Recently, Digital Foundry took a closer look at the PlayStation 5 Pro’s power consumption, and the findings were quite surprising. During a lively YouTube discussion featuring Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, it was discovered that the PS5 Pro uses almost the same amount of power as the standard PS5, even with its remarkably powerful GPU.
The team at Digital Foundry put the PS5 Pro to the test with games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. They compared its performance against both the original PS5 and the updated PS5 Slim. The Pro model was running the games with graphics enhancements exclusive to it, which made the comparisons especially insightful.
For Elden Ring, it turned out that the PS5 Pro’s power draw was nearly identical to the PS5 Slim. At one point in the video, the Pro was drawing 214.1 watts, the Slim 216.2 watts, and the launch model was using 201.3 watts. Despite this, the Pro delivered higher frame rates, hitting 52 FPS compared to the Slim’s 40 FPS and the launch model’s 37 FPS. Keep in mind that the slight frame rate difference between the Slim and the original PS5 was part of one benchmark snapshot, as both consoles generally perform similarly. Effectively, the Pro managed to run at the same power as the Slim but with a remarkable 30% increase in frame rate.
In Spider-Man 2, there was a bit of a twist. The game runs at a locked 60 FPS on all three consoles, yet the Pro showed the highest power consumption at 232 watts, compared to 218.2 watts for the Slim, and 208.1 watts for the original PS5. Here, the Pro used about 6% more power than the Slim and 11% more than the launch model. Digital Foundry didn’t offer a direct comparison for F1 24, but pointed out that the PS5 Pro operated at around 235 watts in-game, maintaining the 60 FPS standard.
It’s important to understand that variations in power usage can occur, influenced by the silicon quality of each console. This aspect explains why the Slim might sometimes seem less efficient than the original PS5. Not all consoles are created equal; some can run at their advertised clock speeds with less voltage due to better silicon quality.
Overall, Digital Foundry’s experiments showcased that the PS5 Pro uses power levels similar to the base PS5 models, which was unexpectedly low considering its upgraded GPU. The team initially thought the Pro might push power consumption beyond 300 watts.
Under the hood, the PS5 Pro packs an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a robust 16.7 TFLOP RDNA-based GPU, known for its 576 GB/s memory bandwidth. While the standard PS5 models also sport the same CPU (though potentially at different clock speeds), their GPU is less powerful at 10.28 TFLOPs, with 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
