“That gives us an extremely clean way to support the existing 700 titles.” In essence, the PS4 Pro switches into a non-Pro compatibility mode when it’s running a game that hasn’t been patched to support the console. “We doubled the GPU size by essentially placing it next to a mirrored version of itself, sort of like the wings of a butterfly,” said Cerny. PS4 Pro’s additional RAM frees up memory for game developers The simplest way to do that was to beef up the PS4’s GPU while keeping the CPU relatively similar.

Mark Cerny, the lead system architect of the PS4, said in an interview with Digital Foundry last year that the company wanted to ensure that every PS4 game would be compatible with the Pro. Sony’s engineering team designed the PS4 Pro that way on purpose. Even though the PS4 Pro is more than twice as powerful as the original PS4, the Pro doesn’t currently use that extra juice if a game has not been coded to support the system.

However, developers must specifically patch their games with PS4 Pro support to offer higher-fidelity visuals such as 4K resolution. The PS4 Pro, which was released in November, plays every PS4 game. PS4 firmware v4.50 will reportedly add a Boost Mode for the PS4 Pro. Boost Mode offers a clear frame rate improvement from the very choppy performance of the standard game. You can see the Boost Mode in action in the comparison video above, which shows the opening of Tango Gameworks’ The Evil Within - a game that has not been patched with PS4 Pro support - running with and without Boost Mode enabled. Turn this off if you experience unexpected behaviour during gameplay. A screenshot of the PS4’s settings menu, from a tester named Mladen Tapavicki, describes Boost Mode while offering a caveat:Įxperience improved gameplay, including higher frame rates, for some games that were released before the introduction of PS4 Pro (CUH-7000 series). Reports of the feature arrived today from PS4 owners who are testing a beta of the upcoming system software update, version 4.50. Sony’s next major PlayStation 4 firmware includes a new system setting, Boost Mode, that enables the PlayStation 4 Pro to deliver better performance for games that don’t explicitly support the beefier console.

Skymaxx pro 4.5 screenshot comparison