Digital Foundry recently delved into the power consumption intricacies of the PlayStation 5 Pro, uncovering some unexpected insights. In a lively YouTube discussion featuring experts Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, it was revealed that the PS5 Pro, despite boasting a much more robust GPU, uses practically the same amount of power as the original PS5.
To conduct this assessment, Digital Foundry put the PS5 Pro through its paces with games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. Their performance was measured against the launch version of the PS5, the updated PS5 Slim, and the Pro variant. Notably, the Pro’s capabilities were highlighted by its ability to run enhanced versions of these games.
Elden Ring presented an intriguing scenario where the PS5 Pro’s power consumption mirrored that of the PS5 Slim. In one segment of the video, data showed the Pro drawing 214.1 watts of power, the Slim at 216.2 watts, and the original PS5 at 201.3 watts. Remarkably, the Pro was achieving frame rates of 52 FPS, while the Slim achieved 40 FPS, and the original PS5 managed 37 FPS. It’s worth mentioning that the difference between the Slim and launch models’ frame rates is likely due to a specific snapshot during Digital Foundry’s benchmark. Overall, the Pro displays a 30% superior frame rate with comparable power usage to the Slim.
In Spider-Man 2, the narrative shifts slightly as the game maintains a steady 60 FPS across all three consoles. Here, the PS5 Pro’s power consumption reached 232 watts, outpacing the Slim’s 218.2 watts and the original’s 208.1 watts. This translates to the Pro using about 6% more power than the Slim, and 11% more than the original version. Although F1 24 wasn’t compared directly, the Pro ran consistently at around 235 watts while maintaining a 60FPS lock.
An important point to consider is that both the launch and Slim models can vary in power usage due to variations in silicon quality. This variability might account for the Slim’s slightly lesser performance in comparison to the original model. Essentially, these quality differences mean some consoles can achieve optimal performance at lower power levels than others.
In their testing, Digital Foundry concluded that despite the impressive hardware upgrade in the PS5 Pro, its power consumption remains close to that of the base models. This finding surprised the team, who initially anticipated the Pro might exceed 300 watts.
The PS5 Pro is equipped with an advanced 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a formidable 16.7 TFLOP RDNA-based GPU, supported by 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The standard PS5 models share the same CPU structure, though the clock speeds may vary, and they feature a less robust 10.28 TFLOP GPU with 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
