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[SonGoku]

Things that caught my attention during the reveal:
Cerny made no mention of RDNA arch which i think is due to AMD not formally announcing RDNA 4, they cant discuss the architecture yet
I expected it to be RDNA4 regardless considering the rumored RDNA 3.5 has basically all of RDNA4 improvements sans RT to save in die space for laptop APUs
Also

"PS5 Pro uses the new advanced [ray tracing] feature sets that AMD created as the next step in their roadmap architecture," Cerny told me. "But if you look around, there are no other AMD GPUs that use it yet. We motivated the development, and I'm very happy we did so

Makes it sound like RDNA4 was codeveloped together for the PS5 Pro
Similarly in the past Polaris was codeveloped for PS4Pro/OneX and there were no "high end" Polaris cards

Cerny mentioned custom hardware for machine learning
At first i just assumed they would just write their own software (PSSR) to leverage existent RNDA4 machine learning blocks but his "custom" wording makes it sound like the machine learning hardware used is not present on the RDNA arch they are basing the PS5 Pro on (RDNA4 presumably) and thus they requested the feature to be added from a future arch (RNDA5/UDNA) similarly to how they added RPM from Vega arc to the PS4 Pro Polaris GPU

tl;dr PS5 Pro seems to be based on RNDA4 with custom machine learning blocks taken from RDNA5/UDNA

 

[Dorfdad]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

 

[West Texas CEO]

Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase.

Exactly how could you possibly prove this?

 

[Gaiff]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up??

Changing it would have costed even more. Bumping the clocks up has its limits and they must remain within the power budget.

 

[Skifi28]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

It's very easy, just grab your own CPU of choice and slot it in. Careful not to bend any pins and always remember to apply thermal paste!

 

[SonGoku]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

I agree but Sony designed this console to be cheap to manufacture so every bit of die space counts. This is a console that should have been $550 digital and would have been a classic as you say

Also if you read past Cerny interviews for the PS4 Pro he says they didn't upgrade the CPU because they consider that a generational upgrade

 

[Eszti]

Logically but rdna 4 releases nov/dec too. Stupid marketing at best. Was the same with ps5 and rdna 2

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

They had this silicone done too long ago and then shelved it for awhile for whatever reason, they weren't going to scrap that and start over

 

[SonGoku]

Logically but rdna 4 releases nov/dec too. Stupid marketing at best. Was the same with ps5 and rdna 2

Yes! the most surprising albeit disappointing bit for Radeon cards is that the machine learning hardware used on PS5 Pro will be missing on RDNA4 and thus we'll have to wait for RDNA5/UDNA for FSR to implement AI upscaling

 

[lh032]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

isnt that could affect how BC games run?

 

[SolidQ]

machine learning hardware used on PS5 Pro will be missing on RDNA4

Because it's XDNA2 NPU

 

[yogaflame]

Just include the cd drive out of the box and everyone will be happy

 

[Eszti]

Yes! the most surprising albeit disappointing bit for Radeon cards is that the machine learning hardware used on PS5 Pro will be missing on RDNA4 and thus we'll have to wait for RDNA5/UDNA for FSR to implement AI upscaling

Its because its from Sony not Amd. Sony also helped develop rdna in general.

 

[Killer8]

Sony literally out here saving AMD and PC gaming:

 

[SonGoku]

Its because its from Sony not Amd. Sony also helped develop rdna in general.

That may be the case or Sony could just ask the feature from a future project (RDNA5) they did it before with RPM for the Pro which was taken from the Vega arch. Why else would AMD not include the results of their cooperation in RDNA4 like Cerny mentioned before if the result of their work benefit both you will see features shared across console and cards

Because it's XDNA2 NPU

Maybe although i dont think those are die space efficient for a console. From laptop APU shots those NPU seem to take an awful lot of die space
Would be more space efficient to have the AI blocks spread over the GPU like with nvidia tensor cores.

Also the rumored tops for PS5 Pro far exceed XDNA2 NPUs 50 TOPs

 

[SolidQ]

awful lot of die space

Yeah, but
Another major feature being announced today is PSSR or PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution which is an AI-driven upscaling method. XDNA 2, the same IP that is powering the NPU for AMD's Strix Point APUs will be used to handle the AI processes on the PS5 Pro.

and maybe that one of reason that why PS5 pro expensive

 

[Skifi28]

Sony literally out here saving AMD and PC gaming:

I imagine AMD is doing quite well these days and doesn't need much help. They're probably making a killing with their CPUs. It just seems like most of their RnD budget goes there and GPUs are an afterthought.

 

[SonGoku]

Another major feature being announced today is PSSR or PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution which is an AI-driven upscaling method. XDNA 2, the same IP that is powering the NPU for AMD's Strix Point APUs will be used to handle the AI processes on the PS5 Pro.

Where did you get the quoted from? Havent seen it mentioned in the cnet article

 

[SolidQ]

Where did you get the quoted from

AMD Debuts New SoC With 60 Compute Units, Faster GDDR6 Memory, Advanced Raytracing & PSSR AI Upscaling In PlayStation 5 Pro

AMD developed a new custom SoC for Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro, featuring 60 Compute units based on the RDNA architecture & other improvements.

wccftech.com

 

[Gaiff]

Yes! the most surprising albeit disappointing bit for Radeon cards is that the machine learning hardware used on PS5 Pro will be missing on RDNA4 and thus we'll have to wait for RDNA5/UDNA for FSR to implement AI upscaling

Is that confirmed?

 

[Dorfdad]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this a

I agree but Sony designed this console to be cheap to manufacture so every bit of die space counts. This is a console that should have been $550 digital and would have been a classic as you say

Also if you read past Cerny interviews for the PS4 Pro he says they didn't upgrade the CPU because they consider that a generational upgrade

i was wondering that but that’s silly. So they basically would have to upgrade the ps6 even more to showcase a difference over the ps5 pro I assume and that would have cost more so I get it but, when you know the biggest issue with a lot of games is cpu based to not address it somehow seems bad.

 

[Wolzard]

Yes! the most surprising albeit disappointing bit for Radeon cards is that the machine learning hardware used on PS5 Pro will be missing on RDNA4 and thus we'll have to wait for RDNA5/UDNA for FSR to implement AI upscaling

All of these features were already known/rumored since the launch of RDNA 3. If you don't follow the hardware market, they may be new.

AMD changed its focus to being a software company, primarily AI, and bought some companies that specialized in that. So we already knew that RDNA 4 would have a reformulation in RT, would have upscaling via AI, etc. The lack of high end is due to the high end GPU not being stable enough. RDNA 5, will have a new architecture, so the biggest focus is on that.

It's likely that Sony took the opportunity to create the PS5 Pro and not the other way around.

 

[Eszti]

I imagine AMD is doing quite well these days and doesn't need much help. They're probably making a killing with their CPUs. It just seems like most of their RnD budget goes there and GPUs are an afterthought.

Depends. In the discrete gpu part they do absolutely terrible, in fact they never did as bad as now. Polaris times they were much better on that front.

Whats funny with rdna they went rdna gaming arch and cdna for computec.

Now rdna 3 immensely improved computec far beyond the gsming part.( AI boom) rdna 3 is in that department lightyears ahead of rdna 2.

Now they announced they will merge it again. Aka vega 2.0

Intel will surpass them one day. Intels rt performance is already better relatively anf upscaling is better too. They just need time.

Cpu they are doing well.

Without consoles amd would have gone bankrupt.

 

[Loxus]

I don't think RDNA5 changed it's approach on how the AI Accelerators work and UDNA would be to much of a different architecture to use anything from it.

It's most likely using another RDNA4 feature, which is the AI Accelerators.
Examining AMD’s RDNA 4 Changes in LLVM

Better Tensors​

AI hype is real these days. Machine learning involves a lot of matrix multiplies, and people have found that inference can be done with lower precision data types while maintaining acceptable accuracy. GPUs have jumped on the hype train with specialized matrix multiplication instructions. RDNA 3’s WMMA (Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate) use a matrix stored in registers across a wave, much like Nvidia’s equivalent instructions.

RDNA 4 carries these instructions forward with improvements to efficiency, and adds instructions to support 8-bit floating point formats.

Sparsity​

RDNA 4 introduces new SWMMAC (Sparse Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate) instructions to take advantage of sparsity.


RDNA3/4/5, I still don't understand how the PS5 Pro is $700. Nearly everything is reused from the PS5 architecture besides the GPU features.
Is it because of AI, 2TB storage or wafer cost?

 

[shamoomoo]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

Because the PS5 Pro is a stopgap console, it's basically the PS5+ and not the PS6.

 

[SonGoku]

AMD Debuts New SoC With 60 Compute Units, Faster GDDR6 Memory, Advanced Raytracing & PSSR AI Upscaling In PlayStation 5 Pro

AMD developed a new custom SoC for Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro, featuring 60 Compute units based on the RDNA architecture & other improvements.

wccftech.com

So this seems like an assumption from the author rather than a quote from official sources

Is that confirmed?

Its confirmed Pro uses custom machine hardware blocks, what we can deduce from that is that whatever RDNA arc its based on (presumably 4) does not have said blocks otherwise they would not have been "custom"

All of these features were already known/rumored since the launch of RDNA 3. If you don't follow the hardware market, they may be new.

AMD changed its focus to being a software company, primarily AI, and bought some companies that specialized in that. So we already knew that RDNA 4 would have a reformulation in RT, would have upscaling via AI, etc. The lack of high end is due to the high end GPU not being stable enough. RDNA 5, will have a new architecture, so the biggest focus is on that.

It's likely that Sony took the opportunity to create the PS5 Pro and not the other way around.

The surprise here is that RDNA4 will not have machine learning hardware used on the PS5 Pro

It's most likely using another RDNA4 feature, which is the AI Accelerators.

If its a RDNA4 feature why would he call the machine learning hardware custom? Seems like it was added to it and not present on the regular RDNA4 we'll see on the off the shelf cards

 

[Gaiff]

Its confirmed Pro uses custom machine hardware blocks, what we can deduce from that is that whatever RDNA arc its based on (presumably 4) does not have said blocks otherwise they would not have been "custom"

I'd say custom is a bit vague in this instance. AMD has been talking about using ML upscaling as far back as the pre-release days of RDNA3. It'd be baffling if they're skipping the hardware for another generation.

 

[Vick]

I agree but Sony designed this console to be cheap to manufacture so every bit of die space counts. This is a console that should have been $550 digital and would have been a classic as you say

You really believe this PS5 Pro should cost $50 more than the regular $499 Digital one?

By running games at improved settings and IQ over the 30fps modes on the regular, at twice the framerate on top?
I'd like to get what some of you guys are smoking.

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

The MLiD benchmark leak would explain why they felt they didn't need to:

Considering most "CPU limited" games actually aren't, this "High CPU Frequency Mode" would be more than sufficient to hold 60fps when needed. At least that's what he says in the video.

 

[Wolzard]

So this seems like an assumption from the author rather than a quote from official sources

Its confirmed Pro uses custom machine hardware blocks, what we can deduce from that is that whatever RDNA arc its based on (presumably 4) does not have said blocks otherwise they would not have been "custom"

The surprise here is that RDNA4 will not have machine learning hardware used on the PS5 Pro

If its a RDNA4 feature why would he call the machine learning hardware custom? Seems like it was added to it and not present on the regular RDNA4 we'll see on the off the shelf cards

Because the PS5 Pro is using an RDNA 3.5 GPU, but they added some features that will only exist in RDNA 4, like the ML hardware.

It's nothing new, AMD always done it like this:

Xbox 360 using an X1850, but with unified shaders from the Radeon HD 2000 that were released 6 months later.
PS4 using an HD 7970, but with Radeon 200 async shaders.
PS4 using an RX 470, but with the Rapid Packed Math of the Vega architecture.
PS5 with a mix of RDNA 1 with features from RDNA 2.

 

[SonGoku]

I'd say custom is a bit vague in this instance. AMD has been talking about using ML upscaling as far back as the pre-release days of RDNA3. It'd be baffling if they're skipping the hardware for another generation.

Exactly AI upscaling is due but from the looks of it AMD wont go all in until after RDNA5/UDNA
RDNA3 already has AI blocks but they are not as robust compared to CDNA, nvidia Tensor cores or whats used on the Pro

You really believe this PS5 Pro should cost $50 more than the regular $499 Digital one?

Current PS5 is overpriced and in dire need of a price cut with sales already showing signs of decline
DE PS5 launched at $400, current DE is $450
$550 would give the PS5 pro a $100 budget to cover increase APU cost and memory speed

Not to mention they make far more money with DE consoles due to higher games prices with no store competition driving down prices and no margin cuts for brick and mortar stores for every game sold

 

[RodriGames40]

You really believe this PS5 Pro should cost $50 more than the regular $499 Digital one?

By running games at improved settings and IQ over the 30fps modes on the regular, at twice the framerate on top?
I'd like to get what some of you guys are smoking.


The MLiD benchmark leak would explain why they felt they didn't need to:

Considering most "CPU limited" games actually aren't, this "High CPU Frequency Mode" would be more than sufficient to hold 60fps when needed. At least that's what he says in the video.

It's also worth noting that thanks to the powerful decompression an increase in frequency that would be otherwise insignificant in a computer might actually manifest in a more significant difference here.

 

[kevboard]

You really believe this PS5 Pro should cost $50 more than the regular $499 Digital one?

the PS4 Pro launched at the same price as the base model launched at, while offering more than 2x the GPU power and hardware that helped with CBR to in the end effectively quadrupling the resolution in some games compared to the base console.

 

[SonGoku]

Because the PS5 Pro is using an RDNA 3.5 GPU, but they added some features that will only exist in RDNA 4, like the ML hardware.

RDNA 3.5 with RT improvements IS RDNA4... The only difference between the two is RT which RDNA 3.5 opted out to safe on die space for laptop APUs
Also he didn't call the improved RT hardware "custom" which makes sense considering its part of RDNA4 which we now know they motivated AMD to develop

PS5 with a mix of RDNA 1 with features from RDNA 2.

PS5 is RDNA2, theres no RDNA 1 or 1.5 . They just worked with AMD to pick and chose the features from it

It's nothing new, AMD always done it like this:

Correct but with the important distinction that in all those examples they gave the latest arch + some forward features not the last gen arch + some next gen features.
And again im not surprised by this fact itself (I expected Pro to have at least one feature beyond RDNA4) what surprises me is that AMD is still not implementing machine learning hardware for image upscaling on their latest upcoming arch

 

[Jesb]

I see a lot complaining about the lack of a cpu upgrade but if they did do this wouldn’t that be like starting a new generation. Wouldn’t that essentially be as problematic as the two Xbox skus was since one is significantly worse. Developers would have to make games for two significantly different skus. With the current upgrade path it’s a smaller improvement but noticeable and does so without making a big headache for everyone. I agree the cpu would’ve been much better and less of a bottleneck, but you have to put into perspective on what a big upgrade on a cpu would do, It changes the gen completely.

 

[Silver Wattle]

The modest spec upgrades are in part due to wanting a larger performance gap with the PS6 in 2-3 years time.

 

[Bitstream]

It's very easy, just grab your own CPU of choice and slot it in. Careful not to bend any pins and always remember to apply thermal paste!

My thermal paste tastes funny

 

[Allandor]

If that is latest tech, rdna4 isn't going to change anything in regard to rt. If PS5 pro has 2-3x the rt power, than this is not good. A huge chunk comes from more CUs. Than emg. RDNA3 - RDNA3 is about 80% (according to AMD) better with rt. And yes, rt is much better on rdna3 than on rdna2 but still way apart from Nvidias solution. But if we only take RDNA3 + more CUs, the GPU should already be 2-3x faster in rt or at least there is not that much more to gain in that tiny window.
Current games already use a crash low rt resolution. Even only doubling that increases demand by 4 times.

 

[Magic Carpet]

My thermal paste tastes funny

I hope they ditched the liquid metal and just used graphite sheets that dont dry out.

 

[rnlval]

Things that caught my attention during the reveal:
Cerny made no mention of RDNA arch which i think is due to AMD not formally announcing RDNA 4, they cant discuss the architecture yet
I expected it to be RDNA4 regardless considering the rumored RDNA 3.5 has basically all of RDNA4 improvements sans RT to save in die space for laptop APUs
Also

Makes it sound like RDNA4 was codeveloped together for the PS5 Pro
Similarly in the past Polaris was codeveloped for PS4Pro/OneX and there were no "high end" Polaris cards

Cerny mentioned custom hardware for machine learning
At first i just assumed they would just write their own software (PSSR) to leverage existent RNDA4 machine learning blocks but his "custom" wording makes it sound like the machine learning hardware used is not present on the RDNA arch they are basing the PS5 Pro on (RDNA4 presumably) and thus they requested the feature to be added from a future arch (RNDA5/UDNA) similarly to how they added RPM from Vega arc to the PS4 Pro Polaris GPU

tl;dr PS5 Pro seems to be based on RNDA4 with custom machine learning blocks taken from RDNA5/UDNA

PS4 Pro GPU didn't include Vega's 64 ROPS 4MB L2 cache link.

Xbox One X GPU had 32 ROPS with 2 MB render cache link and TMUs has 2 MB L2 cache from Polaris. PC's Polaris ROPS does not include 2 MB render cache.

PS5 Pro's up to 3X performance for RT indicates BVH8 with 2 triangles per RT core with 60 CU scaling. BVH8 with 2 triangles RT core is just two BVH4 with triangle RT core super glue.

-------------

For NVIDIA,

ADA RT core has BVH4 with 4 triangles.

Ampere RT core has BVH4 with 2 triangles.

Imagine NVIDIA Blackwell's super glued two ADA RT cores for BVH8.

 

[rnlval]

If that is latest tech, rdna4 isn't going to change anything in regard to rt. If PS5 pro has 2-3x the rt power, than this is not good. A huge chunk comes from more CUs. Than emg. RDNA3 - RDNA3 is about 80% (according to AMD) better with rt. And yes, rt is much better on rdna3 than on rdna2 but still way apart from Nvidias solution. But if we only take RDNA3 + more CUs, the GPU should already be 2-3x faster in rt or at least there is not that much more to gain in that tiny window.
Current games already use a crash low rt resolution. Even only doubling that increases demand by 4 times.

Both RDNA 2's and RDNA 3's RT core have BVH4 with 1 triangle. RDNA 3 RT core has extra early BVH culling, transverse flag hardware support and 1.5X higher RT instruction in flight SRAM storage. RDNA 3 RT core doesn't have raw RT core power improvements.

3X RT improvement indicates BVH8 with 2 triangles and 60 CU scaling.

36 CU to 60 CU = 1.66X improvment.

 

[KeplerL2]

Because it's XDNA2 NPU

It's not, a 300 TOPs NPU would be almost 200mm² by itself.

 

[DenchDeckard]

I can't wait to see real world comparisons.

 

[nowhat]

Also if you read past Cerny interviews for the PS4 Pro he says they didn't upgrade the CPU because they consider that a generational upgrade

Even so, the PS4 Pro had the CPU running at much higher frequency. Yes, PS5 Pro can technically run the CPU ever so slightly faster, with a very minor hit on GPU performance, but it's still basically the same which is disappointing. That, and the price of course.

 

[gooner4life_uk]

I just want to k ow why they didn’t bump the cpu up?? Easily could have gotten a better cpu in there for this cost increase. Would have made this an instant classic machine

The CPU isn't terrible, it's not a jaguar man, it's only 3% off an i9 9900K in single thread performance, 7% at 4 core, no game is 30fps limited by the CPU on PS5, even plague tale, it's the weak GPU.

 

[Dr.D00p]

Pick your battles...the vast majority of PS5 performance woes are down to the GPU, not CPU.

 

[PeteBull]

The CPU isn't terrible, it's not a jaguar man, it's only 3% off an i9 9900K in single thread performance, 7% at 4 core, no game is 30fps limited by the CPU on PS5, even plague tale, it's the weak GPU.

Bro, u know ps5 cpu is zen2 r7 3700x but with massively reduced clock and less cashe, even tho its abot 3x stronger from ps4's jaguar, its visibly weaker even from my old trusty 8700k, and i got mine in 2017, at launch.

tldr sony is trying to sell entry lvl super weak budget cpu in premium console

 

[winjer]

Bro, u know ps5 cpu is zen2 r7 3700x but with massively reduced clock and less cashe, even tho its abot 3x stronger from ps4's jaguar, its visibly weaker even from my old trusty 8700k, and i got mine in 2017, at launch.

tldr sony is trying to sell entry lvl super weak budget cpu in premium console

Did you notice that the 3700X can output +100 fps in most games. Even Baldurs Gate gets an average of 80 fps.
For 60 fps, the Zen 2 on the PS5 Pro is well enough. The only exception is with really badly optimized games.

 

[gooner4life_uk]

Bro, u know ps5 cpu is zen2 r7 3700x but with massively reduced clock and less cashe, even tho its abot 3x stronger from ps4's jaguar, its visibly weaker even from my old trusty 8700k, and i got mine in 2017, at launch.

tldr sony is trying to sell entry lvl super weak budget cpu in premium console

The only game in that video that looked to drop below 60 even for a second was Starfield which was a piece of shit when it launched, it's better now.

Also a CPU in a Gaming PC has to have more cache because it's performing operations for the OS and the game and Windows is a lot more CPU heavy than freebsd on the PS5.

It's nonsense that the CPU will limit any of these games to 30fps on PS5 Pro.

 

[Ronin_7]

RDNA5? Yeah no.

I don't think AMD will use Machine Learning anytime soon if ever.

They'll just keep betting on FSR and trying to win the low-mid range market from Nvidia.

 

[PeteBull]

The only game in that video that looked to drop below 60 even for a second was Starfield which was a piece of shit when it launched, it's better now.

Also a CPU in a Gaming PC has to have more cache because it's performing operations for the OS and the game and Windows is a lot more CPU heavy than freebsd on the PS5.

It's nonsense that the CPU will limit any of these games to 30fps on PS5 Pro.

thats oced to 4,5 Ghz, lests check what ps5pr0 cpu has much lower clock since its console form factor, that 4,5ghz oc would take most of ps5pr0 powerdraw

What Are The PS5 Pro Specs - CPU, GPU, SSD Storage, RAM, PSSR, Ray Tracing Acceleration, PSVR 2 Upgrades & More - PlayStation Universe

What are the PS5 Pro specs? We've got the PS5 Pro CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD storage, PSVR 2 and PSSR details here in our handy guide that is constantly updated.

www.psu.com

The latest rumour leak (which has been corroborated by Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming and others as being legit) suggests that the the PS5 Pro CPU is actually identical to the standard PlayStation 5, with the exception being that the PS5 Pro boasts a ‘High CPU Frequency Mode”, which effectively takes the CPU to 3.85GHz and provides a 10% increase in CPU performance over the standard PS5 console. This dovetails with what the previously rumoured PS5 Pro CPU specs were – representing only a modest increase in CPU power over the standard PS5 console.

Here comparision of few pc cpu's perf in space marine2

vs what consoles are only capable of