PS5 Pro’s DLSS equivalent ‘will upscale 1080p games to 4K’ and is reportedly backwards compatible

Sony’s DLSS equivalent planned for ‘PlayStation 5 Pro’ is capable of upscaling 1080p games to 4K, and can be backwards compatible with existing PS5 games via patches.

That’s according to developer documentation seen by Digital Foundry, which has corroborated via its own sources that PS5 Pro tech specs which recently appeared online are authentic, and the console is planned for release soon.

As previously reported, PS5 Pro looks set to feature an improved GPU offering 2x-4x ray-tracing capabilities, and the same Zen 2 CPU but with an optional 10 percent speed increase. According to Digital Foundry, the system will also have 1.2GB extra memory for games.

Perhaps most compelling for those considering an upgrade, however, is Sony’s DLSS-style resolution upscaler, PlayStation Spectral Resolution (PSSR).

According to DF, PSSR is aiming to deliver similar results and resolution multipliers as Nvidia DLSS. A game internally rendering at 1080p could be upscaled to a convincing-looking 4K image, according to developer docs. Sony says that PSSR has a 250MB memory footprint.

Crucially, developer docs are said to suggest that the upscaling feature will be able to be backported to any existing PlayStation game.

This is in contrast to ‘back compat plus’ features added to PS4 games running on PS5, which previously required games to run on modern development environments (SDKs).

According to Digital Foundry editor Richard Leadbetter, this could be of crucial importance in upgrading existing PS5 games that suffer from image quality problems.

“It looks like all games can benefit from PSSR if the developer goes back to them, even if they’re on older SDKs,” he said. “It looks like developers can go back to those games and patch in support for PSSR, without having to update to the SDK.”

He added: “This is potentially awesome, because [for] a lot of the games that are out there that are unlikely to receive full upgrades to the latest SDK and the full PS5 Pro features, it does mean that you can at least get the PSSR upgrade in there, if the developer goes back and adds that feature.

“Which I think is excellent because there have been so many games where – let’s face facts – the resolution has been too low, and the upscaling hasn’t been good enough to offset that.”

According to the developer documents cited by DF, PS5 Pro will retain the same 16GB of GDDR6 memory as the standard model (though with more bandwidth), but Sony has clawed back an extra 1.2GB of system RAM for game makers.

“Higher frame-rates, substantially enhanced image quality and improved RT features – that’s what’s going to separate PS5 Pro from the standard model,” commented Leadbetter. “Assuming there are no further surprises lying in wait, I’d venture to suggest that this is going to be a more niche offering than PS4 Pro back in the day.”

Last month, CNBC cited a number of games industry analysts who reportedly said they expect Sony to launch a PlayStation 5 Pro console later this year.