While the PS5 has just started, that is not as recent as it has been but very few months it will almost be 3 years old in three months. And with respect to the last generation of consoles, Sony is also preparing to upgrade its console. Tom Henderson, a journalist and an outsider who recently reported that the production for the same is underway, and first-party developers will have to receive prototype development kits in a couple of months.

Although there is a lot of buzz about whether we need a PS5 at the moment yet, we want to look forward to the technical details of this rumored console, and what it needs to bring to the table so we can upgrade to the base PS5. Before leaving, you need to recognize that all of this information will be speculation. Don’t mistake simple for real facts, so keep your expectations in check accordingly.

The processor is the same as the CPU, and as the second to third generation processor, the processing chip has proved to be one of the biggest upgrades, comparing the Sonys latest machine to the PS4. The Zen 2-based custom chip boasts impressive single-core performance, the yet to be used to its fullest potential. As for the PS5 Pro, Sony might not need to be able to make an improvement of its CPU, but we are expecting very little improvements over the base of the machine. This would most likely happen with a Zen 2 chip, which can be used higher than 4.5 GHz and other advanced techniques like raising the rate of a boost clock.

There are rumors that we’ll get a bump in Zen 4 atop the PS5 Pro, but that sounds unlikely to happen now that Sony doesn’t change the chips during the last generation of the PS4 Pro. With the Zen 4, architecture, released only in 2022, the plans for a potential PS5 Pro would have already been made of stone sometime before that, so there’s no doubt that there is to be more into consideration.

Due to its 10 TFLOP RDNA2-based GPU, the base PS5 delivers some serious graphical grunt. Games like Horizon Forbidden West have benefited greatly from this power to deliver very powerful visuals that genuinely feel next-gen, but the CPU isn’t enough when it comes to running games like Ragnarok at 60fp while in native 4K. We are expecting that PS5 Pro can resolve these problems. And the upcoming machine will feature 30-Work Group Processors, which is a substantial upgrade to 16 Work Group Processors of the base PS5.

If you look at these numbers, the PS5 Pro will probably have a GPU with 20 TFLOPs of compute power. As for context, the PS4 Pro had more than double the graphical grunt of the base PS4, therefore our speculations seem to align with Sony’s recent expectations. From the original frame of the architecture, Sony will probably stick to RDNA 2 to the same function as the CPU, but instead pack more or more CU (Compute Units) or increase memory clocks to achieve the above aforementioned power levels. Hopefully, this will help first-party releases achieve much better performance at native 4K or even push certain games beyond that threshold.

Ray-traced reflections are still one of the most important rendering techniques in modern AAA. While the PS5 does support hardware-accelerated raytracing, there is certainly a lot of room for improvement with the Pro refresh. Games like Gran Turismo 7 can not handle ray tracing during gameplay. That’s a shame as it looks a lot better in Scapes mode with ray tracing on. In keeping with the standard for RDNA2 data sets, it seems a bit premature, but the new chip will have better RT cores than the base model which should assist in lowering the fidelity of lighting and reflections, and hopefully help in AAA games to achieve higher quality ray tracing.

AI-aided upscaling is a new technique that’s gaining a lot of popularity in the PC gaming landscape, with fans of all the available options for, including Nvidias DLSS 3 and AMDs FSR 3.0 and Intels XeSS 3.0. Considering the fact that the new console will also feature an AMD chip, it’s likely that we will only see support for FSR upscaling, but as the new machine would have dedicated AI engine to help with upscaling, we’ll get better results for games without compromise on frame-rate or visual fidelity.

The PS5 has 16 GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory that is dynamically shared between the CPU and the GPU. One can imagine 16 GB of RAM at best for modern games, but even a cross-gen game like Cyberpunk 2077 can easily gobble 16 GB while trying to run at 4K 60fps on a gaming console. The PS5 Pro is most likely to carry the same type of upgrades as the memory.

For example, it could be in Form of bumping the memory bandwidth too much so as to a very large scale. Or maybe it could be better with the PS4 Pro or it could just get bigger at the board itself. We’re betting on latter, since it seems more feasible to assume the current demands of modern titles, and we expect that it’ll have 24 GB of RAM. This doesn’t surprise us if Sony retreading familiar ground instead of improving memory bandwidth.

There’s the question of storage, right? Since most current-gen games typically occupie more than 100 GB of storage, even the 825-GB SSD on the PS5 is starting to feel a little too restrictive. If a major storage unit is needed, that’s one of the biggest priorities for a PS5 Pro. We are hoping the system will be able to build as much as the base PS5. This generation has been experiencing difficulties with the SSDs PCI e 4.0 nature. So we are not expecting any other upgrades besides the storage space.

Sonys philosophy is to provide customers with an iterative upgrade over the base hardware, and with our speculated hardware we will bring a new version of the PS5 Pro which will handle genuine 4K at 60 fps almost everything you throw at it.

Aside from the cost of the price, the PS4 Pro began at $399 at a time when the PS4 Slim was available at $299. The PS5 Pro also might likely pay a premium in terms of the base model. The issue is that Sony is offering two SKUs (a higher price version and a lower price digital edition), so it remains to be seen which of these consoles will serve as the baseline for the PS5 Pros price premium.

In September of 2022, it was reported that Sony is working on a new PS5-modell that has a detachable disc drive. If that were true, it would make much sense to include the disc drive on the new console and make the reversible money from having to reduce the price and sell hardware more easily. Upon completion, the PS5 Pro will cost $499, and Sony will announce a sneezing price for the base PS5 around next year to help both SKUs negotiate the same price proposition. However, Sony could not opt for that, and perhaps it might sell with a five99 USD high-end console. It’s going to be interesting to see what this is doing, given history hasn’t been very kind to that kind of console pricing. I think PlayStation 3.

It’s important to reiterate that everything is speculation at that time, and the PS5 Pro might end up being completely different than our speculations. Some are expecting to become an 8K gaming monster, though that seems very unlikely from the technical and business perspective. Both the two of them will wait for at least another year for the obscene moment as long as they can get their hands on this shiny piece of hardware.