The recent PS5 Pro announcement left many curious about one particular detail – the console’s processor specifications were notably absent from Sony’s presentation. As Digital Foundry’s detailed analysis reveals, this omission might be explained by the relatively modest CPU improvements, showing just a 10% performance boost in CPU-intensive games.
The slight performance uplift comes from an exciting trade-off: the PS5 Pro can boost its CPU frequency by 385 MHz above the standard PS5’s clock speed, reaching 3.85 GHz. However, this comes at a cost – the GPU has to dial back its frequencies by roughly 1.5% to accommodate this boost.
Real-world gaming tests paint an exciting picture. Take Cyberpunk 2077, for instance. In crowded areas with numerous NPCs – typically a CPU-intensive scenario – the PS5 Pro pushes closer to 60 FPS in performance mode, though with some fluctuations. The base PS5, in comparison, struggles to maintain 50 FPS in these areas.
However, Baldur’s Gate 3 tells a different story. Even with the PS5 Pro’s enhanced processor, the game’s demanding city environments still pose a challenge, with performance hovering around 40 FPS and occasionally dipping lower. It’s worth noting that while Baldur’s Gate 3 has been optimized for the PS5 Pro, Cyberpunk 2077’s PS5 Pro enhancement patch is still pending.
Where the PS5 Pro truly shines is in its graphics capabilities. The console boasts 67% more graphics cores than the standard model and cleverly utilizes DDR5 memory, keeping the full 16 GB of GDDR6 available for games. These improvements contribute a substantial 45% performance boost over the original PS5.
Both PS5 variants share AMD’s Zen 2 architecture at their core, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. However, as newer CPU architectures continue to emerge, this particular choice of processor is beginning to show its age, with more recent designs offering significant advantages in terms of performance and efficiency.
