The PS5 Pro Delivers 30% More Performance With Almost the Same Power Consumption as the Base Model

The team at Digital Foundry recently delved into the PlayStation 5 Pro’s power consumption, uncovering some unexpected insights. In a YouTube video discussion featuring Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, they found that the PS5 Pro uses nearly the same amount of power as the original PS5, despite boasting a much more robust GPU.

To assess this, Digital Foundry ran tests using games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. These games were played on three different models: the original PS5, the newer PS5 Slim, and the Pro edition running enhanced versions showcasing improved graphics.

With Elden Ring, the power consumption of the PS5 Pro was nearly on par with the PS5 Slim. The video showed the Pro using 214.1 watts, the Slim at 216.2 watts, and the original PS5 at 201.3 watts. In terms of performance, the Pro led with a frame rate of 52 FPS, leaving the Slim and the original trailing at 40 FPS and 37 FPS, respectively. Though the Slim and launch models seem close in performance, remember that the differences stem from a snapshot in Digital Foundry’s benchmark run—both offer similar performance metrics under normal circumstances. Essentially, the PS5 Pro’s efficiency is impressive, producing 30% more frame rate power than the Slim while consuming about the same energy.

When it came to Spider-Man 2, the game was capped at 60 FPS on all consoles. Here, the Pro consumed the most power at 232 watts, compared to the Slim’s 218.2 watts and the original model’s 208.1 watts. In this instance, the Pro used 6% more power than the Slim and 11% more than the launch PS5. Although there were no specific F1 24 game comparisons, Digital Foundry reported the Pro operated at around 235 watts, maintaining a solid 60 FPS in-game.

It’s important to note that variations in power consumption among the models are linked to silicon quality. This factor explains why sometimes the Slim might perform slightly worse than the launch version, as differences in silicon can lead to varying efficiency in power usage at consistent clock speeds.

Digital Foundry’s exploration confirmed that the PS5 Pro remarkably parallels the power consumption of the base models, despite housing a notably more powerful GPU. This discovery surprised the Digital Foundry team, who had initially expected the Pro to draw more than 300 watts.

The PS5 Pro boasts impressive specifications with an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a 16.7 TFLOP-capable RDNA-based GPU, enabling 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. In contrast, the standard PS5 models come with the same CPU but a less potent 10.28 TFLOP GPU, providing 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.