A known insider has opined that the PS5 Pro‘s limited CPU improvements could possibly be due to PS6 backwards compatibility. Yesterday, the PS5 Pro’s specs leaked during Sony‘s third-party developer rollout, which revealed that the console’s CPU offers a 10% boost over the original.
Could PS6 backwards compatibility explain PS5 Pro’s CPU?
According to insiders who’ve seen Sony’s leaked technical document, the PS5 Pro comes with a CPU that’s “identical” to standard PS5’s, but it comes with a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that boosts it to 3.85 GHz — a difference of 10%. Known AMD insider Kepler took to Twitter to speculate that this could be due Sony’s “complex” backwards compatibility system.
“The way Sony handles backwards compatibility is very complex, and it requires the new hardware to run at the same or higher clock speed, even if the new hardware is faster at lower clock speeds,” Kepler explained. “If they are using Zen6 dense cores for PS6, they can’t target 4GHz+ for the PS5 Pro as that could break backwards compatibility.”
This is merely speculation at present so take it with a grain of salt, but it does seem to make sense.
The PS5 Pro is expected to launch in fall 2024.
