PlayStation 5 Pro leak touts a 45% performance uplift — reliable leaker confirms PS5 Pro rumors about 4X higher RT performance and AI-based PSSR upscaling

News
By Aaron Klotz
published

It seems like a PS5 Pro is in the works after all, and it will be substantially faster than the outgoing PS5.

Sony PlayStation 5
Sony PlayStation 5 (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has confirmed that recent specs and performance leaks surrounding the rumored PlayStation 5 Pro are real. Henderson reports that the source material of these new leaks came from documentation leaked from a PlayStation developer portal sent out to third-party developers this week. The leak Tom Henderson refers to states that the PS5 Pro will feature 45% higher rendering performance and two to four times the RT performance of the outgoing PlayStation 5. Henderson also reports that the PS5 Pro will launch later this year during the holiday season.

As with all leaks, take them with a grain of salt. However, Henderson is a widely known leader in the industry and has a purportedly accurate track record. As a result, it's safe to assume these PS5 Pro rumors are probably legitimate.

As previously mentioned, the leak unveiled massive performance upgrades for the PS5 Pro, yielding a 45% faster rendering rate than the PS5 and up to a 4x performance upgrade for ray tracing. To make these performance improvements happen, unknown hardware upgrades will give the PS5 Pro an impressive 33.5 TFLOPs of FP16 performance—over triple that of the PS5.

One hardware upgrade that the leaker did know about is the integration of an AI accelerator (or NPU) that will support 300 TOPS of 8-bit computation. This AI accelerator will reportedly drive Sony's upcoming PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR), an AI-based upscaling solution similar to DLSS and XeSS that will debut with the PS5 Pro.

The performance upgrades Sony is putting inside the PS5 Pro are immersive. Its sky-high graphical upgrades practically confirm that Sony will be jumping ship from RDNA 1 to possibly RDNA 4 due to the super immersive ray tracing performance for the PS5 Pro. 

Henderson states that Sony's goal with the PS5 Pro is to rectify specific performance issues with the PS5 at 4K resolutions. In games where the PS5 cannot achieve a solid 60 FPS, the PS5 Pro should be able to do so without any problems. The PS5 Pro will purportedly do this with its combination of superior graphics hardware and Sony's new PSSR AI-based upscaling — offering smooth 4K performance and 8K gaming through aggressive upscaling.

As mentioned, if Henderson's release date is legitimate, the PS5 Pro will be unveiled later this year during the holiday season.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    Here's the leak since you didn't bother to give credit:

    SV7BJKnZfP8
    You also have a broken link in the article.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    A dumb rumor that if Sony follows thru with it, they will not have learned their lesson from the PS4 Pro. The whole idea of a PS5 Pro just doesn't add up or make any sense.

    Sony has already said the PS5 is in the later stages of its life cycle. People are already anticipating what the PS6 will bring to the table. The massive leap in performance between the PS5 and PS5 Pro would seem to indicate it might be the actual PS6 and not the PS5 Pro.

    Sony has been lacking in 1st party exclusives this gen because of shortages when the PS5 launched and made those games available for the PS4 and PS4 Pro.

    I purchased a PS4 and then the PS4 Pro and not too many games took advantage of it because developers had to create games on the model which sold the most i.e. the vanilla PS4. Sony should take note of that and I won't be fooled again just like I passed on the PS Portal when I got burned on the PS Vita.
    Reply
  • purple_dragon
    Companies need to stop talking about 8k gaming, especially on consoles. 4K gaming on pc is still only possible with a RTX 4090 unless upscaling is used, even then performance varies by game and visual quality settings. A console is low to medium quality settings aggressively upscaled. Still not a mainstream option.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    up to a 4x performance upgrade for ray tracing. To make these performance improvements happen, unknown hardware upgrades will give the PS5 Pro an impressive 33.5 TFLOPs of FP16 performance—over triple that of the PS5.
    All of which points to an utterly unsurprising transition to RDNA3 or newer. It would be interesting if the new performance levels landed it north of the RX 7600, since that's currently their fastest non-chiplet based dGPU, though it has a narrower memory bus than the existing PS5.

    The performance upgrades Sony is putting inside the PS5 Pro are immersive. Its sky-high graphical upgrades practically confirm that Sony will be jumping ship from RDNA 1 to possibly RDNA 4
    Did you mean "impressive"? Oddly, "immersive" almost works... and no, the PS5 uses RDNA 2, not RDNA 1.

    If I didn't already own a PS5, my concern would be that they might lose backward compatibility with some PS4 titles that involve low-level GPU code specific to the GCN ISA. RDNA initially included GCN support and my theory about the rationale had a lot to do with consoles wanting to support prior-generation games. However, if we look back to what happened with the PS3, Sony was all too willing to drop hardware support for PS1 and PS2 games, in the interest of cost reductions.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    70% of the improved performance is likely due to their version of dlss/upsclaing.

    and 8k is pointless for even pc's as i';d argue less than 1% of ppl even own a display for it.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Heat_Fan89 said:
    A dumb rumor that if Sony follows thru with it, they will not have learned their lesson from the PS4 Pro. The whole idea of a PS5 Pro just doesn't add up or make any sense.

    Sony has already said the PS5 is in the later stages of its life cycle. People are already anticipating what the PS6 will bring to the table. The massive leap in performance between the PS5 and PS5 Pro would seem to indicate it might be the actual PS6 and not the PS5 Pro.
    IMO, the specs don't seem to improve quite enough for a PS6. Also, it would be uncharacteristically soon after the PS5's launch, especially considering supply was still limited until about 1 year ago! I remember when Amazon and Newegg stopped wait-listing PS5 consoles, and it was late spring of 2023.

    For me, the main things that support the idea of it being PS6 is the ray tracing and AI performance. These are the kinds of features that could impact the way games are written & designed by a big enough amount to justify a new console generation. However, I still don't think RT performance is quite there - 4x sure sounds like a lot, but comparing against the PS5 means you're starting from a very low baseline.

    Heat_Fan89 said:
    I purchased a PS4 and then the PS4 Pro and not too many games took advantage of it because developers had to create games on the model which sold the most i.e. the vanilla PS4. Sony should take note of that and I won't be fooled again
    Their point about 4k gaming is a fair one, IMO. Developers could target games to run at 60 fps at 1080p on a regular PS5, or 60 fps at 4k on a PS5 Pro.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru251 said:
    and 8k is pointless for even pc's as i';d argue less than 1% of ppl even own a display for it.
    Agreed, but... considering consoles are going to be on the market for at least a few years, I think it's not crazy for them to think about it.

    For sure, the PS5 Pro isn't going to be ideal for 8k gaming, but given this is Sony, maybe they want to be able to use it to help sell a few 8k TVs.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    bit_user said:
    I think it's not crazy for them to think about it.
    i'd argue 8k displays arent going to be norm for a decade.

    4k even in a house is still great.

    going to 8k has no benefit when you are physically limited by your house & only thing that would actually change is ur power bill pushing the extra pixels needed for no real benefit.

    if you put a 4k & 8k tv side by side most people could not tell a difference even if they stood 2 foot from the thing.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    The PS5 released in 2020, so it would be unsurprising to see a 45% or larger performance gain from a refreshed model 4 years later. If Sony is targeting the PS6 for a 2027-2028 release year then a Pro model with AI upscaling and frame gen makes a lot of sense.

    However, the global economy is garbage right now with nothing but worse news on the horizon, people don't have the kind of discretionary cash that they did in 2020, especially for consoles which don't have a trade-in program.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru251 said:
    i'd argue 8k displays arent going to be norm for a decade.
    But, if you're Sony, 8k TVs are soon going to be your flagship, high-margin products. So, anything they can do to make the case that consumers should buy one is a win for them.

    hotaru251 said:
    4k even in a house is still great.

    going to 8k has no benefit when you are physically limited by your house
    I totally agree. I'm just trying to see what might be in it, from their perspective.

    hotaru251 said:
    only thing that would actually change is ur power bill pushing the extra pixels needed for no real benefit.

    if you put a 4k & 8k tv side by side most people could not tell a difference even if they stood 2 foot from the thing.
    On the flip side, the fact that you can't distinguish 8k pixels (or even 4k, at a normal TV viewing distance!) means they can more easily get away with upscaling and don't have to render at native resolution!

    Sadly, a lot of the home theater & hi fi industry's business model involves selling people features & performance they don't need. However, if they do buy an 8k TV, they're definitely going to want to play games on it!

    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    However, the global economy is garbage right now with nothing but worse news on the horizon, people don't have the kind of discretionary cash that they did in 2020, especially for consoles which don't have a trade-in program.
    For people who are in the market for a console, which would you rather buy: a Pro model released in late 2024 or one that's 4 years older? Sure, the older one should be a couple hundred cheaper, but aside from that, the appeal seems obvious... especially if we're talking about people with 4k and 8k TVs.
    Reply