Ah, juicy hardware speculation. Is there really anything better than pondering the potential specifications of a new console? Well, according to new leaked documentation, the PS5 Pro is set to be nearly three times as powerful as the current machine and is gunning for a release later this year.
The information comes via Moore’s Law is Dead on Youtube, who claims to have gotten his hands on leaked documents detailing the expected specs of the new machine. Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming also claims to have verified with anonymous sources within Sony that these documents are legitimate and were obtained from a PlayStation developer portal which was sent out earlier this week. Insider Gaming also confirmed that developer kits of the new PS5 have been available since September 2023. Finally, IGN also stated that they believe the leaked specs to be real.
Here are the key points that Moores’s Law is Dead highlights, plus some more that Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming added on Sunday.
- Rendering 45% faster than PS5
- 2-3x Ray-tracing. Documents mention up to 4x in some cases.
- 33.5 Teraflops of GPU power.
- 16GB of 28% faster RAM
- Same CPU, with a new High Frequency Mode boosting it to 3.85GHz (10% faster,)
- PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling) for upscaling/antialiasing.
- PSSR is planned to be used for 8k support in a future version of the SDK.
- Custom machine learning architecture supporting 300 TOPS of 8-bit computation and 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point.
That’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo, so let’s try to break it down. First, let’s address the supposed GPU which is claimed to produce an impressive 33.5 teraflops of power which is roughly 3x what the current PlayStation 5 outputs. On paper, that would make the new card equivalent to AMD’s RX 7800 XT which retails for around £450-500. If true, that could make the PS5 Pro a very expensive machine.
However, comparing teraflops across consoles and architectures isn’t so simple, which is why many outlets far smarter than myself, such as The Verge, believe a more accurate representation would be the PS5’s 10.18 teraflops vs 17-18 teraflops for the PS5 Pro, hence the document’s claims of around 45% faster rendering. Still a very nice bump up.
Most of that GPU power is going to be focused on the improved ray-tracing which is where we get the 3x more power coming into the story. I admit, this is less important to me personally, but ray tracing is very beautiful and if we’re finally getting to the stage of being able to implement it without tanking the framerate then that’s awesome.
The real magic sauce is going to be the PSSR. Basically, this is the same idea as Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR and uses machine learning to improve image quality. This kind of technology is heavily used by modern-day graphics cards because it can lead to huge leaps in quality without needing to just throw more raw power at the problems. It’s especially effective on lower ends graphics cards.
All in all, then, the PS5 Pro will offer a significant power boost over the standard model. The big question is whether it’s actually needed, and for that, we can take a look back at past data. The PS4 Pro was launched in 2016. In 2020 it was reported to have sold 14.3 million units. Clearly, Sony thinks those numbers are enough to justify a repeat performance, or perhaps they think it’s a worthwhile project to keep the hardcore enthusiasts engaged and happy. I mean, it worked on me for the PS4 Pro…
So what do you think about these leaked PS5 Pro specifications? Having been vetted by Tom Henderson and IGN it certainly seems like the information is reliable. The new console is reported to be scheduled for a holiday 2024, so we won’t have to wait much longer. Will you be grabbing one?