The PS5 Pro GPU is confirmed to be AMD’s own solution that has the features 60 computing units. We also know that it will run at least at the same speed as the PS5 GPU to avoid compatibility issues, and that it will use an architecture not yet available on PC.

All this provides us with everything the information we need to do a pretty comprehensive breakdown of what the PS5 Pro’s GPU will be like, as well as see which graphics cards would be their closest PC equivalents in terms of raw performance. In that sense, you have to keep in mind that yes approximate equivalence, since it is impossible to find a direct equivalence.

Before we find out which PC graphics equivalents are the closest to the PS5 Pro GPU, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze all the keys to the said graphics core. Sony still did not confirm the maximum working speed that it can achieve, so in this article I will start from the minimum level it should have, which is nothing more than the maximum frequency of the PS5 GPU.

PS5 Pro GPU specs and architecture

• 60 compute units with dual-emission shaders.
• 3,840 shaders at 2,233 MHz.
• 240 texturing units.
• 96 raster units.
• 60 new generation cores to accelerate ray tracing.
• 4MB L2 cache.
• No L3 cache.

Sony has confirmed that the graphics core of the PS5 Pro uses an architecture that is not yet available on the market. Since AMD has RDNA 2, RDNA 3, and RDNA 3.5 architectures available right now, it’s most logical to think that the GPU of said console will use the RDNA 4 architecture, but it’s not really like that, at least not completely.

PS5 Pro GPU It is primarily based on the RDNA 3 architecturebut since this is a semi-custom design, it will have some features and technologies exclusive to the architecture RDNA 4which are primarily aimed at improving ray tracing performance. The most important improvements include:

• Dual ray tracing intersection enginewhich will improve the GPU’s raw performance by giving it the ability to compute a higher number of ray intersections per second.
• A ray tracing instance transform node, which will allow the GPU to work more efficiently with high geometry loads and perform basic and important functions such as translation, rotation and scaling of geometry in the scene, among others.
• Three-pair ray tracing optimizationwhich will be essential to reduce the computational load required to calculate ray intersections and triangles, which are fundamental when we work with ray tracing.
• Change of barycentric coded flags to simplify the detection of procedural nodes, which will serve to achieve a better hit-miss ratio when working with ray tracing, i.e. the classic calculation of “hit or miss” operations.
• Improvement in BVH, which are used when working with hierarchies of bounding volumes, which will improve geometry-level performance in each scene by both positioning and grouping.
• Ray tracing support for OBB and node intersection instances, which introduces support for oriented frame separators. In this way, it would be possible to achieve greater accuracy and efficiency of work with smaller delineation volumes.

I still can’t confirm if the PS5 Pro will have all the key components to work with trajectory tracking, but after seeing what Sony showed at this console’s presentation regarding the technology applied to Gran Turismo 7 and Hogwarts Legacy, I’m pretty convinced which said technology It will not be within your reach.

PS5 Pro GPU performance

In terms of raw performance, this console’s GPU will deliver 34.29 TFLOPs in FP32 if it works at a maximum of 2.23 GHz, as I told you on other occasions, this performance is possible thanks dual emission shaders, which means that if we don’t take this technology into account, its real power would be 17,149 TFLOPs in FP32.

PS5 has maximum performance 10.29 TFLOPs in FP32which means the PS5 Pro GPU will 70% more powerful not counting dual emission shaders. However, this does not mean that gaming performance will improve by 70%, nothing could be further from the truth. Sony itself has said that we can expect a 45% improvement in rasterization over the PS5.

In ray tracing, the performance improvement will be around 100%, which means that the PS5 Pro It will be twice as strong than PS5 working with said technology. This increase in performance will come from an increase in GPU performance, but also from the use of a new architecture with advanced features that according to Sony They are not available in RDNA 3.

With all the data we have, it is possible clarify a few things:

• PS5 Pro’s 45% higher GPU performance adds to the feeling more comfortable in resolutions higher than 1080pbut not in 4K. It will most likely run between 1260p and 1600p and upscale to 2160p from there, although I wouldn’t rule out that it will have to go down to 1080p in more demanding games. This is where the first performance data shows.
• Thanks to double the ray tracing performance You will be able to apply this technology with higher quality to games that already implemented it in a very limited way, and could allow PS5 games that didn’t have it, like Alan Wake 2, albeit in a reduced way due to its high demands.
• We should not expect any miracles in ray tracing, because the performance of the PS5 with this technology was very low and doubling down on such poor performance won’t do you any miracles in demanding games. We’ve already seen a demo in Hogwarts Legacy that improves reflections with ray tracing, but they’re still very noisy.

The PS5 Pro GPU will have PSSR technology, a smart scaling which will work similarly to NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS. The use of hardware-accelerated artificial intelligence should enable better performance scaling and enable higher image quality.

The first analyzes of this technology applied to games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth confirm this, and that only with PSSR is great improvement in image quality compared to the PS5 version. Not only is the image sharper, but a more stable image is achieved and a higher level of detail is maintained without giving up significant performance improvements.

Equivalence of AMD graphics cards

In terms of specs and raw performance, the PS5 Pro GPU would be the closest on PC Radeon RX 6800. This graphics card has the power 16.17 TFLOPs in FP 32 and is configured with:

• 60 compute units with dual-emission shaders.
• 3,840 shaders at 2,105 MHz in turbo mode.
• 240 texturing units.
• 96 raster units.
• 60 first generation cores to accelerate ray tracing.
• 256-bit bus and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory at 16 Gbps.
• 4MB L2 cache.
• 128 MB L3 cache.

The Radeon RX 6800 has more dedicated graphics memory and Its 128 MB L3 cache gives it an important advantage versus the PS5 Pro GPU, which would theoretically have no type of L3 cache. However, the graphics core of the Sony console should compensate for this with improvements to the RDNA 3 architecture.

PS5 Pro GPU in ray tracing should be better than Radeon RX 6800. According to the data provided by Sony, it should be at the level of the top graphics card within the Radeon RX 7000 series thanks to the exclusive improvements of the RDNA 4 architecture, but until we see the specific performance and data rendering quality of the flash in games I prefer not to make specific predictions. I explain why.

When Sony announced the PS5, they said that ray tracing would be possible on the console, and in fact, the technology has become very big. Company exaggerated performance data with ray tracing and I think it could do the same with the PS5 Pro GPU, when that console comes out and I see what level it can reach in ray tracing I’ll be able to make a well-founded equivalence.

Equivalence of NVIDIA graphics cards

In this case, it is not possible to establish equivalences at the specification level, logically, because the architectures used by NVIDIA and AMD are very different. In terms of strength, however, we can find a very precise equivalence, the so-called GeForce RTX 3070 Tiwhich performs almost at the same level as the Radeon RX 6800 in rasterization.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is rated at 21.75 TFLOPs at FP32. It outperforms the Radeon RX 6800 in raw power, yet its average rasterization performance is slightly lower (around 2% or 3% less, depending on the games used). I wanted to give you this information to see TFLOPs are not a reliable indicator actual gaming performance.

However, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti performs much better than Radeon RX 6800 in ray tracing, and it has the advantage of supporting DLSS Super Resolution, intelligent scaling which, as I told you before, works in a similar way to PSSR.

I’m sure you’ve seen the rumors that the PS5 Pro GPU has the closest equivalent to the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, real nonsense that is clearly not true. This graphics card is much more powerful in rasterization and in ray tracing it plays in a different league.

I illustrate with an example. Alan Wake 2 configured with 1080p path tracing and maximum quality runs at a 50 FPS average on a GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER without scaling or frame generation. The Radeon RX 6800 achieves about 20 FPS with the same configuration and the Radeon RX 7700 XT barely 25 FPS.

I mentioned the Radeon RX 7700 XT because of this graphics card It was also used as a reference about the possible equivalence, within the RDNA 3 architecture, with the PS5 Pro GPU, Digital Foundry itself said at the time that, due to the specifications, it is also possible to talk about the Radeon RX 7800 XT, but that this. he would have to get a significant drop in frequencies to be on a level close to the PS5 Pro GPU.

After evaluating everything we currently know about the PS5 Pro’s GPU and the first performance data we have, I’m inclined to believe that in rasterization It will be more or less on par with the Radeon RX 6800and that in ray tracing it might be slightly above this.

Technologically speaking, it will be better than the mentioned graphics card because, as I said, it will have the improvements that AMD introduced with RDNA 3, and because it will also have the advances of RDNA 4 working with ray tracing. It will also have another important advantage that I have already explained to you, PSSR, a technology that in my opinion it is the most interesting which Sony introduced with the PS5 Pro.

This console will not be a leap compared to the PS5, you can be sure of that. The real evolution will come with the PS6, the console that will mark the beginning of the next generation and which will be configured with Brand new CPU and GPUbased on much more advanced and powerful architectures.