Sony is gearing up to launch its PS5 Pro later this year and according to the specs, the console aims to be a beefier version of the PS5 with some improvements to the GPU and some upscaling AI features. However, according to Digital Foundry, the specs for the PS5 Pro aren’t relatively impressive.
The team claims that those who are hoping to get 60FPS games from 30FPS games are going to be disappointed. That’s because the performance jump between the two consoles isn’t great enough to offer those enhancements.
In a deep dive breakdown of the hardware, Digital Foundry says the difference between the PS5 Pro and PS5 is similar to that of the PS4 and PS4 Pro back in the day. Sony has especially dropped the ball when it comes to the CPU included in the PS5 Pro as it is the same as the standard console with only a slightly higher clock speed. As a result, it means CPU-limited games will still struggle with frame rates.
PlayStation 5 Pro sticks with Zen 2 but offers developers the ability to run at a capped 3.85GHz clock speed, as opposed to the 3.5GHz cap on the standard PS5. Similar to the existing machine, the Pro appears to operate with a strict power limit, adjusting CPU and GPU clock speeds within a pre-determined power budget. Activating the 10 percent speed increase means that clock speeds on the GPU decrease by circa 1.5 percent, leading to a one percent performance hit, according to Sony.
The team says that games will run at a much more stable frame rate on the PS5 Pro thanks to the slight boost in performance. This will be seen across games that might not be hitting their frame rate when the CPU is limited. We have seen these games recently.
Where users will see the enhancements is when it comes to the increase in resolution. The PS5 Pro will be able to handle higher resolutions at the same frame rate. Similar to how the PS4 Pro introduced 4K and 1440p gaming to the player base. Sony is also implementing its PSSR upscaling in the console which will reportedly upscale games to higher resolutions at the same frame rate.
The big push for Sony’s PS5 Pro will be the graphical improvements across games when it comes to visual details and ray-tracing. However, the team is still concerned about exactly “who” the console is for. The limited CPU performance will still hold it back and only games which are GPU-bound will see major enhancements.
Sony is also hoping to finally achieve its 8K goals with the PS5 Pro. This is something which has been advertised on the standard PS5 but has yet to be unlocked by a firmware update. Of course, the PS5 won’t be able to do much in 8K and the PS5 Pro will rely on upscaling to achieve this resolution.
You can read the full report here. One thing is for sure, all eyes are on Sony this year as the company hopes to tackle the higher-end PC performance on a console.