.
Most programs use a combination of floating point operations, where calculations that can be approximated will use less accurate operation types. In contrast, calculations that need to be more accurate will be processed using double-precision operations. This mixture of operation types allows the developers to get the most out of their calculations while balancing the need for heavy resources used by double-precision operations.
What Are the Specifications of the PlayStation 4 GPU?
The PlayStation 4 GPU is a unique GPU engineered and manufactured by AMD. It has 1152 shading cores, 72 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus.
The GPU’s processor chip clocks in at 800 MHz. The memory has a clock speed of 1375 MHz or 5.5 Gbps effective speed. Regarding theoretical performance, the PS4 GPU clocks in with 1.843 TFLOPS in both half and single-precision operations. It cannot perform double-precision operations.
What Is the PlayStation 4 GPU Equivalent for PC?
The direct PlayStation 4 GPU equivalents are the NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti and the AMD Radeon HD 6950. These cards are about ten years old, and like the PlayStation 4, are eclipsed by more recent cards released at the same price point.
NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti
The NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti contains 640 shading units, 40 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory bus. Regarding clock speeds, the processor chip clocks in at 1020MHz with a boost clock of 1085MHz, and the memory has a clock speed of 1350MHz or a 5.4Gbps effective speed.
- 640 CUDA cores
- Base clock 1020MHz, boost clock 1085MHz
- 2GB of GDDR5 memory
- Memory clock 5.4Gbps
- PCl-e 3.0
AMD Radeon HD 6950
The Radeon HD 6950 contains 1408 shading units, 88 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus. Regarding clock speeds, the processor chip has a clock speed of 800MHz, and the memory has a clock speed of 1250MHz or 5Gbps effective speed.
- 2GB of GDDR5 memory
- 256-bit bus
- Clock speed of 800MHz
- Memory clock speed 5Gbps
Final Thoughts
There are two answers to the question: What is the PS4 GPU equivalent for PC? There is the actual answer to the question and the practical answer. The PlayStation 4 was released in November 2013. It’s approaching its tenth year of life, so it is basically an obsolete console. So, the equivalent cards we discussed above are also outdated. You can still buy the GPUs that are direct PlayStation 4 GPU equivalents, but those cards are now so out-of-date that for the same price, you can get a much stronger card. Take a look at our article, The Best Graphics Cards of 2023, to find a better alternative!
- $178.68Buy Now
- 640 CUDA cores
- Base clock 1020MHz, boost clock 1085MHz
- 2GB of GDDR5 memory
- Memory clock 5.4Gbps
- PCl-e 3.0
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- 2GB of GDDR5 memory
- 256-bit bus
- Clock speed of 800MHz
- Memory clock speed 5Gbps
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