Sony only took the wraps off its svelte new PlayStation 5 Slim redesign a few weeks ago, but tipsters claim the gaming giant is already preparing to launch a supercharged new version of its console.
An upgraded PS5 is rumoured to launch in less than a year, with whispers pointing to a September 2024 UK release date. Dubbed PlayStation 5 Pro, the new console will purportedly arrive with a more powerful processor, dedicated hardware to handle ray-tracing, and a beefed-up GPU.
The upshot of these new components will be better performance and sustained 4K Ultra HD visuals over 30 frames per second, sources say. For players who love graphics-intensive titles, this could be a must-have upgrade.
For those who don't know, ray-tracing is a rendering technique that produces incredibly realistic lighting effects by mapping out the exact pathways of individual light rays. This creates lifelike shadows and reflections that shift dynamically as players move around the scene or interact with the light source.
There's no word on whether the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro will arrive with a new design, but there are plenty of rumours about the powerful new processor built into the console
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As you might imagine, this requires an incredible amount of processing grunt.
In fact, it’s the reason that most titles on PlayStation 5 offer players a choice between a “Performance Mode” which prioritises a higher frame rate above everything else, and a “Quality Mode”, which dynamically lowers the frame rate to unlock a higher picture resolution and ray-tracing.
By offloading the lighting effects to a dedicated componentinside the PS5 Pro, extra headroom will be freed up on the main processor to focus on other aspects of the game. The result? We’d expect to see more stable performance, faster frame rates at higher quality, and other improvements.
The leaked specs for the so-called PS5 Pro claim that we’ll see...
For comparison, the current PS5 CPU maxes out at 3.5GHz and its GPU hits 10.28 teraflops.
If these leaked specs are accurate, some industry watchers claim the generational leap between the original PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro will not be as substantial as the PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro.
That’s likely because developers haven’t fully tapped into the potential power already available under the bonnet of the current PlayStation 5. Several core technologies for this generation, including Unreal Engine 5, have taken longer to be adopted than expected.
It’s always worth taking these rumours with a pinch of salt as nothing is confirmed until we hear from Sony. However, a PS5 Pro launch in September 2024 would fit with the schedule established last generation. Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 Pro just three years after the original console.
Renown leaker Tom Henderson wouldn’t be drawn on whether the leaked details on the components were accurate. However, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Henderson said that Sony anticipatesa number of high-profile leaks at the moment as the Japanese company recently started to mail out developer test kits for the PS5 Pro.
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Can't comment on other peoples leaks because I don't know.
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) December 11, 2023
Internally, Sony is expecting full specs to leak this month because of dev ket distribution to 3rd party studios. https://t.co/sJ9x4OGjtQ
These kits allow software developers to update their games and future-proof upcoming titles to take advantage of new hardware.
It’s a common industry practice and means there should be a number of games that leverage the improvements built into the PS5 Pro when it launches ...whenever that date comes around.
