So the PRO comes out in 9 days and I've never been this confused about a console purchase. To get it out there, I don't have a 4k TV and really don't plan on getting one until something can live up to my LG plasma. Ok, ok, I did have a 4k Samsung earlier this year but I sold it because the picture just didn't hold up, but that's another debate. So the 4k aspect of the PRO doesn't factor in when it comes to why I want the PRO, but the potential of 'better visuals' and 'frame rates' does. Cool, sounds like I know all I need to know then? Well no, I just have no clear view on how games will compare against 2013 'OG' PS4 v 2016 PRO. Yeah great, 1080P screens will do super sampling and play checkers with me or something, but for god sake, I'm not a scientist I just want to play games! There has been talk of devs not being able to add features on the PRO that are not on the OG PS4, or multiplayer features that are not on the OG etc. etc. The big question I have (for example), will BF1 do a more solid 60fps in MP, or is that seen as a 'feature' or giving PRO owners a 'competitive edge'? I guess what I'm really trying to get at here is, where the shit is the marketing push on this thing?! 9 Days away from a new console (half step, mid cycle refresh whatever) and I feel like there is just nothing out there to inform my choice on getting a PRO or waiting out for the SCORPIO. I guess if you're buying this thing you already know if you want it, and that's fine. But what about your not average consumer, but not 'PRO' player. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle, or this thing just isn't for me. Will games load faster? Will the dash and store not be utter junk when loading a page. All this stuff will come out a few days latter and we will know for sure, but I love my tech, I love the day one thrills and It just feels like Sony doesn't even know what the hell this thing is. How's every one else's thoughts on this, are you unsure, confused, or just waiting out the storm? Video games huh?!

(MODS Apologies if this could have fit into another one of the PRO threads. Please feel free to move it)

There is no way that thing will push around games in 4k AND look better. I can imagine it will look slightly better and maybe run slightly better in 1080p.

I will be impressed if they have even one AAA game running nativly in 4k within a year. Same thing for scorpio even though that one got a little more grunt.

@rethla: There is a difference between native 4k and the upsampled 4k Sony is claiming (source: watch the initial stream). 4k just stands for 1080px4, because of this 1080p content scales well to a 4k display.

@rinsatori: Could you explain what checkerboard upscaled versus native resolution means? And what is the noticeable difference for players between these?

The truth is that we don't really know how well individual games will utilize the Pro or what it will do. My understanding is that for some games it will improve frame rate or draw distance (things that would obviously show up on a 1080p display) and in theory there could be additional geometry or lighting effects or other improvements.

My understanding is that there can be no multiplayer modes exclusive to the Pro but that doesn't mean that frame rate improvements or other similar things couldn't come to multiplayer in the pro. The vast majority of gamers wouldn't understand the relatively small competitive advantage that comes from a better frame rate, and for those who do understand, well, Sony wants to sell you a Pro. They just don't want to piss off the original PS4 owners by saying "This mode is locked out for you" or "You can't play this online with your friend because you don't have the new console."

But we won't really know until these things are in the wild and we see how developers use it.

I am SURE it will all vary on a game by game basis.

I'd say it still depends on what exclusives you are after. Regarding your 60fps Battlefield question, I think it would hit it more consistently maybe but they don't want PS4Pro players to have the edge. You won't get a game that is 30fps on PS4 and 60fps on PS4Pro.

Also if you plan on ever owning any 4kBlu-Ray physical movies then just buy an Xbox One S, as it's cheaper, plays all the same multi-plat games and has 4k out with a 4kBlu-Ray drive which the PS4Pro does not.

I agree it's pretty insane they haven't shown more details or examples of the things it does better and it's out in like a week.

Wait until games come out. See how they look like in a shop or at a friend's. If you think it's worth it, grab ti. Otherwise ignore until PS4 arrives.

The checkerboard upscale is basically calculating every other pixel value in the scene each frame (an a certain pattern that is best optimised for how the GPU works on blocks of data) and then swapping the next frame. The values that aren't calculated that frame are taken from the neighbouring values or from a reprojection of the last frame. So this isn't shocking (we already use reprojection for the current wave of temporal antialiasing) bit also doesn't calculate each pixels' value from scratch every frame. But it's a lot more data being calculated than just in a native 1080p render.

Basically it's a PS4 that offers better performance if it's supported. Otherwise it offers the same experience. Ideally, I would wait till spring if you're going to get 4K TV as there is still no perfect solution. BF1 is not currently supported on the PS4 Pro if it was multiplayer would be the same, since multiplayer performance is linked to connection speed. You would however get more consistent visual fidelity if it was supported. Games could also potentially load faster as it now supports SATA 3 (SSD) but would require you to upgrade the drive.

I will buy one as soon as possible, but only because I just own a 4K TV and I'm eager to finally see some 4K content on it (wether it be compressed Netflix shit or upressed console games, gimme those pixels!).

If I did not own that TV, then I wouldn't even think about buying a PS4Pro.

@rinsatori: Thanks, I assumed as much. But what does that mean output-wise? What will be the perceived difference between the two for me as a player ? You make it sound like native is better, but why? Would it look more crisp?

@shivoa: Thanks for the explanation. So does that practically mean that if an uncalculated pixel is surrounded by, say, a red pixel to the left, right and below, and a blue pixel above it, if will appear as a reddish purple (75% red, 25% blue)?

So but say with games like BF1 that have an uncapped frame rate, how can you render at a higher res but not taget the same refresh. Like an area in one map might be 45-57 fps on the OG and then the same area but rendering higher res on the PRO Would be a completely different load gpu wise. So the way I see it no matter what, MP games with unlocked frame rates are going to be to either be higher or less stable, or more stable. Unless they said MP online components must run in the same spec as OG PS4

Edit: it would seem that one console or the other (when it comes uncapped frame rate) will have the upper hand.

Every PS4 Pro Game That Is and Isn't Getting an Upgrade Patch Sony has started sending out Pro's to media outlets the NDA lifting sometime next week I believe.

NBA2K is native 4K60 quite a few titles will be native, it'll also be very difficult to distinguish native from upscaled 4K using checkerboard.

@dussck:

It will be just as hard as distinguishing 1080p from 4k and the only thing running in 4k@60 will be the dashboard.

@rethla: TBH that doesn't make any sense, NBA2K is not AAA? They could be lying but we'll see soon enough.

@thepanzini: i belive it when i see it. The thing that doesnt make any sense is how they would be able to render something at 4k@60.

I'm getting one. Like you, I don't have a 4K screen. Personally I'm trading in mine to Gamestop with a controller and the 20% bonus credit towards the Pro and it should come out to right around $200 purchase before tax.

On a 1080p screen games will by and large simply look a bit nicer. On top of that Games that don't consistently reach native 1080p on PS4 like Battlefield One and Titanfall 2 will. It should run smoother as well with less dips in BF1.

According to those leaked documents, Sony mandates that Pro games can run at higher speeds so long as they still look better than the Base PS4 graphics. Games must run at least as well on Pro as they do on Base PS4. Sony also mandates that Pro versions are not allowed to have exclusive content or advantages in multiplayer games. What that means is You can't run base PS4 multiplayer at 30fps and Pro at 60fps. But if they are both 60fps, it's OK for the Pro version to run at a more locked 60fps. They're not going to downclock the CPU to 1.6 GHz while running the GPU at a higher rate with any extra Pro resolution and effects bumps because there can be adverse effects on the CPU if certain calls for those extra flourishes are called as that would cause the game to run slower on average than the Base PS4, which is a huge no no. Therefore, the Pro will run at full CPU and GPU capacity and should run at a more locked 60fps with less dips than the Base model. It's not a clear distinct advantage, just an inherent advantage. After all, the majority of the time they'll be running the game at the same 60fps.

EA already said Battlefield One and Fifa 17 would get Pro upgrades. And only a portion of multiplayer performance is based on connection speed. The game still has to render on that specific console.

Yep. And you can guarantee it will be the Pro unless a developer messed up and if they do Sony will demand a prompt fix for it.

Also, the vast, vast majority of assets will be identical, especially textures as there is only an extra GB of RAM to work with and all assets used have to be loaded into RAM.

I believe the cpu is only getting a bit of an overclock, so most games at 1080p 30fps, won't automatically get bumped up to 1080p 60fps.

Everything I've heard is that games will run and look better on a 1080p screen compared to the launch PS4.

Richard from Digital Foundry met with Mark Cerny couple of weeks ago and talked about more of the Pro features. Supposedly, the Pro has a second cpu which is the same as the overclocked one.

I've heard the Cerny quote about by using 16 bit floating points instead of 32, the Pro can reach 8.4 teraflops. Honestly, I am not sure what that means in real world terms.

Also, DF was saying how the default resolution the Pro wants to output is 1800p. From there it uses up scaling, like the checkerboard version to get the rest of the way to 2100p.

Those facts are off the top of my head, but think I'm remembering them right. Typing this from my phone.

Right now I think DF is most informed and reasonable source. At least until they get out into the wild.

I wish i knew what hdr was when i bought my tv, the regular ps4 will get it and it will probably be the most noticible difference if they are only upscaling their games.

I will probably wait till scorpio releases but i am tempted to trade in my ps4 for an upgrade to pspro.

So far i think ps4 game look fine on my 4k tv btw.

Not sure if people saw this but someone from Respawn on gaf said Titanfall 2 will be running higher than 1080 and I guess downsampling and they'll be talking about that and the other enhancements soon. wanted to put this here because on the beastcast they read the Respawn guy's quote which made it sound like on the pro it would just stay closer to 1080 more often, which sounded really unimpressive, but I guess that guy just phrased it weird and it will be a better upgrade than that.

Anyway, I just traded in my ps4 to amazon with an extra controller for $204 so I'm ready to get this for $200+tax even though I only have a 1080 tv. Games staying at a more solid frame rate while being rendered at 1800p and downsampled(no more jaggies) +some better effects, textures etc is enough for it to be worth it for me for the next 3 years or whatever for $200. Or if I get a 4k tv at some point it sounds like it's a huge night and day difference that everyone has been extremely impressed by so that would be even more worth it. I think Watch Dogs 2 will be my first enhanced game on it. Now to wait

@wallee321: Pro essentially has two mildly overclocked PS4 GPUs and one overclocked CPU.

The argument Cerny made about 8.4 teraflops was meaningless. I'll be happy to admit I'm not an expert but I'll also happily admit I'll call bullshit when I see or smell it and that statement is rife with it. His argument equates to completely change how the game is programmed. It's far from a simple find and replace across the code. If it was something akin to that they would be promising nothing but native 4K games in the future. After all, 8.4 teraflops would be plenty capable of handling 4K, right?

The resolution the Pro outputs depends on the game. Basically, Base PS4 1080p games will mostly run at twice that resolution so they can reach the half resolution of 4K to properly use checkerboard rendering to attain the 4K image.

Here's the link.

“It’s a PS4 that’s faster. We’re able to increase the resolution, we have high-res shadows, and maybe higher particle counts. The frame rate is more stable; we have dynamic resolution scaling on all consoles, but it scales down less often on PS4 Pro to maintain 60 frames-per-second.”

“Because we also made the PC version, we have some nobs we can tweak, so we just spent some time making sure it still runs well and looks good on PS4 Pro. You know, making sure it doesn’t look any worse at all. That’s the requirement: it can’t run any worse or look worse than on PS4. So it runs better, looks better and has no bugs on PS4 Pro."

ya that's the original quote that got people worried that it still just hangs around 1080p on the pro, then in this thread on gaf someone from respawn clarified it will run higher than 1080:

thread

I don't have a 4K TV but I have preordered.

I went from PC to console gaming when it became impractical to maintain an up-to-date gaming PC and have young children, both due to cost and inquisitive little fingers.

The downside was knowing how far behind PC power I was, particularly in the second half of the generation.

I am more than happy Sony are addressing that with the mid-gen half step. I get a much more powerful machine at an affordable price, and all my PS4 games still work.

I also get to move my old machine upstairs for when the wife is using the TV, and get 1080p game streaming to my iMac.

I'm looking forward to playing games at a smoother frame rate with fewer jaggies. 4K and UHD sound great, but a new TV is not on the cards for some time, and by then TVs will be better anyway.

So don't get one day 1. Wait until a game that you care about drives you to upgrade.

No need to make a huge deal out of it.

It's far from simple but we have to understand what's going on here.

The shader code on the GPU is working (on legacy desktop GPUs) with 32-bit floating point numbers. All the maths to work out the colours of the pixel are being done at that precision. Even when that's just calculating a single colour (sub-pixel) value which will, once computed, be mapped to the range of 0-255 (8-bit integer). There is generally far more precision in the floating point maths than can possible be seen in the final integer output. Even a HDR output is only expanding from 8-bit to 10-bit (for current panels, maybe we get 12-bit panels at some point but not with HDR10) for each sub-pixel.

What this new generation of desktop GPUs (mobile GPUs have been doing 16-bit precision for years) can do it take a 32-bit unit and use it to do up to two 16-bit operation in the same tick. So if the calculation can be done with less precision then it can be done in effectively half the time. That's something nVidia enabled for their research Pascal chips but not for their consumer Pascal cards and AMD now are offering on the PS4 Pro's SoC. It's not always possible to get double the performance but it's often possible (especially on a fixed platform where you can tune your code) and plenty of calculations can be done without the need for 32-bit precision. It's work, but the wins from getting double the FLOPS is going to be worth it for a lot of games. But that's not all it gives you...

So current GPUs have thousands of units that do the calculations and, compared to CPU cores, they are starved of local memory and bandwidth to the VRAM. 16-bit values take up half as much cache, register space, and VRAM bandwidth to pipe back and forth compared to 32-bit floats. Assuming you've got registers that can pack two 16-bit values into them (I've not seen a deep dive into how AMD's half-precision GCN cores operate - I'm not sure they've released those details) then you're looking at not only double the FLOPS but no added pressure on the memory systems to do it. That's a big win. That's why even some consumer Pascal cards are going to see some wins from pushing bits of code to 16-bit when the precision isn't needed, despite those CUDA cores not being able to run two 16-bit operations in the space of a 32-bit one. Run the 16-bit values through the 32-bit units and truncate back to 16-bit and you've got half the bandwidth issues. That already happens with 16-bit buffers used for lower precision after doing 32-bit calculations.

So Cerny isn't making meaningless statements. This is pretty cool. In fact, I suspect that the next generation of nVidia cards with update the consumer CUDA units to use the Pascal design used in their research chips so they get double the FLOPS for 16-bit operations. I was somewhat surprised when the technical details came out and nVidia didn't use those dual-precision cores for their consumer chips this year (they added a few of them so you can test code that needs their actual 16-bit calculation units but they're a tiny fraction of the total CUDA unit count and not designed to be actually used for normal work).

I'll buy a PS4 Pro if it does ONE THING: If it makes Bloodborne run in solid 30, or even better 60. I will pay 400 bucks for that, not even a joke. As of yet though I've heard nothing about Bloodborne getting any Pro features and I'm not sure if it will just naturally run better like a game on the PC would with a GPU upgrade. I'll wait until I get some reviews on that before I pick one up. If people say that Bloodborne just naturally runs at a solid 30 on the Pro I'll get myself one for Christmas.

@shivoa: Even so, it's still comes down to actually being implemented and it's hard believing developers will upend their entire work just to take advantage of this especially when the base PS4 doesn't support it and every game on Pro must work on base PS4. That is fascinating information though. Thanks for sharing. :)

@rinsatori: lol, learn to use your head. If you think multiplayer games are going to run absolutely identical then you're truly delusional. What, are they going to hardcode in frame rate drops if so many alphas are on screen? lol, you're absurd.

@tpoppapuff: It's certainly something you need to code for. But you're coding for only in your shaders. The assets and CPU code are basically unchanged so it's a relatively cheap thing to build different shaders for the Pro to really boost your performance on that platform. I would be shocked if a lot of games didn't make use of that to get them as many resources as possible just like I'd be shocked if an XB1 and PS4 game are identical because I'd expect effort to make use of the difference in performance between the platforms. That's not to say there have been no games that are identical between the platforms but that those which are are leaving easy performance on the table to shorten their development time in a way consumers should consider negative to the final product.

On the PC, nVidia (and AMD to some extent but this is something nVidia are famous for) extract the shaders for AAA games and rewrite them to generate the same result but more efficiently on their architecture by optimising them. That's work the platform holder (in a certain sense that GeForce is a platform) does and gets integrated into driver releases (detect game, detect when shader is being loaded in, replace shader with cache from driver of the optimised version) and then advertised as a performance gain for the update. I'm not saying Sony should do that for the Pro but that they should at least have a code technology team who go out to various devs and show them how optimising their ubershader (lots of AAA engines have a single shader that does everything that is a monster rather than having to write a shader for every combination of effects that could be in play at any pixel location) can significantly improve their Pro performance and get them to 4K native rendering or significantly increasing detail levels.

Shaders, even ubershaders, are reasonably self-contained, especially for what is effectively an optimisation pass (which is basically a core role in the engine team, because of how much games are GPU-limited when reaching for doing more).

Strange that that PS4 Pro update list doesn't have Bloodborne. I guess I could be incorrect in thinking that that's THE exclusive for the PS4.

Has there been anything talked about load times on the Pro? What about any assertions (or lack thereof) that the Pro will be only major PS4 revision until the PS5 comes out (barring any sort of Slim model)?

This isn't a uniquely Playstation problem; it is console gaming in general. PC gaming is not taking over anytime soon and video games will be fine.

@adequatelyprepared: I suspect the load times will be no better no worse (5.5GB available RAM for a game vs 5GB for how big a pool the game can push assets into at load time; possibly a faster 2.5" platter derive but probably not - would not be shocked if it's the exact same 1TB drive as in previous PS4s; some have said S-ATA 3 connection so user-swapped in drives will have a higher peak performance).

Think Sony have been pretty clear that this is a thing where this isn't what they consider a generation but the next console they release will be so bets are that'll be a PS5 (in 3-4 years probably, guess it depends somewhat on how sales are of these consoles). Pushing lots more CPU power for that next system (so even if it uses the same OS/API and x86/GCN architecture it'll be large fast Zen+ (or beyond) cores not small slow Jaguar cores they'd move to), increasing RAM and bandwidth - maybe at that point HBM is the natural fit vs GDDR6. I'd hope by then that the storage system was SSD-based because right now these console load times are not good and that's such an obvious (if not that cheap yet but 3-4 years for it to get cheaper) fix.

Well, Sony has promised that a rule for certification, going forward, is that the multiplayer version of a game supporting the PS4 Pro cannot add improvements which provide a competitive advantage, including framerate. Theoretically they could pretty some things up that don't change the competitive advantage, at least barely. I guess we'll see if Sony holds to the policy, but if they don't, it'll split the user base and be exactly what they're trying to avoid here. So, at this point, I'd say you're absurd... since Sony and Devs have confirmed exactly what rinsatori said, and it's all we have to go by (not only that, but Sony does appear to be very serious about compatibility for both PS4s and no advantage with the Pro in competitive multiplayer.

I like the way Rise of the Tomb Raider is handling the PS4 Pro version with various visual presets that the player can choose from. Seems like a good standard going forward.

Agree, giving players that choice is a really good way to go about it. PC style settings shouldn't be something that console players need be afraid of, I mean we already are seeing more and more games with FOV sliders and that affects performance also. I'll use BF1 as an example, and they do say that it may impact performance chaining the FOV. I'm not saying that all games need options on the level of PC games, but it would be cool to get some more options to play with. Hey you don't care about motion blur (can slightly effect performance), cool, turn it off and grab 5 more FPS for example.

PRO unboxing and more details by digital foundry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ghA7yrc8so

Well considering as I said they would, Uncharted 4, Titanfall 2 and Battlefield One hand over much smoother framerates in multiplayer, thus giving a slight advantage (as well as the advantage of sharper images for spotting people at a distance, which can be critical in both games). It's just common sense that the games are not going to be absolutely identical. In order for them to be absolutely identical you would have to artificially limit the system which you can't do when when you need that power to process effects at higher resolutions. That's why it was absurd for you and @rinsatori to even argue otherwise. It's common sense.