Close to 16 months ago, the $750 PlayStation 5 Pro didn’t exactly set our world alight with its capabilities. More GPU cores and faster clock speeds didn’t generate a sizable difference in how you played your games. Now, upscaling software could be the key difference between the cheaper and more expensive consoles for the sake of making games look and run their best.
Sony has been hinting at upcoming updates to its PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaler for close to a year. The upscaler essentially takes frames rendered at a lower resolution and then enhances them so they appear like they’re rendered at a higher resolution. In a PlayStation Blog post centered around the release of Resident Evil Requiem, PlayStation’s lead hardware guru, Mark Cerny, said the updated PSSR will be “rolling out globally to PS5 Pro players in the coming weeks.”
Already, we’ve seen that the game appears to run much, much better on the PS5 Pro compared to the base PS5. The game features better lighting through ray-traced effects and still manages to run at a mostly consistent 60 fps.
In March, Sony should allow “multiple existing games” to get the improved PSSR. After the update, PS5 Pro owners will need to select the “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” toggle in the system settings for “any PS5 Pro games that currently support PSSR.” That could include many of the games released over the past two years, such as Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Battlefield 6, just to name a few. Upcoming games like 007: First Light should also receive PSSR enhancements.
Cerny has already spent time talking up PlayStation’s partnership with AMD to craft the current generation of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), which is now called FSR Redstone. Sony worked with AMD to develop its upscaler through “Project Amethyst.” The reason it took so long to bring the enhancements to PS5 Pro was due to the system using the older RDNA 2 GPU microarchitecture. The FSR 4 and FSR Redstone models were initially exclusive to RDNA 4 GPUs for PC, like the Radeon RX 9070 XT. We already had an inkling that it was possible to run the hardware-specific upscaler on older systems. Modders managed to port the latest upscaler to RDNA 3 GPUs.
Resident Evil Requiem on PS5 Pro looks damn good
Digital Foundry currently has the best side-by-side comparison for Resident Evil Requiem between the base PS5 and PS5 Pro. The version running on Sony’s latest console can maintain a 60Hz mode at 1080p resolution with ray tracing enabled or manage to hit 120 fps without ray tracing. The enhanced lighting does have a major impact on the moodiness for some scenes, especially on the streets in the early parts of the game, where you can see light reflecting off rain-soaked sidewalks. The 60Hz mode also showcases more refined and sharper visuals, and it’s likely the mode using the enhanced PSSR.
The base PS5 Pro playing the game sans ray tracing is equivalent to what you get on the base PS5. While previous PS5 Pro-enhanced games featured better frame rates and slightly enhanced visuals, Requiem may be the first game to finally fulfill the PS5’s initial promise of getting ray tracing onto consoles.
A senior engine developer at Capcom, Masaru Ijuin, also wrote in the PlayStation Blog post that the updated PSSR allows users to see individual strands of hair in main character Grace Ashcroft’s hair. These are only small visual enhancements for the types of gamers that demand more visual fidelity from their games. Even with these graphics upgrades, the PlayStation 5 will still be many gamers’ mainstay console. Considering how we may have to wait several more years for a PlayStation 6, Sony is signaling the new age of the PS5 Pro could make the current console generation last a little longer. And even with memory prices making all gaming gadgets more expensive, a $750 PS5 Pro may be your best alternative for gaming with solid frame rates and visuals without spending too much money on a gaming PC.