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The PS5 Pro Is Not Pro Enough

Did The PS5 Pro Fail As A Pro Device?

  • Yes

    Votes: 116 48.9%

  • Depends On The Game

    Votes: 61 25.7%

  • No

    Votes: 60 25.3%
  • Total voters
    237
It's okay. I would've voted for a mid-range option if there was one, rather than just the binary of "Yes, it failed" or "No, it didn't fail." "Depends on the game" doesn't capture it, because it's not about individual games but rather my sense that while it is nice to have the most powerful PS5 model around, the improvement hasn't been "Wow, great success!" It's been more modest.

I'm still glad I purchased it, though. I would have eventually. I only own one videogame platform (PS), so I want the best version.
 
Senua said:
DeepEnigma DeepEnigma right now

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Revolutionary said:
It was billed as a PS5 where you can enjoy the High Fidelity modes at 60fps, and it's delivered on that front for me so far.
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How Dare You GIF by moodman
 
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I think they had a way too conservative of a chip die size to really shine. It's pretty clear that they were limited to a 1/3 reticle limit (so they could fit three chips per target). So they had to make concessions: no CPU upgrade, GPU limited to 2SE still, no wider memory bus or GPU L3 cache.

Pro we've been amazing if it was something like a 8xZen4c/5c with a Navi 48-type (9070GRE/9070) GPU.
 
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And my professional opinion is that being able to play quality at 40 fps is good enough.
PS5 pro did not fail, it just barely passed without any honors.
 
I paid for better IQ in 60fps games. The PSSR better than FSR1, 2 or 3 but need works. They need to improve the PSSR in UE5. I feel worth to me still they should have included the disc drive. I'm not disappointed with the PS5 Pro as I was with the PS4 Pro. I sold the PS4 Pro and got a slim. Keeping the PS5 Pro until the PS6.
 
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They kinda put all their eggs in one basket (PSSR), PS5 Pro should have had the Hardware to natively boost games + PSSR, which is technically does because we have games that don't use PSSR (Horizon, Callisto) and they do deliver the goods
But the current PSSR+60/120fps model they have doesn't do it any favours.
On day one I noticed something was wrong, every game I tested even those that people was saying is a massive difference was....poor in comparison to the Quality Mode, and as time went on people was noticing it more, DF started pointing it out( despite being present in the games they praised)
Then people jumped to "yeah, but it's better then the performance mode" like WTF?
For nearly 700 it better look better then the dog shit mode on the standard PS5.
"But the framerate!" Yep, lovely but it's upscaled and has Temporal Ghosting which blurs the image, you can freeze the image all you want to show it looks "sharper in motion in a still shot" but in real motion it doesn't, it fussy static, and fussy in motion
It's target should be better then Quality with all graphically effects and more at 60fps
And what's worse is some games you are forced to use PSSR by default and they all look worse then the based PS5 with no way of disabling it.
Now I have high hopes for PSSR 2.0 when ever that supposed to drop which is apparently soon, but Sony has yet to mention it which means it's probably not soon at all.
Disappointment is a understatement
 
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I'm happy enough with the performance.

It's a sports gaming machine for me and they've been rock solid on it.

I've got PC for everything else 🙂
 
I feel like I've benefitted from having the Pro so far. I've enjoyed a few VR games like GT7 and NMS with Pro enhancements. My favourite SP games have had really good upgrades. Even unpatched games have shown discernible improvements.

Forza Horizon 5 having a 60fps quality-like mode can't be sniffed at and gives me confidence in FH6 and Fable having similar modes.

Insomniac's games have all had great Pro modes, and no doubt Wolverine will be another one (hopefully using PSSR 2).

If PSSR 2 can gain better results with UE5 games then even better.

It's the next big ND and SSM games that I'm looking forward to the most though. For this reason, it feels like an exciting investment at the very least. Resident Evil Requiem and Saros are two more games that are just around the corner.

But, yeah, I opted for 'depends on the game'.

The worst game I've played on Pro was only yesterday. Test Drive is on PS+ so I thought I'd give it a punt. My god, it's a shocker. Really, really badly optimised. No proper reflections on the cars, awful shadows that flit all over the place, whether using performance or quality modes.
 
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Topher said:
Lot depends on developers putting the effort into it. I think the most significant mistake Sony made with this was pricing it so high that it did not achieve an install base for many developers to believe it is worthy. Not saying the technical weaknesses that others are talking about are not factors, but there is a pretty large gap between the best implementations of the technology and the worst.
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Sony probably doesn't care other than for keeping their console designers and launch pipeline busy.
Looking at the hardware cost of the Pro components, they probably make more money on each sold base PS5 than for the Pro.
So ironically, it's just a nice to have for the hardcore fans.
 
The devs are already too starved for time and manpower to optimize for a system only 15% of the fan base has, so you get only the brute force improvements.

At the same time, you are all feeding the beast by proving this kind of clearly nonsensical piece of hardware are a viable marketing strategy to boost numbers to show to the next shareholders meeting, effectively keeping prices high across the board with marginal improvements.

So congrats to all Pro gamers.
 
I don't like the value proposition for the PS5 Pro. And I don't trust Sony to provide the same value as previous iterations for the next console.

Less games and less value + walled garden.

Therefore I made a choice. It's the reason why I went PC after owning all five Playstations released.
 
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videogamedude said:
i'm disappointed because I thought it would drive down the price of the base model... but it's still $550 on Amazon
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The ps5 digital fortnite bundle in Amazon is $400. The same price as a Series S 512gb. The Xbox Series X it's more than $500. The X 2tb cost $800. The Switch 2 cost $450.
 
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It's not a balanced machine and 920 euros for the disc version is high end robbery.

But the quality of the improvement is always dictated by the devs\game, ds2\yotei have a nice perf pro mode, something like mh wilds looked obscene in perf mode and it wasn't even 60 locked, and actually nextgen looking games in ue5 have mixed results.

Considering the fact that i play all games on pc and only buy the 1-2 sony exclusives per year on pro so the improvement i get are the best possible, it's not complete trash :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
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scydrex said:
The ps5 digital fortnite bundle in Amazon is $400. The same price as a Series S 512gb. The Xbox Series X it's more than $500. The X 2tb cost $800. The Switch 2 cost $450.
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i'm not trying to create a comparison post, It would be nice if the switch2 cost me less money as well... but I have a bunch of switch1 carts that run on it (bayonetta3 at 60fps) and I really wanted Hades2 120hz on my tv

I really am stubborn about the 550 price because I want a disc drive... but you are right the digital is more affordable
 
Nope. The hardware itself is fine. Is the software what is sightly undercooked (more on this later). Compare it with the PS4 Pro is dumb. And sine I have the chance to give yet another unpopular opinion here we go: aside from Silent Hill f every title where the Pro under delivers is shit so it doesn't matter. So it's just "sightly undercooked" since it works perfectly in the games that count.
 
Xyphie said:
I think they had a way too conservative of a chip die size to really shine. It's pretty clear that they were limited to a 1/3 reticle limit (so they could fit three chips per target). So they had to make concessions: no CPU upgrade, GPU limited to 2SE still, no wider memory bus or GPU L3 cache.

Pro we've been amazing if it was something like a 8xZen4c/5c with a Navi 48-type (9070GRE/9070) GPU.
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lol yea for $1000 and it's essentially a new generation of hardware
 
Radical_3d said:
Nope. The hardware itself is fine. Is the software what is sightly undercooked (more on this later). Compare it with the PS4 Pro is dumb. And sine I have the chance to give yet another unpopular opinion here we go: aside from Silent Hill f every title where the Pro under delivers is shit so it doesn't matter. So it's just "sightly undercooked" since it works perfectly in the games that count.
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PSSR is far from perfect, but it is still better than FSR and other tech used in the base PS5.
 
Worthless piece of shit. PSSR was a bust, not even implemented correctly in all the games that support it. No incentive for devs to cater to maybe 5% of the PS5 userbase that owns one. This is where the Sony first parties were suppose to shine and take full advantage of the hardware, but where are the games?

Seems like some people got bamboozled into paying a premium to be beta testers for PS6 hardware.
 
FalconPunch said:
Slightly a year after the PS5 Pro launched, I think it's safe to say that it has failed to meet the expectations people have as a pro device. To break it down, let's look at the chart below:


PS4PS4 ProImprovement vs PS4Xbox OneXbox One XImprovement vs Xbox OnePS5PS5 ProImprovement vs PS5
Bandwidth176 GB/s217.6 GB/s24% Greater68.3 GB/s326 GB/s4.7x Greater448 GB/s576 GB/s29% Greater
CPU Clocks1.6 GHz2.13 GHz33% Greater1.75 GHz2.3 GHz31% Greater3.5 GHz3.85 GHz10% Greater
CPU Cores88-88-88-
Compute Units18 CUs36 CUs2X Greater12403.3X Greater36 CUs60 CUs67% Greater
GPU Clock Speed800mhz911mhz14% Greater853 mhz1172 mhz37% Greater2.23 GHz2.175 GHz5% Less
TeraFlops1.8 TFs4.2 TFs2.3X Greater1.3 TFs6 TFs4.6x Greater10.28 TFs16.7 TFs62% Greater
Raytracing------??Rumored 2-4x Faster
Ram8GB8GB + 1GB DDR313% Greater8 GB12 GB50% Greater16GB16GB + 2GB DDR513% Greater
Storage500GB1TB2x Greater500GB1TB2x Greater825 GB2TB2.4X Greater
Price$399$399No Difference$500$500No Difference$500$70040% Greater


Before we delve into the chart, let's discuss the PS4 Pro. The ps4 was favorably received due to it's increase in performance and it's price. It offered a notable jump from the PS4 at the same price.

The ps4 pro boosted the resolution from 900p-1080p on the base ps4 to 1440p-2160p on the ps4 pro. There wasn't too much attention paid to increasing the individual graphics settings but that did occur in some games.

The main complaint about the ps4 pro was that it primarily boosted resolution and did very little for frame rates. While valid, that complaint was due primarily to the anemic Jaguar cpus. A higher frequency didn't yield significantly more performance.

Looking at the Xbox One X, it was even better received than the PS4 Pro. It boosted resolutions from 720p-1080p on the Xbox One to 1800p-2160p on the Xbox One X.


When we compare the PS5 pro to the previous pro consoles, in all but Raytracing and Storage, it's basically a worse hardware improvement than previous pro consoles. The GPU fails to hit the 2x compute unit mark provided by the PS4 pro talk less of the Xbox One X.

The CPU frequency increase is worse than previous pro consoles as is the TFs, GPU clock speed, etc. So far, we have not seen large increases in resolution similar the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. We have seen some frame rate improvements in cpu limited games however, we're seeing no more than a 10% improvement there.

Technologies like PSSR and Improved RT were supposed to increase the value proposition. However, outside of a handful of games, both of these features have failed to deliver.

Price is the biggest issue with the ps5 pro. a 40% increase in price over the base ps5 while being a complete downgrade from the PS4 Pro. To make matters worse, it doesn't even come with a disk drive.


What is a point of a pro console if you can't learn from the previous pro iteration? Charging a price premium for such a downgrade is a real head scratcher. Unfortunately for those looking forward to the PS6, it appears that Playstation is on track to offer a worse value proposition once again.

The rumored PS6 is supposed to have a marginal improvement in memory bandwidth, compute units, smaller chip, smaller tdp, while boasting a nice increase in price. Rumors do suggest that improved RT, ML capabilities and architectural improvements will make the PS6 a significant boost over the ps5 pro.

However, we have heard these exact rumors before in the lead up to the ps5 pro and we can see the results. AMD often misses their GPU performance targets so it would not be surprising to see that happen again with RDNA 5.

I'm on Team PS5 pro is a failure right now. Maybe that will change as the gen progresses but I don't see it. How does Gaf feel about the PS5 Pro so far?
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PS5 Pro is much bigger upgrade vs. base PS5 when you comparing PS4 to PS4 Pro

The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X have an old, outdated, overclocked Jaguar tablet CPU that was really crap. There was more of a bump in resolution and graphic effects at 30 fps (some games would only get a bump in resolution, such as Days Gone, which only had bump cuts on a 4k checkerboard) than from 30 to 60 fps (on Xbox One X it was more visible because of course it was stronger, and Xbox One was the weakest, and that's why) compared to the regular launch versions of the consoles.

When a game on PS4 Pro, Xbox One X got a jump to 60 fps, the graphics were the same or lower than on base consoles, the resolution was the same or lower than on base consoles.

It's different on the PS5 Pro. In all tests, there is a visible jump in all 3 categories - fps, IQ and graphics compared to the classic PS5. So, what is fidelity mode in 30 fps on regular PS5, on PS5 Pro it is in 60 fps with higher resolution and better graphic effects.

Taking that into account, the jump is bigger in every game, and we didn't even count ray tracing, which will now be performed better. So that the PS5 Pro justifies the invested - gained, i.e. you get more."
 
I'll see what PSSR2 brings to the table before deciding to bother buying, i aint seeing the sort of couch position visual leaps it would bring over the base to make it worth near £700
 
If you have a good display the pro shines. I like mine. It could have been more powerful I guess but partial blame falls on the devs for shit looking games and shit performance even on base hardware.
 
I wished they had disregarded pricing and aimed it at non-price sensitive buyers but internet forums would have been ablaze if they did that.
 
It's been great for me, the image quality improvement in many games is very noticeable if not tranformative while also maintaining a more stable/higher framerate on top of that. Compared to PS4 pro it's been a much better experience and an overall improvement. Does anyone remember all the games back then that were actually performing worse on the 4 pro and your best option was to adjust the resolution to 1080p on the dashboard? It was also the loudest console I've ever owned. Back when I was living with my parents, I could literally not play games past midnight as I would wake them up.
 
Had a ps5 pro since launch and voted that so far the ps5 pro is a failure as it hasn't lived up to what mark Cerny promised, however there is a fundamental flaw in ops opener - it is NOT a downgrade from the ps4 pro and to even suggest such a thing is deluded and shows that the op doesn't own a ps5 pro imo as no one could make such an obviously false claim. The pro has had some great upgrades, however we are seeing Xbox barely supporting pro with the exception of forza horizon and the Ray tracing and the rest of their released basically mimicking the series x feature set and many other so called pro enhanced releases barely implementing anything of any note, however the upcoming resident evil requiem pro mode will demonstrate the kind of leap every developer should be aiming for and I think it's a shame that big titles like silent hill 2 and alan wake 2 had half assed pro patches that don't scratch the surface of what they could deliver, but that kind of outcome needs effort and development - remedy might come through for alan wake 2 but it's doubtful that blooper team will ever be given the funds to go back to silent hill 2 which is a crime - but very Konami - the Konami releases like silent hill f and metal gear delta are 2 titles where I still fell back to my older purchasing preferences of series X because the ps5 pro versions still fall short of delivering a superior experience which again is a crime given how these titles used to be the flagship PlayStation games and Sony should be at Konami studios with mark cerny, ploughing money into these Konami disasters to make them standout examples of what the pro can do, but who am I to make such bold demands... only a consumer who looks at these examples and is saddened by konamis continued fall from grace, the only consolation it that Konami finally gave up on gatcha games once the market collapsed and returned to software development even if it is to then deliver sun standard releases!
 
I think the output so far has been mixed. A lot of growing pains with ML upscalers, lots of UE5 CPU bottle-necked titles and far few titles where you see a huge difference.

The gains in IQ for FFVII Rebirth, GT7 and No Mans Sky in VR are almost enough to justify the purchase for me.

The real benchmark will be GTA6. Its been cooking long enough so the Pro optimizations could be substantial, not to mention it should come out with FSR 4 to get even better IQ improvements. After GTA6 it will be much more clearer if the Pro was worth it or not.
 
I never understood why people buy these 'Pro' versions. The specs look good on paper, but are rarely utilised properly in development, making it a waste of resources for everyone involved, including the consumer.
 
Gusy said:
I think the output so far has been mixed. A lot of growing pains with ML upscalers, lots of UE5 CPU bottle-necked titles and far few titles where you see a huge difference.

The gains in IQ for FFVII Rebirth, GT7 and No Mans Sky in VR are almost enough to justify the purchase for me.

The real benchmark will be GTA6. Its been cooking long enough so the Pro optimizations could be substantial, not to mention it should come out with FSR 4 to get even better IQ improvements. After GTA6 it will be much more clearer if the Pro was worth it or not.
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the big issue here is that devs just aren't optimizing for it. Look at Avowed that just came out, they bump up the resolution and call it a day.

Sometimes that is enough to make the game look a lot better - Ninja Gaiden 4 is an example of this - but often not
 
30-45% gain in GPU bottlenecked games ( depends on the game engine), no L3 (infinity) cache, 5-10% gain in CPU bound scenarios, broken PSSR meme. Pretty terrible, after all it launched 4 years after PS5 for 40% MSRP without disc drive.
 
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krumble said:
Had a ps5 pro since launch and voted that so far the ps5 pro is a failure as it hasn't lived up to what mark Cerny promised, however there is a fundamental flaw in ops opener - it is NOT a downgrade from the ps4 pro and to even suggest such a thing is deluded and shows that the op doesn't own a ps5 pro imo as no one could make such an obviously false claim.
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OP was not saying it's an absolute downgrade from the PS4 Pro, they're saying it's a relative downgrade. As in PS4 to PS4 Pro had a larger difference in power for the same cost, where was PS5 to PS5 Pro was a smaller increase in power for a higher cost.
 
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