Playstation 4 details hint at next-gen specs

The first clues as to how powerful the next generation of consoles will be has popped up on Edge .

. "Sources close to the hardware" clued them in on a more PC-like, developer-friendly architecture that will run on a 1.6GHZ eight-core AMD CPU. Current dev kits are apparently running on 4GB of GDDR5 RAM. More below.

Edge mention that Sony are pushing for that figure to be scaled up to best Microsoft's eight gigs of DDR3 by the time the console launches at the end of this year in the US and Japan, and early 2014 in Europe.

According to an Edge source that's seen Sony and Microsoft's dev kits, the new Playstation is “slightly more powerful” and “very simple to work with." It will run on the AMD "R10XX" architecture. These are the first ball-park specs for the next generation of hardware that developers will be working with, which provides a bit of a hint at the leap in fidelity we'll see on PC in the coming years as devs dig into that extra memory.

Sony used a cryptic video to tease what's thought to be a full reveal of the PS4 on February 20. I'm off to try and wrangle a few extra cores for my weary CPU.