According to an analysis by Digital Foundry, the PS5 Pro’s improved performance may have minimal impact on the frame rate of games.
As details about the rumoured PS5 Pro continue to leak, with a hypothetical release slated for the 2024 holiday season and a mysterious technology called “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution”, Digital Foundry throws some cold water on expectations.
During the March 19 episode of DF Direct, Digital Foundry founder Rich Leadbetter broke down the leaked PS5 Pro specs. The console’s CPU is virtually identical to that of the base version, both of which feature an eight-core, 16-thread Zen 2 processor clocked at up to 3.5GHz. The only difference is the presence of a “High CPU Frequency Mode” on the PS5 Pro, which allows the CPU to increase performance by 10%, up to 3.85 GHz. There are other differences, such as the processing power of the PS5 Pro which would be around 33.5 teraflops compared to 10.28 teraflops of the standard PS5. However, when it comes to frame rate, the similarities between the two CPUs worry Digital Foundry. Here’s what Leadbetter thinks.
“Games currently set to 30fps won’t hit 60 frames per second on PlayStation 5 Pro if they’re CPU-limited. So, all the assumptions like ‘It’s going to be great for Grand Theft Auto 6, which can be played at 60fps’, well, unless Rockstar has some CPU-level magic in store, I suggest it’s not going to happen. A 10% increase in clock speed won’t make much difference. It will help with minimum frame rates when limited by the CPU, but it’s not a quantum leap. I think that’s pretty clear.”
According to Digital Foundry, the impact of the PS5 Pro’s increased processing power on actual gaming performance may not be as exciting. Maybe it will be able to convince a gamer undecided between console and PC to stay on the console, but the incremental improvement over the base PS5’s CPU probably won’t push owners of the current model to upgrade.
However, the PS5 Pro’s improved hardware is not without its advantages. Thanks to Sony’s proprietary PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling technology, the console will be able to run games in 4K, with support for 8K resolutions and above thanks to machine learning. However, the timing of the console’s release seems unfortunate, as Sony doesn’t plan to launch any “new games belonging to a major franchise” until 2025. Until the company can show off a true “killer app,” something that makes upgrading to the PS5 Pro indispensable, the console feels more like an “optional” than a “necessary.”
