The PS5 Pro Delivers 30% More Performance with Almost the Same Power Usage as the Base PS5

Digital Foundry recently put the PlayStation 5 Pro through its paces to understand its power consumption, and they were in for a surprise. During a YouTube discussion with Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, they revealed that the PS5 Pro barely uses more power than the original PS5, even though it boasts a much beefier GPU.

They ran tests with games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. The aim was to compare the performance of these games on the PS5 launch model, the updated PS5 Slim, and the PS5 Pro, which came with enhanced graphics.

In Elden Ring, the PS5 Pro’s power usage was astonishingly similar to that of the PS5 Slim. At one point, the Pro clocked in at 214.1 watts, closely matched by the Slim at 216.2 watts, while the original PS5 pulled 201.3 watts. The frame rates told a different story though: the Pro delivered a solid 52 FPS, leaving the Slim and launch models behind at 40 FPS and 37 FPS, respectively. However, it’s worth noting that performance differences between the Slim and the launch model are often negligible.

Spider-Man 2 mixed things up since all versions held a steady 60 FPS. Here, the PS5 Pro did draw a bit more power, hitting 232 watts, compared to the Slim’s 218.2 watts and the launch model’s 208.1 watts. This meant the Pro consumed 6% more power than the Slim and 11% more than the original. Information on F1 24 was limited, but it’s noted that the Pro ran at about 235 watts without budging from the 60 FPS mark.

It’s important to remember that variations in silicon quality can cause such differences in performance and power usage between consoles, which might explain why the Slim seemed to be underperforming compared to the launch model. Silicon quality can mean that some consoles hit their CPU speeds with less effort, so to speak.

Digital Foundry’s analysis showed the PS5 Pro has similar power targets to the base models, despite a GPU that packs a heavier punch. This was unexpected, as they’d originally speculated the console might push past 300 watts.

For context, the PS5 Pro comes equipped with an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a 16.7 TFLOP RDNA-based GPU with a blazing 576 GB/s memory bandwidth. Meanwhile, the standard PS5s share the same CPU but feature a toned-down 10.28 TFLOP GPU with 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.