Sony is reportedly all set for a mid-cycle refresh of its popular gaming console, the PlayStation 5. It was earlier reported that the PS5 could get a Pro model, namely, the PlayStation 5 Pro, sometime around the holiday season, gearing up for the GTA VI, which is coming in 2025. Now, fresh details about the PlayStation 5 Pro have surfaced online suggesting promising updates for demanding players.
According to leaked GPU details by Digital Foundry, the base clock of the alleged PlayStation 5 Pro will boast a base clock speed of 2.18 GHz, with boosted speeds of up to 2.35 GHz for ultimate performance. Moreover, the details reveal that the vital cache components will be restructured. The report notes:
The 4MB of L2 cache per WGP remains the same, while L1 doubles from 128KB to 256KB to accommodate the larger numbers of compute units per shader engine. L0 cache also improves from 16KB to 32KB, which Sony says is to accommodate higher ray tracing performance.
The report suggests that Sony's documents hint that the real-world gaming performance of the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro will see a 45% boost after an approximate 200% teraflop increase.
The PS5 Pro is alleged to have 30 WGP outputting 33.5 teraflops of performance compared to 18 WGP offering 10.23 teraflop of performance by the standard PS5 model. WGP means Work Group Processors, which includes 2 CUs (Compute Unit), allowing for more compute power and memory performance (thanks to LDS or local data share banks) being directed to a single workgroup. The VRAM memory bandwidth scales around 29% from the standard PS5 to the P55 Pro.
Hence, the report suggests the PS5 Pro will be limited by the VRAM bandwidth more so than the shaders; which is why, despite the massive TFlop bump, Sony apparently expects a 45% performance improvement.
Recent disclosures by Sony suggest that both the PS5 and the PS5 Pro model have some CUs turned off, i.e., the PS5 has 18 WGPs active out of 22 in a 5-4-5-4 configuration, while the PS5 Pro is alleged to have 30 WGPs active out of 34 in an 8-7-8-7 set-up.
This means that the lower speed of 2.18GHz of PS5 Pro can be boosted to 2.35GHz, and only some games will be able to push the console to this limit. Notably, Digital Foundry reached this number by dividing the TFlop figure by the number of enabled CUs/WGPs.
Apart from upgrading the hardware specifications, Sony is also speculated to pack the PlayStation 5 Pro's GPU with cutting-edge technologies, including more DirectX 12 Ultimate features, which were missing in the original console, and variable-rate shading to render the details in different areas of the screen.
Advanced features like a "hybrid" MSAA will help developers enhance visuals and provide a smoother gameplay experience along with full support for mesh shaders that help to simplify geometry processing. Sony is also expected to restructure the reconstruction technique, which would be beneficial for the 60FPS gameplay on the PS5 Pro that the standard PS5 struggles with.
Let us know your thoughts about the PlayStation 5 Pro, and what would you like to see Sony include in the upcoming console.
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