Digital Foundry recently dove into the power consumption of the PlayStation 5 Pro, and the findings were quite intriguing. In a YouTube discussion with hosts Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, they revealed that the PS5 Pro uses almost the same amount of power as the original PS5, although it’s equipped with a much more powerful GPU.
Their tests included games like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. They compared these on the original PS5, the updated PS5 Slim, and the Pro model, which was running exclusive versions of the games with better graphics.
During the Elden Ring test, the PS5 Pro consumed nearly as much power as the PS5 Slim. In the video, it showed the Pro drawing 214.1 watts, the Slim at 216.2 watts, and the original PS5 at 201.3 watts. Despite this, the Pro managed to deliver a much higher frame rate at 52 FPS, compared to the Slim’s 40 FPS and the original’s 37 FPS. It’s worth noting that the performance difference between the Slim and the original was based on a snapshot from Digital Foundry’s benchmarks, as both are similar in performance. Essentially, the PS5 Pro delivered a 30% higher frame rate while using about the same power as the Slim.
As for Spider-Man 2, the game consistently ran at 60 FPS on all three consoles. Here, the Pro consumed the most power at 232 watts, followed by the Slim at 218.2 watts, and the original PS5 at 208.1 watts. This means the Pro used 6% more power than the Slim and 11% more than the launch version. While there were no direct comparisons for F1 24, Digital Foundry noted the PS5 Pro used about 235 watts in the game, maintaining a solid 60FPS.
It’s essential to consider that power consumption variations often depend on the quality of the silicon used in the consoles. This variability might result in the Slim sometimes performing worse than the original model since some units can achieve their advertised CPU clock speeds with less power.
Ultimately, Digital Foundry confirmed that the PS5 Pro rivals the power consumption of the original PS5 models, despite having a more robust GPU. This was unexpected, as they initially thought the Pro would require up to 300 watts. The PS5 Pro boasts an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a beefy 16.7 TFLOP RDNA GPU, handling 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Compared to the standard PS5, which features the same type of CPU but a less powerful 10.28 TFLOP RDNA GPU and 448 GB/s memory bandwidth, the Pro offers a significant performance boost without a significant increase in power draw.
