Enlarge / The club sandwich of game consoles.
| Spec Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| PS4 | PS4 Pro | |
| GPU | 18 Radeon GCN compute units @ 800 Mhz | 36 improved GCN compute units @ 911 Mhz |
| CPU | 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.6Ghz | 8 Jaguar cores @ 2.1Ghz |
| RAM | 8GB GDDR5 @ 176GB/s | 8GB GDDR5 @ 218GB/s (plus 1GB DDR3) |
| Max power consumption (gameplay) | 148W (79W for PS4 Slim) | 154W (4K gaming) |
| USB ports | 2 USB 3.0 ports | 3 USB 3.0 ports |
| Hard drive | 500GB (1TB special editions available) | 1TB |
| Size (widest points) | 275 x 53 x 305mm (10.8 x 2.1 x 12″) | 295 x 55 x 327mm (11.6 x 2.2 x 12.9″) |
| MSRP | $300 w/ bundled game ($250 in holiday deals) | $400 w/out bundled game |
A new video game console is usually a chance to envision an entirely new future for popular gaming. After years of developers and players exploring the old console inside and out, a new console cleanly breaks with the past. Typically, it introduces new features, new exclusive franchises, and a clear, new high-water mark in what’s possible as far as graphics and processing power (in a non-PC living room console, at least).
The PlayStation 4 Pro is different. As you might already know from our coverage, the Pro represents more of a split in the current era of the PS4 rather than a clean break from what came before. Sony has taken pains to point out that every console game it creates or licenses for the foreseeable future will run on both the PS4 and the PS4 Pro, making them essentially one “platform” from a software perspective. The promise, according to Sony, is that those games will look and perform better on the Pro hardware—sporting higher resolution, better frame rates, or more detailed in-game character models for instance.
Thus, reviewing the PS4 Pro is more like reviewing a new PC graphics card than reviewing a new console (though, yes, the Pro does also slightly upgrade the RAM and CPU from the standard PS4). Unlike a modular PC, however, upgrading the graphics on the PS4 requires throwing out the entire console that you may have bought just three years ago (or less) and starting from scratch with a new $400 box. It also means dealing with a scattered and inconsistent software update system from Sony and its partners that means performance can vary widely by game.
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Source: Ars Technica – PlayStation 4 Pro review: You’re gonna want a 4K TV