PS5 Pro Delivers 30% Performance Boost with Similar Power Usage to Base Model

Digital Foundry recently delved into the power usage of the PlayStation 5 Pro, and they unearthed some unexpected findings. During a conversation on YouTube featuring Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, they revealed that the PS5 Pro’s power consumption is almost on par with the original PS5, even though the Pro version packs a much beefier GPU.

The team put the PS5 Pro through its paces with games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. Their goal was to compare it against both the launch edition PS5 and the newer PS5 Slim, while running the Pro versions of the games which offer enhanced graphics.

When it comes to Elden Ring, the PS5 Pro’s power usage was nearly a match for the PS5 Slim. At one point in the video, the Pro model drew 214.1 watts, the Slim 216.2 watts, and the launch model 201.3 watts. Yet, the Pro delivered impressively higher frame rates, clocking in at 52 FPS, compared to the Slim’s 40 FPS and the launch model’s 37 FPS. It’s worth noting that the slight frame rate differences between the Slim and the original model might not be significant, as these numbers are from a single snapshot in the analysis. Thus, the Pro was essentially using the same power as the Slim while outperforming it by 30% in terms of frame rate.

Switching gears to Spider-Man 2, the scenario shifted a bit since the game tops out at 60 FPS across all versions. Here, the PS5 Pro consumed the most power at 232 watts, followed by the Slim at 218.2, and the launch model at 208.1 watts. With Spider-Man 2, the Pro used 6% more power than the Slim and 11% more than the original PS5. F1 24 figures weren’t directly compared, but the Pro was shown to operate around 235 watts, maintaining a steady 60FPS.

It’s important to keep in mind that the power consumption can vary due to differences in silicon quality, which can explain why the Slim doesn’t always perform as efficiently as the launch model. Depending on the silicon, some consoles may hit their CPU clock speeds with less power than others.

Digital Foundry’s experiment confirmed that the PS5 Pro’s power usage closely mirrors that of the base PS5 models, even with its notably stronger GPU. This was a bit surprising for the team, who initially speculated that it might require over 300 watts.

Under the hood, the PS5 Pro boasts an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA-based GPU capable of 16.7 TFLOPS, along with 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. In contrast, the standard PS5 variants have the same CPU (albeit with possibly different clock speeds) but a less powerful 10.28 TFLOP GPU, coupled with 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.