Technical analysis of the next 5 games on PS5 Pro

In past episodes, we’ve taken an in-depth look at various enhanced games for the PlayStation 5 Pro. Upgrades can vary significantly from game to game, with some developers modifying existing modes and others adding new ones. Some use new PSSR upscaling, others keep proven technologies, and it goes on and on. There are many types of improvements, and unfortunately, not all of them were completely successful; you can see the most interesting ones in our previous articles and videos.

In today’s article we will do it a little differently. Instead of taking a detailed look at one or two games, we’ll take a broader look at 5 games you might want to play on your new console. Four of them have been improved for PS5 Pro, the last one did not receive an upgrade, but it is interesting from the point of view of increasing performance, so we will, of course, stop there too.

Spider-Man Marvel 2

Let’s start with a game from Insomniac, whose console support is huge. The developers have released an update for all the PS5 games they have released so far. However, their upgrades are very similar, so we will only show them in one game, namely the most recent one – the second Spider-Man. It originally contained Performance (1440p upscaling and 60fps) and Fidelity (4K upscaling and 30fps) modes, which could be combined in various ways with unlocked frame rates. But first, let’s look at the image quality.

In performance mode, its increase is quite significant. The developers have moved from their own upscaling technology to PSSR, which works surprisingly well here. As seen on distant objects, it can reconstruct them in much more detail and accuracy, while significantly suppressing aliasing. At the same time, the image is sharper, which, as we found out earlier, is practically the main advantage of the PSSR.

Higher sharpness can also be seen in the second photo, for example in the trees. But especially pay attention to the reflections on the cars, which on the original PS5 are quite unstable, creating unpleasant noise and ghosting. Performance Pro mode eliminates almost all problems.

As for Fidelity Pro, there is less difference in image quality compared to the original Fidelity. But PSSR still provides a more detailed image.

In addition, it is true that reflections on cars are more accurate and noise-free.

This is also very noticeable in the reflections in the windows of buildings. Fidelity Pro offers more detailed reflections without leaving unpleasant marks.

Besides better reflections, Fidelity Pro also provides RT occlusion and sun shadows, but you won’t notice the difference. By the way, you can turn individual RT elements on and off separately, or reduce and increase the quality to ensure the desired frame rate.

I was most interested in the frame rate in the 120Hz performance mode, where you can only unlock up to 120 FPS. You can kiss this cap goodbye right away, but your FPS will still be slightly above the otherwise locked 60. When flying quickly around the city, they fluctuate between 60 and 70 FPS, sometimes even higher.

Interestingly, this is almost the same frame rate as the original PS5. All the extra performance obviously went into PSSR and slightly higher detail.

God of War Ragnarok

Another interesting game is God of War Ragnarök, which received a patch for the PS5 Pro rather quietly, but doesn’t add much. On the one hand, you can look forward to a new mode that will try to combine the quality of the original quality mode and the target 60 frames per second. But the main new feature in the game is the switch between anti-aliasing and scaling, something rarely seen in console games. You can choose between the classic TAA from the original game and PSSR.

In terms of image quality, don’t expect much improvement; to be honest, I had a hard time noticing any significant differences. Even in Performance mode, the original Ragnarok already looks very good, and PSSR doesn’t add much. Mainly due to the high input resolution, the differences between technologies are lost.

As a result, I would advise you not to switch to PSSR at all, because you will lose a fair amount of FPS. If we unlock the frame rate in performance mode it can range from 80 to 90 fps, at least in the tested location, the frame rate in this game really depends on the environment.

If we look at the performance mode on the original PS5, we find that the FPS is not much lower, ranging from 75 to 85 FPS in the test location.

But if you leave TAA anti-aliasing on an upgraded console, you’ll be able to enjoy frame rates above 100 FPS. In less demanding environments, the 120fps cap can easily be reached, which is definitely noticeable in an action game like God of War.

So this is the mode I would recommend to you the most, at least if you have a 120Hz display device with VRR support.

No Man’s Sky

Another clearly improved game is the space survival game No Man’s Sky, which even after many years the developers still care about. For the PlayStation 5 Pro console, they are preparing to roll out PSSR upscaling and, as one of the few, even an 8K 30 FPS mode.

However, I do not have such a TV or monitor, so I was not able to test this mode. Like other games with this mode, from my point of view it is just a nice bonus or preparation for the distant future. However, there are no signs that 8K resolution will be significantly expanded in the coming years.

When it comes to using PSSR, the new scaling provides a slightly more stable and detailed image, but the differences are minimal. On the other hand, the game also offers improved lighting and shadows.

As for the frame rate, everything is very simple here, you can expect a completely stable 60 FPS on both the base PS5 and the new console.

Remake of Resident Evil 4

The latest improved game is a remake of the legendary Survival Horror Resident Evil 4. It had quite significant problems on the base PS5, as it could not maintain a stable 60 FPS in any mode. As an improvement, the developers chose a completely simple, but ultimately sufficient option, since they added support for 120 Hz and the ability to enable HFR mode, which unlocks frame rates up to 120 FPS.

Since nothing else has changed, this is one of the games where we can look at the overall performance boost of the new console, which is not small at all.

First we’ll look at the Resolution mode (with a slightly higher resolution) with hair strands and ray tracing enabled. In the first big battle in the village, which is quite performance-intensive, the frame rate on the base PS5 is well below 60 FPS, hovering around 50 frames per second.

On the other hand, you can expect frame rates of around 70fps on the PS5 Pro. This means that if you decide to lock the frame rate, you’ll have a perfectly stable 60.

I also tested the performance mode without ray tracing, but with hair strands enabled. Already in the tested location, PS5 can reach 60 FPS.

However, the PS5 Pro increases the frame rate to around 80-90fps.

Of course, if you turn off hair strands, you can get to even higher numbers, but then the hair will look much worse. On the contrary, I recommend turning off ray tracing anyway, because its implementation is very poor and the reflections in the water look even worse than the already relatively bad SSR reflections.

At the same time, think carefully about whether you really want to unlock the frame rate. I played most of RE4 on the PS5 Pro, and after a few hours, I preferred to keep the framerate at 60 FPS because the stuttering in some areas of the map was much more noticeable at higher framerates.

Final Fantasy XVI

Finally, we have Final Fantasy XVI. Unlike the newer VII Rebirth, it hasn’t received a patch for PS5 Pro, but it’s still a very fun game. On the base PS5 it runs very unstable in performance mode, the frame rate rarely stays at a stable 60 FPS and often drops much lower, even below 40 FPS. How are things going on PS5 Pro?

Purely due to the increase in raw power, you will increase frame rates from 40 to around 50 FPS in the most demanding areas of your base, which are inside the console’s VRR window.

I also measured similar values ​​in the suburbs, where there are also a lot of NPCs, so the processor limit can certainly also affect performance.

In less populated areas, I even reached a stable 60 FPS, while the base PS5 remained around 50. In the battles themselves, both consoles maintained a nearly stable 60 FPS, although the base PS5 has some dips. And how does he achieve this? It simply lowers the resolution, which is already very low, so the image doesn’t look very nice.

And this also applies in general. The developers used a modified version of FSR 1 upscaling in the game, which produces a very unstable and blurry image, unfortunately, you will see this on the PS5 Pro. Deciding between Quality and Performance modes is still tricky, but it’s still worth considering the significantly more stable frame rates that typically stay within the VRR window (at least 48Hz).