Recently we saw the release of Sony’s brand-new top tier console – the PlayStation 5 Pro! It is a lean, mean machine indeed and while it is still somewhat supply limited, it is already making waves! But for us at SAPPHIRE NATION what matters most is – how will this impact PC gaming hardware? And also almost as importantly – how does this machine compare to modern PC parts?
The PlayStation 5 Pro (shortened to PS5 Pro from now on) has several key changes over the base version. If you want to know more about the base consoles and how they compare to PC parts, click here.
The CPU?
I decided to start here since this is also where I made a prediction that is yet to pan out. In a previous article on futureproofing PC parts I made the claim that closer to the end of the current console generation, CPUs like the Ryzen 5900X or Ryzen 5950X will start outdoing parts like the Intel i5 10600K or Ryzen 5 5600X to a noticeable degree. This has not panned out yet though the trend is moving that way.
Either way the PS5 Pro has the same CPU as the base PS5. However, it is clocked slightly higher at up to 3.85 GHz and has access to more bandwidth. When comparing to PC parts do remember the following:
- The console CPUs do clock lower than most desktop parts.
- They use GDDR6 memory instead of the lower-latency, optimized for CPUs DDR5 or DDR4 memory kits.
- Their cache amounts are very low.
- They are non-upgradeable
The PS5’s CPU shares an architecture with the Renoir-based Ryzen 7 4750G. However, it is still a bit weaker overall. Compared to the Ryzen 7 3700X, the difference is larger still due to its massive L3 cache advantage over the consoles.
A 10% increase in clock speed does help slightly obviously, but it is not enough to truly impress next to modern 2025 CPUs. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is massively superior and makes short work of the PS5 Pro’s CPU. A discounted Ryzen 7 5700X3D or Ryzen 5 7600X are also much faster too. This is the same for the Intel equivalents.
This bad boy is the fastest gaming CPU on the planet – massively above what the PS5 Pro can offer…
We are already seeing game design slightly change due to the modern console generation. Modern games have overall slightly more physics enabled props, worlds are a bit less static and we can see that ray tracing and open world games benefit from such CPU grunt. But the PS5 Pro itself is not changing anything, at least not on the CPU front. What about…
The SSD?
The base SSD capability of the Pro model is more or less the same. The cool thing about it though is that it has stepped up from a 1TB drive base (as per the PS5 Slim model refresh) to a 2TB drive with twice the storage. For game design itself this does not mean much since the base consoles still exist but it is a sign of things to come long term – games are getting larger and larger. 4K assets, amazing audio quality, great models, PBR, data – it adds up. And even if developers were to compress things very well, there is no way modern games can be as small as what we had in the past.
Thankfully though, the PC hardware arena has kept up as well. In 2025, 1TB SSDs are very cheap and 2TB SSDs are the new gold standard – being optimal in price to performance and size. In fact, 4TB SSDs are also almost there with some good, fast, PCIE4 models already approaching the same perfect ratio!
Modern titles like STALKER 2 showcase the importance of having an SSD. The era of the hard drive is over for gaming, it seems. Though it should be noted that a fast PC with a good CPU and lots of RAM does not necessarily need a super-fast SSD to match a console! It helps loading times noticeably, yes, it is a nice to have, true, but even slower modern SATA drives are still doing good work.
Though with the current prices I do recommend you go for a decent PCIE3 or 4 NVME at the very least!
The GPU?
This is where the majority of changes occur.! Finally!
Sony is using a customized version of RDNA2 to power their new console. In terms of rasterization, Sony claims this new GPU has a 45% gain over the original PS5.
What about ray tracing? Well, this is where things are a bit more complicated. You see, the PS5 Pro has hardware in it that is more advanced than what can be seen in RDNA2 or RDNA3 GPUs. Its Ray Tracers are probably a mixed version of what RDNA 3 and 4 use. With that said hold your horses here before claiming it is faster than monsters like the 7900 XTX in ray tracing.
This monster is outside the PS5 Pro’s reach.
Ray tracing and path tracing are super heavy on both compute and memory performance, alongside the custom hardware that accelerates their pipelines. The PS5 Pro has good compute ability and great custom hardware, but it is still outmatched by modern strong GPUs in compute and massively out scaled in memory performance. The RDNA3 based RX 7900 XTX has a lot more pure memory bandwidth that it does not need to share with a CPU, it is a wider, more compute-heavy GPU, and it has gigantic cache systems on top.
What does this mean for gaming? And for its comparison to PC parts? Well for ray tracing aficionados I have good news! The PS5 Pro means that we will see more games try to push the envelope in their higher settings. For people with less prodigious or older GPUs, nothing changes since multiplatform games need to target the base PlayStation 5 or the weaker Xbox Series S. For PC owners of high-end GPUs like the 7900 XTX? Nothing changes again – while the PS5 Pro will get closer it cannot match such a delta in compute or bandwidth or cache, even with more advanced fixed function hardware.
The next upgrade is the more advanced AI capability found in the PS5 Pro. It is hard to compare this to PC desktop parts at this moment in time since higher end models like the RX 7900 XTX do have capable hardware to handle such workloads.
RAM?
The PS5 Pro has a few changes here. Firstly, it has 2 GB of fast DDR5 memory reserved for its operating system. This means that the other 16GB of GDDR6 are now fully usable by the games themselves, up from 13-14 GB before.
For us PC Gamers this does not matter much to be honest. 2 more GB of RAM/VRAM on higher settings is something normal for us already. This does however mean that modern GPUs are indeed in need of more VRAM on their lower ends. Yes 16 or 24 GB parts will do fine. And 12 GB ones will hang in there for sure. But 10 or 8 GB ones? It will be rough if they want to keep texture/model parity with consoles going forward.
The upgrade in bandwidth from 448 GB/s to 576 GB/s is notable as it is an increase of 29%! This will for sure help the Pro defeat the base PlayStation 5, but it does not inherently mean much next to PC hardware. In fact, even if I compare it to the older but still impressive AMD Sapphire RX 6800 Pulse, this is not that impressive. Yes, it has higher VRAM bandwidth, 576 versus 512, but the older XT GPU has massive cache systems feeding it – its effective bandwidth will still be overall higher than what the console has for itself.
Where does this leave us (V2)?
Ultimately the PlayStation 5 Pro is a big step up over the base version, though not in all ways. In a way I must admit that at the time, the previous generation’s PlayStation 4 Pro model impressed me a bit more with its capabilities.
"However, there’s good news for tech enthusiasts – games will definitely scale better on medium and high settings! For those using slightly older yet still capable GPUs like the RX 6700 XT Pulses or RX 7600 XT, there’s no significant change either. These cards will continue to run games at or just above base console levels for the foreseeable future."
The articles content, opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in SAPPHIRE NATION are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent official policy or position of SAPPHIRE Technology.
