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PS5 Pro devkits arrive at third-party studios, Sony expects Pro specs to leak

With the recent news that Sony isn't planning on releasing any major title this year, it's not hard to imagine that they'd delay the launch of the Pro until they have a game that can showcase it.
I would want the pro delayed if it could improve the specs maybe releasing in 2025 could guarantee full rdna 4 and zen 5
 

Imtjnotu

Member
And we should be willing to pay it bring on the first 700$ PlayStation the ps5 pro
Boombox Shut Up GIF
 

saintjules

Member
With the recent news that Sony isn't planning on releasing any major title this year, it's not hard to imagine that they'd delay the launch of the Pro until they have a game that can showcase it.

To be fair they said they aren't releasing major existing franchise titles until 2025. What's to say we don't get a few other big new games prior to the end of the year?
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
Tbh the only thing that would get me to pick up a Pro would be if it could play Cyberpunk with full path tracing at 1440/60 everything maxed otherwise I'm happy to wait on a PS6, whether it's possible is another thing
A 4090 paired with a CPU thats over $350... does Cyberpunk, at 1440p path traced... at 39fps.

Thats a $3000 PC.... 39fps. And you expect some $600 console to do that?
 
I expect we'll probably see 16GB / 256-Bit again, but the chips will be bumped from 14Gbps to 18Gbps taking us from 448GB/s to 576GB/s..

Paired likely with a doubling in CPU cache and a considerable bump in GPU cache to further ease the load on RAM.

The SSD+I/O side will likely remain as is, as it's already more than capable of feeding the system.

In addition, they could add some LPDDR ram to offload non-Game functions. Making the full 16GB of GDDR6 available to games vs the current ~13.5GB. If they went for 4GB LPDDR5X on a 64-Bit interface they could offload all non-game functions and still have 1+GB left over to either make system functions more performant, add additional features, they could even expose it to devs to use as a small overflow or scratchpad, perhaps for low latency operations. Though if they took this route I'd expect they to go for the bare minimum approach and do something like 2GB LPDDR4 and give 15.5GB GDDR6 to devs.

As for what I'd like to see..... Just a straightforward 20GB GDDR6 (320-Bit 16-18Gbps) @ 640-720GB/s, paired with Zen 4C (2x the PS5 Zen 2 implementation's Cache) & 3D V-Cache on the GPU.

But yeah, real-world I expect 16GB @ 576GB/s (256-Bit 18Gbps), 2GB LPDDR4 & a CPU/GPU cache bump.

Looking ahead to PS6 I'd expect 32GB GDDR7 @ 1.0-1.2TB/s, considerable higher caches and the SSD will see a 2x bump just by way of a going to PCIe Gen5; paired with the I/O and Decompression being adjusted to match.
Won’t pcie gen 6 be out by then
 
Do you believe you could get 13900k @5.8Ghz + 32GB of RAM + 4090 levels of performance from a $700 console? Hell... even an $800 console made in 2025? If thats the case then there is something very wrong with how you view tech.
No of course not NVIDIA would be the biggest failure in pc history if that was the case but I do think for that price they could get maybe 70% of the way there
 

SonGoku

Member
The base PS5 APU, has already had its R&D done and dusted. Since 2019/2020 to be exact. Node shrinks on an existing architecture require very little extra R&D. So why complicate the PS5pro R&D just to accommodate something that's not even needed?
Thats not what im suggesting though
Im saying take the PS5 Pro APU and remove GPU bits, considering GPU architectures are modular they can remove (just for arguments sake) 2 shader engines and downclock to base PS5 speeds

What im proposing is for the PS5 slim to use the exact same GPU architecture as Pro (RDNA 3.5/4) GPU but smaller to recycle the R&D done on the 4nm APU design and run PS5 games in BC mode similarly to how the Pro would run non patched PS5 games.

The incentive would be cost reductions down the line and Sony being able to keep PS5 momentum another 4 years by dropping the price of the slim without taking losses
 

SonGoku

Member
Coupled with Zen 5 it is. Remember, these would have been taped out a year ago or more.
I'm not so sure about RDNA 4 being out of the table, remember ever since Sony switched to AMD they used the latest and greatest GPU architecture available on the year of release on PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5. So they clearly have early access to the architecture to make these decisions. Though sure they might skip some features here and there that arent needed for the console just like Cerny implied they did for PS5 with RDNA2.

Zen 5 yeah... Judging by Cernys past comments i rather be pessimistic and assume Zen 2 and be pleasently surprised down the line with something like Zen 4. I remember him saying they did not upgrade the PS4 Pro GPU because it wasn't a new gen and made similar comments about things like CPU, SSD defining new gen hardware.
This thing has been sitting for awhile so yeah don't expect Zen 5 until next gen boxes, you are spot on
😲 I would hope 4 years from now PS6 will use at least Zen 6, Zen 5 would be very outdated by then
 
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HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
I'm not so sure about RDNA 4 being out of the table, remember ever since Sony switched to AMD they used the latest and greatest GPU architecture available on the year of release on PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5. So they clearly have early access to the architecture to make these decisions. Though sure they might skip some features here and there that arent needed for the console just like Cerny implied they did for PS5 with RDNA2.

Zen 5 yeah... Judging by Cernys past comments i rather be pessimistic and assume Zen 2 and be pleasently surprised down the line with something like Zen 4. I remember him saying they did not upgrade the PS4 Pro GPU because it wasn't a new gen and made similar comments about things like CPU, SSD defining new gen hardware.

😲 I would hope 4 years from now PS6 will use at least Zen 6, Zen 5 would be very outdated by then
No clue whats on tap for PS6
 

Perrott

Member
I am starting to think the Pro does not exist
Nah, Colin Moriarty's sources have confirmed to him its real.


Where are the leaks? If the thing is out there how has it not leaked yet?
The last State of Play was leaked in its entirety like 5 days in advance, yet for some reason none of the people privately in the know about all that was coming leaked the PS Studios x Kojima Productions x Columbia Pictures collaboration for the action espionage new IP Physint from Hideo Kojima.

Perhaps no one in the know at the studios want to take the risk of having a PS5 Pro leak traced back to them.
 
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seeing what’s going on with Xbox I think I’ll get this once it’s confirmed/released and just use that and switch for my gaming.especially with the likes of GTA 6 on the horizon.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Nah, Colin Moriarty's sources have confirmed to him its real.



The last State of Play was leaked in its entirety like 5 days in advance, yet for some reason none of the people privately in the know about all that was coming leaked the PS Studios x Kojima Productions x Columbia Pictures collaboration for the action espionage new IP Physint from Hideo Kojima.

Perhaps no one in the know at the studios want to take the risk of having a PS5 Pro leak traced back to them.

Well, damn, that settles it. Colin "Cerny" Moriarty has confirmed its existence.
 

Perrott

Member
Mr. Bloodborne 2 confirms it's real? Anyone else?
Yeah, let's pretend that because he had one miss, suddenly all his other leaks that turned out to be true (The Quarry, the Tomb Raider and Star Wars Eclipse scripts, Red Dead Redemption remaster, etc) are invalid, as well as his undeniable and deep connections to the North American game development scene having been the editor-in-chief of PlayStation content at IGN for years.

For the record, a lot of people, some very reliable, also heard echoes of Bluepoint working on Bloodborne stuff at the time. It kinda feels to me like one of those Star Fox: Grand Prix type of situations that got rolling in the grapevine and spiraled out of control.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
A 4090 paired with a CPU thats over $350... does Cyberpunk, at 1440p path traced... at 39fps.

Thats a $3000 PC.... 39fps. And you expect some $600 console to do that?
I'm not expecting it in the slightest, I'm saying that in order for me to pick up a Pro it needs to be outputting visuals a proper level above what the PS5 can currently do and the only thing I've seen do that to date is Cyberpunk with RT Overdrive
 
An equivalent zen 5 in 2024-2025 shouldn’t be that much more expensive than zen 2 so no

First of all, that's not true. The new process nodes are more efficient, but Moore's Law has been replaced by the law of diminishing returns - at last. It's very expensive to fab chips, and each new node process has been hit by this. Just how it is.

Second of all, it's already been said, but if this thing is launching in November the specs were decided a while back and we would expect to see it go into manufacturing soon. Even a 2025 launch, I don't think we'd see prices drop enough to justify going to Zen 5. There is no use because games in development are not going to push hardware when there is a low spec base unit out. Zen 5 power or beyond is for the PS6 at this point, it makes absolutely no business sense.
 

welshrat

Member
Have to say, a lot of news outlets seem to be posting about it now, does seem to be gathering traction. I reckon some solid leaks in the next few months.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
Thats not what im suggesting though
Im saying take the PS5 Pro APU and remove GPU bits, considering GPU architectures are modular they can remove (just for arguments sake) 2 shader engines and downclock to base PS5 speeds

What im proposing is for the PS5 slim to use the exact same GPU architecture as Pro (RDNA 3.5/4) GPU but smaller to recycle the R&D done on the 4nm APU design and run PS5 games in BC mode similarly to how the Pro would run non patched PS5 games.

The incentive would be cost reductions down the line and Sony being able to keep PS5 momentum another 4 years by dropping the price of the slim without taking losses
Oh I get what you are saying now. Basically that they should have two variants of the same APU, like how the current PS5 APU has 2 Shader engines with 10 work groups each resulting in a 40CU total (with 36Cu active), the PS5pro would just be a variant of that but with 2SE with 15WG/SE resulting in 60CU total with 56CU active. And the only other differences would be things like the increased caches where applicable.

That could make sense I suppose, with the only issue I see is if the PS5pro is using RDNA3/4-based WGs. Those units are fundamentally different from RDNA1/2 WGs in such a way that they would be wasted on a stock PS5. Eg. In RDNA3, each CU has twice the number of ALUs and Vector units compared to RDNA1/2. This is why RDNA3 is capable of VOPD (or dual issue compute). Ot at least the first generation of it which translates to just around a 20% improvement in actual compute. The reason for that has something to do with how the VOPD data results are compiled, something about two inputs but one output. So rather than doubling of compute, you just end up with overall faster compute. RDNA4 could address this and allow you have actual real double compute.

Anyways, all that hardware would be wasted on the base PS5.

Then the question becomes, assuming both the PS5 and PS5pro APUs are on 5nm at some point. And you are making 3 PS5s for every 1 PS5pro. If you use the current PS5 arch but on 5nm, you still end up with a chip that is smaller than a stripped-down PS5pro-based chip even with them having identical CUs. Because there are things in the PS5pro CU that you just can't mess with that would mean a PS5pro CU will be bigger than a PS5 CU even on the same node. That means its still cheaper to make a PS5 chip, based on the current PS5 architecture.

Its one thing to just remove blocks of CUs, cache...etc. Its another thing if you have to start changing RTUs, ALUs....etc within a CU.
 

Ronin_7

Member
honestly if we believe what Sony said that the PS5 is in the later stages of its lifecycle than there is no reason for them to release a PS5 Pro ZERO.

Maybe they learned that there will be no Series X Pro and instead Microsoft was going to try and jumpstart the Next Gen and Sony has decided to revamp the Pro into eh 6. Give is more power / gpu and keep refining it to launch within the same window as the NextBox?

Developers can have the Current kits which give them a baseline and they would have time to get new units and improve on them one there next 2-3 years.
Providing a real NEXTGEN feeling
You took what Sony said way too literally.

PlayStation 6 is 2028, PlayStation 5 Pro is happening this fall.
 
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XesqueVara

Member
I'm not so sure about RDNA 4 being out of the table, remember ever since Sony switched to AMD they used the latest and greatest GPU architecture available on the year of release on PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5. So they clearly have early access to the architecture to make these decisions. Though sure they might skip some features here and there that arent needed for the console just like Cerny implied they did for PS5 with RDNA2.

Zen 5 yeah... Judging by Cernys past comments i rather be pessimistic and assume Zen 2 and be pleasently surprised down the line with something like Zen 4. I remember him saying they did not upgrade the PS4 Pro GPU because it wasn't a new gen and made similar comments about things like CPU, SSD defining new gen hardware.

😲 I would hope 4 years from now PS6 will use at least Zen 6, Zen 5 would be very outdated by then
Zen 6 is just an optimization of Zen 5 so don't worry about that, all the Funny things are happening on Zen 5
 

SonGoku

Member
Anyways, all that hardware would be wasted on the base PS5.
This goes beyond the scope of my knowledge but couldn't they take advantage of the more modern hardware by introducing a use it at your own risk boost mode that has slight chance of breaking the game. That way GPU/RT bound games with dynamic resolution could hit upper bound of targets or more stable fps
PS5pro CU will be bigger than a PS5 CU even on the same node. That means its still cheaper to make a PS5 chip, based on the current PS5 architecture.
Correct but the second question we should be asking is:
Whats cheaper to manufacture a PS5 APU on 6nm or a mini version of the Pro APU on 5nm? Also taking into account a PS5 Slim with mini pro APU would be smaller and more power efficient thereby reducing other manufacturing costs like cooling, power supply, shipping.

Original PS5 APU would be smaller on 5nm yes, but that's like a 100+ mill R&D investment to shrink the chip to 5nm which is why they haven't done it already
 
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saintjules

Member
This goes beyond the scope of my knowledge but couldn't they take advantage of the more modern hardware by introducing a use it at your own risk boost mode that has slight chance of breaking the game. That way GPU/RT bound games with dynamic resolution could hit upper bound of targets or more stable fps

Correct but the second question we should be asking is:
Whats cheaper to manufacture a PS5 APU on 6nm or a mini version of the Pro APU on 5nm? Also taking into account a PS5 Slim with mini pro APU would be smaller and more power efficient thereby reducing other manufacturing costs like cooling, power supply, shipping.

Original PS5 APU would be smaller on 5nm yes, but that's like a 100+ mill R&D investment to shrink the chip to 5nm which is why they haven't done it already

Didn't realize you were back. Was looking for you during the launch of the PS5 back in 2020. Didn't know you were active again :messenger_grinning_squinting:
 
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Mr.Phoenix

Member
This goes beyond the scope of my knowledge but couldn't they take advantage of the more modern hardware by introducing a use it at your own risk boost mode that has slight chance of breaking the game. That way GPU/RT bound games with dynamic resolution could hit upper bound of targets or more stable fps
They can't do that. Well, not can't.. but more like won't. It would be akin to having something like an XB1S. The base PS5 based on the PS5pro architecture, would perform better than a normal base PS5. I just don't see sony doing that.
Correct but the second question we should be asking is:
Whats cheaper to manufacture a PS5 APU on 6nm or a mini version of the Pro APU on 5nm? Also taking into account a PS5 Slim with mini pro APU would be smaller and more power efficient thereby reducing other manufacturing costs like cooling, power supply, shipping.

Original PS5 APU would be smaller on 5nm yes, but that's like a 100+ mill R&D investment to shrink the chip to 5nm which is why they haven't done it already
Nope. I don't get where people are getting that from. The reason they haven't done it already is that the actual chip is cheaper being on 6nm than on 5nm... nothing to do with some R&D budget (that isn't even really Sony's business). Even if its a $100M R&D investment (which it isn't), if 5nm was actually cheaper for them than 6nm, they would be saving at least $20 on every chip alone, and probably another $30+ on everything else that they benefit from having a smaller chip. So that's a smaller chassis, smaller PSU, smaller cooling...etc.

If they make 20M of those, that's already $1B in savings right there. That's how these things work and how the math is done. So even if the R&D cost was $100M , or hell $250M... can you see how much they save from just 20M consoles shipped that would make doing it a no-brainer?

This is a great way to look at things to understand that if you can bet on anything they do, the one sure bet is that it would always be what costs them the least possible amount of money. Even something that means they spend $5 they don't need to spend, extrapolates to like $250M across 20M consoles.
 
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