"Project Trinity" leak indicates a PS5 Pro refresh coming in late 2024

[Cal Jeffrey]

Rumor mill: News of a midlife PlayStation 5 refresh began swirling again. Supposedly, Sony plans to launch a PS5 Pro next year. The specs seem sketchy, but it will reportedly have higher framerates while playing in 4K, and games could even feature an 8K performance mode.

The rumors began over the weekend with a blog post from Tom Henderson last Friday. According to anonymous sources, Sony has been working on "Project Trinity" since early last year. You might recall Sony's affinity for references to the movie The Matrix with its Project Morpheus (PSVR) and Project Neo (PS4 Pro) in 2016.

Henderson's sources said the more powerful console sports "30 WGP and 18000[MT/s] memory." These terms are difficult to define without context. Since 30 WGP is equivalent to 60 CU, and the PS5 can run up to 36 CU, some believe that Sony is shooting to double the performance over the standard console – a reasonable assumption considering the insiders' claims of higher and more stable FPS@4K and an 8K mode. They also mentioned that the PS5 Pro will have "accelerated ray tracing." Presumably, the sources meant "AI-accelerated," but that is unclear.

Sony plans on sending out PS5 Pro devkits later this year and is shooting for a consumer launch in November 2024. Although the insiders didn't mention a price point, current rumors indicate pricing will likely range between $599-$699.

Of course, as always, we should remain critical of "anonymous" leaks. While there are good reasons for true insiders to stay anonymous, it also allows jerks to pretend to have exciting information while making stuff up. Keep your grain of salt handy.

In case you missed it over the weekend, the PS5 Pro is codenamed Trinity.

Sorry for the confusion, but this website is mine. Will update you on things like patch notes, press releases, transcription etc.

You can follow it at @KeyToGamingNews https://t.co/0LEbJfFjeO

– Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) July 24, 2023

I'm finding it difficult to take this leak seriously, not just because of the sketchy spec claims. I mainly don't see a reason to release a PS5 Pro yet. As it is, developers have barely begun tapping the full potential of the PS5's current configuration. There is little point in upgrading the hardware unless it is actually needed, or Sony can create a sense of necessity from a marketing standpoint.

If you recall, necessity led to Sony's release of the PlayStation 4 Pro in 2016. The company had been working on Project Morpheus, later dubbed PlayStation VR, since at least 2014. While the PSVR was compatible with the standard PS4, performance was much better with the Project Neo (PS4 Pro) variant.

Couple this with the fact that by late 2015 – one year before the PS4 Pro launched – developers were starting to make games that began taxing the PS4 and 4K TVs were becoming affordable. So at the very least, Sony had a good marketing strategy for releasing a refreshed PS4 console – "Your PSVR and the latest games are going to run and look much better on our new PS4 Pro!"

We aren't seeing that right now with the PlayStation 5. It handles even the latest PS5-focused (as opposed to PS5/PS4) titles with little effort. The newly released PS VR2 also runs fantastically on the console. Furthermore, 8K TVs are still priced a bit high, with entry-level sets costing $1,000 or more. It seems a bit premature to launch an upgraded deck when the current one runs so well.

So keep your expectations in check, and let's see what transpires in the next several months. If the rumor holds water, Sony should be officially firing up the hype train anytime now.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99522-project-trinity-leak-indicates-ps5-pro-refresh-coming.html

 

[godrilla]

No mention of memory capacity. For reference the 7800xt although with rdna 3 is rumored to come out next quarter with also 60 Cus and 16 gigs of vram for around the same price of the current 6800XT and similar performance. Rumors are the ps5 pro might have its own proprietary upscaling technique and rdna 3.5 which fixes some of the rdna 3 shorfalls ( up to 20% delta from target). Depending how they clock these if you bought the 6800xt since 11/2020 you were already experiencing ps5 pro graphics launching end of next year.

 

[pencea]

A refreshed console with almost twice the power? We'll see about that.

That's plausible. The PS4 Pro had double the gpu power of the original PS4.

 

[godrilla]

A refreshed console with almost twice the power? We'll see about that.

That's plausible. The PS4 Pro had double the gpu power of the original PS4.

The release dates for ps4 was 11/2013 ps4 pro 11/2016 ps5 11/2020 and ps5 pro 11/2024. More than plausible.

 

[EdmondRC]

I have seen that its RDNA2 still, not 3 and will be around 14 TFlops. That's honestly plausible, clocked around 1.85 GHz, which would make sense in an RDNA2 console for power consumption reasons. If that is the case, it will be only around 40% faster than the PS5 and barely faster than the XSX.

 

[brucek]

It's even more plausible if they borrow from the Nvidia marketing playbook where the comparison is PS5 native vs. PS5 Pro FSR.

What I remain skeptical about is "8K Gaming" (or any content really.)

 

[godrilla]

I have seen that its RDNA2 still, not 3 and will be around 14 TFlops. That's honestly plausible, clocked around 1.85 GHz, which would make sense in an RDNA2 console for power consumption reasons. If that is the case, it will be only around 40% faster than the PS5 and barely faster than the XSX.

That makes sense plus different generations in rdna might cause a headache for development if they want to target both consoles.

Update the 6800 non xt has 60 cus and has 16 teraflops of fp32 performance.

 

[NumberSix]

Very odd to give something the code name Trinity when it has got a 5 in its name.

After 3 years I am still playing many more PS4 games on my PS5, I am not sure it needs a refresh/pro, they might as well wait for the PS6 and go balls out.

 

[Lounds]

GDDR7 will be out by then, why would Sony make a console that uses older GDDR6 memory modules when it could use the latest chips? Something doesn't add up with this leak imo.
Also previous comment about RDNA2 have they considered Sony could just do a die shrink and clock the PS5 even faster? The RX 6500 XT could clock to 2.8Ghz on 6nm.

 

[Vauban]

Anonymous source? Isn't like 1st rule of journalism to never rely on anonymous sources?

 

[neeyik]

A refreshed console with almost twice the power? We'll see about that.

That's plausible. The PS4 Pro had double the gpu power of the original PS4.

Achieved because there's a decent improvement in transistor density going from TSMC's N28 to N16 node, as used for the PS4 and PS4 Slim/Pro SoCs respectively. Taking the latter, the Pro has a 54% larger die than the Slim, due to having 80% more CUs -- at 322 mm2, it's larger than the PS5 SoC, which is currently 260 mm2 on N6.



The majority of both the PS4 Pro (above) and PS5 (below) SoC die area is taken up by the CUs:



Increasing the CU count of the PS5 by 50% (the PS5 GPU has two Shader Engines with 20 CUs apiece, with two CUs disabled per SE to improve yields) while remaining on N6 for manufacturing will result in a significantly larger chip. AMD could, of course, use N5 or N4 to keep the die size under control, but that would obviously cost a lot more.

There was no difference in the launch prices between the PS4 and PS4 Pro, but unless Sony is willing to absorb a hefty chunk of money, there's little chance of a 60 CU PS5 Pro being $499. Would the market happily pay, say, another $100 for a Pro?

GDDR7 will be out by then, why would Sony make a console that uses older GDDR6 memory modules when it could use the latest chips?

Because GDDR7 is going to be a lot more expensive than GDDR6 when it first comes out. Besides, the PS5 doesn't even use particularly fast GDDR6 -- just 14 Gbps. Stick 20 Gbps in there and you've got an instant 43% boost in bandwidth.

 

[dangh]

I have seen that its RDNA2 still, not 3 and will be around 14 TFlops. That's honestly plausible, clocked around 1.85 GHz, which would make sense in an RDNA2 console for power consumption reasons. If that is the case, it will be only around 40% faster than the PS5 and barely faster than the XSX.

... current PS5 in games often is faster than XSX, and you saying new version would be 'barely faster'?
If you mean it will have more or less tflops, really, how does it matter - it is just a single kpi, and does not exists in a vacuum.

 

[godrilla]

There was no difference in the launch prices between the PS4 and PS4 Pro, but unless Sony is willing to absorb a hefty chunk of money, there's little chance of a 60 CU PS5 Pro being $499. Would the market happily pay, say, another $100 for a Pro?

With the stagnation of the medium tier discreet gpu market Sony might have an opportunity to be successful although this will allegedly launches closer to rdna 4 parts, zen 5 cpus, and battlemage followed by Nvidia's successor gpu lineup 1 or 2 quarters later. Currently a system with radeon 6800 gpu and 7600x/6600x3d can be build under $1k mark. Lastly Strix point apu might give it some challenges as well.

 

[EdmondRC]

... current PS5 in games often is faster than XSX, and you saying new version would be 'barely faster'?
If you mean it will have more or less tflops, really, how does it matter - it is just a single kpi, and does not exists in a vacuum.

I honestly haven't been following the consoles closely. I have a PS5 that has been mainly just sitting there collecting dust. TFlops are the best measure that we have to compare graphics cards, especially two cards with the same architecture. However, it seems that PS5's GPU variable clocks are producing better results than XSX steady clock rate, even if technically it should be 20% faster. I haven't been able to find a clear explanation of why that is, but my guess is betting on more CUs but slower cores was a bad bet. Perhaps there is something in the design that just doesn't let XSX take advantage of the 52 CUs effectively. I do know that 40% faster isn't a massive jump. It might help the PS5 Pro to have more consistent 60fps games at upscaled 4K resolution, it's not going to give you native 4k @ 60fps in most games. I don't think a lot of people will see the difference unless higher FPS options are given to the Pro that just are not available on the PS5. Most likely the difference will be slightly higher render resolutions and more stable FPS though.

 

[dangh]

I honestly haven't been following the consoles closely. I have a PS5 that has been mainly just sitting there collecting dust. TFlops are the best measure that we have to compare graphics cards, especially two cards with the same architecture. However, it seems that PS5's GPU variable clocks are producing better results than XSX steady clock rate, even if technically it should be 20% faster. I haven't been able to find a clear explanation of why that is, but my guess is betting on more CUs but slower cores was a bad bet. Perhaps there is something in the design that just doesn't let XSX take advantage of the 52 CUs effectively. I do know that 40% faster isn't a massive jump. It might help the PS5 Pro to have more consistent 60fps games at upscaled 4K resolution, it's not going to give you native 4k @ 60fps in most games. I don't think a lot of people will see the difference unless higher FPS options are given to the Pro that just are not available on the PS5. Most likely the difference will be slightly higher render resolutions and more stable FPS though.

You're right when mentioning comparing the same architecture. In consoles' integrated apu there is just more than one system which matter, and just throwing in CU's is simply not enough and this architecture between ps5 and xsx is very different. It is not about clock alone, but how the data is feed to the CU, how is prepared, and so on. Even on PC relying only on CU do not matter, really, even if GPU is rather isolated from the CPU and system RAM, but in integrated systems any even small bottleneck will cause lasting issues.
Anyway, Cerny in his discussion on ps5 architecture put it together very well and while I had some doubts at the time he was going through that, in the end what he said has been positively verified. If you haven't seen it I really recommend to go through it, excellent piece on technological decisions.

 

[McMurdeR]

What I remain skeptical about is "8K Gaming" (or any content really.)

That smells very fishy alright. I think its unlikely, the PS5 remains a very good performer for its price point. The PS4 Pro was able to target 4k TV owners, which were quite ubiquitous at the time, plus gamers who wanted 60fps console games. There was a clear rationale for bringing it to market, and a target for game developers.

There won't be many 8k TV owners any time soon, and aside from a tiny number of exceptions, 60fps has proven to already be a realistic target for current PS5 titles.

 

[McMurdeR]

Given that backwards compatibility is now an expectation, mid-life refresh branding seems confusing. A more powerful unit would almost certainly use the same architecture, and play visual variations of the same titles regardless of whether it was branded 'Pro' or PS6. At the end of the day, we're now just looking at the same console with extra horsepower. Arguably the PS5 could have been called a PS4 Pro Pro for all the difference it made to accessibility to titles. The real difference is how well it handles them.