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Digital Foundry: PlayStation 5 Pro Review: The Digital Foundry Verdict

XXL

Member
Proud Of You Yes GIF
 

Senua

Gold Member
Agree that resolution is too low but wouldnt call Veilguard and Alans Wake2 prorformance modes massive improvements ;d
Yea definitely the least impressive implementations. Alan wake 2 looked better with motion blur turned off though in the vid at least
 
As expected GPU bound games will see a noticeable increase in fidelity and those that are CPU bound will see a very small bump if not locked but nowhere near enough to push 30fps games to 60fps.

Seems like a reasonably good upgrade and I'm eager to see how first party games come out looking. I'm kind of excited to give Horizon Forbidden West a go too. The DF team really made that sound impressive.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Looks like a nice incremental upgrade like ps4 pro. Ill just wait for ps6. Never bought ps4 pro and didnt feel like I missed anything.
 
It's too early to tell in my opinion, we'll see how it goes through 2025 and 2026. Personally I'm getting it as I prefer to always have the maximum performance I can get my hands on, especially on consoles to avoid technical issues.

My big issue with the Pro right now is the lack of the Optical Drive in the box for 799€.
 
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It was a strange video review because their main points of criticism weren't so much as to whether the games look better, or play better, but rather that they weren't locked to 60 fps (graph showed it dipping to 57fps), or that there was some shimmering on the grass (I didn't notice it till they mentioned it). In some cases, they didn't really highlight whether there were any improvements at all despite the video comparison showing that improvement. Dragon Age Veilguard, for instance, looked significantly better in Performance Mode.

I suppose in hindsight, the context of the discussion was more about the varied success PSSR was having, in contrast to Sony 1st party. It's a fair point to make; if Horizon can look this good, and run this flawlessly, what excuse is there for other developers to have 57fps rather than 60fps (if the base can do 60). However, that is arguably a weak argument overall. Ater being quite sceptical myself about this machine when it was revealed, it only reinforced my anticipation rather than dwindling it.
 
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Luipadre

Gold Member
It was a strange video review because their main points of criticism weren't so much as to whether the games look better, or play better, but rather that they weren't locked to 60 fps (graph showed it dipping to 57fps), or that there was some shimmering on the grass (I didn't notice it till they mentioned it). In some cases, they didn't really highlight whether there were any improvements at all despite the video comparison showing that improvement. Dragon Age Veilguard, for instance, looked significantly better in Performance Mode.

I suppose in hindsight, the context of the discussion was more about the varied success PSSR was having, in contrast to Sony 1st party. But overall, after being quite sceptical myself about this machine when it was revealed, it only reinforced my anticipation rather than dwindling it.
Yeah even AW2 looks a lot better than base perf mode imo. Sharper, better graphics settings etc. I saw some DA footage and it looked pretty great and also much sharper than base PS5
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I think the biggest question the reviews should be answering...is Mark Cernys statement.

Does this console provide quality mode settings at performance mode framerates?
 

Zacfoldor

Member
It is silly to review this kind of thing, btw.

It is a PS5 with a better graphics card. So might as well review the PS5 then say it is better than that.

Otherwise the review is just about the price point.

I'm of a mind that products should be reviewed on their own merit and appropriateness of the price point should be decided by the market.

It's like saying this rock candy turd is a 10/10 because it isn't as expensive as regular turds. If you go by price in a review, then you are not comparing apples to apples with ordinary reviews.

It generates conversation around a product we are interested in and generates clicks, but keep in mind that the review score for something like this is not an apples to apples comparison to a base console. So for example, if this gets a 7 and PS5 gets a 10, that doesn't truly convey the fact that that this is a much better machine in every way than a PS5 and that if price wasn't a consideration, then everyone with a PS5 would want this upgrade as there is no reason not to upgrade except price. There is no downside to the pro besides the price.
 

Kangx

Member from Brazile
OMG. Found this Alan wake video.
Disable len distortion and film grain will make the game crisper and Disable motion blur will mostly clear the shimmering when moving. This is the most annoying thing in consoles.

Go to 10:20. What a fucked up Remedy.


The performance mode look pretty crisp here and all the shimmering almost gone. It is a game changer. Really.

wtf. does this work on on the base consoles? Nobody reporting this?
 
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Luipadre

Gold Member
OMG. Found this Alan wake video.
Disable len distortion and film grain will make the game crisper and Disable motion blur will mostly clear the shimmering when moving. This is the most annoying thing in consoles.

Go to 10:20. What a fucked up Remedy.


The performance mode look pretty crisp here and all the shimmering almost gone. It is a game changer. Really.

wtf. does this work on on the base consoles? Nobody reporting this?


Even tho the footage has wrong black levels it does look pretty nice and crisp. Damn i just watched the beginning and it does look a lot crisper than any footage i saw. So much better than base PS5 perf mode
 
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Kangx

Member from Brazile
Even tho the footage has wrong black levels it does look pretty nice and crisp.
Yea, this guy video alway fucked up. If the shimmering showing the same improvement in this scence here, the performance is back on the table as the prefer mode to play.

We need someone to test this more lol. Maybe tomorrow.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Like DLSS it's not magic, if the internal Res is super low (below 1080p) then it only has so much to work with. It's still a huge improvement over FSR2 at those resolutions. But yea don't expect miracles
Yep. Thats why i kept harping on the supposed 45% gpu performance upgrade. And now we know its 45% peak and as low as 30%. Thats simply not enough to boost some of these 720p ps5 performance modes to 1080p. you need 100% more GPU power. not 30-45%.

I was a big believer in the PS4 pro. The 2.3x increase in tflops combined with a 1.25x increase in IPC gains meant that we could get up to 2.5-2.8x more performance out of the GPU. The fact that there is no IPC gains this time around and a mere 45% increase despite the 65% increase in tflops was simply never going to enough.

Hopefully, the RT IPC gains will help in future games but even then the vram and cpu bottlenecks will hold back 60 fps rt performance.
 

Mr Moose

Member
700 pounds for "something" like fidelity mode at performance mode.

Don't fall for this shit peeps. Please.
Not something like fidelity mode, something like fidelity levels of detail. And we've seen it do just that in most cases.
It's taking performance modes and making it as clean (sometimes more so) than fidelity modes. Take a look at FF7 as an example of this. According to John it looks better than the native 4K mode in Stellar Blade, and it runs at 80fps (native 4K one runs at 50 for some reason).
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
I suppose in hindsight, the context of the discussion was more about the varied success PSSR was having, in contrast to Sony 1st party. It's a fair point to make; if Horizon can look this good, and run this flawlessly, what excuse is there for other developers to have 57fps rather than 60fps (if the base can do 60). However, that is arguably a weak argument overall. Ater being quite sceptical myself about this machine when it was revealed, it only reinforced my anticipation rather than dwindling it.

I read somewhere that Sony was still updating and improving PSSR. Since PSSR is not a system wide feature, developers will probably include a specific version of PSSR in their game code and they'll have to update the code if Sony brings out PSSR updates. This is how it works with DLSS and FSR on consoles. So there could be PS5 Pro games with different versions of PSSR out there which would explain why PSSR is flawless in one game and has shimmering grass in another game.
 

Luipadre

Gold Member
Yea, this guy video alway fucked up. If the shimmering showing the same improvement in this scence here, the performance is back on the table as the prefer mode to play.

We need someone to test this more lol. Maybe tomorrow.

My first game will be AW2 tomorrow when i get the Pro, so i will test it
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
What do you recommend to do with $700 for gaming?

Hopefully you have already bought a pc. Spend that money on a gpu and literally turn the settings up on every single one of your games. Get better settings and framerate.

If you haven't invested in a pc I would say use that 700 dollars to pay a large chunk towards your first pc and enjoy every game you want to play running at the settings you want. No waiting for patches etc.

Everyone knows my stance on how I felt this box was a rip off. It's even worse than I thought imo. I would advise people don't spend money on this until Sony truly shows its worth.

Same 32gps hdmi chip etc is just an insult.
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Yep. Thats why i kept harping on the supposed 45% gpu performance upgrade. And now we know its 45% peak and as low as 30%. Thats simply not enough to boost some of these 720p ps5 performance modes to 1080p. you need 100% more GPU power. not 30-45%.

I was a big believer in the PS4 pro. The 2.3x increase in tflops combined with a 1.25x increase in IPC gains meant that we could get up to 2.5-2.8x more performance out of the GPU. The fact that there is no IPC gains this time around and a mere 45% increase despite the 65% increase in tflops was simply never going to enough.

Hopefully, the RT IPC gains will help in future games but even then the vram and cpu bottlenecks will hold back 60 fps rt performance.
When did the PS4 Pro ever exhibit such performance increases? It would have been a 4K machine 99% of the time when it clearly wasn’t. It rarely ever hit 4K.
 

Kangx

Member from Brazile
My first game will be AW2 tomorrow when i get the Pro, so i will test it
Good. I think the shimmering mostly will clear though with all post process disable. I think the console low post processing setting is causing all these specular shimmering. When moving with motion blur over an object with specular highlights willl cause it to shimmer.

Edit. Still if this engine have DRS, most scenes or places will probably average 1080p internally which further get rid of aliasing and look more crips with extra resolution.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
When did the PS4 Pro ever exhibit such performance increases? It would have been a 4K machine 99% of the time when it clearly wasn’t. It rarely ever hit 4K.
It took base PS4 1080p (2.1 million pixels) games and ran them at 4kcb (4.1 million pixels + reconstruction cost on the GPU). Several games ran at 1620p. Some games like GOW and SOTC ran at 1080p 60 fps so doubling the performance.

Some other games were held back because of the poor vram bandwidth increase but most games managed to hit 4kcb at a minimum.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
It took base PS4 1080p (2.1 million pixels) games and ran them at 4kcb (4.1 million pixels + reconstruction cost on the GPU). Several games ran at 1620p. Some games like GOW and SOTC ran at 1080p 60 fps so doubling the performance.

Some other games were held back because of the poor vram bandwidth increase but most games managed to hit 4kcb at a minimum.
In other words, never. Going from 2.1 to 4.1M pixel doesn’t require twice the GPU horsepower. Try going from 1080p>4K.

God of War doesn’t run anywhere near 60fps on the PS4 Pro. More like 40-45.
 

scydrex

Member
Hopefully you have already bought a pc. Spend that money on a gpu and literally turn the settings up on every single one of your games. Get better settings and framerate.

If you haven't invested in a pc I would say use that 700 dollars to pay a large chunk towards your first pc and enjoy every game you want to play running at the settings you want. No waiting for patches etc.

Everyone knows my stance on how I felt this box was a rip off. It's even worse than I thought imo. I would advise people don't spend money on this until Sony truly shows its worth.

Same 32gps hdmi chip etc is just an insult.
No... I don't have a PC and will only spend $700 to play game. So what do you recommend me for $700? I can sell my PS5 fat for whatever I can get and have $700.
 
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RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
As expected GPU bound games will see a noticeable increase in fidelity and those that are CPU bound will see a very small bump if not locked but nowhere near enough to push 30fps games to 60fps.

Seems like a reasonably good upgrade and I'm eager to see how first party games come out looking. I'm kind of excited to give Horizon Forbidden West a go too. The DF team really made that sound impressive.
Tbf Forbidden West at 40fps was already a visual masterpiece, easily one of the best looking games I've seen, it would take something else to make that game look even better tbh and from the clips I've seen so far I ain't really seeing it
 

Senua

Gold Member
Tbf Forbidden West at 40fps was already a visual masterpiece, easily one of the best looking games I've seen, it would take something else to make that game look even better tbh and from the clips I've seen so far I ain't really seeing it
RTGI would go a long way.
 
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