PlayStation 5 Pro features next-gen RDNA 4-based ray tracing engine, allows 2-3x faster RT

Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro consoles continue to ramp up with rumors, solidifying what we've heard over the last few months... but there's one very interesting tidbit here: RDNA 4 is being used.

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AMD's current-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture is found both inside the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards as well as inside the PlayStation 5 console. But, the new PlayStation 5 Pro console will reportedly feature an integrated graphics processor that uses BVH8 traversal shaders, and while that might not sound like much, it's huge news.

This confirms that the PlayStation 5 Pro is using AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 RT (ray tracing) engine, also confirming that RDNA 4 doubles the throughput per cycle, something that hasn't been mentioned in any open-source patch yet, says leaker Kepler. The BVH8 traversal shaders are an 8-level bounding volume hierarchy for ray tracing, compared to the 4-level hierarchy on the RDNA 2-based GPU inside of the APU in the PS5.

We've heard through recent rumors from leaker Moore's Law is Dead that we can expect a 45% performance jump with the PS5 Pro over the standard PS5, but a more exciting 2-3x boost in ray tracing performance... and now it's beginning to make sense.

This means that Sony is using a hybrid RDNA 3 + RDNA 4 GPU for the PlayStation 5 Pro, which is where the bigger performance gains are coming from (45% faster rendering, 2-3x faster RT performance). We also have a GPU capable of a new temporal upscaling technology in PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR.

This is expected to support the monster 8K resolution in future SDK updates, with Sony launching the PlayStation 5 Pro later this year as a "competitive" console that will have a detachable disc drive and 1TB of SSD storage inside. The perfect console for Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches in 2025... time to see RDNA 4 stretch its legs in the biggest game release ever.