Sony announces the PlayStation 5 Pro with upgraded GPU and AI image upscaling | Infinium-tech

Sony has announced its most powerful games console ever, the PlayStation 5 Pro, an updated model of the PlayStation 5 announced in 2020.

Like the PS4 Pro before it, the PS5 Pro aims to improve the graphical fidelity of its games on the whole, with three major new improvements toward this goal.

The first of these is the upgraded GPU. Although it is still based on the same architecture, the PS5 Pro GPU now has 67% more compute units and 28% faster memory. Sony claims that these changes provide 45% faster rendering of games compared to the PS5.

The second improvement is in hardware accelerated ray tracing. Given that AMD graphics rely on its compute units for ray tracing, increasing the number of compute units also increases ray tracing performance. Sony claims that the PS5 Pro GPU can cast rays at twice or triple the rate of the PS5 GPU.

Finally, Sony also announced a new AI-powered image upscaling solution that it has developed in-house. Called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, it upsamples images to higher resolutions using AI and machine learning. Given that this is likely a hardware accelerated solution, it will deliver better results than the mediocre software-based AMD FSR technology used by PS5 games and should be on par with Nvidia’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS. However, Sony didn’t mention any frame generation aspect, so this appears to be purely an image upscaling solution.

Talking about the new hardware, PlayStation lead architect Mark Cerny mentioned the need for performance and quality toggles within games on the PS5, which let the user choose between a higher frame rate or image quality. This resulted in users choosing the performance mode 3/4 of the time for a better frame rate, compromising on image quality.

It seems the goal for the PS5 Pro was to make this toggle redundant and deliver the image quality expected from Quality mode at 60FPS, giving the best of both worlds.

With the combination of more powerful hardware and native image upscaling, this seems quite possible, but we’ll have to wait for games to get native support to see if this claim is true. Sony also showcased some first and third-party titles taking advantage of the new console’s improved performance. Games optimized for the new console will carry the PS5 Pro Enhanced label.

Sony also announced a new PS5 Pro Game Boost feature that can be applied to over 8500 PS4 titles and increase their resolution and frame rate for the new console. The new console also has Wi-Fi 7 in regions where it is supported, as well as support for VRR and 8K displays.

The PS5 Pro has only slight visual changes from the standard PS5. It is taller than the existing slim model, but the same thickness as the PS5 model without Blu-ray Disc. The PS5 Pro does not have an optional optical disc model, and users will have to purchase it separately (it is the same drive available for the PS5). The only consolation here is that the PS5 Pro includes 2TB of internal storage compared to 1TB on the standard model.

The PS5 Pro costs $700, which is 56% more than the $450 price of the digital PS5. The console will go on sale later this year on November 7, and pre-orders will begin on September 26.

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