by Now that Sony’s latest console has been out for two years, some are turning their attention to the potential of a PS5 Pro. A revamped edition of the console could add more power to ensure the system can keep up with more demanding titles, but the key change it could bring would be the introduction of Gen 5.0 NVme SSDs.
If you know your way around SSD for PS5 then you know that it is currently NVMe Gen 4.0 and matches the internal drive found in the PS5 Even in late 2022, these drives are still incredibly powerful and have yet to be fully replaced by the emerging Gen 5 SSDs that should be more common in 2023 and beyond. That makes the possibility PS5Pro so exciting.
With the current Gen 4.0 standard, you can expect maximum sequential read speeds of up to 8,000 MB/s, with many high-performance models such as Samsung 990 Pro and Corsair MP600 Pro LPX, which comes close to this performance ceiling. In terms of real-world use in console, you’ll find almost non-existent load times depending on how the PS5 games are optimized to take advantage of it.
But as great as these drives are for the PS5 console, there will come a point where games could load faster on PC. That’s because PC components move much faster than what’s available from a more standardized console experience – which only changes two or three times at most during its lifetime. Sony could effectively future-proof its console’s capabilities, allowing access to much faster storage on the system by implementing a Gen 5 SSD in a future upgrade.
How much faster are NVMe Gen 5 SSDs?
Based on the upper limit of what is possible from NVMe 2.0 port Gen 5 SSDs, the latest storage technology will be able to achieve sequential speeds of up to 13,000MB/s. That’s about 60% faster than Gen 4, which are some really fast rates. While it’s unlikely that many Gen 5 models will scratch the ceiling here, due to factors such as DRAM or DRAM-less and spec controllers as hardware ages, we should see it become more state-of-the-art over time approach
The PS5 Pro’s secret weapon could be the introduction of Gen 5 SSDs, as that would mean games would load even faster than they currently do. This would also mean significantly faster transfer times for large game transfers from internal storage to an internal drive. Additionally, since Gen 5 SSDs with NVMe 2.0 port are backward compatible with Gen 4, you can keep any existing drives until you are ready to upgrade.
In contrast, the Xbox Series X uses the low-level API DirectStorage to deliver faster load times by compressing the VRAM available in the GPU, thus reducing the time it takes to get into gameplay. This is a feature that finally came to gaming PCs in early 2022, although support isn’t widespread yet.
Gen 5 SSDs are really fast, make no mistake. Should the PS5 Pro use them, we’ll see faster load times and better looking games as Ultra HD textures can be rendered faster in real time. Time will tell if that’s the case, but should Sony be looking to extend the lifespan of its latest gaming console, adopting the new storage standard would be beneficial across the board.
What other improvements could the PS5 Pro bring?
Judging by the existing PS5 hardware built around a specially tuned AMD RDNA 2 GPU called the Oberon, the next big leap for Sony would be usage RNA 3 Microarchitecture officially launched in December 2022. The current graphics processor in the console is backed by 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM and a 256-bit memory bus. While the size of the bus width is unlikely to change due to the form factor, this is where we could see an upgrade to the faster GDDR6X memory with the implementation of current generation computing technology.
We don’t expect the PS5 Pro to be a massive, sweeping upgrade over the original like the PS4 to PS4 Pro jump was before, the upgrade will certainly be welcome for those wanting to keep up to date . Will it be the final version of the console? Well, we’ll have to wait for a price, and specs will reveal when that finally happens, which likely won’t be in 2023.
