Yesterday, we reported on a claim that PlayStation 5 Pro’s GPU performance was confirmed by some customers who got their pre-orders early. Digital Foundry has their hands on the console as well, and they have shared their insight.
To quote Digital Foundry’s John Linneman, “they have essentially bolted an Xbox One X worth of TFLOPs onto the PlayStation 5, resulting in this machine.”
So, on a base level, Digital Foundry confirmed earlier claims that the PlayStation 5 Pro came with the specs sheet. To be clear, the specs sheet was not on the box itself, but in one of the pamphlets in the console, specifically, the safety guide.
But Linneman is reacting to the same number we reported yesterday. The PlayStation 5 Pro’s GPU is rated at 16.7 TFLOPs, an increase over the original PlayStation 5’s 10 TFLOPs.
As we noted yesterday as well, this new information debunks rumors that were going around for over a year. Data that was allegedly leaked from Sony’s developer portal, for studios making games for the PlayStation, stated that the GPU was rated at 33.5 TFLOPs.
That information first went public from a video by YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, and then IGN and Insider Gaming independently corroborated his claim. The information seemed bombastic when Sony DMCA’d that video, and we took that as confirmation that the information was correct.
Now that we know it wasn’t accurate at all, we will push forward the idea that perhaps this was really the leaked data, but none of the people who were sharing it really understood what it meant.
Linneman, however, makes an entirely different point altogether. We do want to make sure there is no misunderstanding on this statement. The Xbox One X, which first released in 2017, had a GPU rated at 6 TFLOPs, a huge leap over the Xbox One’s 1.3 TFLOPs, and higher than both the PlayStation 4’s 1.84 TFLOPs and the PlayStation 4 Pro’s 4.20 TFLOPs.
The PlayStation 5’s GPU is rated at around 10 TFLOPs. Linneman is saying that Sony added the amount of TFLOPs that the Xbox One X’s GPU has to that number, to reach the PlayStation 5 Pro’s 16.7 TFLOPs.
Linneman also stated that he believes the teraflop wars are over. That is directly alluding to the months of speculation from the now debunked claim that the PlayStation 5 Pro would be rated at over 33 TFLOPs.
The Xbox Series X has 12 TFLOPs, which put it clearly over the PlayStation 5. But as Digital Foundry have pointed out before, most developers did not even make use of that power, so gamers didn’t feel that difference, at least in third party games.
Now, Sony may have stacked the deck to get ahead, but given that they did it on a console few gamers can afford, it may be a Pyrrhic victory. Make no mistake, Sony took serious risks when they decided to go forward with this console at this price point.
That price issue will always loom over this mid generation upgrade, regardless if Digital Foundry or consumers ultimately find that the upgrade is worthwhile or not. We know a significant amount of PlayStation playtime is still really PlayStation 4 owners on Fortnite, and they’re not getting as much money from that as they want.
So where will Sony land after this console comes out, and especially when we get into the blockbuster year of 2025? That all remains to be seen.
