Sony’s announcement of the PlayStation 5 Pro has sent ripples through the gaming community, with the new console’s beefed-up hardware generating significant buzz. While the hefty $699 USD price tag has drawn attention, the true highlight is the impressive performance boost offered by the upgraded GPU.
This isn’t just a minor upgrade; the PS5 Pro’s GPU boasts a whopping 67% increase in Compute Units, faster memory, and up to 45% better overall performance compared to the standard PS5. However, the real game-changer lies in the realm of ray tracing. The PS5 Pro delivers a phenomenal 2-3x improvement in ray-tracing performance, a massive leap forward from the RDNA 2.5 or ‘almost RDNA 3’ hardware found in the base PS5.
Sony achieved this impressive jump by incorporating AMD’s cutting-edge RDNA 4 architecture into the PS5 Pro. Mark Cerny, Sony’s lead PlayStation system architect, confirmed this development, highlighting the groundbreaking nature of the new ray-tracing features. He explained that AMD developed these advanced ray-tracing capabilities as the next step in their roadmap, and the PS5 Pro was the first to utilize them. This initiative, spearheaded by Sony, has paved the way for a significant boost in ray-tracing performance for future Radeon graphics cards.
This development holds immense significance for the PC gaming landscape. Previously, AMD’s Radeon graphics cards struggled to match NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX in terms of ray-tracing capabilities. The PS5 Pro, however, represents a turning point, as it has driven AMD to significantly improve its ray-tracing technology. This newfound power will be passed on to future Radeon graphics cards, potentially bringing them on par with, or even surpassing, their NVIDIA counterparts in the realm of ray tracing.
