Which graphics cards are equivalent to a PS5 Pro?

Therefore, we can base our analysis on current-generation AMD graphics cards that use RDNA 3. The Radeon RX 7800 XT has the same number of cores (although the RX 6800 has the same number, but the improvement over the base PS5 would be small, so it doesn’t make much sense). It competes against the RTX 4070 and manages to have an advantage in most of the games tested in our reviews. Therefore, AMD’s GPU sits between the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 SUPER. And what can these graphics cards do? Let’s take a look.

Before the test results, we won’t even get into the price, or try to build a PC equivalent to the console, or even go into the other specifications like memory and CPU, something Diego Kerber did (with difficulty, since we can only remain in the realm of speculation for now). So let’s see what these video cards can deliver and get an idea of ​​what the PS5 Pro could also do.

PS5 Pro has improved hardware for ray tracing

In games running at 1080p and 1440p and with maximum graphics presets, both video cards deliver performance that easily exceeds 100 FPS in the games we selected. In the case of the Radeon RX 7800 XT, considering the use of ray tracing effects, it lags considerably behind the GeForce RTX 4070. And this is an important point to highlight and we will open a parenthesis here.

Sony promises up to three times better performance in games with ray tracing compared to the standard version of the console. This will happen thanks to the implementation of a new graphics architecture from AMD in the PS5 Pro GPU. In an interview, Mark Cerny, head of hardware at PlayStation, said that Sony “motivated” the development of the technology.

According to him, the PS5 Pro “uses the new advanced feature sets [ray tracing] that AMD created as the next step in its architecture roadmap“. In other words, we could even be talking about RDNA 4. This architecture would be responsible for exclusive ray tracing processing, if we consider the words of the Sony engineer, something that could boost performance in games using this technology on AMD’s side. To what extent? We don’t know yet.

Furthermore, there is a rumor coming from a leaker with a good track record of being right, who claims that the new GPU would have similar performance to the RX 7700 XT in rasterization, and would be superior in ray tracing processing precisely because it uses another architecture for this work.

PS5 Pro GPU-like graphics card performance

Returning to the performance of the Radeon RX 7800 XT and GeForce RTX 4070, both GPUs still deliver performance above 60 FPS at 4K in more demanding games with the use of AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS, it is worth mentioning, since this is a resolution for high-end GPUs to handle without the use of upscalers and frame generators, and this still depends on the game’s optimization.

Preliminary analysis by Digital Foundry, of the PS5 Pro game clips released by Sony, reveals that the “enhanced” versions will make extensive use of PSSR, the proprietary upscaler present in the new hardware, which will work via machine learning like DLSS. With this, the promise is to deliver greater graphic quality while maintaining high frame rates.

Difference between chips in different segments

It’s always good to remember that these console chips are customized and are not exactly the same as the models used in video cards. We can see something similar with the AMD Ryzen Z1, a very popular APU among handhelds, which is nothing more than a Ryzen 7 7840U with the appropriate settings for very small devices.

In other words, even with GPUs of the same name, but for different devices (desktop and notebook, for example), the performance is not the same. So the possible “PS5 Pro Radeon RX 7800 XT” is not the same as a desktop PC video card. In other words, the comparison cannot be exactly the same.

And we haven’t even talked about the PS5 Pro’s processor, which should have slight improvements in clocks, according to rumors, and faster memory, something confirmed by Sony in the presentation. But, looking at these superficial numbers, it’s possible to imagine that the new console would deliver something similar to the Radeon RX 7800 XT (probably less so due to the design resized for the console), a very competent graphics card for PC gaming at 1440p and even 4K, whether with upscaling or not.

Finally, coincidentally (or not), AMD has launched a new mobile GPU, the Radeon RX 7800M, which carries the same core specifications as the PS5 Pro GPU. It wasn’t a launch like it usually is with video cards, but the page for this graphics chip appeared on the day of Sony’s console announcement.