At this point the PS5 Pro feels like Thanos: it’s inevitable. While Sony has yet to officially announce its long awaited mid-generation upgraded console, the rumor mill continues to spin. And the latest talk suggests PS5 Pro could be unveiled as early later this week.
High-profile X leaker @Kepler_L2 recently put out an incredibly brief reply to a fellow user saying “7700-ish in raster, faster in RT” (thanks, NotebookCheck), when asked about the PS5 Pro's specs.
Untangling those view words, Kepler_L2 is talking about a graphical technique known as “rasterization”, while “RT” refers to “ray tracing”. They’re using these terms in the context of how both perform on AMD’s mid-range RX 7700 XT GPU, which is roughly as powerful as Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti graphics card.
7700 XT-ish in raster, faster in RT.August 30, 2024
To go even further into the technical weeds, the current PS5 has an APU that’s roughly as powerful as a Radeon RX 5700, so a proposed leap to RX 7700 performance would be quite the upgrade. Indeed, it’s been suggested that the PS5 Pro could be powerful enough to render games at 4K/60 frames per second; a tech feat that is off the table in all but the rarest of cases on PS5.
One potential snag that could hold back the PS5 Pro’s real-world power is the consistent rumor its CPU will only get a relatively minor upgrade. Currently, the PS5 uses an aging Zen 2 processor, and the Pro’s CPU isn’t expected to be significantly more powerful.
However, with the introduction of the rumored "PlayStation Super Resolution" (PSSR), there should hopefully be less chance of the PS5 Pro being bottlenecked by its CPU. PSSR is said to be Sony’s answer to the likes of Nvidia DLSS, an increasingly AI-driven form of super sampling that, in its most basic terms, boosts frame rate performance with minimal loss to image quality.
Potential PS5 Pro reveal date
As for the PS5 Pro reveal date, we’ve previously reported that it could be as early as September 9, so just 6 days away at time of writing. That leak is based on info from an anonymous 4chan poster, though, so please take it with an eye-watering amount of salt. And let's be honest, a Sunday reveal would be a little odd.
Yet there’s no denying that historically, Sony announcing the PS5 Pro on September 9 would show at least some consistency. After all, the PS4 Pro was revealed on September 7 back in 2016, before being launched on November 10 that same year.
Regardless of whether we see Mark Cerny pop up on a stage with a PS5 Pro in hand within the next week, at least we won’t have long to find out whether these latest rumors are on the money or not.
