PS4 Pro console
The PS5 Pro is going to make the PS4 Pro seem straightforward (Sony)

The latest leaked tech specs for the PS5 Pro paint a confusing picture of what the console is capable of and what improvements it offers.

Detailed technical specifications for the PS5 Pro have leaked out many times already but the problem with such information is that it doesn’t give an accurate indication of what difference all the confusing technical jargon will actually make.

That’s why, as soon as a new console is released, the tech specs are instantly ignored, since all that matters is what goes up on screen.

It’s not anyone’s fault, but the problem is particularly acute when it comes to an upgrade console like the PS5 Pro, where the main takeaway from the latest leaked information is that… nobody is sure of anything.

PS5 Pro devkits are widely reported to be with developers already, so it’s no wonder information is leaking out as much as it is. This new information comes from Digital Foundry, who go into excruciating detail about the latest specs – which supposedly come straight from the PlayStation developer portal.

If you have a thing for detailed hardware analysis then it’s all very interesting, with talk of a 2.35GHz boost clock, a practical limit of around 33.5 teraflops, and double the L0 cache for ray-tracing.

However, if all that sounds like Star Trek style technobabble to you then the bottom line seems to be that it’s very hard to predict what difference any of this will make, because so much depends on Sony’s new AI upscaler technology, believed to be called PSSR.

On paper, the PS5 Pro is three times more powerful than the original PlayStation 5 but because of the RDNA 3 GPU microarchitecture, in practice it’s only likely to be a 45% improvement.

Those two variables combined means it’s currently impossible to tell what the console will be capable of in normal situations, especially as Sony hasn’t offered any public demonstration of PSSR yet.

Even then, whatever tech demo they use is unlikely to be representative of how the average game will look, or how much performance will be improved. Which, again, is exactly how things turns out with all new consoles, from every manufacturer.

How much all this matters also depends on the price, but even if it’s the same price as the standard PlayStation 5 (which is unlikely) that’s a lot of money to shell out for something where the benefits are so hard to quantify.

Or maybe Sony will find a simple and elegant way to explain everything… although given the standard of their communications lately that would be a surprise.

Technically Sony hasn’t even announced the PS5 Pro yet. They have hinted at it but even assuming it is out this year, there’s no indication yet when they will publicly unveil it.

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