The Playstation 4

That’s a good point. Unless you are the type of gamer that installs, plays, the game, then uninstalls for the next one I now consider 1 TB a minimum for modern consoles.

I have a 1 TB XBone and I even added a 3 TB external HD since the games are so massive now. Halo 5 weighs in at between 75 to 85 GBs if I remember correctly and many other games are reaching that threshold very quickly.

The problem is that all the reporting I have seen has said that developers need to implement any new feature on the PS4 Pro, including improved framerates. I expect that this should be simple, but my main point was that I would take a wait and see attitude for PSVR and PS4Pro and improvements if that is your big interest, especially if you already have a regular PS4.

In a normal PC world, improving the graphics chip would increase framerates automatically, but it doesn’t sound like that is specifically the case in this instance. Of course, the actual lack of information from Sony about this is the big problem.

Now, if someone is buying a system brand new, definitely the PS4 Pro is the way to go.

I preordered a PS4 Pro to play exclusives like Uncharted and Last of Us. Is there any word on titles being ‘ready to go’ to take advantage of the better hardware when it launches? It’ll be kind of underwhelming to get this new console and have it perform the same as the regular PS4 on day 1.

If a game is running at 900p locked at 30fps today, you’re right that it will need a patch. Many are doing just that, because it feels better to run at a lower locked framerate than to have one wildly swinging around between 60 and 20. Consistency is key. I agree that patching this should be very easy, but of course not all games will get one.

In many cases the PS4/Xbone can’t even maintain 30fps-- Fallout4 is infamous for this. In those cases, the PS4 Pro will offer much better performance without a patch.

And finally, tons of games have unlocked framerates, and they will immediately benefit.

To reiterate Galadin’s point, I’m not sure this is true. In the original leaks about the Pro, it was suggested that backward compatibility was done by running a profile that matches the base model and the only way you’ll see something different is if the game is patched to run in Pro mode.

If there was going to be some performance boost, I think it would have been a talking point for Sony and they don’t appear to have said anything about this?

That seems very unlikely given that Microsoft’s refresh makes use of the additional performance. But of course we don’t know for sure.

All PS4 releases from October forward are required to implement Pro modes via a patch or at release. That obviously covers all psvr titles. VR titles already run at a minimum of 60fps reprojected to 120fps. Some may be bumped to 90fps but most will probably increase the rendering resolution so the games are much sharper with less aliasing.

I received this Canadian version email. I have already paid for my PS4 + subscription for the next 2 years. What should I do about this? What action do I take?


Dear valued PlayStation Plus member,

Starting on September 22nd, 2016, prices for PlayStation Plus memberships will change from $49.99 to $69.99 for twelve months, from $17.99 to $29.99 for three months, and $9.99 to $11.99 for one month. If you are a current member, the new prices will take effect if your membership renews on or after this date.

If you would like to continue your membership at the new price, please visit the following site and submit your request to continue your membership without any gaps.

Click here to submit your response >>

If we don’t hear from you by 11:59 PM PST on October 20th, 2016, your membership will not auto-renew and your member benefits may be disrupted.

We thank you for your ongoing support.

PlayStation

The email is saying that they have turned off auto-renew. If you’re good for another 2 years, just chill. You’re good for 2 years. I’m sure you’ll find another good deal on PS+ sub within those two years.

Thanks rock8man. That is a reassuring interpretation.

If you need any more reassurance, I’ve a Canadian PS4+ sub and have it paid until Jun 2018. Ignoring the email since I already planned ahead. I agree with Rock8man: chillaxify.

Agreed.

So yeah, I was wrong about that.

New article talking about PS4 Pro internals. Rather than building a faster GPU, they have two PS4 non-pro GPUs in the package. When you play a non-PS4 Pro aware game, they simply turn one of the GPUs off. It will perform exactly like a launch PS4.

I didn’t take it as non Pro aware but games that came out before this system existed. All games coming out in the future should take advantage…at least I hope.

Games coming out in the future will, assumedly, be pro-aware, yes.

The Verge doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Eurogamer’s article is much more accurate. It’s just a GPU with twice as many shader units, but it does in fact have a number of architectural enhancements. For compatibility reasons they do clock down and deactivate part of the GPU for non-Pro aware games. We probably won’t know if there are literally no performance differences until someone is able to do tests, but going by the mess than can be PC ports of Japanese console games which freak out in weird ways on more performant hardware it’s easy to see why they’d air on the side of maintaining perfect compatibility.

All games going forward are required to be Pro aware, taking advantage of as much hardware as they want. Devs are free to patch older games, too. The Shadows of Mordor 4K patch is already out. Reportedly it targets a full 4K but uses a dynamic resolution to maintain frame rate in demanding scenes. Bethesda is supporting Pro in Elder Scrolls Online and the Skyrim remaster. Maybe they’ll include a Pro update when they add mods to Fallout 4 as well.

They got their information from Mark Cerny also-- but given Eurogamer’s direct quote it looks like you’re right, they just disable half of the GPU, rather than having two separate PS4 GPUs.

The way I read it is that it’s not a literal separate gpu on the motherboard but a separate one on the SoC. They took the block of transistors that make it up and made separate “copy” of it. So it is kind of like two GPUs just on one die.

He said they mirrored it, but if it was truly two GPUs they wouldn’t share memory directly and there’d be a lot of duplication for things like video acceleration, command scheduling, schedulers, etc, beyond just the cores and CUs, which wastes space on your die.

Brad’s explanation makes the most sense-- they doubled the number of GPU cores and CUs and increased the clockspeed. When you run a non-pro aware game, they disable half the cores/CUs and clock it down.

That’s too bad, I liked the paralell bewteen a GPU sandwich and the exterior “sandwich” design.