Pro big or Pro home, folks. That seems to be the mantra when it comes to the most heavily rumored console in the video game industry, alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 — the PS5 Pro.
The rumored successor to the PS5 console has been tipped to release later this year for what seems like a veritable Ice Age at this point. If/when it arrives (which could potentially be as early as September), the upgraded PlayStation will reportedly support cutting-edge graphical features so advanced, they could make the PS5 Slim look roughly as impressive as The Big N’s iconic Game Boy.
According to a new video from YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead (thanks, NotebookCheck), PS5 Pro could house 67 teraflops of compute power; a mightily impressive APU-boosting figure that appears to be assisted by machine-learning. In real-world gameplay terms that may end up equating to a "mere" 33.5 Tflops of “Floating Point” performance.
This is obviously super technical stuff, so to provide some eye-rubbing context, the PS5 has just 10.28 Tflops. If these numbers are true, that’s a colossal technical leap that could help PS5 Pro rival some of the best gaming PCs when it comes to sheer graphical grunt.
So how will this translate to making the best PS5 games perform better on Sony’s rumored new system? All suggestions currently point to substantially improved ray tracing performance. How much improvement are we talking about here? According to MLiD, the PS5 Pro could double or even quadruple the current efficiency of PS5 ray tracing output.
A ray (tracing) of hope
For argument’s sake, let’s say you’re the sort of gamer who only buys two games a year — which are probably going to be the latest Call of Duty and EA Sports FC 24. If that’s the case, you might wonder: What the hell is ray tracing? Good question! In semi-basic terms, it’s a form of advanced graphical rendering that essentially improves in-game lighting by simulating how light works in the real world.
Translation: it makes virtual lighting, shadows and reflections look better/more realistic. The current best example of the tech you can find on either consoles or PCs at the minute is in the astonishingly pretty Cyberpunk 2077. Those puddles are ever so eye-arousing! If these PS5 Pro ray tracing rumors prove true, it could finally mean gamers can enjoy 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled.
Currently, the only developer who has managed to pull off this hugely tricky tech balancing act is Insomniac. The studio behind Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has managed to squeeze RT features into Performance modes that still showcase impressive image quality thanks to effective anti-aliasing and upsampling techniques. Outside of this premier PlayStation studio, enabling ray tracing in your average PS5 game normally restricts you to a 30 fps Quality mode.
Could PS5 Pro pull off a form of DLSS?
The other major rumor to come from Moore’s Law video is that PS5 Pro could introduce a form of image reconstruction that could match the brilliant frame rate-boosting results Nvidia has achieved with its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech. Apparently, the Pro will feature a technique called “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” which is a form of “Temporal anti-aliasing Upscale.”
Essentially, we’re talking about an advanced upscaler that works by rendering a game at a lower resolution, then boosts final image quality through upsampling while also deploying dynamic resolution to stop frame rates from dropping into the graphical gutter. “PSSR” is said to operate like DLSS and AMD’s FSR tech, with the bonus that it should support High Dynamic Range (HDR) to produce high-resolution games that sport far more vivid colors than standard SDR.
All of the above makes it sound like the PS5 Pro could offer a true generational leap over PS5. So much so, that it almost looks like it could rival some of the tech specs we’ve been expecting from the (equally speculated upon) PS6.
As with every rumor related to unannounced PlayStation products, please take this incredibly exciting tech scuttlebutt with all of the grains of salt. Still, if Moore’s Law is Dead's predictions manifest into reality, PS5 Pro should be one hell of a console.
