PlayStation 5 Pro will be bigger, faster, and better using the same CPU

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Rumor mill: The time for a home console mid-generation refresh is approaching, and leakers are working overtime to provide additional information about Sony's gaming machine. A consensus of leaks says the PlayStation 5 Pro will have much better graphics performance while utilizing the same CPU as the standard model.

Update (04/16/18): Last month, internal Sony documents revealed that the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro sports improved ray tracing performance and a new upscaling technology. More information surfaced later on, providing a clearer picture of the console's specs. While the PS5's GPU has undergone a full-architecture hardware refresh, PlayStation 5's main computing chip will not change that much.

This information has been further corroborated this week by The Verge, who says Sony insiders have told them that game developers are being instructed to make their games compatible with the forthcoming console. Sony is seemingly pushing developers towards incorporating advanced graphics features like ray tracing in the PS5 Pro, allowing games that offer considerable improvements to carry a "Trinity Enhanced" (PS5 Pro Enhanced) designation.

The PlayStation 5 Pro model is set to feature an upgraded GPU and a CPU boost mode to push game rendering capabilities for titles using ray tracing, or aiming for superior resolutions and frame rates by leveraging upscaling tech.

The original story follows below:

Although the PlayStation 5 Pro CPU will be the same as the original, it will have a novel "High Frequency Mode" to boost its clock to 3.85 GHz, a 10-percent increase. Sony has enhanced the PS5's audio processor (ACV) to a higher clock speed for about 35 percent better performance. The new ACV library will process more complex reverb effects and Fast Fourier Transform sequences. PlayStation consoles have traditionally provided exceptional audio capabilities compared to competing machines, but Sony wants to continue flexing its audio muscles.

The standard PS5 sports 448 GB/s (14 GT/s) of system memory bandwidth, while the PlayStation 5 Pro gets a 28-percent bump to 576 GB/s (18GT/s). The leak also mentions that memory architecture is more efficient than the standard model.

Previously unveiled improvements for the console's GPU include a 45 percent increase in rendering performance, up to four times as fast ray tracing, and a novel upscaling solution known as PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), essentially Sony's version of DLSS/FSR/XeSS.

Sony told its partners the PS5 Pro supports up to 8K resolutions (with soon-to-arrive SDK updates), full HDR support, and machine learning algorithmic acceleration, something you cannot miss in a home gaming console anymore.

Like the PS5 Slim, Sony will try to put the PlayStation 5 Pro in a more "competitive" position with an optional detachable Blu-ray disc drive. Additionally, internal storage is getting a bump from 825BD to 1TB. All leaks and analysis point to a Fall 2024 release, with more specific rumors mentioning September. Unfortunately, not even insiders seem to have any information on its MSRP.

Image credit: Trusted Reviews

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PlayStation 5 Pro will be bigger, faster, and better using the same CPU

 

[Squid Surprise]

If I do decide to upgrade from my PS4Pro, I think I'll give it a few more years for the PS6... will depend on reviews I suppose, but none of the PS5 games really intrigue me enough to buy a new console.

 

[The Talking Tech]

Funny how as the PS5 pro specs leaks, this article about the next Xbox system also comes in.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/a-new-xbox-dev-kit-has-been-certified-in-south-korea/

Love competition.

 

[The Talking Tech]

If I do decide to upgrade from my PS4Pro, I think I'll give it a few more years for the PS6... will depend on reviews I suppose, but none of the PS5 games really intrigue me enough to buy a new console.

The PS5 pro will be a total waste of money as Sony will be hard pressed on releasing a PS6 sooner than expected.

Especially now that the new Xbox system devkit has been officially spotted in South Korea.

Here is the link: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/a-new-xbox-dev-kit-has-been-certified-in-south-korea/

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

If I do decide to upgrade from my PS4Pro, I think I'll give it a few more years for the PS6... will depend on reviews I suppose, but none of the PS5 games really intrigue me enough to buy a new console.

That's exactly why Sony is struggling to sell PS VR2 units. It really is a great VR set, but the lack of any killer software and no backward compatibility with the last-gen headset makes it a no go for most. I've enjoyed only two original games on it and one port of a last-gen game. That's terrible for sales and it's why I predict the PS VR2 will be the last VR headset you see from Sony.

If sony really wanted to sell VR units, it should have had devs lined up out the door creating launch titles. Not even all of them had to be great--if you have enough studios developing you're going to get at least a few titles that will drive sales. So far, the vast majority of VR2 games are garbage.

Kayak VR: Mirage is a case in point. It's beautiful but borrrrrrrring. I enjoyed Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, but it was far too short. Horizon Call of the Mountain was very very good, but again it felt almost too short and had no replay value. Probably the best I've played is The Walking Dead Sinners and Saints, which is a port from the PSVR. The only other game I have interest in at the moment is Switchback. Those are the straight VR games. The Village and No Man's Sky VR modes are pretty good for keeping you interested.

Long story short, Sony can come out all it wants saying "The Pro will do this. It will do that. It will make fireworks shoot out of the back of your TV" but lacking any developers willing to either port their games (upgrade then to take advantage of the Pro feature) or otherwise code their games to leverage the hardware it's not going to matter. Software sells hardware. You can have the best GPU out there but it is useless if nobody pushes it and right now, nobody is pushing the standard box to its limits--how is a Pro SKU gong to change that?

 

[Vulcanproject]

I had a PS4 and got a PS4 Pro. Not always for the higher resolution modes. It tended to have really good 1080p modes which was fine in say 2018. The Pro either smoothed out performance on wobbly games on base hardware or some had some 60FPS modes.

I think we're in a similar situation here. PS5 does fine on a 4K display. With many games in "quality mode" you might get 1440p+ but it'll probably be 30FPS. Maybe 40FPS if you're lucky on a few very good titles. The 60FPS performance modes on many demanding games are closer to 1080p. Or less! Not so great in 2024 and beyond.

I think there's a fair chance you'll see more games 1440p+ and sustaining 60FPS with the bells and whistles turned on. Whatever the hardware AI upscaling is will pretty much guarantee this and hopefully be greatly superior to the dire FSR used on consoles now.

It's not some earth shattering improvement but PS4 Pro really did make many games much more enjoyable for me and that's why I'll probably be a sucker and get a PS5 Pro.

 

[Bill A]

33.5 teraflops?
More like 16 to 17 teraflops

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's exactly why Sony is struggling to sell PS VR2 units. It really is a great VR set, but the lack of any killer software and no backward compatibility with the last-gen headset makes it a no go for most. I've enjoyed only two original games on it and one port of a last-gen game. That's terrible for sales and it's why I predict the PS VR2 will be the last VR headset you see from Sony.

If sony really wanted to sell VR units, it should have had devs lined up out the door creating launch titles. Not even all of them had to be great--if you have enough studios developing you're going to get at least a few titles that will drive sales. So far, the vast majority of VR2 games are garbage.

Kayak VR: Mirage is a case in point. It's beautiful but borrrrrrrring. I enjoyed Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, but it was far too short. Horizon Call of the Mountain was very very good, but again it felt almost too short and had no replay value. Probably the best I've played is The Walking Dead Sinners and Saints, which is a port from the PSVR. The only other game I have interest in at the moment is Switchback. Those are the straight VR games. The Village and No Man's Sky VR modes are pretty good for keeping you interested.

Long story short, Sony can come out all it wants saying "The Pro will do this. It will do that. It will make fireworks shoot out of the back of your TV" but lacking any developers willing to either port their games (upgrade then to take advantage of the Pro feature) or otherwise code their games to leverage the hardware it's not going to matter. Software sells hardware. You can have the best GPU out there but it is useless if nobody pushes it and right now, nobody is pushing the standard box to its limits--how is a Pro SKU gong to change that?

MS and sony both forgot the tenant: it's not the pixels, its the games that sell. There's a reason the switch is closing in on PS2 numbers.

The PS5, in total, has 12 games not available on other platforms. Xbox is way worse, its like 3 total. And of those games, well, none of them really hit it out of the park, as you described with the VR games.

The PS5 pro likely wont sell great, in large part because any multiplay game STILL has to target the xbox series S as the bare minimum, which kneecaps games in both complexity and scale. Nobody can make a game just for the PS5 pro.

 

[daffy duck]

Bizarre they can greatly upgrade gpu performance but stick with ancient Zen 2 cpu. Given the atrociously long lifecycle of these consoles, a mid-term refresh to Zen 3 woud have been a lot more enticing.

As for the 400% RTing improvement, it's not that impressive as current PS5 has woeful RT, so 5x that is still rubbish. Now you can wait until 2027 at earliest for PS6 rocking it's Zen 4 cpu no doubt at best, when Zen 7 will be out.

 

[mistyrain]

Bizarre they can greatly upgrade gpu performance but stick with ancient Zen 2 cpu. Given the atrociously long lifecycle of these consoles, a mid-term refresh to Zen 3 woud have been a lot more enticing.

As for the 400% RTing improvement, it's not that impressive as current PS5 has woeful RT, so 5x that is still rubbish. Now you can wait until 2027 at earliest for PS6 rocking it's Zen 4 cpu no doubt at best, when Zen 7 will be out.

It will punch the price up if they switch the CPU. And if they do then for PS6 they will deffinately will need again since it is a new generation. This will punch the price to a high end gaming PC and this will not be good. Also, I am not sure if it is needed from dev side having in mind that (according to me) noone has yet made some great optimized coding to suck all the juice from the PS5 yet.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

33.5 teraflops?
More like 16 to 17 teraflops

A console will be much more focused on implementing dual-issue than PC games, where studios rarely have programmers willing to optimize the code.

It's going to sell a lot as a (the) machine to run GTA VI.

 

[envirovore]

That's exactly why Sony is struggling to sell PS VR2 units. It really is a great VR set, but the lack of any killer software and no backward compatibility with the last-gen headset makes it a no go for most. I've enjoyed only two original games on it and one port of a last-gen game. That's terrible for sales and it's why I predict the PS VR2 will be the last VR headset you see from Sony.

If sony really wanted to sell VR units, it should have had devs lined up out the door creating launch titles. Not even all of them had to be great--if you have enough studios developing you're going to get at least a few titles that will drive sales. So far, the vast majority of VR2 games are garbage.

Kayak VR: Mirage is a case in point. It's beautiful but borrrrrrrring. I enjoyed Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, but it was far too short. Horizon Call of the Mountain was very very good, but again it felt almost too short and had no replay value. Probably the best I've played is The Walking Dead Sinners and Saints, which is a port from the PSVR. The only other game I have interest in at the moment is Switchback. Those are the straight VR games. The Village and No Man's Sky VR modes are pretty good for keeping you interested.

Long story short, Sony can come out all it wants saying "The Pro will do this. It will do that. It will make fireworks shoot out of the back of your TV" but lacking any developers willing to either port their games (upgrade then to take advantage of the Pro feature) or otherwise code their games to leverage the hardware it's not going to matter. Software sells hardware. You can have the best GPU out there but it is useless if nobody pushes it and right now, nobody is pushing the standard box to its limits--how is a Pro SKU gong to change that?

Perhaps having PC support for their fancy new VR kits when it launched, instead of waiting for some modder to hack compatibility with PC before deciding to add official support for it (coming later this year) would have also helped them ship some units.

 

[Burty117]

I'll probably pick one up, hand down my PS5 to my younger brother or something.

I'm already pretty impressed with the PS5, games look fantastic on it, specially games that allow 40Hz mode or VRR.

 

[erickmendes]

As for the 400% RTing improvement, it's not that impressive as current PS5 has woeful RT, so 5x that is still rubbish.

It's like Intel GPUs 600% improvement: from 5fps to 35fps...

 

[Starscream07]

If I do decide to upgrade from my PS4Pro, I think I'll give it a few more years for the PS6... will depend on reviews I suppose, but none of the PS5 games really intrigue me enough to buy a new console.

Same reason why I haven't even bothered. The quality of games coming out has been abysmal in an historical context. Even Sony's own GoW Ragnarock did not bother with enhancing it for PS5 users other than the fps count, Spiderman 2 could have easily ran on the PS4 Pro but someone blocked it. Cyberpunk is probably the one game that is still truly next gen. Here's hoping at least GTA 6 takes advantage of it. I'll likely get this though anyway.. Hoping for a special edition like my spiderman edition Pro.

 

[godrilla]

It's like Intel GPUs 600% improvement: from 5fps to 35fps...

That's perfectly fine for the target demographic audience of 30 fps console gaming. Ironically Intel is actually not only competing with Nvidia and AMD in the discreet gpu market but also the all in one console market. Blackmage will be competing with ps5 pro for gamers on a budget. I heard that the ps5 pro will have plenty of games with 30fps target. going from 5 fps to 35 fps may sound funny to the PC enthusiast crowd but even the 4090 does 24 fps cinematic at 4k pathtracing .

 

[MasterAce]

Forget RT and put in a mandatory 60fps mode…

 

[amghwk]

Bigger, Faster, Better with the SAME CPU, huh?

Don't know, I was a PS user from the days of PS1 up to PS4 Pro.

Then I took a jump to XB|SX. I enjoy it. Mostly because in addition to new games, I also wanted to play older games too, especially those games that I used to play in PC, but now want to enjoy them with true native controller support, like Morrowind and Oblivion, after getting used to playing with the gamepad.

It's a long cubical shape, running with complete silence even at 4K, and it's behind my TV, and I don't even realize it's there pumping out the iron without a sweat to my TV.

 

[Watzupken]

It is nice to see a mid life refresh, but I don't think it will be a huge step up despite the beefed up hardware. The 30 or 60 FPS in games will persist, though more consistent. Visually, it requires game developers optimization, so it may or may not happen. I do think this refresh will run quite a bit hotter since it is still on 6/7nm.

 

[Disiw]

Can't wait to see how good PSSR is. They wanted DLSS-like upscaling, which is why FSR was dropped from the start. Not good enough.

PS5 absolutely dominates XSX and XSS in terms of sales. PS5 Pro is going to sell like hotcakes and GTA 6 will come out shortly after launch. A system seller title.

Also, Nintendo will launch Switch 2 in 2025. With DLSS support.

Even XeSS beats FSR at this point. AMD should wake up. FSR is the worst upscaler today.

 

[magisys]

Bigger? Bigger than the already ginormous white plastic monolith? They are really out of control... Even the slim is way to big vertically speaking, they need to stop and take inspiration from series X and other compact pc case.

 

[godrilla]

Bigger, Faster, Better with the SAME CPU, huh?

Don't know, I was a PS user from the days of PS1 up to PS4 Pro.

Then I took a jump to XB|SX. I enjoy it. Mostly because in addition to new games, I also wanted to play older games too, especially those games that I used to play in PC, but now want to enjoy them with true native controller support, like Morrowind and Oblivion, after getting used to playing with the gamepad.

It's a long cubical shape, running with complete silence even at 4K, and it's behind my TV, and I don't even realize it's there pumping out the iron without a sweat to my TV.

Bigger, Faster, Better with the SAME CPU, huh?
This almost sounds like intel cpu marketing team as of late.

 

[Jarenien]

The PS5 pro will be a total waste of money as Sony will be hard pressed on releasing a PS6 sooner than expected.

Especially now that the new Xbox system devkit has been officially spotted in South Korea.

The Xbox hasn't been an actual contender to Playstation since the 360, so Sony doesn't even need to release a PS6, and they will still sell more PS5 Pro's than Microsoft does of their next Xbox. Xbox just has no exclusives worth ****. You have the Halo and Forza crowd, but that's about it, and it's not that large of a crowd compared to the crazy amount of exclusives Sony has.

 

[gamerk2]

Irrelevant, since the Xbox S is the baseline lever of support for this console generation. Devs are always going to target the lowest common denominator; it makes the most financial sense.

 

[Disiw]

The Xbox hasn't been an actual contender to Playstation since the 360, so Sony doesn't even need to release a PS6, and they will still sell more PS5 Pro's than Microsoft does of their next Xbox. Xbox just has no exclusives worth ****. You have the Halo and Forza crowd, but that's about it, and it's not that large of a crowd compared to the crazy amount of exclusives Sony has.

Sony has not been that great so far this gen, but I expect alot of PS games to come out 2025 to 2028+

PS5 had a few great games so far but they also came to PC for the most part.

PS4 had way more good games. Alot of them came out in the last half part of the generation tho, so PS5 still has time.

Microsoft is buying up tons of game studios and Xbox One sold pretty good, almost as good as 360 really, PS4 just sold better.

Console market is not doing that well really. PC gaming is increasing tho.

Many people found out that Console gaming mostly means locked deep into an ecosystem with high prices and paid subs. PC gaming is far cheaper especially if you already own a PC for work or other stuff and has tons of free/cheap games with full mod support.

Playstation already opened up alot of the exclusives to PC as well.

I might pick up a PS5 Pro eventually. Maybe if GTA 6 is good and running locked 60+ because PC won't see it for several years and my 77 inch QD-OLED TV needs a new companion.

Will be fun to see if Microsoft will answer back when PS5 Pro comes out. Without games tho, it makes little difference to actual buyers. Game Pass sub is not for me.