PS5 Pro's PSSR Will Get An Upgrade In 2026

Last week AMD launched FSR 4 alongside its first RDNA 4-equipped desktop GPUs. It's a drastic improvement over previous versions of the tech suite, introducing AI-powered upscaling that is only possible thanks to dedicated hardware on the new cards. It's an advancement that Sony's Mark Cerny is saying will come to PS5, albeit not until 2026.

Speaking to Digital Foundry, Cerny was full of praise for AMD's FSR 4 release, saying that the upscaler surpasses the work Sony has done with its PS5 Pro-exclusive solution, PSSR. "And results are excellent, it's a more advanced approach that can exceed the crispness of PSSR," Cerny explained. "I'm very proud of the work of the joint team!"

Cerny says that FSR 4 will need to be backported to the PS5 Pro, essentially through a new version of PSSR that takes into account all the advancements AMD has made. Cerny says that for the most part the information the upscaler requires from a game will stay the same, which will make implementation by developers easier, but that it isn't as easy as supporting FSR 4 natively. This is due to the PS5 Pro having an entirely different architecture than RDNA 4, and thus not one that can support it fully like AMD's latest GPUs.

"RDNA 4 and the hardware in PS5 Pro are completely separate designs, which is why I speak in terms of 'reimplementation' on PS5 Pro when I talk about the new upscaling network used in FSR 4," Cerny continued. "I'm definitely looking forward to a future with co-developed hardware features for machine learning that will dramatically increase the interoperability."

FSR 4 doesn't have the same performance gains as its previous iteration, in part due to the additional overhead required for the vastly improved results. Cerny, however, believes the PS5 Pro can still support these image improvements despite the much weaker hardware in the PS5 Pro, without requiring major re-architecture. "That is what we are targeting, and we believe we can achieve it," Cerny added.

Sony and AMD continue to collaborate on Project Amethyst, with its first major milestone coming with the release of PSSR. Cerny believes there's a lot more to come by working closely with AMD, especially when it comes to machine learning and ray tracing enhancements for future console hardware. "All I can say is stay tuned! There’s a lot of opportunity with our Amethyst collaboration, and we know that ray tracing is a huge part of the graphics future," concluded Cerny.