The GPU in the hot new PlayStation 5 Pro is mostly pretty old tech. But it does preview the ray-tracing upgrades that are coming with AMD's new RDNA 4 graphics chips for PC gamers.
That's the low down from the same PS5 Pro deep dive that also revealed Sony went its own way with AI hardware in the console rather than using AMD technology.
Sony's lead architect for its PlayStation consoles, Mark Cerny, has explained that the GPU in the PS5 Pro is still RDNA 2-based at its core, just like the original PS5. The reason for that is straightforward, compatibility.
By largely carrying over RDNA 2 technology for the shaders in the PS5 Pro's GPU, game developers can compile a single code path and have it run on both the PS5 and the PS5 Pro.
However, the PS5 Pro is not identical. «The base technology for PS5 Pro is somewhere between RDNA 2 and RDNA 3,» Cerny says. For starters, while the shaders are RDNA 2, parts of the geometry pipeline are from RDNA 3.
Those geometry pipeline elements are faster but essentially invisible to a game engine. You can use the same code on both consoles, it will simply run better on the PS5 Pro.
However, had Sony gone for, say, the doubled-up floating point math capability from RDNA 3, that would require two code paths to be compiled, one for PS5 and one for PS5 Pro. That wasn't a burden Sony wanted to put onto game devs for what is a mid-life refresh rather than a properly new console generation.
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But from a PC gaming perspective, easily the most intriguing aspect of the PS5 Pro's GPU involves ray tracing. Cerny says the upgraded ray-tracing hardware is sourced from a «future RDNA» generation.
Cerny is non-specific, but he is clear that this technology is «showing up first» in the PS5 Pro and is not currently available in any other AMD chip. Given we're expecting RDNA 4 to be replaced by an architecture-branded CDNA, that really only leaves RDNA 4.
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