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News The PS5 Pro is surprisingly efficient — 30% performance uplift while operating at nearly the same power draw as the base PS5

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Why is it I get the impression they're trying real hard to sell us something we really don't need? I'm still not sold on a PS5 Pro when even Sony admitted that we are at the end of the PS5 lifecycle. This would have been a better sell if it was released a year ago and for $599, $100 more than the base PS5 with a disc drive included.
 
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Sony and MS want RT in their consoles, but AMD is a generation behind nVidia™ in RT, never mind upscaling and frame generation. Without RT in games, these consoles would clearly offer purchase-worthy performance.
 
umeng2002_2 said:
Sony and MS want RT in their consoles, but AMD is a generation behind nVidia™ in RT, never mind upscaling and frame generation. Without RT in games, these consoles would clearly offer purchase-worthy performance.
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It actually is quite capable for $699. It doesn't get credit, but the PS5 Pro is better than majority of PC gamers rigs per Steam hardware survey, and I think thats why they are so angry about it (PC gamers all over any PS5 Pro media comment sections stirring up tribalism).

RT simply isn't there on the hardware, but they are going to try to force it anyways, unfortunately. Marketing for 2-3x RT vs base PS5 sounds great on paper, but the PS5 was awful at RT without significant compromise. It's like marketing 2-3x more cache when all you had was 1mb in it in the first place. 3mb? Yeah, no. They also need Ray Reconstruction and a better upscaler, as in DF Jedi Survivor there was a lot of shimmering/noise. Alan Wake as well. If they ditched RT, it is actually solid hardware.
 
Mcnoobler said:
It actually is quite capable for $699. It doesn't get credit, but the PS5 Pro is better than majority of PC gamers rigs per Steam hardware survey, and I think thats why they are so angry about it
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For me, the issue really is how much more it costs vs. what you get. I bought my PS5 in summer of last year, shortly after the supply problems finally got sorted out and the N6 respin (CFI-1200) models were in the channel. Mine has the disc drive and I got it on sale for just $450. However, let's compare the list price of $400 for the original discless model vs. $700 for the Pro (which is also discless).

The main upgrade seems to be a GPU that's about 62.5% faster and maybe about 28.6% more memory bandwidth. Over a 4-year span, that amount of improvement actually seems like it's a little behind the curve! At the time of launch, Zen 2 was only about a year old (with Zen 3 having just launched) and now we're on Zen 5, yet the CPU cores didn't improve at all.

I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that the PS5 Pro's SoC is probably even cheaper to manufacture than the PS5's originally was. So, for Sony to basically charge 75% more for these specs basically seems like a ripoff. It's not enough improvement to justify that, given the amount of time that passed. Even after accounting for inflation. The only way it remotely makes sense is that they're Sony and they have a captive audience, with some people who are simply wiling to pay that much.

Mcnoobler said:
(PC gamers all over any PS5 Pro media comment sections stirring up tribalism).
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Now, this is the first critical thing I've posted about it, so don't think I'm on some kind of crusade. I'm just thinking about it and this is how I see it. Also, I'm no PC gamer, FWIW.

Mcnoobler said:
RT simply isn't there on the hardware, but they are going to try to force it anyways, unfortunately. Marketing for 2-3x RT vs base PS5 sounds great on paper, but the PS5 was awful at RT without significant compromise. It's like marketing 2-3x more cache when all you had was 1mb in it in the first place. 3mb? Yeah, no.
Click to expand...
Heh, perhaps not unlike how they tried to tell people the PS4 was a 4k console. Um, no.
 
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Heat_Fan89 said:
Why is it I get the impression they're trying real hard to sell us something we really don't need? I'm still not sold on a PS5 Pro when even Sony admitted that we are at the end of the PS5 lifecycle. This would have been a better sell if it was released a year ago and for $599, $100 more than the base PS5 with a disc drive included.
Click to expand...
Does Digital Foundry have a money trail going to Sony?

Who is "they"?
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
Why is it I get the impression they're trying real hard to sell us something we really don't need? I'm still not sold on a PS5 Pro when even Sony admitted that we are at the end of the PS5 lifecycle. This would have been a better sell if it was released a year ago and for $599, $100 more than the base PS5 with a disc drive included.
Click to expand...
When he said the PS5 is about to enter the final phase of its lifespan, he meant sales are going to enter the decline phase, not that the console is about to be replaced. PS5 Pro is using RDNA4 tech which isn't even released in other products yet. RDNA5 isn't likely to see a big enough boost over 4 to make a PS6 worth releasing. The soonest we should expect a PS6 is when RDNA6 hits the market which is going to be another 4 years minimum.
 
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bit_user said:
tWait for a Strix Halo mini PC, then. It will have a comparable GPU to the base PS5, a much more powerful CPU and a 256-bit memory datapath. The main downside will be that LPDDR5 will still offer only about half as much bandwidth as the PS5's GDDR6.
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I dont get it. why AMD is not releasing such strong APU into the desktop market. They can crush all mini PCs , the Mac mini M4 strong point is its powerful GPU ... they can even release professional productivity drivers for it ... alot will will buy them instead of paying thousands for mid ranged Quadro's .

as for bandwidth , they can use quad channels or more if they insisnt on not including the GDDR6 with the APU .
 
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spongiemaster said:
PS5 Pro is using RDNA4 tech which isn't even released in other products yet. RDNA5 isn't likely to see a big enough boost over 4 to make a PS6 worth releasing.
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To whatever extent that's true, the Pro isn't going to become the new mainstay. Therefore, the delta that really matters is PS5 -> PS6, not the 5Pro -> PS6.

spongiemaster said:
The soonest we should expect a PS6 is when RDNA6 hits the market which is going to be another 4 years minimum.
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PS3 -> PS4 was 7 years. PS4 -> PS5 was 7 years. I think it's a pretty safe bet that PS6 will launch in 2027.

Edit: there are fresh leaks that the PS6 will indeed use RDNA5 (which is being rebranded as UDNA).
 
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newtechldtech said:
I dont get it. why AMD is not releasing such strong APU into the desktop market. They can crush all mini PCs ,
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Look at the DRAM - it's using GDDR6. That needs to be soldered down, as does the CPU. It's not something you can put in a socket. It's also pretty expensive and very limited in capacity, which means you're either stuck with 16 or 32 GB, or else you have DDR5 on the side (like the PS5 Pro), at additional cost.

To get equivalent bandwidth out of LPDDR5(X), you need 512-bit, which only the M-series Max have. But, that also isn't going to fit an AM5 socket.

newtechldtech said:
the Mac mini M4 strong point is its powerful GPU ... they can even release professional productivity drivers for it ... alot will will buy them instead of paying thousands for mid ranged Quadro's .

as for bandwidth , they can use quad channels or more if they insisnt on not including the GDDR6 with the APU .
Click to expand...
I think AMD is potentially going to follow Apple's path, but it will take them a lot longer. The reason is simple: Apple has a captive market and if they choose not to use a dGPU, then the only way to get more graphics horsepower is by buying their bigger SoC, whatever the cost. Since AMD has to compete against dGPUs, their APU solution has to be better than you could get with a CPU + dGPU at equivalent cost.
 
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GDDR is high bandwidth, high latency, single application
GPU likes high bandwidth, doesn't care too much about latency
DDR is low bandwidth, low latency, multiple application
CPU likes low latency, though it certainly benefits from higher bandwidth.
Software/OS performance would be crippling if you used GDDR on a CPU.

And then there is the power consumption factor of GDDR, but that is for another day.

It's not like AMD can't design an ultra wide, 512-bit or 768-bit, DDR5 memory bus, they use it on their Threadripper Pro and EPYC platforms.
It's just that they choose not to.
If you are wondering, 768-bit is 12 channels.
 
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bit_user said:
The main downside will be that LPDDR5 will still offer only about half as much bandwidth as the PS5's GDDR6.
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Strix Halo bandwidth will be at least somewhat bolstered by having 32 MiB of Infinity Cache (PS5 has none).

AMD has come up with "effective bandwidth" figures for their GPUs with Infinity Cache. I don't know how to calculate that or determine to what extent it's misleading marketing. But the cache does help (graphics only).
 
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bit_user said:
For me, the issue really is how much more it costs vs. what you get. I bought my PS5 in summer of last year, shortly after the supply problems finally got sorted out and the N6 respin (CFI-1200) models were in the channel. Mine has the disc drive and I got it on sale for just $450. However, let's compare the list price of $400 for the original discless model vs. $700 for the Pro (which is also discless).

The main upgrade seems to be a GPU that's about 62.5% faster and maybe about 28.6% more memory bandwidth. Over a 4-year span, that amount of improvement actually seems like it's a little behind the curve! At the time of launch, Zen 2 was only about a year old (with Zen 3 having just launched) and now we're on Zen 5, yet the CPU cores didn't improve at all.

I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that the PS5 Pro's SoC is probably even cheaper to manufacture than the PS5's originally was. So, for Sony to basically charge 75% more for these specs basically seems like a ripoff. It's not enough improvement to justify that, given the amount of time that passed. Even after accounting for inflation. The only way it remotely makes sense is that they're Sony and they have a captive audience, with some people who are simply wiling to pay that much.


Now, this is the first critical thing I've posted about it, so don't think I'm on some kind of crusade. I'm just thinking about it and this is how I see it. Also, I'm no PC gamer, FWIW.


Heh, perhaps not unlike how they tried to tell people the PS4 was a 4k console. Um, no.
Click to expand...
For a tech savvy person like you the price is not justified as you can see through it but for a rich teenager it can be a different story.
 
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