PlayStation 5 Pro release date, features and more after online leak

A new leak suggests the PS5 Pro will pack the latest in graphics processing technology from chip giant AMD.

Although Sony has yet to officially announce the rumoured console (an upgraded version of the almost four-year-old PS5, which could be unveiled as soon as this Autumn), leakers have gone ahead and detailed some of its biggest improvements.

The latest info gives us an even better idea of the PS5 Pro’s enhanced graphics output. Specifically, a dataminer called Kepler, who previously leaked specs about the console, claims it will utilise the ray-tracing upgrades from AMD’s upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards.

Reeling off a list of RDNA 4 features on X (formerly Twitter), Kepler said the likes of double ray-tracing, wave matrix multiply accumulate and new data prefetcher will all be available on the PS5 Pro.

Not familiar with the jargon? All you need to know is that it could enable the PS5 Pro to deliver a substantial leap in graphical fidelity and performance over its predecessor.

Ray tracing is a relatively recent technique in games, where the behaviour of light is modelled to create more realistic reflections, shadows and lighting effects. It can look spectacular, but requires a lot of computing power.

While the PS5 Pro is rumored to be primarily based on RDNA3 architecture, that’s still an upgrade over the RDNA 2 card inside the regular PS5. Dipping into RDNA 4 could result in the system handling ray-tracing calculations twice as fast, producing more lifelike lighting and reflections in games. Meanwhile, Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate and the new data prefetcher are designed to boost performance.

Here’s what else we know about the rumoured PS5 Pro, including its possible release date.

It’s rumoured to be 45 per cent more powerful

The PS5 Pro will have around 45 per cent more gaming power than today’s PlayStation 5 .

That’s according to YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead , which posted this information after accessing documents distributed among PlayStation development partners. If a PlayStation 5 Pro is coming, the folks making games for it need to know what it can do.

The big change is in the GPU, the graphics processor. The Pro is also expected to use the same core CPU processor as the current console — but with a boosted mode that adds up to an extra 10 per cent power when needed.

Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro has an internal codename of Trinity, but it’s unlikely to be used once the console is available. The PlayStation 4 Pro’s codename was “Neo” for example. Perhaps someone at Sony PlayStation is really into The Matrix .

The console has faster system memory too, able to ferry data at 576 GB/s, a 28 per cent increase from the 448GB/s of today’s PlayStation 5.

What will this mean for actual games? We are likely to see significant increases in the use of ray tracing in games, and sharper, cleaner-looking visuals.

Increased GPU power will also let the PlayStation 5 Pro render games at higher resolutions. However, what we see when the console comes out will be guided by PSSR. This stands for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. It’s a proprietary upscaling technology that uses machine learning to make lower-resolution graphics look higher-res.

This concept is common and available in AMD’s FSR 2, Nvidia ’s DLSS and Intel’s XeSS. But a custom Sony take on the tech could give the PlayStation 5 yet more leverage over Microsoft’s Xbox series.

The PlayStation 5 Pro leak also suggests the system will have 67 teraflops of graphics power. While meaningless to most, this figure is much higher than the 12 teraflops of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

While the figures are not directly comparable, even after halving this to 33.5 teraflops to bring them to the same 32-bit ballpark, a dramatic performance increase is likely.

PlayStation 5 Pro release date

Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson, a prominent gaming reporter who first outed the existence of the PS5 Slim months ahead of its release last November, claims the PS5 Pro could be unveiled as soon as late September at the Tokyo Games Show.

Sony is expected to have a massive presence at the gaming event in its native Japan, making it the ideal launchpad for a new console. The company is reportedly telling developers that PS5 Pro games must be approved by July 30, per Henderson, and that all titles released after September 15 must be able to run on the new system with support for higher frame rates and resolutions.

You can expect to pay more for the new model than the current PlayStation 5, however.

During an investor call in February, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Hiroki Totoki said it would be “very difficult” to cut the price of the current console. In previous generations, Sony reduced the cost of manufacturing the system as the generation progressed. This time around? Not so much.

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