A few weeks ago we discovered that the PS5 Pro is a reality. Sony wants to improve the performance of the current generation with a mid-generation model that enhances the original console. So, just like there was PS4 and PS4 Pro, there will be PS5 and PS5 Pro.
After the recent leak of the PS5 Pro specifications, The Verge has obtained the complete list of specifications for the upcoming console. Sources familiar with Sony’s plans claim that developers are already being asked to ensure that their games are compatible with this upcoming console, with a focus on improving ray tracing.
A console that aims to achieve true raytracing on consoles
With the codename Trinity, the PlayStation 5 Pro model will include a more powerful GPU and a slightly faster CPU mode. All of Sony’s changes point to the PS5 Pro being much more capable of rendering games with enabled ray tracing or achieving higher resolutions and frame rates in certain titles.
And that’s why Sony is encouraging developers to use more graphic features like ray tracing with the PS5 Pro, as games will be able to use the “Trinity Enhanced” tag (PS5 Pro Enhanced) if they “provide significant improvements”.
Sony expects the GPU rendering of PS5 Pro to be “approximately 45% faster than that of the standard PlayStation 5”, according to documents describing the upcoming console.
The GPU of PS5 Pro will be larger and will use faster system memory to help improve ray tracing in games. Sony is also using a “more powerful ray tracing architecture” in the PS5 Pro, where the speed here is up to three times better than the regular PS5.
The PS5 and the PS5 Pro will coexist in the market
“Trinity is a high-end version of PlayStation 5,” reads a document, in which Sony indicates that it will continue to sell the standard PS5 after the release of this new model. Sony expects game developers to have a single package compatible with both PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles, and for existing games to be patched to improve their performance.
Tom Warren says that developers can now request test kits and Sony expects all games submitted for certification in August to be compatible with the PS5 Pro. Insider Gaming first reported the full specifications of the PS5 Pro and indicated that the console will be released during the 2024 holidays.
Although Sony is improving the GPU of PS5 Pro, the CPU will be the same as the standard PS5, but with a new mode that makes it more powerful. “Trinity has a mode that reaches a CPU frequency of 3.85 GHz,” Sony explains in a document addressed to developers. This represents a 10% increase compared to the normal PS5. Sony will offer developers the option to choose between a “standard mode” at 3.5 GHz or the “high CPU frequency mode” at 3.85 GHz.
The standard mode works like a regular PS5, where a certain amount of power is allocated to the CPU: it runs at 3.5GHz if the power budget allows it or at lower frequencies if the PS5 is performing “high-consumption operations”. Sony claims that these lower frequencies are rare and that the unused power in the CPU is sent to the GPU.
In this new high-frequency CPU mode for the PS5 Pro, more power is allocated to the CPU, which means slightly less for the GPU. In this mode, the GPU is reduced by approximately 1.5%, resulting in “approximately 1% less performance,” according to Sony.
PS5 Pro will also have some changes in the system memory for developers. The standard memory of PS5 operates at 448 GB/s, but Sony plans to increase it by 28% to 576 GB/s in PS5 Pro. According to Sony, since the memory system is more efficient in PS5 Pro, “the increase in bandwidth can exceed 28%”.
Developers will also have more access to the system’s overall memory. Games can use an additional 1.2 GB of system memory on the PS5 Pro, bringing the total to 13.7 GB compared to the 12.5 GB allocated to games on the basic PS5.
The improvement in speed and memory allocations “can be useful” for the new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) from Sony. Basically, it is Sony’s response to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR to improve frame rate and image quality on PlayStation. Sony has created a “custom machine learning architecture” on PS5 Pro, which supports 300TOPS of 8-bit computation.
This new architecture is compatible with Sony’s custom PSSR scaling solution, designed to replace a game’s temporal antialiasing or upsampling implementation.
Sony highlights that “the inputs are quite similar to DLSS or FSR” and that it includes full HDR compatibility. This compatibility requires approximately 250 MB of memory, so the memory allocations of PS5 Pro should help in this regard.
Sony claims that upscaling an image from 1080p to 4K has a latency of approximately 2 ms, and that the company is working to support resolutions of up to 8K and even improve latency in the future.
If developers manage to have their games ready on time, analysts expect to see the release of PS5 Pro this Christmas.
