PlayStation 5 Pro: AI tech, 60% faster than PS5, 2x faster with RT, with November 2024 release

Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console has been teased for a while now, where last week I pondered that the just-announced Grand Theft Auto 6 would be a huge system seller for an upgraded PS5 Pro console... and now we have more information on the PS5 Pro out of nowhere.

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The new information on the PlayStation 5 Pro is coming from leaker Kepler and the ResetEra forums, where we've heard that the PS5 Pro is codenamed "Trinity". In contrast, the upgraded SoC inside of the console is codenamed "Viola". The APU will see the CPU side boosting at up to 4.4GHz, which makes sense as we heard about the "low 4GHz range" in rumors a couple of months ago now.

Viola still uses the Zen 2 architecture that is inside of the regular PS5 for compatibility, but the CPU will boost up to a higher 4.4GHz. There's also reportedly 64KB of L1 cache per core, 512KB of L2 cache per core, and 8MB of L3 shared cache (4MB per CCX).

• Read more: Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro: GTA 6 at smoother 60FPS, maybe 8K

Now, let's talk about the GPU... PlayStation 5 Pro, aka Viola, and its GPU die have 30 WGPs (Work Group Processors) enabled in its developer kits, but the final retail PS5 Pro console will reportedly have just 28 WGPs (or 56 CUs) enabled. AMD's current-gen RDNA 3 architecture will be the foundation of Viola and the PS5 Pro, but it is taking ray tracing improvements from the next-gen RDNA 4 architecture.

We can expect major ray tracing performance improvements on the PlayStation 5 Pro, pulled out of the GPU and its 3584 shaders, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The PS5 Pro will also have upgraded unified RAM, with 16GB of GDDR6 clocked at 18Gbps with up to 576GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The GPU targets 2.0GHz clock speeds, with 14.33 TFLOPs of compute performance.

• Read more: PlayStation 5 Pro: ready for 8K gaming, priced at $600-$700 for 2023

Performance-wise, the PlayStation 5 Pro should be 50-60% faster than the regular PlayStation 5... and over 2x the performance of the PS5 when it comes to games with raw RT (ray tracing) performance. But, we can expect even more performance with Sony including an XDNA2 NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which is an AI-based part of the SoC that will be used to accelerate Sony's temporal machine learning upscaling technique.

This is reportedly going to be one of the "core focuses" of the PS5 Pro, which will temporally stable upscaled 4K output at higher than 30FPS is the goal. I'd be disappointed not to see 4K 60FPS on pretty much all PlayStation 5 Pro-certified games, with 8K 30FPS being an option for particular games like Grand Theft Auto 6.

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The new codename Viola SoC will be fabbed on TSMC's new N4P node, and the PlayStation 5 Pro console itself will reportedly be unveiled in September 2024. That gives Sony at least 3-6+ months before Rockstar is ready to unleash Grand Theft Auto 6 into the world, which I'm sure is going to be one of the biggest titles for the upgraded PS5 Pro console.

New PlayStation 5 Pro information:

• Viola is fabbed on TSMC N4P.
• GFX1115
• Viola's CPU is maintaining the zen2 architecture found in the existing PS5 for compatibility, but the frequency will once again be dynamic with a peak of 4.4GHz. 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 8 MB of L3 shared (4 MB per CCX).
• Viola's die is 30WGPs when fully enabled, but it will only have 28WGPs (56 CUs) enabled for the silicon in retail PS5 Pro units.
• Trinity is the culmination of three key technologies. Fast storage (hardware accelerated compression and decompression, already an existing key PS5 technology), accelerated ray tracing, and upscaling.
• Architecture is RDNA3, but it's taking ray tracing improvements from RDNA4. BVH traversal will be handled by dedicated RT hardware rather than fully relying on the shaders. It will also include thread reordering to reduce data and execution divergence, something akin to Ada Lovelace SER and Intel Arc's TSU.
• 3584 shaders, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs.
• 16GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6. 256-bit memory bus with 576 GB/s memory bandwidth.
• The GPU frequency target is 2.0 GHz. This lands the dual-issue TFLOPs in the range of 28.67 TFLOPs peak (224 (TMUs) * 2 (operations, dual issue) * 2 (core clock)). 14.33 TFLOPs if we ignore the dual-issue factor.
• 50-60% rasterization uplift over Oberon and Oberon Plus, over twice the raw RT performance.
• XDNA2 NPU will be featured for the purpose of accelerating Sony's bespoke temporal machine learning upscaling technique. This will be one of the core focuses of the PS5 Pro, like we saw with checkboard rendering for the PS4 Pro. Temporally stable upscaled 4K output at higher than 30 FPS is the goal.
• September 2024 reveal