PS5 Pro Delivers 30% Performance Boost with Nearly Unchanged Power Consumption

Digital Foundry recently took the PlayStation 5 Pro for a spin to test its power consumption, and the findings were rather unexpected. In a lively YouTube discussion with Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, it was revealed that the PS5 Pro barely uses more power than the original PS5, even though it boasts a significantly more powerful GPU.

To dive into the details, Digital Foundry threw Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24 at the PS5 Pro. These were compared against both the original PS5 and its refreshed sibling, the PS5 Slim. Notably, the Pro edition ran enhanced versions of these games designed specifically for it, showcasing its superior graphical prowess.

When it came to Elden Ring, the power consumption was surprisingly in line with the PS5 Slim. In the analysis, the Pro was consuming 214.1 watts, the Slim slightly higher at 216.2 watts, while the original PS5 registered 201.3 watts. Despite these similarities in power usage, the PS5 Pro delivered a significant boost in frame rate, hitting 52 FPS compared to 40 FPS on the Slim and 37 FPS on the original. It’s important to take the frame rate differences with a grain of salt, as they come from a singular snapshot during Digital Foundry’s benchmarks, with both the Slim and the original PS5 usually offering similar performance. Essentially, the Pro matched the power draw of the Slim but offered 30% more in terms of frame rate.

In contrast, Spider-Man 2 painted a different picture. With the game locked at 60 FPS across all models, the PS5 Pro showed the highest power draw at 232 watts. The Slim pulled 218.2 watts, while the original PS5 was at 208.1 watts. This put the Pro’s power consumption 6% above the Slim and 11% more than the launch version. While specific figures for F1 24 weren’t compared, it was noted that the Pro maintained around 235 watts during gameplay at a steady 60 FPS.

It’s essential to keep in mind that variations in power consumption between the launch model and the Slim can occur due to differences in silicon quality. Some units achieve the same CPU speeds at lower voltages, impacting their power draw.

Digital Foundry was quite surprised that the PS5 Pro’s power usage was almost in line with the earlier models, especially given its more powerful GPU. They initially expected the Pro to use more than 300 watts.

The powerhouse that is the PS5 Pro comes equipped with an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a 16.7 TFLOP RDNA-based GPU, delivering 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The standard PS5 models might share the same CPU but feature a less robust 10.28 TFLOP RDNA GPU with 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.