The long-rumored PS5 Pro has been (somewhat) confirmed after specifications and internal documents leaked online. The PS5 Pro, codenamed ‘Trinity’ in a nod to the PS4 Pro’s original codename ‘Neo’, offers an expected significant feature boost over the almost four-year-old base model PS5. While many will focus on how many teraflops the PS5 Pro will pack, we’ll cover the leaked specs and explain how this will affect games running on the machine, along with explaining the new ‘PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution’ secret sauce.
CPU
Arguably the smallest change over the base model is that the PS5 Pro uses the same Zen 2-based, 8-core 16-thread AMD CPU as the current PS5. According to the leaked documents, the PS5 Pro will offer a slight boost via a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that provides a roughly 10% increase over the original’s base 3.5Ghz speed. This new 3.85Ghz new GPU is available at 1% lower clock speed. Despite this cost, in reality, games will still perform the same as the main machine when the CPU is limited. In short, this upgrade is like a marketing statement that allows Sony to brag about having faster console CPU clock speeds than anything else. Nothing to see here.
GPU
The graphics processing unit is where the real magic happens. As with the PS4 Pro, Sony spent the bulk of the budget on improving the graphics quality, resolution and performance of the PS5 Pro.
Specific architecture changes aren’t listed, but we do have some information from the leaks that we can extrapolate. According to the notes, the PS5 Pro is expected to have 60 computing units (CU), up from the PS5’s current 36 CU. That’s a smaller jump, at least on paper, than the PS4 Pro doubling the CUs of the base PS4.
What we get in theory is a 67% increase in graphics performance compared to the “standard” PS5. But wait, we have more! The GPU itself is pretty much based on the latest RDNA3 Architecture of the current AMD Radeon 7000 cards, offering some architectural improvements over the older RDNA2-based PS5 GPU. The teraflop number suggested in the docs adds some weight to this as it says the PS5 Pro has 33.5Tf as opposed to the standard model’s 10.28Tf. This is almost entirely due to binary FP32 (Floating Point) operations that the latest GPU can handle, not an issue on an older console. Using these numbers we can estimate that approximately 2335Mhz of the 56CU is active and a full 2180Mhz of the 60CU is running. In fact, it will be the rare and isolated cases where double-computing can get past the GPU. However, the biggest problem with the PS4 Pro was that the pure compute boost never matched the bandwidth.
Memory
On the memory side, Sony bumped up the PS5’s old 14Gbps 16GB of RAM to the latest 18Gb for the PS5 Pro, which is likely a benefit of buying the latest nodes available. This increase increases the system’s throughput by 28%, from 448GB/s to 576GB/s, putting it ahead of the Xbox Series X and many current PC GPUs.
Although unconfirmed, sources told IGN that around 1GB of gaming RAM has been added to the overall allocation, with 13.5GB available for games. This will be vital to the PS5 Pro’s ray-tracing improvements, as well as the biggest boost and secret sauce Sony offers with PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), a hardware-accelerated rival to FSR3 and DLSS: dedicated machine learning hardware. . ML).
The “Secret Sauce”
In summary, we have the PS5 offering roughly the same CPU performance as its non-Pro predecessor at eight cores and 16 threads, paired with faster memory to feed a 67% faster GPU. Sony’s own numbers claim a roughly 45% increase in raw rasterization performance (converting 3D objects to pixels on the screen) with the PS5 Pro.
Simply put, an existing 1080p title on the PS5 will jump to 3840 x 2160, or a game that was limited to 42 fps by the GPU will now be able to hit 60 fps. But the biggest boost comes in that PSSR and dedicated ML hardware, which will be able to increase image quality resolutions without requiring double or more pure hardware muscle. Like the Tensor cores in Nvidia’s GPUs, this particular GPU silicon will take a lower target resolution output – say 1080p – and upscale it to 4K output through machine learning reconstruction, all at the cost of a few milliseconds in rendering time.
This machine learning system not only provides a huge increase in the image quality of all games by unlocking 4K (and possibly better) resolution, but also solves the problem of higher bandwidth and GPU performance, since this data is estimated rather than displayed. All of this means that the PS5 Pro will deliver better quality output than 4K to your screen, with a lower performance and bandwidth penalty.
The other piece of the graphics pie is, of course, ray tracing. Based on Sony’s own patent and developer documentation, the PS5 Pro’s new GPU also offers a major 2x increase in ray tracing performance through improved hardware. In special cases, it can even reach a 4-fold increase.
So what does enough specification mean for these games? In fact, a lot of it will depend on how developers use the hardware and new features offered by the PS5 Pro. I suspect we’ll see three major improvements to PS5 Pro for current games and two more for new titles, the first being the most exciting.
Dynamic Resolution and Free Frame rates
Dynamic resolutions and unlocked frame rates will be available for free, tapping into the increased performance and the latest SDK, which will be shipped with the PS5 software update shortly before PS5 Pro launch. These perks can take current games running at uneven frame rates and use dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) to instantly run faster and smoother on Sony’s new console.
Games like Alan Wake 2, which struggled to hit 30 fps and 60 fps in quality and performance modes respectively, can now be locked to 30 and 60 frames per second without a developer touching the code. Spider-Man 2’s unlocked VRR mode, which produced framerates hovering around the 70s, can now jump into the 100s. These are immediate boosts that players can see applied to their back catalog.
Developer Update Patch
Through development update patches, studios can easily revert to older games (even PS4 titles) and add updates to the engine code to improve visual quality through SDK adapted PSSR libraries or simply by taking advantage of increased hardware performance. If they use both, it could mean that an old GPU-bound game on PS5 will jump to 4K/60fps… Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 rely on PSSR resolution to improve image quality can be easily fixed with a capable 4K/60 fps upgrade, while leaving plenty of room on the table to increase visual quality and match the highest levels available. PC version.
By using ray tracing enhancements along with PSSR reconstruction, a game can have a PS5 Pro version that can target 1440p/60 with a high level of ray tracing effects. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 seems perfectly suited for a potential update that could finally bring the console version closer to the high-end PC version.
PSVR2 could also benefit from these enhancements, with PSSR and increased ray-tracing capabilities offering the chance to bring better performance to VR headsets than the current PS5 quality. Gran Turismo 7 could get the ray tracing effects used in the replays during the races, but now in VR. The development team may also choose to increase the image quality and performance beyond 120fps and 4K to improve the immersion of one of the best games on the platform.
New Games
The best thing about new hardware is new games, and with the PS5 Pro I can see a huge increase in games as the potential market for them grows, pushing them more with framerates and/or ray tracing. There may be a reason why we haven’t seen any new first-party titles so far this year, as the PS5 Pro will likely be the tentpole machine to show them off at their best.
We could see new titles on both PC and consoles either come with PSSR remastered 4K resolution and a “PS5 Pro mode” that offers ray-tracing effects not possible on the base PS5, or overall visual and performance enhancements. Be closer to the PC version. Upcoming games Black Myth: Wukong and Star Wars: Outlaws were recently announced to support RTX boosts on PC. Some or all of these can now ship on PS5 Pro and offer a closer match to the high-end PC version, opening the door for more developers to push ray tracing in games even more. We could even see older releases like Doom, Quake or even Tomb Raider come with a tracked version on the PS5 Pro, creating cheaper remasters that offer a huge increase in quality and true next-gen improvements for a lower investment. .
Mid-Cycle Update Coming
The PS5 Pro still might not make much sense out of a pure niche market – it’s not a guaranteed hit. But leaks suggest that the enhancements to current and future games with hardware and software solutions Sony is developing could be transformative.
The cost will probably be around $499, which could be with or without the removable optical disc drive that we saw on the PS5 Slim last year. The design will likely reflect this aesthetic with a larger figure. According to the specs, it may even be on the same 6nm node, as even smaller 4nm is possible, but power usage is vital. Regardless of the final design and price, the PS5 Pro could bring new excitement to the console gaming market, as well as the potential for game visuals.
But what about GTA 6? I hear you scream. You’ll probably expect a nice ray-traced world that looks even better in 4K than the reveal trailer. But unfortunately, thanks to this CPU, Rockstar’s next visit to Vice City will be limited to 30 fps. As with the previous PS4 Pro, developers could still ship a single SKU on the PS5 base and Pro models and simply let the boosted hardware smooth out any performance wrinkles and sharpen pixels over the base model. It’s almost certainly going to happen, but I suspect that between now and when the PS5 Pro is inevitably announced at an event later this year, Sony will be working hard to ensure that developers who take this route are in the minority.
Michael Thompson is a freelance writer for IGN.