PS5 Pro Deep-Dive Details Technical Upgrades as Sony Announces New AMD Collaboration

Lead system architect Mark Cerny revealed that the ideation for the PS5 Pro began in 2020, the same year that the standard PS5 launched.

Written by Manas Mitul | Updated: 19 December 2024 22:07 IST

PS5 Pro Deep-Dive Details Technical Upgrades as Sony Announces New AMD Collaboration

Photo Credit: Sony

The PS5 Pro was officially announced in September after multiple leaks

Highlights

The PS5 Pro is priced at $699.99 (roughly Rs. 58,750)
Sony's collaboration with AMD will focus on ML-based technology
PS5 Pro comes with 2TB SSD storage and supports Wi-Fi 7

Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro, the upgraded version of its current-gen console, in September. In a technical presentation, Mark Cerny, lead architect of the PS5, gave an overview of the PS5 Pro's features. Cerny has now gone in-depth into the technical aspects of the console in a new deep-dive video, detailing the PS5 Pro's advanced ray tracing features, the new AI-driven upscaling technique and more. Cerny and Sony have also revealed a collaboration with AMD on Machine Learning-based technology for improved graphics and gameplay.

PS5 Pro Technical Deep-Dive

At a seminar at Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ, Cerny gave a “bits and bytes” talk on the PS5 Pro, diving into the technical details that went into Sony's newest console. In a near 40-minute presentation, shared on YouTube Wednesday, Cerny detailed the “tightly focussed” approach to upgrades for a mid-generation Pro variant that prioritises keeping the work needed from game developers to an absolute minimum, while bringing improvements that feel significant to gamers.

Cerny revealed that the ideation for the PS5 Pro began in 2020, the same year that the standard PS5 launched. The upgraded console, which launched November 7 in select markets, comes with three headline performance features — an upgraded GPU, upgraded ray tracing hardware, and a new AI-based upscaling technology, dubbed PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR).

PS5 Pro Launched in Select Markets With Over 50 Enhanced Games Confirmed

Cerny detailed the technical aspects of the larger GPU on the PS5 Pro. The base PS5 runs on RDNA 2 GPU, which comes with 18 sub-units, called Work Group Processors (WGPs). The PS5 Pro's “hybrid” RDNA GPU, on the other hand, comes with 30 WGPs. In the video, Cerny explained the technology behind the 16.7 teraflops “hybrid” RDNA GPU on the PS5 Pro, that combines multiple generations of RDNA technology.

“The base technology for PS5 Pro is somewhere between RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. I'm calling it RDNA 2.x,” Cerny said. According to him, that choice makes it easier for developers to port their games to the PS5 Pro.

“Ray tracing uses what I'm calling Future RDNA technology. It's roadmap RDNA that's well past the feature set today. It's showing up here first,” Cerny said. “And machine learning is custom, or to be more specific, it's custom enhancements to RDNA,” he added.

PS5 Pro Revealed With Better GPU, More Storage, but No Disc Drive: See Price

According to Cerny, the PS5 Pro required faster and more memory to support its larger GPU. The upgraded console's system memory has a bandwidth of 576Gbps — 28 percent faster than the base PS5's 448Gbps. The PS5 Pro also has over 1GB more memory available to games, which is utilised to integrate PSSR, adding ray tracing, and increasing rendering resolution of games. To achieve this, the PS5 Pro comes with a separate slower DDR5 RAM dedicated to the operating system, thus freeing up faster memory for games.

Cerny also elaborated on the PS5 Pro's “RDNA 2.x” graphics. The middle-of-the-road upgrade brings a number of features from RDNA 3 technology, while keeping things that would cause complications at bay. He further detailed the technical aspects of improvements to ray tracing and machine learning technology packed in the PS5 Pro.

Finally, Cerny announced the beginning of Sony's deeper collaboration with AMD, codenamed Amethyst, with a focus on future hardware architectures for Machine Learning.

Sony PlayStation 5 Pro

KEY SPECS
NEWS

HDD 2TB PCie Gen 4 NVMe SSD

Processor Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2 CPU @ 3.5GHz with SMT

More Sony Gaming Consoles

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Further reading: PS5 Pro, PS5, Sony, AMD, Mark Cerny

Manas Mitul

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In his time as a journalist, Manas Mitul has written on a wide spectrum of beats including politics, culture and sports. He enjoys reading, walking around in museums and rewatching films. Talk to Manas about football and tennis, but maybe don’t bring up his video game backlog. More