The PS5 Pro FAQ: what you need to know

It’s Sony’s latest and greatest PlayStation, an upgraded PS5 model that incorporates a more powerful graphics processor and several forward-thinking features. One can think of it as a PS5.5, of sorts, since it sports some of the advanced hardware expected to also appear in the inevitable PlayStation6.

The PS5 Pro is now available across all major markets costing $699.99 (US), €799.99 (Europe), £699.99 (UK) or ¥119.980 (Japan). As one can already tell, these costs have nothing to do with exchange rates and everything to do with Sony’s pricing strategy for each market.

Sony’s systems are based on the same general architecture and main processor (CPU), but the PS5 Pro comes with a graphics processing unit (GPU) that’s 45% more powerful than the one found in the PS5… on paper. In practice, results have so far offered an uplift of up to 35%. The new model also operates at a higher system memory bandwidth and sports an extra 2GB of GDDR5 memory, helping it free up more of the main 16GB GDDR6 memory for demanding games. It comes with 2TB of storage space (instead of the 1TB found in the standard model) and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. Most importantly: the PS5 Pro incorporates a specially-designed, powerful machine-learning block that greatly helps with AI calculations like those needed by the new PSSR image upscaling algorithm.

PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) is the Sony-developed equivalent of nVidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR technologies for their respective PC graphics cards: specially designed software that allows games to work at lower resolutions (so that they can offer higher frame rates) and be automatically upscaled to higher ones with minimal loss of visual quality. PSSR depends on the machine learning block present in the PS5 Pro, so it is not available on the standard PS5. Sony’s upscaling solution is better than AMD’s FSR or Intel’s XeSS, but not yet as effective as the current market leader, DLSS. It’s widely expected to be improved over time through software updates (just like DLSS was).

Yes, it is. This means that it is also backwards compatible with almost every game developed for the PlayStation4 too, bar the already-known six (6) PS4 titles that don’t work with the PS5. Those would be Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume One, Hitman Go Definitive Edition, Just Deal With It!, Robinson: The Journey, Shadwen and We Sing.

It is kind of complicated but – long story short – it all depends on the games themselves. Testing proved that all titles that have been updated so as to leverage the extra power of the PS5 Pro indeed run in higher resolutions or at higher frame rates or both, with or without additional graphics effects enabled. These games are called PS5 Pro Enhanced and many future PS5 titles are expected to be optimized in this way from day one. All other PS5 games not currently updated may also run better on the PS5 Pro, but not by much (and the way they are improved is not exactly predictable). Sony’s Game Boost functionality, on which all non-updated PS5 games rely on, is also expected to improve over time.

There’s a growing list of PS5 games that offer higher resolutions, higher framerates, additional graphics effects or any combination of the above that The Point Online has already published on this page.

Yes, the PlayStation5 Pro is able to display video games at 8K resolution, with a handful of titles – No Man’s Sky, Gran Turismo 7 and F1 2024 – already offering such a graphics option. The PS5 Pro also supports media playback of 8K video files locally, although it is quite selective with the kinds of file types and codecs it can work with (just like the PS5 is).

No, it does not. It is fully compatible with Sony’s optional optical drive for the PS5 Slim, but that has to be purchased separately.

Yes… and no. It does come with a pair of small plastic legs sturdy enough to ensure the device’s stability when placed horizontally, but Sony is also offering a vertical stand for it – sold separately – along the lines of the one it introduced with the PS5 Slim. Chances are that third-party manufacturers will also offer their own versions of both a horizontal and a vertical stand at some point in the future.