PS5 Pro: Ray Tracing Revolution Coming Soon
Recently, there has been a proliferation of information concerning the anticipated Sony PlayStation 5 Pro. Known internally as “Trinity,” and equipped with a SoC codenamed “Viola,” it continues Sony’s tradition of naming their hardware after characters from “The Matrix.”
According to The Verge, sources familiar with Sony’s plans have disclosed that developers are now required to ensure that games remain compatible with the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, with a particular focus on enhancing ray tracing capabilities. Sony aims to launch the PlayStation 5 Pro by the end of this year and is encouraging developers to extensively utilize graphical features such as ray tracing. Games that demonstrate significant enhancements may be designated with the “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to feature a GPU based on the RDNA 3 architecture, rendering speeds up to 45% faster than the standard version, and employs a more robust ray tracing architecture—three times that of its predecessor. It will also be equipped with larger, faster memory, increasing the bandwidth from 448 GB/s to 576 GB/s to boost the efficiency of ray tracing. Although the custom SoC’s primary advancements focus on the GPU, the CPU, still using the Zen 2 architecture, has also been enhanced, providing a “high CPU frequency mode” that is 10% higher than the standard model, reaching 3.85 GHz. Choosing this mode allocates more power to the CPU, while the GPU frequency decreases by approximately 1.5%, resulting in a performance decrease of about 1%.
Developers will gain more memory access, with the PlayStation 5 Pro offering 13.7GB of memory compared to the standard version’s 12.5GB—an increase of 1.2GB. The PlayStation 5 Pro will support Artificial Intelligence-driven PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) technology, a super-resolution technique developed by Sony to enhance frame rates and image quality. A “machine learning custom architecture” has been built into the PlayStation 5 Pro, providing 300 TOPS of machine learning computation power (8bit integer).
After the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro, the original standard model will continue to be sold. Sony hopes that game developers will support both models, with existing games capable of achieving higher performance on the new model through updates. It is understood that developers can now order test kits, and Sony expects that from August onwards, every game submitted should be compatible with the PlayStation 5 Pro.
