But even if there is way better ray tracing support you can’t design a game solely based on that because you have to support the base ps5. So you get a bit better reflections and lighting for 700 bucks. Okay.
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In some games the performance mode is not ideal, visually speaking. Maybe a mid gen refresh can make it so that a performance mode not only runs super steady but also has a significant graphics jump. I have no idea, but that could be worth it for some.
If the difference will be one console is 30fps in certain games and 60fps on the other…that is a real big difference. But that I doubt.
i was ubder the impressions that rt was oe of the more scalable aspects of graphics, but perhaps i’m mistaken?
Sony and MS releasing the Pro/One X made a lot of sense. Both the XBO and PS4 were considered underpowered at launch. We saw the rise of 4K TV sales and that becoming the new standard. We also saw die shrinks from 28nm at launch to 16nm midway through.
That last part is important because it allowed the companies to double performance (or more) on the Pro consoles while having a chip roughly similar in size as the non-pro consoles at launch. If I remember correctly, the One X chip is even slightly smaller than the launch XBO chip was at launch, despite offering over 4x the GPU performance. This was possible due to the shrinking in chip manufacturing.
None of this applies today. Both the PS5 and Series X were considered powerful when they launched. We’re not chasing a new resolution standard with 8K being so far off with little demand. And we are not seeing die shrinks that are both large enough and make sense economically. So the performance jump won’t be anywhere near what we saw last gen.
The most realistic scenario we can expect from a Pro console launching in 2024 is a 5nm console that is using either RDNA3 or maybe even 4 hardware that will be marginally more capable than the current systems but cost a lot more. I don’t see many gamers spending $700+ to play at 4K60 instead of 1620p60.
None of that makes sense to me and I’m wondering if people are hearing about revised hardware for a slim model and mistaking that for a Pro console.
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I bet Sony will do it. I’m not sure about Xbox, but Sony will.
This is the company that released a pro dualsense controller for over $200 with inferior battery life. They don’t care whether the tech isn’t really there & the product doesn’t make sense (the dualsense edge having worse battery life really does show they just didn’t care about downgrading one part of the product when they could label everything else about the controller as ‘premium’).
So they’ll release a PS5 Pro ‘just because’ they’ll want to maintain that premium branding.
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Its very scalable for low hanging fruits, yes. If you already have a low settings raytracing solution in place for your PS5 game, you can increase the rays per pixel with not a lot of effort which will suck every bit of power you have on PS5.
Buuuuut, this has diminishing returns. Are ultra reflections instead of low settings on your PS5 Pro really worth 700 bucks?
For more noticeable gains (like Fortnite UE4 → Fortnite UE5 or Metro Exodus) you will have to design different rendering paths alltogether. And you still need to support PS5.
This seems a lot more work than was needed for PS4 Pro or One X.
| Console | Size |
|---|---|
| Xbox One | 363mm² (includes EDRAM) |
| Xbox One S | 240 mm² (includes EDRAM) |
| Xbox One X | 359 mm² (no EDRAM) |
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My guess is that a PS5 pro refresh does the following things:
- Smaller form factor with lower TDP.
- At least 2-3x increased performance in RT heavy games through architectural improvements. Goal is to have all the 30fps RT games run in 60fps.
- ML support in some ways. The PS5 doesn’t have fp4 support, maybe not even fp8 support.
- Necessary increases in CPU, GPU, ram bandwidth to not bottleneck the RT improvements.
- Cerny secret sauces.
- It’s both a PS5 Slim and Pro into one. Replace PS5 on the market. PS5 is discontinued.
So specs wise I see
8 core Zen4/Zen5 ~5ghz
16GB GDDR6x 19gbps 608GB/s
36cus at ~2.5ghz RDNA4 GPU. 23 teraflops. (GPUs based on RDNA 3 have dual-issue stream processors so that up to two shader instructions can be executed per in some workloads, I expect RDNA4 to be the same)
~150 -175 watts TDP
~225mm die size.
$499
That does sound good to me and let’s say you’re on to something here I would really like to see Xbox follow suit. But so far the rumor is only about Sony.
Those that love to brag when a DF video comes out are gonna love that. Going from 30fps RT games to 60fps would be a pretty damn big difference.
In Sony’s defense I believe their hardware team did a great job of ensuring devs supported the base PS4 console all the way through the generation with first party titles having good performance & res (30 fps 1080p).
Honestly I was shocked when I played Ghost of Tsushima on my 2013 PS4, i.e. it looks amazing. I mean the 30 fps is usual for last gen but they did a really good job (& another example is Spiderman which runs really well on the base system as well).
Sony makes questionable choices (their pricing, among others) but as for the hardware & dev tools, they’re on point. It means a prospective PS5 Pro won’t necessarily affect base PS5 performance, except maybe in third party games.
It’s not even going to be called the PS5 Pro. Just the “new” PS5 or PS5 2024.
Same way that apple does it.
Exactly. The one area where the hardware can demonstrate the biggest leap is in ray-tracing. Couple that with steady performance and it could be impressive.
But at this point there’s not enough software to justify it.
Sony may want to do this to leave MS behind, power-wise, and to negatively affect Xbox’s investment in their xCloud serverblades. Sony has enough loyal customers that will upgrade without hesitation and without question.
What if this is the reason for the shortage of the model X?
I mean we can all make up a fantasy console specification based on wishful thinking and nothing else.
So they are making a smaller pro console with double the current spec and cooling it by magic and all for the bargain price of the same as the current PS5?
Never going to happen.
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Give me a handheld or give me death.
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Perhaps if you actually follow the developments of RDNA you’ll know that nothing is doubled through brute force about these specs. It’s just the PS5 with higher clocks and new architecture. If anything this is the absolute lowest baseline that I expect for the PS5 pro at $499 in 2024, as I expect Sony to make a large profit with the specs I suggested. A PS5 pro that breaks even would have faster ram and 72cu 40-50 teraflop GPU, i.e “doubled GPU”.
Btw the PS4 pro more than doubled the gpu of the PS4 after 3 years, and it’ll be at least 4 years between the PS5 and PS5 pro.
Its almost guarenteed that Sony are doing it, so Xbox do really need to do it as well.
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In a scenario where what you say actually happens, that’s definitely a reason for hardcore gamers who want the best to get one, and assuming Xbox cares enough still about the consoles…man I hope they follow suit. I really want to buy the majority, if not all of the multiplats on Xbox.
I hope Sony won’t wait too long with announcing it, because then I definitely will not buy a PS5 in the summer.
There is nothing impressive about the two ps5 configurations I listed. They’re both conservative in specs compared to how much Microsoft crammed into $499 in 2020.
Condescending and ignorant both at the same time that’s some feat.
Still doesn’t change the fact that what you are suggesting is not possible at a 499 price point without Sony taking a bath on costs. And this is Sony we are talking about they won’t do it.
PS4 pro was a half assed attempt at a 4k box with bare minimum specs to get there if a PS5 was ever done it would follow the same design philosophy.
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