Giovanni Colantonio / Digital Trends
As we reach the middle of this current console generation, people are wondering when improved “Pro” versions of consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will arrive. PS5 fans had their curiosity rewarded this week when Moore’s Law is Dead and Insider Gaming leaked the specs of what has become colloquially known as the PS5 Pro and is reportedly referred to as “Trinity” internally at Sony.
The leaked documents indicate that the PS5 Pro will have a similar CPU to the base model that can be modified to run at a slightly higher clock speed, as well as 67 teraflops of 16 bit floating-point calculations, a GPU with 60 AMD compute units and faster memory bandwidth, and more. These are improvements over the launch PS5 model, but it isn’t a console generation-like leap in terms of hardware power.
People should keep their expectations in check in terms of just how much better games will look and play on the PS5 Pro, but there are still some more realistic expectations people can have for games running on this improved PS5 hardware. In particular, I hope to see the following three improvements to PS5 games after the release of the PS5 Pro.
More stable frame rates
Capcom
One of the most disappointing things about this generation so far is the plethora of games that have had frame rate issues. As recently as this week’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, some AAA games are struggling to run at even 30 frames per second (fps) smoothly on base current-gen consoles. While analysis from Digital Foundry suggests that games limited by the PS5’s CPU won’t see massive frame rate boosts because of minimal improvements to that part of the console, it does point out that “greater stability” for 30-fps games is much more achievable.
At this point, even with these improvements, it seems like the pipe dream of most AAA games being able to run smoothly at 4K and 60 fps is still just that. Despite the disappointment that comes with that realization, I’ll be content if games run more smoothly on the PS5 Pro at whatever frame rate the developers can realistically aim for.
Better ray tracing
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Heading into this generation, ray tracing was yet another widely lauded feature and capability of a next-gen console like the PS5. It’s over three years in, and I’m still left relatively unimpressed by ray tracing’s implementation in PS5 games, especially when compared to their PC counterparts. Thankfully, the leaked documents suggest this is something the PS5 Pro will directly address with better ray-tracing architecture that improves performance by up to four times.
Lighting is incredibly important when it comes to establishing the mood, look, and tone of a scene or location in a video game, and ray tracing has the power to enhance that while making the lighting look more realistic. I feel like we still haven’t seen the full potential of ray tracing in video games, especially on console, so any improvements the PS5 Pro brings on this front are welcome.
True 8K support
Sony
Something that has always bugged me is that the PS5 box boasts 8K support, yet almost no games on the console have come anywhere close to having true 8K support. Admittedly, this is a resolution that’s not widespread yet, and support 8K would likely come at the cost of higher frame rates in most scenarios. That doesn’t make it feel any less misleading, though. Using machine learning, the PS5 Pro might make displaying in 8K a more achievable possibility.
The leaked documents tease something called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, which uses machine learning to generate color buffers and upscale a game resolution, and claim that 8K support for this feature is on its way. Even if 8K super-resolution support is achieved, I doubt we will see wide adoption of 8K resolution in video games this generation, especially in more graphically intense ones aiming for higher frame rates. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and can finally fulfill a promise made on PS5 boxes in 2020.
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