PlayStation 6 will deliver 4K 120 FPS ray-traced gameplay, here's how

AMD's current RDNA 4 generation, led by the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT, is a turning point for the company as it introduces powerful new AI hardware into the RDNA architecture and overhauls how it renders real-time ray-traced visuals. Our review shows that the arrival of FSR 4's new AI-powered upscaling and powerful RT-capable hardware is a game-changer compared to previous-gen RDNA 3 graphics.

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With AMD shifting to a new unified data center and computer graphics architecture called UDNA for its next-generation GPUs, the latest rumors are pointing to UDNA GPUs offering a 20% increase in raw rasterized performance compared to RDNA 4 and a 2X increase in ray-tracing and AI performance. This technology is rumored to power the next-generation PlayStation 6 and Xbox consoles and the next desktop Radeon generation for PC gaming.

Even though a 20% improvement to raw performance might sound incremental and not a game-changer, the RT and AI enhancements will power a level of real-time graphics on the PlayStation 6 and next-gen Xbox consoles that we haven't seen before.

Microsoft's head of Xbox, Sarah Bond, hinted at this during a recent AMD and Microsoft partnership announcement, explicitly pointing out AI playing a key role in its next-gen gaming hardware.

In other words, next-gen AMD and Radeon graphics will finally go all in on NVIDIA's pioneering work with its recent GeForce RTX generations, including the current GeForce RTX 50 Series. This includes AI-powered upscaling using powerful new models, as seen in DLSS 4, AI-enhanced rendering with Frame Generation and Multi Frame Generation, AI-denoising ala Ray Reconstruction to improve detail, and neural rendering that covers everything from texture compression to using AI to assist in complex ray-tracing calculations.

Sony's Mark Cerny announced Project Amethyst in 2024, an initiative it spearheaded with AMD to develop powerful AI tools and technologies for rendering and gameplay. Stuff that is beyond the capabilities of the PlayStation 5 Pro, which can only handle lightweight AI models and tech. Project Amethyst is what led to the arrival of FSR 4 for the RDNA 4 generation, and it's behind AMD's recent FSR Redstone announcement that confirmed AI-powered Frame Generation, neural shaders, and AI denoising were coming to the Radeon RX 9000 Series later this year.

With these technologies and powerful AI hardware, next-generation PlayStation and Xbox hardware will enter a new era of post-raw performance gaming. We've been talking about this heavily in our reviews of GeForce RTX hardware (covering the RTX 40 and RTX 50 Series) because DLSS opens the door to free performance. So much so that when it comes to benchmarks, it makes looking at raw FPS more academic than a representation of real-world gaming.

For the PlayStation 6, UDNA's massive boost to ray-tracing will pave the way for real-time path tracing with AI upscaling and Frame Generation as standard. We expect several games to properly take advantage of 4K 120 Hz TVs for the first time, with 4K 120 FPS modes running with cutting-edge ray-tracing powered by AI. Until now, this has only been possible on PCs with high-end GeForce RTX hardware, and the result for consoles like the PlayStation 6 will be a levelling up of visuals on par with what we saw going from the original PlayStation to PlayStation 2.

For those thinking that the jump from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 wasn't that impressive outside of the shift to fast SSD storage, the leap to an AI-powered PlayStation 6 is on track to be monumental - and we can't wait.