Rumors of a PS5 Pro are no longer true. Several Sony development studios have been testing PS5 Pro development kits for months. The relative democratization of 4K and the ever-increasing demands of games would necessitate this “upgrade”. The PS5 family’s backward-compatibility and lifespan will have to be dealt with in the years to come.
PS5 Pro: arrival for Christmas, Zen 2 OC CPU and 45% on the GPU
A number of elements now seem to be taking shape regarding the PS5 Pro’s arrival schedule and future technical specifications. Rumors are regularly circulating that the PlayStation 5 Pro may well include a much more powerful GPU. MLD understands that this would be up to three times faster for certain tasks than existing PS5 models. But this time, we have precise, quasi-official details of what this new version will offer. In an internal document delivered by Sony to developers, we learn:
- The CPU will be the same as that of the standard PS5 (AMD ZEN 2), but with a new frequency boost mode. Trinity (codename of the PS5 Pro) features a mode that targets a CPU frequency of 3.85 GHz”, Sony will offer developers the option of choosing between a “standard mode” at 3.5 GHz or the “high CPU frequency mode” at 3.85 GHz.
- The PS5’s standard memory operates at 448 GB/s, but Sony will increase this to 576 GB/s on the PS5 Pro. [ …]the bandwidth gain can exceed 28%, says Sony. Developers will also have greater access to the system’s global memory. Games can use an extra 1.2 GB of system memory on the PS5 Pro, for a total of 13.7 GB compared with the 12.5 GB allocated to games on the base PS5. These 2 improvements will be of great interest for Sony’s new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) support.
- The GPU is said to be 45% more powerful. Sony says the graphics part will use faster system memory to help improve raytracing efficiency in games. Sony also states that the “new” GPU uses a more powerful raytracing architecture in the PS5 Pro, where speed is up to three times better than that of the classic PS5. Leaving aside this strong gain in raytracing performance, in the raw data, the base PS5 would be close to 10.28 teraflops and the PS5 Pro would be closer to 17 teraflops. According to The Verge, if we were to project ourselves onto PC equivalents, Sony could go from a Radeon RX 6700 equivalent inside the PS5 to something close to the Radeon RX 7800 XT for the PS5 Pro (which seems very ambitious, including in terms of power consumption / noise / heating).
The arrival of this new version is clearly scheduled for the 2024 holiday season. The standard PS5 will continue its commercial life, however. We have no indication yet of the price positioning of Sony’s 2 consoles.
