I hope you’re ready for a delicious stats sandwich, because the latest PS5 Pro leak points to some seriously eye-rubbing numbers. If these fresh rumors are true — which seems likely, given the strength of the source — PlayStation fans should book their tickets for that blisteringly quick hype train, post-haste.
According to the pixel-counting wizards over at Digital Foundry (via the team’s weekly post advertising their DF Weekly pod on Eurogamer), the long-rumored PS5 Pro will get a 227% teraflop increase over the OG PS5. That’s a ludicrous bump in power if true, with this incredible number coming via Sony’s developer portal. For context, this fresh speculation says the upgraded console will sport 33.5 Tflops compared to the 10.23 teraflops of both the 2020 launch model and last year’s PS5 Slim.
There is a fairly major caveat according to longtime industry veteran Richard Leadbetter, though. “The same Sony documents suggest only an extra 45 percent of actual throughout,” reports DF’s Leadbitter. “Part of the explanation comes from the RDNA 3 architecture with its dual-issue FP32 support, which doubles the amount of instructions processed, but which does not typically double game performance.”
The big takeaway? That headline reported figure in regards to increased compute power looks jaw-dropping, no doubt, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll start to see PS5 Pro games running in native 4K (3,840 x 2,160) at 120 frames per second or more.
There are a loooooooot of numbers to sift through in Leadbetter’s report, so let me try to cut to the chase of his brilliant, if head-spinning writing. To quote a video games journalist who can basically analyze frame rate stats like they were sifting through green digits in The Matrix, a “67 percent increase in compute units only translates to 45 percent of extra performance.” In that regard, I’d suggest myself and Rich have slightly different definitions of the word “only," because that still seems like one hell of a performance increase for a speculated console that merely represents a mid-gen refresh, rather than a full generation jump to the equally rumored PS6.
Sensibly, Rich also states we should all probably cool our jets and wait until the PS5 Pro is out in the wild before dribbling over numbers and their real-world, in-game gains. And that’s the stance I think most reasonably-headed PlayStation gamers will hopefully adapt while we all wait for Sony’s next console to be, y’know, officially announced.
The Pro leagues
Stepping away from Tflops, the proposed massive GPU upgrade with the PS5 Pro also comes down to the cache structure of how its APU operatues. This is super techy, but bear with me. The latest Sony leaks suggest The 4MB L2 cache of the Pro and current PS5 will remain the same, yet crucially, the L0 and L1 caches will double from 16KB to 32KB and 128KB to256KB respectively. What does this mean in terms of squeezing the most graphical goodness out of the best PS5 games? Ray tracing performance should get a big ol’ upgrade.
In an age where the physical grunt of gaming hardware is becoming less and less important in the PC space thanks to AI super sampling methods such as Nvidia DLSS, it’s also encouraging that these latest leaks suggest the PS5 Pro will benefit from a similar form of tech. The Sony documents point to DirectX12 Ultimate features that missed the cut for PS5, but will now take the form of “PSSR upscaling” in the words of Leadbitter in the case of the Pro. Indeed, the respected journo suggests “PSSR upscaling could be just as transformative for Sony as it has been for Nvidia DLSS.”
If all of the above holds true, we could be looking at a new PlayStation that is so powerful of a system which utilizes machine-learning techniques so effectively, that the rumored PS6 2027 release date no longer looks like a great hardship to endure.
As someone who primarily plays his favorite titles on one of the best gaming PCs, I’m all for significant hardware upgrades whenever they become available. At time of writing, the PS5 Pro looks like an incredibly tasty piece of hardware. Now all it has to do is run GTA 6 at 60 fps.
More from Tom's Guide
- I got tired of waiting for the PS5 Pro so I upgraded to the Xbox Series X
- PS5 Pro leak confirms revamped GPU, improved ray tracing and more
- GTA 6 release potentially delayed until 2026
