Mark Cerny revealed the secret.
In his speech at Sony’s San Mateo headquarters (attended by DigitalFoundry), he said a few new details about the upcoming upgraded console. On top of having an extra gigabyte of memory, there’re other differences in the hardware.
Cerny explained how the GPU‘s size was doubled: there are two chips instead of one in the original PS4. With this solution, they can support all 700 of released games (that’s all we got in three years?) the best possible way. If we put in a game disc (or download a title digitally) that supports the PS4 Pro, then both graphical chips are activated.
Cerny brought up Netflix as an example of how the two PlayStation 4 models are different, regarding the extra gigabyte of memory. On the base PS4, if we switch between a game and Netflix, both applications stay in the memory. With the PS4 Pro, it’s different: if we switch from Netflix to the game, Netflix is moved to the extra gigabyte of memory (which isn’t GDDR5, just „DDR3 in nature,” quoting Cerny), and the 512 MB of system memory is available for the games. The remaining 2.5 GB GDDR5 memory is held for the PlayStation 4 Pro‘s user interface that can now be displayed in 4K resolution.
Cerny also says that the PlayStation 4 is not the beginning of the new console generation because he thinks the generations are healthy for the industry and the gaming community alike. The PS4 Pro has a different goal, he adds.
The PlayStation 4 Pro launches on November 10 for 399$/€, or 349 GBP.
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