The PS5 Pro GPU is confirmed to be a custom AMD solution that features 60 computing units. We also know that it will run at least as fast as the PS5 GPU to avoid compatibility issues, and that it will use an architecture that isn’t yet available on PC.
All this gives us all the information we need to give a fairly complete breakdown of what the PS5 Pro GPU will be like, and also to find out which graphics cards would be its closest equivalents on PC in terms of raw power. In this regard, you should keep in mind that these are approximate equivalences, since it is impossible to find a direct equivalence.
Before discovering what are the closest graphical equivalents on PC to the PS5 Pro GPU, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze all the keys to said graphic core. Sony still has not confirmed the maximum working speed that it will be able to reach, so in this article I will start from the minimum level it should have, which is none other than the maximum frequency of the PS5 GPU.
PS5 Pro GPU specifications and architecture
- 60 compute units with dual-emission shaders.
- 3,840 shaders at a speed of 2,233 MHz.
- 240 textured units.
- 96 raster units.
- 60 next-generation cores to accelerate ray tracing.
- 4 MB L2 cache.
- Hidden Sin L3.
Sony has confirmed that the PS5 Pro’s graphics core uses an architecture that is not yet available on the market. Given that AMD currently has the RDNA 2, RDNA 3 and RDNA 3.5 architectures available, it is logical to think that the GPU of said console will use the RDNA 4 architecture, but in reality it is not like that, at least not entirely.
The PS5 Pro GPU It is mainly based on the RDNA 3 architecturebut since it is a semi-custom design, it will have some functions and technologies exclusive to the architecture. RDNA 4which are primarily focused on improving ray tracing performance. The most important improvements include:
- Dual Ray Tracing Intersection Enginewhich will improve raw GPU power by giving it the ability to compute a higher number of ray intersections per second.
- Ray tracing instance transform node, which will allow the GPU to work with high geometric loads in a more efficient way, and perform basic and important functions such as translation, rotation and scaling of geometry in the scene, among others.
- Three-pair ray tracing optimizationwhich will be essential to reduce the computational load required to calculate ray-triangle intersections, which are basic when working with ray tracing.
- Changing barycentric coded flags to simplify the detection of procedural nodes, which will help achieve a better hit-miss ratio when working with ray tracing, i.e. the classic “hit or miss” calculation.
- Improvements in BVH, which are applied when working with hierarchies of bounding volumes, which will improve performance at the geometry level in each scene both by positioning and grouping.
- Ray tracing support for OBB and node intersection instances, which introduces support for oriented box bounding boxes. This would make it possible to achieve greater accuracy and efficiency by working with smaller bounding volumes.
I can’t confirm yet if PS5 Pro will have all the key components to be able to work with trajectory tracing, but after seeing what Sony showed at the presentation of this console related to this technology applied to Gran Turismo 7 and Hogwarts Legacy I am quite convinced that said technology will not be within your reach.
PS5 Pro GPU Performance
In terms of raw power the GPU of this console is going to reach the 34,29 TFLOPs en FP32 if it works at a maximum of 2.23 GHz. As I have told you on other occasions, this power is possible thanks to the dual-emission shaders, which means that if we do not take this technology into account, its real power would be 17,149 TFLOPS in FP32.
PS5 has a maximum power of 10,29 TFLOPs en FP32which means that the PS5 Pro GPU will be 70% more powerful not counting dual-emission shaders. However, this doesn’t mean that gaming performance will improve by 70%, far from it. Sony itself said that we can expect a 45% improvement in rasterization compared to PS5.
In ray tracing the performance improvement will be approximately 100%, which means that PS5 Pro will be twice as powerful that PS5 works with this technology. This increase in performance will come from the increase in GPU power, but also from the use of a new architecture with advanced features that, according to Sony, are not available in RDNA 3.
With all the data we have it is possible to clarify a few things:
- That 45% increase in performance will make the PS5 Pro GPU feel more comfortable in resolutions higher than 1080pbut not in 4K. Most likely it will move between 1260p and 1600p and then scale back to 2160p, although I don’t rule out that in more demanding games it will have to go down to 1080p. That’s where the first performance data points to.
- By having twice the power in ray tracing You will be able to apply this technology with greater quality to games that already implemented it in a very limited way, and could allow its implementation in PS5 games that did not have it, such as Alan Wake 2, although in a reduced way due to its high demand.
- We shouldn’t expect any miracles in ray tracing, because the performance of PS5 with this technology was very low, and Doubling such a poor performance will not allow any miracles to be done in demanding games. We already saw a preview in Hogwarts Legacy, which improves reflections with ray tracing, but these are still very noisy.
The PS5 Pro GPU will feature PSSR technology, a smart rescaling which will work in a similar way to NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS. The use of hardware-accelerated AI should allow for better performance scaling, and will enable higher image quality.
The first analyses of this technology applied to games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth confirm it, and it is that only with PSSR you can already achieve a great improvement in image quality compared to the PS5 version. Not only is the image sharper, but the image is also more stable and a higher level of detail is maintained, without sacrificing significant performance improvements.
AMD graphics card equivalents
In terms of specifications and raw power, the closest thing to the PS5 Pro GPU on PC would be a Radeon RX 6800. This graphics card has a power of 16,17 TFLOPs in FP 32 and is configured with:
- 60 compute units with dual-emission shaders.
- 3,840 shaders at a speed of 2,105 MHz in turbo mode.
- 240 textured units.
- 96 raster units.
- 60 first-generation cores to accelerate ray tracing.
- 256-bit bus and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory at 16 Gbps.
- 4 MB L2 cache.
- 128 MB of L3 cache.
The Radeon RX 6800 has more dedicated graphics memory, and Its 128 MB of L3 cache give it a significant advantage compared to the PS5 Pro GPU, which in theory would not have any type of L3 cache. However, the graphics core of Sony’s console should compensate for this with the improvements inherent to the RDNA 3 architecture.
In ray tracing the PS5 Pro GPU should be superior to the Radeon RX 6800. According to the data provided by Sony, it should be at the level of a high-end graphics card within the Radeon RX 7000 series, thanks to the exclusive improvements of the RDNA 4 architecture, but until I see concrete data on performance and quality of ray tracing in games, I prefer not to make concrete predictions. Let me explain why.
When Sony announced PS5 it said that ray tracing was going to be possible on this console, and in reality this technology has been too big for it. The company exaggerated performance data with ray tracing, and I think it might be doing the same with the PS5 Pro GPU. When this console hits the market and I see what level it can reach in ray tracing, I’ll be able to make a well-founded equivalency.
NVIDIA graphics card equivalents
In this case, it is not possible to establish equivalences at the specification level, as is logical, because the architectures used by NVIDIA and AMD are very different. However, in terms of power we can find a very accurate equivalence, the GeForce RTX 3070 Tiwhich performs almost on par with a Radeon RX 6800 in rasterization.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has a power of 21.75 TFLOPS in FP32. In raw power it surpasses the Radeon RX 6800, and yet its average rasterization performance is slightly lower (around 2% or 3% less, depending on the games used). I wanted to give you this data so that you can see that TFLOPS are not a reliable indicator real gaming performance.
However, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti performs much better than the Radeon RX 6800 in ray tracing, and has the advantage of having DLSS Super Resolution support, an intelligent rescaling that as I told you before works in a similar way to PSSR.
I’m sure you’ve seen rumors that the PS5 Pro GPU is closest equivalent to the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, A real nonsense that is obviously not trueThis graphics card is much more powerful in rasterization, and in ray tracing it plays in another league.
Let me illustrate with an example. Alan Wake 2 configured with path tracing in 1080p and maximum quality runs at a average of 50 FPS on a GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER without upscaling or frame rendering. The Radeon RX 6800 manages around 20 FPS at the same settings, and a Radeon RX 7700 XT barely reaches 25 FPS.
I have mentioned the Radeon RX 7700 XT because this graphics card It has also been used as a reference of possible equivalence, within the RDNA 3 architecture, to the PS5 Pro GPU. Digital Foundry itself said at the time that by specifications we could also talk about the Radeon RX 7800 XT, but that this would have to receive a significant reduction in frequencies to be close to the level of the PS5 Pro GPU.
Taking into account everything we know right now about the PS5 Pro GPU, and the first performance data we have, I’m inclined to think that in rasterization It will be more or less at the level of a Radeon RX 6800and in ray tracing it could be a little above this.
Technologically speaking, it will be superior to said graphics card, because as I said, it will have the improvements that AMD introduced with RDNA 3, and because it will also have the advances of RDNA 4 working with ray tracing. It will also have another important advantage that I have already explained to you, PSSR, a technology that in my opinion It is most interesting that Sony has introduced with PS5 Pro.
This console is not going to represent a leap forward from PS5, you can be absolutely sure of that. The real evolution will come with PS6, a console that will mark the beginning of the next generation, and which will be configured with a All-new CPU and GPUbased on much more advanced and powerful architectures.
Source: www.muycomputer.com
