PS5 Pro: Why doesn’t the new console have a better CPU? Experts believe there are four reasons

With a better CPU, we would probably have had to be prepared for a four-digit euro price

Last week, console manufacturer Sony unveiled the PlayStation 5 Pro.

The technical presentation focused on the graphical improvements of the PS5 Pro; afterwards, there was also a lot of talk about the price, which in this country is 800 euros for the basic model.

One component was not mentioned by PS5 chief architect Mark Cerny during the nine-minute stream: the processor, which was probably due to the fact that the CPU is almost identical to the chip in the regular PlayStation 5.

In a two-hour podcast, the experts from Digital Foundry have now shed more light on the reasons behind the decision not to upgrade the CPU for the PS5 Pro. Sony is said to rely on a total of three arguments:

• Themanufacturing costs and the sizeof the chip are said to have played a significant role in the decision.
• In order to reduce these, Sony had already shortened part of the FPU (“Floating Point Unit”) in the base model. In simple terms, this is important for the calculation of floating point numbers, which are primarily used in graphics calculations or physics simulations.

As a result, thecompatibility with existing PS5 titlescould have suffered from a new CPU. At the same time, Sony didn’t want to take too big a leap anyway so as not to stand in the way of the PlayStation 6

• In the podcast, the performance of the PlayStation 5 Pro is rated as “very well calculated”.
• If the manufacturer had dared to significantly upgrade the CPU, the gap to the PS6 would again have been too small to market it sensibly. A similar assessment was already made in past leaks about the PS5 Pro.

In addition, thevision of the PlayStation 5 Prowas also a reason, according to Digital Foundry. During the presentation, Sony repeatedly emphasized the improved image quality in performance mode

• In this mode, Sony is aiming for a stable 60 frames per second at 4K resolution, for which the Zen 2-based CPU is probably sufficient.
• Upgrading the CPU for this purpose would therefore have been superfluous work that would only have led to a more expensive, but not necessarily better, end result.