Most of the 12 navi TFLOPS comes from people speculating about the off hand 2x Xbox One X comment and the 8x Xbox One number (both cannot be true at the same time taken at face value, so they are approximations which MS never committed to). The first shot and speculations have focused on explaining how it is felt it could be possible, but there is a great deal of unknown being guess there too by mostly non chip designers with knowledge of the HW at hand nor the custom enhancements in these semi-custom designs and the level of redundancy in them.
The GPU data “leaked” have been tied together sensibly but the tie to PS5 is also a bit flimsy. Not seeing another stepping with more CU’s May or may not be repeated to PS5.
I do not see hard data around either GPU.
Fair points. "Hard" hard data, i.e anything official or confirmed by Sony and MS directly, hasn't happened and probably won't happen for a very long time. So at least in claiming any of this stuff as official, yeah, people should stop short of doing that.
But, since we're all so eager to speculate about these next-gen systems, we do have to come to some type of standard on what can be considered valid proof or evidence in light of any official confirmation. Regarding XSX, I think MS understand for them how important the power narrative is because, besides things like BC, GamePass and (seemingly) Xcloud, they don't have too much of tangible proof of goodwill with the gaming community at large this past generation. That's just how badly the XBO botched things, and games like MCC launching like a broken mess, plus Scalebound and Phatom Dust remake getting cancelled, created a lot of bad will. The X being the peak power of console performance at the time of its release helped to at least establish goodwill back to the Xbox platform in terms of the "power crown" and XBO didn't enjoy a swell of strong, industry-pushing 1st party content near its tailend to turn goodwill on the software front around the way, say, PS3 managed to from 2010-2013.
So ensuring they have a very powerful console, that's probably something really important for MS because winning back the software narrative will take a lot of time, but they could theoretically have the more powerful next-gen console out there in the wild by the end of this year. It's a part of the narrative they can more easily control and I think after the X it's something they are just really focused on prioritizing. Sony OTOH, they don't have as big a need for controlling that part of the conversation, they've mopped generations in the past having the less powerful system (PS2), and know they have the goodwill in terms of 1st party software expectations based simply off their strong performance with PS4 on that front. They would likely be prioritizing more of that type of software development for PS5 as soon as possible versus needing to allocate portions of those funds for the most powerful next-gen system when they know they will get that 3rd party support regardless and optimized for their platform because of how many more markets PS is in versus Xbox, just going by this current generation. It's less a concern for them.
That's a fair reason why I personally do think MS implies 12TF Navi when they talk about XSX, especially if Lockhart does exist, because why go with a low-price alternative if both your low and high-priced products come up short to your competitor's offering? MS would certainly have some expectation of where PS5's specs are at by this point (vice-versa with Sony regarding XSX), and yet Lockhart very much still seems like it's a thing. In a next-gen environment where PS5 were actually handily more capable than XSX, wouldn't a multi-billion dollar conglomerate absolutely cancel the lowest end altogether? That would be the sensible business decision, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Could of course be the case that if XSX is actually, say, 9-10TF Navi (equivalent to about 12TF GCN), then maybe they could have a value proposition in a 4TF Lockhart, but the insiders themselves implicate such a scenario being business suicide because none of them have been seen implying PS5 will be less than 12TF Navi. So if that's true, and MS by now would know that's true (if the insiders know, MS and Sony would DEFINITELY know), why would they bother with Lockhart? Just doesn't add up. Plus also, you can see the size and dimensions for XSX and deduce that such a size is fitting for a system generating a good amount of heat (including possibly having cooling on both sides of the board)....even if that doesn't hint at 12TF Navi, it hints at something pretty close to it imho.
Now about Sony...again I don't want to mean "hard data" as in official; no claims have been made by Sony on pretty much anything regarding specs, so of course take it all with a pinch of salt. However, we already know Oberon has regression testing modes for both PS4 and PS4 Pro, and it's extremely unlikely AMD would be doing that for GPU intended for the PC market because I doubt Sony would appreciate a GPU card out on PC that could play PS games natively (
BUT, maybe they could? Maybe that's part of their goal in embracing PC gaming more? SEGA did something very similar back in 1995 with the Diamond NV-1 card between them and Nvidia, it was Nvidia's first GPU card in fact, and basically a SEGA Saturn on a PC GPU card, even having Saturn controller ports).
So that's one way it (and, by proxy, the benchmarks) tie in with being PlayStation-related, imho. I'd also like to bring up another GPU that was datamined recently, may or may not be Oberon-related but it had 36CUs as well and HBM2 memory instead of GDDR6. However it seemed tuned for compute rather than gaming. It's a very loose thread of connection TBF, but it being 36CUs could mean it has some type of relation with Oberon, and again, Oberon has had regression testing set exactly to PS4 and PS4 Pro clocks. Maybe that GPU with HBM2 could've been an offshoot, maybe something tied to Sony with big data/server markets in mind, and possibly some connection to PS5 on top of that?
It's a lot of speculation and guesswork, yes, but that's what people do when speculating on next-gen hardware, and we can't wait forever while Sony and MS take their sweet time in providing any official specifications. But I personally don't think you need to be Sony or MS to at least get within very good range of correctly speculating what the official technical aspects could be, either.