The days of developers pushing for native resolutions feel like they’re coming to an end. The reality is that it’s a waste of resources, especially as upscalers like DLSS (or Deep Learning Super Sampling, to give it its full name) get better and better. It’s no surprise Sony is exploring similar technology with PS5 Pro, and it looks like this is all part of a long-term plan which will eventually expand to PS6 as well.
We reported on PlayStation Spectral Resolution (or PSSR) recently, and now Digital Foundry has corroborated the rumours with fresh information. According to the tech experts, who claim to have seen developer documents, PS5 Pro has an improved GPU with better raytracing capabilities, a ten per cent faster CPU, and an additional 1.2GB memory. All this confirms what’s been reported previously.
But as mentioned, the game changer is PSSR. According to Digital Foundry, this technology could theoretically upscale a 1080p image and transform it into a convincing 4K, leveraging just a 250MB memory overhead. So, what does this mean? Well, consider how much criticism Square Enix has faced for the resolution in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s performance mode – that’d be easily resolved here.
In fact, dev documents allegedly claim that PSSR can be backported to existing PS5 games with minimal effort, meaning you’ll likely see lots of improvements on Sony’s new hardware right out of the gate. Obviously, those that put in the extra legwork will be able to extract even more from the console, but this is generally promising news overall.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 69
What they said was that older games will need a patch to use PSSR but they won’t have to update the whole game to the latest SDK to do so. So “without any extra work” is incorrect.
Some games will be CPU bound and with PS5 Pro having a 10% higher clock speed, won't make a lot of difference to those games but running them at 1080p upscaled will do so much. If its quality is close to DLSS 3 then it'll be a game changer
@Angelus3K the leaks say it doesn't have to be trained on a title by title basis, so that's what they mean by "without any extra work"
I'm just here to applaud the subhead. Excellent work. 😂
@Angelus3K Thanks, I've adjusted that slightly to clarify.
Bet they still don't do anything with bloodbourne though 😅
Also here to praise that sub header!
It’ll depend on how good it is. Seems unlikely to work as well as DLSS 3 or the newest release of DLSS 2 both of which have existed for years. BUT if it’s better than FSR 2 that would be great.
This article doesn't really add anything compared to yesterday's article on the exact same subject. I get that information is sparse at the moment, but do we really need the same article twice in the space of two days just to generate 100+ comments again?
guessing the upgrades will translate to the pro perfomance mode looking better than base quality mode
So will this help bloodborne without patches?
Well, with patches the spider but not code changes Sony refuses to make …
People expecting Bloodborne to be magically fixed at system level. Is that now an actual thing, like, a genuine expectation? Or just people repeating it for the sake of negativity?
@tomted76 yeah sometimes I'll click on an article on here that I'm not even really interested in just to check out the subheader. Some absolute crimes have been committed in that department 🤣
Just watched the DF video and they are surprisingly downbeat about the console. The lack of cpu upgrade makes the whole console a bit pointless (the cpu increase is even less than the ps4 pro got) and the other spec increases and pretty small. I have been saying since the rumours started this would not be a 60fps on everything machine or a 60fps quality mode machine, and atleast now everyone can get their expectations in check
It's not worth upgrading from the base model at all, it's a pretty minor increase, now we just need some more actual ps5 games and not more hardware
@Sakai sadly overall its a smaller upgrade on both the CPU and GPU side (despite the inflated tflops) than the PS4 Pro was. Though the RT and upscaling should be a fair bit better. Personally I'll just stick with the base model
Personally I'm much more interested in framerate than pushing for higher resolutions.
So the TLDR of this could be - games like Dragon's Dogma 2, or Starfield if it was ever ported, would just run at a higher effective resoution, but only get a modest framerate increase and still won't likely hit anywhere near 60FPS?
In which case, I doubt I'll be interested in an expensive upgrade.
@Jswift56 Miyazaki pretty much said they're waiting for the ps6 before looking at it unfortunately
I'm really hyped for it but at the same time I have huge concerns over the CPU upgrade. It's really questionable.
For now it seems like they aim at higher resolution and better GPU ray tracing rather than improving frame rates and some of the games have really low frame rates.
Even PS4 pro had 30% extra on the top, which added like 5-7 frames to help lock the 30fps cap or in some cases even push for 60fps with lower res, and in many ways it was game changer from PS4, which struggled with steady FPS a lot.
This gen however the focus shifted to 60fps and honestly speaking I don't even want to look at games that play at 30 FPS anymore. 10% is not enough and won't do the same impact of what PS4 pro did. You will get extra 2 frames on games that can't reach steady 30 and or 4-5 frames on games that can't make it to lined 60... I mean, they really should check into it.
I'm playing the outer world spacers edition rn on performance mode and it struggles with 60 FPS a lot, sometimes dropping to even low 30 on specific angles and places with VRR on...
Really concerned right now, for what otherwise would be a day one buy for me.
@Sakai
I watched the DF Video and they did critique the 10% increase in CPU Clock speed as being too little of an improvement, because with all things being equal, it wouldn't do much to improve Frame Rates, maybe 5 Frames a second at most, but that was with them focusing ONLY on the slightly upgraded CPU, if you move on to them talking about the PSSR Machine Learning that does a massive 300 TOPS then that changes things, because ALL things are NOT equal any more, because the PSSR on the PS5 PRO can take a 1080P resolution image an kick it up to a full 4K resolution in 2ms, so by starting out at a Lower Native 1080P Resolution it now gives the PS5 PRO a lot MORE resources for increasing that Frame Speed while still giving the Player a Flawlessly upgraded 4K image with the PSSR A.I managing the upgraded images, and does it all with only 250MB of memory use, and that's minimal considering they increased the overall useable memory of the available (and now upclocked) 16 GB's on the PS5 PRO by 1.2 GB's.
And DF was definitely most excited about the Machine Learning aspect for the PS5 PRO, they went from least impressive to most impressive feature in their discussion.
On a side note, I can't shake the feeling that Mark Cerny has more Specs or some kind of "Secret Sauce" that HASN'T been leaked yet, but we'll see, because the custom graphics chip seems to be overkill at 33.5 Teraflops, yet only gives a 45% increase in Graphical Rendering, and not only DF but others online are speculating that the Custom Chip appears to have some RDNA 4 aspects thrown in it with its 2x to 3x increase in Ray Tracing, so we'll have to wait and see. Happy Gaming✌!
@Professor_Niggle
I read the same thing, the leak said no "per title training", so I took it as the firmware in the PS5 PRO itself would be already programmed to recognize the older SDK's and implement the PSSR Machine Learning to ALL of the older titles, so again no Per Game Patching Requirements (aka "per title training").
Subhead game is strong 😎
ahh the console capable of what they promised the ps5 would be at launch
Correct me if i'm wrong but upsampling tech is already supported by the base ps5..
@Sakai @Professor_Niggle There's 2358 games on PS5 not including the back compatible games and only about 7 games run at 30fps. We also have no idea which ones are CPU heavy and which ones are GPU bound or which ones are just down to bad optimisation and lazy devs, so as long as PSSR is a good upscaler then it should be able to improve every game that already has a 60fps performance mode and every game that gets one, also every GPU bound game can obviously be improved as well.
The 7 Games are -
If there's any more I'm not aware of then tell me and I'll add them.
PSSR will be the big game changer here. Yess, the CPU isn't changed but with PSSR the console CPU can use more power for performance. So more games will run at 60. DF is downplaying this a bit in my eyes. But we will see. I'm buying one regardless.
@zebric21 yes you are correct. Sony are saying the same thing about this upgrade that they said about the ps5 before it launched. I'd settle for 1440p -1800p @ 60fps natively.
@MomsSpaghetti
Your absolutely right! The fact that Sony went ALL IN on A.I Machine Learning with the PSSR able to do a massive 300 TOPS, and with it being their own proprietary property that they control they can then continuously upgrade it on their own time to make it better without waiting for AMD to improve their FSR Upscaling or any other outside companies upscaling technology, they can now also unify the Developers into using their upscaling as the standard, so all games will look and play better without different Developers using different methods or standards of upscaling!
And as a Result everything will look and play phenomenally better and be more efficient when doing it, but not everybody knows about machine learning and what it can do, so that's why I think a lot of people don't understand how much of Game Changer this really is!
@zebric21 Upscaling in general, sure, but this is specifically about dedicated machine learning hardware for upscaling, which doesn't exist on the base PS5.
You only have to look at DLSS to see what an enormous difference such hardware makes.
It's all kind of a mute point when you realize that a lot of the limitations we're experiencing with the PS5 are CPU related. meaning that with such a modest if really not any Improvement on the CPU side that this won't fix problems where they have to downgrade games like Final Fantasy rebirth merely because the game isn't adequately optimized to stream in the assets at a high quality.
So paying a mid Gen refresh premium for a better GPU and ram speed won't equate to gains in the problems that are directly related to cpu bottlenecks because they chose to largely leave the cpu perf without meaningful improvement.
Slightly better hardware and more AI upscaling just means more justifications for poorly polished and unoptomized games to be the norm, relying on these inconsistent crutches to compensate.
Dlss has been good for PC games that really use it correctly, however FSR has been absolutely disasterous for the quality of console releases and is really the only upscaling used on consoles.
.
I think people really need to measure their expectations.
I get that maybe development on PS5 Pro started before it seemed that cross gen would not stop and it seems to be a good piece of hardware but the issues are the games. PS5 has three exclusives, Spidey 2, FF16 and FF7 Rebirth and all are coming to PC, the FF games relatively rather sooner than later. Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok and the Resident Evils games played adequate on my launch PS4 model and I really enjoed them there. I know that I am in the minority that plays mostly games from japan but if PS5 didn't have FF it would loose major selling points for me.
More on topic I was skeptical on the PS4 Pro, it seemed useless to me. But when I finally got one and swapped the drive with a "good" SSD I really enjoyed it. PS5 Pro sounds a cool piece of hardware but the cpu may bottleneck it. AI upscale is a good idea but it may lead to more unoptimised games.
Would this technology come to PS5 as well?
@RicksReflection It'll be interesting to see what Microsoft does to respond.
It's had hardware Machine Learning hardware in the Series consoles already and has been working on its own AI Super Sampling solution for quite some time (and it apparently now being added in Windows 11 with something called Automatic Super Resolution - probably AutoSR for short). Somehow I suspect it will be in a Series firmware update in 2024.
Here's the kicker, though. I don't need a more expensive machine to get it - I've had the capabilities for a while...it's just that Microsoft never leveraged it aside from AutoHDR.
After watching the DF coverage on this, Sony better hit a respectable price point for this because realistic performance don't tell me much other than it's going to be about 25% faster than a Series X - which is 20% faster than the base PS5 (when developers actually bother to use the hardware rather than simply "port" the PS5 version to the console).
Kudos to Sony though, everyone is now talking about this hardware upscaling and attaching it to Sony's machine without even knowing that the Xbox console already had the hardware to so, it's just that Microsoft is taking way too long to use it.
@Ainu20 DLSS is not the solution for everything..the image quality takes a serious hit..
What's the price though? If it's much north of £600, I'll just get a Desktop PC instead. I'd sooner spend an extra £400 and not have to update again in another 3 years..
@MrMagic TBH, this generation, it's the developers, last gen, the PS4 was a bit weak, but look at Shadow of Mordor compared to Ghost etc..
My RTX 2050 laptop (on the scale of things, incredibly weak for an RTX card) can run Baldurs Gate 3 better than PS5, it manages 50-60fps at 1440p ultra. I'm pretty sure it will run DD2 at 1080p 60fps too...
@GamingFan4Lyf
Yeah when I watched the recent Video on the PS5 PRO from DF, they mentioned how disappointed they were with Microsoft not utilizing the machine learning aspect of the Series X except for HDR, which they mention isn't chip based Hardware like the PS5 PRO is, and I can't remember if they said it was 40 or 70 TOPS capable in performance when comparing it to the PS5 Pro's actual Hardware based PSSR with its 300 TOPS Capable Performance, and that their absolutely shocked that Sony beat Microsoft to the Punch with Full silicon based machine learning, considering that they had at least some software based Machine Learning already in the Series X and didn't really try to use it for anything else except for HDR.
Watch the Video and skip towards the end, because they discuss the Machine Learning aspect of the Pro5 as being the real game changer, not the 10% Upgraded CPU, which they basically describe as anemic.
They start with what their least impressed with, then move on to what their most impressed with. 1st-CPU 2nd-GPU 3rd PSSR's A.I Machine Learning.
Happy Gaming ✌!
EDIT': Sorry, I only glanced at your message, I NOW see that you already watched the DF Video...lol...my bad...I need to quit trying to speed read stuff...again my bad...lol.
@zebric21 DLSS doesn't solve everything, but it's arguably the most powerful tool available on PC hardware to marry advanced graphical features like RT, above HD resolutions and good performance.
Bit weird to state that image quality takes a serious hit. That's a statement that's true of something like FSR, but these days DLSS is virtually as good as native. Native resolution doesn't really exist on consoles anymore anyway, so DLSS-like tech is definitely a game changer.
@RicksReflection I might have not watched it to the absolute end - I think I closed the video during their closing remarks.
It is surprising that Sony beat Microsoft to the punch with it as well - especially with Microsoft being all in on AI (Microsoft is now partnered with Nvidia on some non-gaming-related AI).
Phil has already said that the Series X is the "mid-gen upgrade", so I am guessing it will wait for its next machine to do anything in that arena. It's not as if Microsoft actually making a mid-gen upgrade will move the needle in Microsoft's favor, so why waste R&D efforts for something that might not have much of an ROI (or could end up being a total loss)?
@Ainu20
I totally agree with your statement about DLSS, and what I would like to add is, what people aren't thinking about, is that with PSSR being Sony's own upscaling solution, they can implement improvements and upgrades at will, and do so without having to wait for updates from AMD for FS2 or any other third party with their type of upscaling solution, makes me excited to see what Sony can do with it!
But it's a shame that not enough people know about machine learning and what it can do now for games, and what it could possibly do in the future for gaming, because if they knew, they'd know exactly how much of a game changer it can be, IF it's implemented correctly!
Sony's already saying that currently PSSR can take a 1080p resolution and upscale it to 4K in 2ms with only using 250 MB of memory.
But proof is in the pudding, so we'll have to wait and see how really good it is, but I doubt Sony is going to release the PS5 Pro with broken machine learning installed from the go, but again we'll have to see.
But if what they are saying is fully true, then it looks to be an awesome upscaling solution!
Too bad they didn't give the CPU a major upgrade as well. It might become a bottleneck.
@GamingFan4Lyf
DF Video is a realistic look at the PS5 PRO upgrades, but they break it down accurately for each individual upgraded component in the PS5 PRO, but they don't summarize what it means with ALL Components working together, and what improvements people will see when playing games on the PS5 PRO with all those upgraded components working together in unison, and so it paints a duller picture of what the PS5 PRO Model can actually do.
I personally think if they reversed the order they took, which they were going from worst improvement(CPU) to best improvement(PSSR), and instead if they started with PSSR First, it would paint a MUCH Better Picture of what the PS5 PRO will be able to do with the other components working WITH PSSR, and what it'll do for Past and Present and Future Titles, and I think people watching would understand better that the Real Game Changer that Sonys centering around with the PS5 PRO is the A.I Machine Learning itsef, followed by its Massive GPU upgrade with 2x to 3x Ray Tracing Capability, then the slightly added overhead gained by up-clocking the CPU 10%.
I think Mark Cerny is definitely going to better clarify how everything works in unison to get the best possible performance out of the PS5 Pro, which again I'm betting it will be centered around PSSR and it's Machine Learning Capabilities, but again I think digital Foundry was just spec-ing out the individual components like you do with a typical off the shelf computer build before it's all put together, and Sony doesn't do typical computer builds with it's custom chips and structural architecture, so we'll have to see if Mark Cerny has any Specs or "Secret Sauce" to add that may be hidden from sight.
On Microsoft, yeah their not selling enough Current Gen Hardware as it is, so their focusing on maybe a Handheld System, at least that's the Rumor going around lately.
What do you think their cooking up?
@RicksReflection Yeah, the Machine Learning AI is nice, but still not something I am that entirely fussed about.
I only use my PS5 as an exclusives machine (same with the Switch) and most of the exclusives already have great performance and image quality. I use my Series X as my everything else (I find it to have the better overall feature set even if games have historically favored PS5).
My TV doesn't support 120Hz, so that's out of the question if the extra GPU power is used for that.
While I certainly like RT, trading in my PS5 towards a Pro doesn't feel worth the cost for either better-looking RT or adding 1 more RT effect over what's already available on PS5 exclusives.
I also think image quality is perfectly fine on exclusives where I don't feel like the slightly sharper detail is warrants the purchase.
As far as what I think Microsoft is cooking up, I have no idea. Microsoft is all over the place right now that I feel like it should be focusing on rebuilding its brand with polished games at launch.
People are creatures of habit and I fear that PlayStation is just ingrained in their gaming spending habits. Digital purchases continue to grow. Their PSN profiles continue to build up Trophies and stuff. Gamers don't want to "start over" on a new console after building up so much on another console.
If MTX for sports games, COD, Fortnite, etc. aren't cross-platform (I don't play these kinds of games so I genuinely don't know) and continue to carry over from game to game on the same platform, why leave that ecosystem to start somewhere else?
Microsoft's only hope is to figure out how to also make Xbox a secondary console in the way Nintendo has worked its way into also being a secondary console.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Microsoft is doing that as its actions now look to be positioning itself as a "third-party publisher who also happens to make a console". Even if games are timed-excusive to Xbox, I don't see even that strategy moving the needle from a hardware standpoint (they'll just wait for the PlayStation version).
Personally, I think Microsoft needs to figure out how to make PC-gaming "couch friendly". It needs to figure out how to integrate with Steam, GOG, Epic game libraries. It needs to figure out how to make the PC versions of games play without having to fiddle with drivers, menu settings, etc.
Basically, improve upon what Valve has already started with the Steam Deck, but in a dedicated device.
Basically, it needs to "exit" the console space by making a true PC console instead. Developers only need to verify in-game settings for the Xbox PC specs rather than develop against a whole new dedicated box.
The hardest part is that all of that needs to be seamless for the end user. It should look like an Xbox console, except it's now more open than before.
It's a huge undertaking, but I think worth it in the end - especially if the PC versions of Sony games can also be played on it (force "cross-platform" but it's not actually "cross-platform" because it's a PC and not a closed system).
It's all an interest chess game for sure. But, I do want Sony to be put in-check as I don't think a competition-less Sony is great for gamers, either.
Again - whilst it may well be the 'best' upscaler, even better than the industry leading DLSS, its still an 'upscaler'.
So that may mean that they target 1080/60 on PS5 Pro (where the PS5 may be only 720p) with this being used to upscale that to a '4k' image. FSR2.0 as we know is better than 'traditional' upscaling, but not as good as DLSS. So in terms of an upgrade, the PS5 Pro would look much cleaner.
However, I also think this will be 'misleading' as you'll get these devs saying their game is running at 4k on PS5 when in reality its running at 1080p and being 'upscaled' to 4k.
Don't get me wrong, I think its a 'better' use of resources as it costs much less to upscale 1080p to 4k than to render Native 4k. But that doesn't mean the game is actually running at 4k - its outputting a 4k image with 'superior' upscaling than your TV would do, better upscaling than FSR or TAA offers...
Sony have done exactly the same as they did with the PS4 Pro - bumped up the GPU side out of 'balance' with the rest to essentially offer the PS5 games with the SAME performance (or thereabouts) with higher 'base' resolution and superior upscaling - better than traditional, temporal or FSR methods.
The CPU is basically the same - albeit with the ability to go faster - a fraction faster than Series X now so if a game can't hit '30fps' due to CPU bottlenecks (BG3) then this isn't suddenly going to let you play at 60fps. The image may look better than PS5, thanks to maybe a higher 'base' Resolution to upscale from and a much better upscaling solution.
I'll be interested to see how much they are charging, but I think I'd stick with the base PS5 for the 'few' exclusives that I can't play elsewhere, my PC for example which has DLSS, a better CPU and much more RAM (32GB).
@GamingFan4Lyf
That is a lot of stuff to chew on, as far as Microsoft, that rumour about a possible Handheld that their making, some people online are speculating the very thing you touched on by saying "they need to make something couch friendly like a Steam Deck" that's exactly what people are talking about online, so it wouldn't be Suprising if it turned out to be true, it would certainly coincide nicely with their vision of Game Pass and the Future of go anywhere and Play Everywhere Gaming!
By the way you mentioned that you or people in general, not wanting a New Sony console, because they'd have to start over with their Trophies from scratch, I'm confused because with the PS5 Pro and even the Next Gen PS6, it should all transfer over from your last console like it always has? Let me know if I read that incorrectly...Lol
As far as the Price of the PS5 PRO, it's a personal choice, I don't have a problem with selling my PS5 Privately and then Purchasing the PRO Model, I did it with the PS4 and bought the PS4 PRO day 1, I forgot to mention that I also sold the PS4 PRO and got the PS5 on Day 1, and I only managed to get one because my friend use be a Manager for GameStop at the time, and he told me to hurry up and get there as fast as I can to put money down on it, because it was when the Very first Pre-Orders opened up at GameStop, so I hopped in my Car and broke every traffic law trying to get there, including the Sound Barrier, and put a $100 Dollars down on it, and by the way I got there in time to get the very LAST Pre-Order available, so Day 1 PS5...lol.
But as far as the Tech inside of the PS5 PRO Model, mark my words, people are sadly mistaken about its full capabilities by only looking at the Paltry CPU upgade without looking at the whole architecture as a whole and how it'll work together, specially for making new games, and so without me sounding like a Parrot and going into more detail, we'll just have to wait until Sony and Mark Cerny explain it all out in finer detail.
By the way, I'm also waiting for the Switch 2 to release, because Nintendo has and probably always will make some of the best software games on the market, despite not having the most cutting edge console, Games are always Number 1, hardware always 2nd!
So Anyway, Happy Gaming my friend✌!
@RicksReflection “By the way you mentioned that you or people in general, not wanting a New Sony console, because they'd have to start over with their Trophies from scratch, I'm confused because with the PS5 Pro and even the Next Gen PS6, it should all transfer over from your last console like it always has? Let me know if I read that incorrectly...Lol”
You read that incorrectly - or I didn’t explain properly.
What I mean is Microsoft gaining market share over Sony going forward by trying to persuade them to change consoles.
Switching ecosystems basically means “starting over” and I don’t see Microsoft ever doing that after Sony gained huge dominance last generation and spilling into this generation. People just want to stay where they are. It would take something truly special for people to move ecosystems after all this.
The best Microsoft could do is position itself as a companion console. But with Microsoft seeming to turning itself into a third-party developer who happens to make a console, I’m not sure how that would be possible as people will just wait for PlayStation versions.
Microsoft would need to do something significantly disruptive if it ever wants to narrow the gap with Sony (assuming that is even the plan at all).
So from what I'm reading if GTA 6 runs at 30fps on the base PS5 it will also run at 30 on the Pro because of the limited CPU? So what would be the point of getting the Pro for GTA, so it can look a little prettier?
This is the system Sony is basically releasing just to match of up with GTA and all it will do is make it shine a little more!? Hope Rockstar can somehow squeeze out a 60fps mode using the new upscaler.
@GamingFan4Lyf
That totally makes sense, and after going back and re-reading it, it was all me confusing what you said, not you...Lol
I was trying to retain all the different points that you touched on while typing my answer to your post on my phone, and couldn't easily go back and check it, but again it was me, and not you, sorry about that...Lol
My mind was stuck, and locked in on all this PS5 PRO stuff and confused the two, but at least my brain acknowledged that it didn't make sense, and that it was probably wrong...Lol
By the way I think if Microsoft surprises everyone with an outrageously powerful handheld Game System that blows the competition out of the water feature wise, and they do it by throwing the Kitchen sink at its Specs, I think it'll do good, but it wouldn't hurt to undercut the competitions Price per Performance, to really help to maximize getting more people into their new ecosystem, even to the point of them loosing a little money on the actual cost of manufacturing the Handheld unit wouldn't hurt Micro$oft any...Lol
It'll be interesting to see what Microsoft actually does next.
Happy Gaming my friend✌!
Forget ps5pro. When I read about this tech I only wonder how Sony could use this on a handheld.
This gen has been marginal returns as is, really not sure if I'd shell money again for a machine where I was able to play 80% on my PS4pro anyways.
So does this mean the "8K" sticker on the "OG PS5" box gets to be justified from now on?
@RicksReflection yeah exactly, probably patch needed for the game to implement PSSR in the settings, sure. But not for the PSSR to upscale the game, it'll do that with a flick of a switch I reckon.
@MrMagic dude you get it. With so few (and might I say very badly optimised games) being CPU bound, reducing the resolution to 1080p and using PSSR will do a world of good. For the many games that aren't CPU bound, my goodness, the performance uplift should be really promising, especially for what they can do with PS6.
I disagree with the need to make the console have a much stronger CPU, because we get a situation like Series S for the base PS5, which is still plenty strong. The PS5 & Series X did not release with weak specs like the PS5 & XbOne, no need for overkill. This is a console for spec nerds and people with high end 4k TVs that want more.
How does AI (or deep learning) help all this happen? And why couldn’t this be done 10 years ago?
There’s no ‘intelligence’ here, it just sounds like really good algorithms to upscale better than current upscalers.
I’m just curious as to why this can happen now. And what do these do differently to make the upscaled image look better and cleaner and not be as blurry? It’s still an upscaled image at the end of the day
@GravyThief How all of it works internally is beyond me, but in DLSS's case the basic idea is that it uses neural networks/deep learning to train a model using loads of extremely high resolution images. The model can then take low resolution frames and predict what a high resolution image would look like, which is done via hardware acceleration using the tensor cores found on RTX cards. Presumably, PSSR will be something similar.
As to the why now, I guess that's just the result of advancements in deep learning and the fact that we now have the hardware to do all of this in real time at high performance.
@Professor_Niggle
Yeah, all Sony would need to do is have the coding implemented into the PS5 PRO Firmware itself from the start, so PSSR would recognize "ALL" of the SDK's (old or new) so it would only need to have the PSSR Switched on through the settings.
I think Sony's development approach to the PRO Model is going to be unique as far as how they develop games for it.
I think Sony may tell developers make 2 versions of games for the Base & PRO Model like they normally would, but instead of Targeting the Higher Resolution version for the PRO Model like Normal, & the Lower Resolution for the BASE 5, I think it'll be the Reverse, because they can now create the necessary head room & Resources with PSSR that the Minor CPU Upgrade can't Provide, & use the Extra Headroom & Resources that PSSR has FREED up to increase the FRAME RATES to at least 60 FPS from that Lower Resolution.
With PSSR turned on you could have as an example, a PSSR Manufactured 4K Image at 60 FPS of GTA 6, & if you decide to turn OFF PSSR you then Revert to the Base PS5's Natively Higher Resolution running its own Upscaling Solution that's Running at Lower Frame Rates, but it'll still Run Smoother from "ALL" the other Extra Muscle that has been added to the PS5 PRO, & if they leave the Frame Rates uncapped for that Base PS5 version for the PRO Model, the PRO version could still run at over the 30 FPS, because of the Extra 10% Bump in CPU Speed & again the extra GPU Muscle.
Again people are to Focused on the CPU side of things & not looking at the Big Picture of how PSSR then the GPU with 3x Ray Tracing is the bigger advancement with how it'll ALL work together with the extra CPU bump, not complaining about the Weaker upgraded CPU that they look at as a typical "bottle neck", they are narrowly "Bench Racing" the Parts like a typical PC Build & not looking at Sony's "Outside the Box thinking" that everybody should be used to by now...Lol
I think it's also funny that people want to complain about the Price while at the same time not understanding that Sony is trying to make it more affordable.
Because they really would have broke the Bank with spending More on a CPU Upgrade, because the latest PS5's currently use 6nm Chips, and they would have had to decrease to a smaller nanometer size to make any significant Improvement in CPU Speed, without having over heating issues, & it can't be done without making the Price even MORE unreasonable, as an example the Base PS4 went from a Jaguar 28nm Chip and so Sony shrunk the PS4 PRO's Chip to the SEVERAL TIMES SMALLER Vega 16nm Chip size(Thats 12nm smaller), so it was stupid easy for them to increase the CPU to have 31% more Speed, because its NOW a Cooler Running & Less Power Hunger 16nm Chip(That's Probably Not even Overclocked being its 12nm smaller), where as the Base PS5 and the PS5 PRO is looking more & more like there still going to use the SAME 6nm Size Chips in Both, hence the anemic 10% Gain, which is most likely to keep it from having a melt down from Sony having it Overclocked from 3.5 to 3.85.
Even if they had spent more money which will certainly increase the Cost of the Console by even more, by dropping one size down to a 5nm chip, to be able to get better clock speeds, it still would only be a 1nm Chip Size Drop, that's tiny, especially when comparing it to the massive Drop in Size of 12nm between PS4 to the PS4 PRO Chips, but people keep comparing Apple's to Watermelons and saying its the same...Lol.
What's the cliche, "You can please some of the people some of the time, but you Can't please ALL the people ALL the Time".
So it's just more of those Mental Gymnastics we were talking about earlier...Lol
Happy Gaming ✌!
@GravyThief DLSS was not possible 10 years ago, let alone even in 2018. It's only possible due to the HUGE year by year advancements in machine learning. GPUs can do so many calculations per second which allows for ML in conjunction with other silicon that are dedicated to solely do this as well. GPU TFLOP numbers have gotten so high in recent years, allowing ML capabilities to be very very sexy.
Being a huge nerd, I have followed the progress of some ML technologies and to oversimplify it, what was initially possible, was filling in certain parts of images which took a long time, it transitioned to filling in parts of videos and then you get to real-time videos, such as games. Then whilst all this is happening, you implement reconstruction methods that can maintain sharpness, colour quality and consistency and most importantly, the cost on the GPU to be as small as possible. For DLSS today, it is only like a 0.5ms cost on the GPU, in other words, it adds to latency by 0.5ms. PSSR are aiming for 2ms which will improve over time. It is done by using incredibly complex algorithms and it is essentially magic. We can use that technology to generatively fill in parts of images and some videos right now using AI to essentially guess what is supposed to be there, but these ML technologies like DLSS, FSR, PSSR (not sure how it accomplishes it) use what we already have but with a low quality to upscale to something like 4k. I hope that helps you to understand why it couldn't be possible 10 years ago.
@RicksReflection well said. I think that with DF being a specs enthusiast page and obviously only focusing on things that very very few would when it comes to gaming may have skewed the perception for many people for consoles. With the PS5 Pro, I get wanting a CPU upgrade but it is a PS5. Why would you upgrade the CPU to a point that makes the base basically a last gen console. Plus, with PSSR and the GPU upgrades alone, like has already been said, it should be powering through so much. Like do people understand the benefits that essentially DLSS 1 or a lesser version of 2 bring to a console space. Because of course PSSR being a new technology and not having frame generation won't be near DLSS 3. And not FSR 1 or 2 where ghosting and artifacting is so bad.
I do have thoughts regarding PSSR on PS4 games, I think it is only possible on the ones running on PS5s new SDK so just the ones that have been updated to use PS5s architecture, mainly first party games.
I feel like the price will be around that 500-550 mark. I think they knew PS5 couldn't launch at 600, it was a nice £530, I feel like maybe a small bump will happen with the Pro.
With all this, I can't see what there is to complain about to be real. The benefits are amazing and shows Sony are smartly developing tech to use for the future. PS6 is going to be a smart console, PSSR can be used for handheld devices too so I wouldn't be surprised to see in the future a bulky PS Portal 2, with PS4 or PS5 or even PS6 compatibility, even better remote play and local play as well. Am I getting ahead of myself lol
@Professor_Niggle
I think you're right about the Price of $549.99 U.S Dollars, but only as long as they do at least a $50 drop on the Base 5 model to $449.99 U.S, but if they keep the Base PS5 Price the same at $499.99, then I say that it's going to be $599.99 or about $100.00 more than what ever the Base PS5 is when they launch the PS5 PRO, and its mainly because of the current state of the world economy.
Your also right about backwards compatibility especially with the SDK's, because while everyone has been screaming needlessly about the Anemic 10% Speed Upgrade, and that the PRO is still using the Exact SAME RDNA 2 based CPU Chip that the Base PS5 has, they weren't factoring in that Sony has to make sure that the PS5 PRO is FULLY Backwards Compatible with all those modified SDK's that got created going from the PS4 to the PS5 for the backwards compatibility of Both the PS5 & PS5 PRO, and Sony wouldn't be able to do that with a completely different CPU chip, so they smartly used the same RDNA 2 Chip and simply Overclocked it for a 10% gain.
By the way, you might want to re-read my last post again, I was half asleep when I first wrote it, and had heavy brain fog, I re-edited it like 15 times to make it sound more logical and cohesive, it was a mess, like one Huge Rambling Run on Sentence...LOL
What I'm most excited about for Sony's PSSR Machine Learning, is that since they outright own it, and PSSR works through their own Hardware System, and Plays through their own in House Developed Software for the whole world to see, I think we're going to see them Update PSSR at a Mad Pace when comparing it to the World Industry Leading Nvidia DLSS ML and especially when comparing it to AMD's casual & slow FSR update pace.
Because thinking about what separates Sony from Nvidia & AMD, is Sony's a Big First Party in House Software Developer with tons of 3rd Party Software running on the World's most popular console, so it should provide Sony with more than enough Maximum motivation to Update Often, not to mention that Everyone's naturally going to Constantly Judge and Critique how well their PSSR Machine Learning Actually Looks, Works & Plays on the Newly Launched PS5 PRO versus if it had the capability of having Nvidia's DLSS running in it, and so by Default I think they're going to naturally strive to put much More Effort & Energy into how Often they Update their versions of Machine Learning to make it more on parody with Nvidia's DLSS and if my speculation holds true, and it's updated quickly enough, maybe beyond DLSS in short order, but who really knows, but thinking about the possibilities are very exciting.
For People that think that PSSR will be as good as Nvidia's DLSS 3.5 from the start, No it won't, but from what the Leak states-(1080P to 4K in 2ms using 250MB Memory) its a Solid Starting Point at (V-1.0), but I don't think they'll stay behind for very long, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Happy Gaming ✌!
@RicksReflection What you are missing is that a LOT of things don't actually scale with 'resolution' or changes to Graphical Settings. Physics, NPC AI etc. If you have 100 enemies on screen, each with their AI and Physics, that doesn't 'scale' with Resolution.
There are a number of games that are CPU limited on PS5 already so a 10% boost to CPU isn't suddenly going to free up enough CPU resources to make much difference. If it can't hold a 'locked' 30fps due to CPU, then a 10% boost isn't suddenly going to allow them to hit 60fps.
Granted, if you are targeting a Native 4k, dropping to 1080p may allow for 60fps if the GPU is the limiting factor. If the PS5 is well balanced between CPU/GPU, then the PS5 Pro is heavily weighted on the GPU side.
Many games can't hit 60fps on PS5 because they are hitting the ceiling of the CPU, not GPU...
@BAMozzy
My understanding as an example is, If you go from Native 4K Image that's pushing 8 million pixels around Per Frame and Drop to Native 1080P which is pushing only 2 million pixels around Per Frame, that besides obviously dropping GPU Load, your also going to drop SOME of the CPU overhead as well, so that it could then can help provide that Extra Headroom and Resources to Push the Frame Rates Up, then couple that with the Increased 10% CPU Boost and then apply PSSR to bump the Visuals up to artificially upscaled 4K.
Naturally I would think that Sony would Target 60FPS with the Highest Possible Native Resolution without PSSR Turned On on the PS5 PRO, so only strictly as an "example", for Sony to find what that Starting Native Resolution should be, they start at Full Native 4K without PSSR Turned On and obviously you'll get Lower than 60FPS Frame Rates and then dial down the Resolution with PSSR turned on till a balance of 60FPS and until A.I upscaling 4K is still being maintained, which depending on how advanced PSSR already is, it may be able to do this process completely on its own, it definitely would be smoothest way to find the Highest Native Resolution possible and still achieve 60 FPS, while also helping to pick highest possible starting Resolution per game, with some games being higher or lower than just the 1080P starting point that the Leak suggests(Upscaling 1080P to 4K in 2ms using only 250MB).
I can't help but think if Sony says it'll make games run at 4K Visuals and 60 FPS that their going to use their usual Outside the Box thinking, and yet a lot of people as usual are stuck in the Classic "PC Bench Racing Mode" where your build is only as good as your slowest moving Part, which no one is saying isn't True, but instead people need to be asking "How are 4K Visuals (Not necessarily Native)& 60FPS actually achievable with the Parts and Specs that are on Display so far", but most people are holding onto that tried and true, but narrowly focused viewpoint, by saying it can't be done because of the paltry 10% CPU Increase is still going to be a major "Bottleneck Problem", yes that's the Norm, but that's with ALL Things being equal, they are not equal, when looking at Sony leveraging other sources that the Pro4 didn't have, like PSSR Machine Learning to achieve the specified results of 4K(Visuals) at 60FPS.
Think about it, Sony isn't pulling off a magic trick or breaking the laws of physics, it's gotta be here for us to see if we look hard enough, so unless there's some Mark Cerny "Secret Sauce" that we don't know about yet, or the Leaked Specs are wrong or incomplete, there's got to be a way.
Happy Gaming ✌!
@RicksReflection That's not how it works - the GPU (or Graphics Processing Unit) is obviously going to see a 'reduction' in its workload as its only rendering and processing a much smaller image.
However that image still has the same number of objects, NPC's, Textures etc etc. Its still having to decompress exactly the same amount of 'data' being transferred from SSD so whilst you may 'reduce' the cost of Rendering out a frame, you may not save 'enough' resources to increase the Frame Rate.
As I said, if you have 100 AI enemies all with 'physics' and shooting at you, every bullet has to be tracked and isn't going to be affected by resolution differences - 100 enemies will still have the same Physics/AI resources regardless of whether its 1080p or 4k. The amount of objects, textures etc that the CPU has to call in and decompress for use by the GPU isn't changing either.
There are much better CPU's in the PC space that can't hit '60fps' in some games with a RTX4090 and resolution/settings dropped to 540p (no GPU Bottleneck) because the CPU cannot do 'everything' its being asked to do in 16.6ms (or less) to hit that Frame Rate. A 10% boost to a CPU limited '50fps' isn't going to make it hit 60fps.
If the GPU takes 18ms to render at 4k, and only 6ms at 1080p for example, that maybe 'enough' to reduce the overall frame time to be 'below' 16.6ms - but if the CPU needs 14ms (therefore 32ms at 4k - under the 33.3ms required for a 'stable' 30fps), dropping to 1080p isn't going to save 'enough' resources to hit the 16.6ms frame time required for 60fps.
Look at Rise of the Tomb Raider - a CPU limited game that despite dropping the resolution down by 1/4, that still didn't enable a 2x Frame Rate increase on Series X despite the massive (much greater than 10%) boost to CPU, RAM and GPU resources the XB1X had. The PS4 Pro had a bigger CPU boost (30%) and couldn't 'double' frame rates.
It may enable a 'few' games to offer 60fps 'Performance' modes if they weren't CPU intensive but I expect it will be more a 'Graphical' boost. Some are already running at 720p with FSR2.0 in 'Performance' modes and this may enable them to 'boost' resolution to 1080p and then use PSSR to upscale to 4k for a much higher quality looking image but games like Jedi Survivor, Gotham Knights, BG3 etc cannot hit 60fps with much higher PC CPU's in some areas so a 10% boost isn't going to make much difference...
@BAMozzy
Wow...Info Overload...Sorry but I don't wanna get lost in the Weeds with you, because I'd have to Compete with the Holy Bible in its total page count to respond properly to everything you just threw at me, so to keep it Simple, I'LL just say this:
It's not my Hardware or Yours and
this forum is All speculation anyway, but it is Sony's Actual Hardware, and I'm sure Sony's gonna do it some how or some way, without breaking the Laws of Physics, and Mark Cerny will (I'm Sure) in greatest of Detail explain it Waaay Better than You or I ever could, and I'm going to Dare to say it AGAIN, that it could be some kind of "Outside of the Box thinking" that most people can't comprehend or see right in front of their faces, or at least some kind of "Secret Sauce" that Sony's cooked up that were missing, like maybe some specs or information that's hidden from sight.
But after all, it's Sony's Own Custom built Hardware, and Not Run of the mill Off the shelf P.C Hardware that we're all trying to speculate about, so I'm excited to see how their going to do it, because clearly too many people are Negative and think it can't be done solely because of CPU Constraints, even though some people think it'll be possible through the implementation of PSSR's Machine Learning, so it should be real interesting to see how they've confused so many other people into believing it can't be done, but yet have convinced themselves that they're right.
Happy Gaming ✌!
@RicksReflection I'll keep it simple for you then.
PSSR may well create the 'illusion', the 'look' of extra frames (like DLSS 3.0 or FSR 3.0) by 'generating' fake frames to drop in between each frame the game Generates. That may well give the 'look' of a 60fps game, that extra smooth presentation, but isn't going to make the game 'run' and therefore 'update' at 60fps.
I am not being 'negative' as you put it, I'm being realistic and tempering my expectations accordingly. The PS5 Pro, like the PS4 Pro before it, looks to 'enhance' the Visuals. If the PS5 can't do 60fps because of CPU bottlenecks and having to drop to 720p with FSR2.0 to 'upscale' to 4k in performance modes, then this is more likely to offer 1080p with PSSR (instead of FSR and much more like nVidia's own AI/Machine Learning DLSS ) to give a much cleaner, sharper and 'better' looking upscaled 4k image than PS5 can - maybe even better lock to 60fps (or 30fps in some games)
@BAMozzy
I'm really confused now, because you just told the SAME thing that I said "Previous" to my Last Post that you started the Covo with me about, that I essentially said that Sony WOULD Provide 60FPS only through a Lower Native Resolution because of the CPU and then Artificially Upscale to 4K by Using PSSR A.I and you told me IN No uncertain terms, NO that isn't the way that'll work?
Because I Never claimed anything would be a FULL Native 4K running at 60FPS on the PS5 PRO?
I Don't know how you could have, but maybe you did misunderstand something when you responded the very first time to my Original Post?
Again I'm Totally Dumbfounded, but we're Good, so no worries.
Happy Gaming ✌!
@RicksReflection What I said is that IF games are CPU limited on PS5, limiting them to 30fps, then there is NO way they can drop the resolution LOW enough and rely on PSSR to make the game look 4k and run at 60fps.
Games like BG3 (drops below 30fps) won't suddenly be able to hit 60fps because the reason its NOT 60fps on PS5 is the CPU - not the 'graphics'. PSSR at most can make it 'look' like its running at 60fps by artificial frame generation - but the game will still be running at 30fps, still have the same 'feel' and input lag of a 30fps game, because the game is only updating at 30fps...
Sony doesn't have some magic pixie dust they can sprinkle on their Hardware and make it perform miracles. IF you actually read what I wrote, then you wouldn't be so 'Dumbfounded'. Its simple to understand that PSSR is basically the same as nVidia's DLSS. On PC, DLSS may allow PC users to drop the game visuals to save resources and get 'higher' frame rates, but instead of being 'limited' by GPU on what Frame rate they can achieve, they are limited by GPU. DLSS won't help hit 60fps if the CPU is the limiting factor...
If you actually 'read' what I said, I said there are '60fps' Performance modes on PS5 but they have to turn the res down to 720p, turn down some visual quality settings and rely on FSR to upscale to 4k. PS5 Pro could increase that starting res to 1080p and use PSSR to make it look significantly 'better' than the PS5 but BOTH still are offering 60fps regardless. What I said is that if the game is 'limited' to 30fps on PS5, that doesn't mean the PS5 Pro can offer 60fps because the CPU will be the limiting factor...
@BAMozzy
You do realize that we're both still saying the same thing...yet again, but the difference is you're taking us into the Woods and Circling the Trees and then ending back up at the exact same point that I made in the first place, but to further simplify it, let's start off with a base PS5 running "the same exact game" at some unspecified "but a higher native resolution" than 1080p as an example, but it's only running it at 30 FPS because of the base ps5's limitations, and because of the limited 10% CPU increase on PS5 Pro, you can't run or boost the "same exact game" to 60 FPS in a native 4K resolution because of it's limitations, you would then take the PS5 Pro, and "run the same game" at a "lower native tested resolution", for only as an example 1080p, and then crank the frame rate up to get the 60 FPS, and then apply PSSR to upscale the 1080p resolution up to an A.I generated 4K image!
That's exactly in condensed form, what I was saying from the go, but here we are, with you saying the same thing and telling me that I got something wrong...?
First of all you're the one that replied to my posting first, and not the other way around, and then you proceeded to throw the "Your Wrong Message" at me, yet I said hey no problem, no worries, we're good, and yet you continue to throw the "your wrong and don't understand me message" at me, if you don't agree with anything that I stated up in this posting, let's just agree to disagree, and move on.
Because gaming is about having fun, and I joined this forum to have fun and get excited speculating about the next bump up in Hardware power, I didn't know that someone would come at me Fast and Hard, and then proceed to club me like a baby seal, and or that I was going to be critiqued to death like its a job interview, and that you were going to militantly make sure that I actually know how to use C++, otherwise my opinions are completely invalid?
I'll say it again, have a good day, we're good, no worries, and happy gaming✌!
"The PS5 PRO is going to Rock!"
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