PS4 Pro is an inherently flawed system, just get regular PS4. Tech jargon broken down for the layman inside

The problem with the PS4 Pro is that the regular PS4 is practically the same. It has more power, more than double the power but it's mostly useless and I will thoroughly explain exactly why.

The PS4 Pro only offers a resolution bump over the regular PS4. It does not offer substantially better framerates and doesn't even offer higher resolution textures. Basically it's the exact same assets as the PS4 but running at 1440p or a checkerboard 4k. They both support HDR.

Now there are two main categories of customers, those with 1080p displays and those with 4k displays. I am sure everyone here will agree that anyone with a 1080p display that doesn't plan to upgrade to 4k soon, has no business buying a PS4 Pro. Well, I'm going to explain why even if you own a 4k display, you wouldn't really benefit from a PS4 Pro over a PS4.

TLDR; scroll down

Look at the image to the left. If you have a 4k display, your display is made up of 3,840 pixels horizontally by 2,160 pixels vertically. That equals(multiply 3,840 X 2,160) = 8,294,400.00. That is over 8 million pixels.

If you have a 1080p display, your display is made up of 1,920 pixels horizontally by 1,080 pixels vertically. That equals(multiply 1,920 X 1,080) = 2,073,600. That is over 2 million pixels or roughly 1/4 the pixel count(size of canvas) of 4k.

Think of a television display as a canvas where your gaming images will be drawn. Of course a much larger canvas will show a lot more details. A 4K display is really 4X the size of a canvas as a 1080p display. You need to be clear on this to understand how scaling works.

Every 4k display automatically scales everything you feed into it to fit the 4k display. What does that mean? Look at the image below. If your 4k television didn't scale the image, then a 720 signal that is sent to it, would look like a tiny square in the middle of the screen the size of the 720p square in the image compared to the 4k. Since it would be ridiculous to have a 65" 4K for example to watch a tiny image in the middle of the screen, all 4ks automatically stretch the image to fit the full screen.

The smaller the original(native resolution) image is, the worse it will look once it's stretched all the way to fit the screen. A 1080p image is roughly 1/4 the size of a 4k canvas as you can see in the image below. This means it has to stretch less to fit the screen so it will look better than the 720p native image. Then there is 1440p which is about 3.6 million pixels so that makes it a little less than half the size of a 4k. It has to stretch a lot less than 1080p to fit 4k but it's still less than half the size.

Of course a native 4k image is 4k so the tv doesn't need to do anything, it just displays the native 4k image that fills the entire screen natively and that of course offers the best quality.

Let's now compare the PS4 vs PS4 Pro. Remember, all 4k televisions will upscale any image that is not 4k, all the way up to 4k. With a regular PS4, you can send the image to the TV at 1080p and have the TV upscale it to 4k. Or you could set the PS4 to 4k which would mean the PS4 is internally upscaling the image to 4k so the TV doesn't have to do anything. If you have a cheap tv with a bad upscaler then this would be the better option. Now the PS4 Pro since it doesn't have the power to send a native 4k signal either, it can only send an upscaled 1440p image that your tv doesn't have to do anything with.

The results will be very similar between PS4 and PS4 Pro. Especially if you have a good 4K television with a good upscaler. It may even look better than a PS4 Pro game on a cheap 4k television.

Again, this is because the PS4 Pro only offers a resolution bump that still doesn't even fill half of a 4k screen and has to be upscaled. It doesn't offer higher fps than a regular PS4. It doesn't offer better texture quality or assets over the PS4. It will never be able to offer higher quality assets because it has the same amount of RAM as the regular PS4. It's using higher resolutions so if anything, the RAM is bottlenecking it a lot more than the standard PS4.

TLDR;

If you have a really nice 4k TV such as the Sony x900e, a PS4 game will look great on it with the FALD and great HDR implementation as well as superb upscaling. If you plug in a PS4 pro you will use the PS4 Pro's internal scaler instead and may actually produce inferior image quality vs a regular PS4 which again will be using the Sony television's higher quality upscaler.

The Xbox One X doesn't suffer from these problems. That is because the X has 12 GBs of RAM so that almost doubles the amount that is reserved for games vs PS4 Pro(9GB vs 5GB). Also the X has much faster RAM which along with the extra GPU power, allows the X to display 4k assets and 4k textures in 4k games just as long as the developers patch it in of course.

I know the X doesn't always do native 4k. But when it doesn't it at least does 1800p which would be an image that almost fits the entire 4k screen(about 80%) with only minimal upscaling required by the X internally. This produces a superb image that is very well suited and looks great on 4k tvs. Even though it's not fully 4k native. The X has been lauded for having an exceptional upscaler. That is why DF routinely states that PS4 Pro games are better suited for 1080p tvs and Xbox One X games are recommended to be played on 4k displays.

The PS4 Pro is a dumb system that just doesn't make sense. Actually it does make sense as something designed specifically to improve VR which it does very well. So only buy a PS4 Pro over the PS4 if you plan buying the PS VR. Other than that, just get the regular PS4. If you want a real upgrade in visuals and you own a 4k television, you need the X.

It's fantastic for PSVR. All this wagging over native 4k is stupid in a post-Scorpio launch world. An actual 4k console is next generation because $500 and $600 consoles don't sell. Ancient Chinese secret...

I would skip the X myself, that's also fake 4k for the majority of games.

I'd rather have more frame rate than resolution personally even if it's below 1080p, but the CPU in all the consoles suck.

Except the benefits of the added resources are not strictly limited to resolution. So there's that worth considering.

Didn't read, but love my Pro. No problems at all. Games like Tomb Raider, Titan Fall 2, Uncharted, Horizon, gravity Rush and Knack 2 all look great and run great on the Pro. That's all that matters. The AA on it is incredible as is the HDR and how smooth the frame-rates are. Anyone who has a Pro loves it with no complaints. Only people who don't have one say other wise. facts. Man Horizon is life like on the Pro. Everyone without a Pro is losing out.

X, Pro, whatever... Stop fuckin around with these shit consoles and just buy a gaming PC.

I already have a gaming PC.

@Xplode_games: Then use it and stop promoting shit hardware like the X.

Without consoles the gaming industry as a whole would be all but dead. The X is the best hardware on a console by far and ideal if you're a gamer with a 4k tv. As a matter of fact, read these forums and you will see high end PCs constantly being compared to the X. Not just on these forums, DF compares the X to high end PC as do a lot of other youtube gaming sites as well. It's a monster as far as consoles are concerned and the best console MS has designed since the 360.

@Xplode_games: No matter how much you try to spin it, it is still a shit 30fps box.

It can't output at native 4k?? Since when? I have a pro now and can say there is an upgrade to visuals. Definitely noticed in playing Destiny 2. I play on a 1080p screen but use it for psvr mostly. Boost mode is supposed to increase frame rate. I haven't tried it yet.

Ummm. With the CPU hindering both the Scorpio and the Pro in similar ways, why do you hand the L to one and not the other? You're not really consistent. Furthermore, the exclusives on PS4 and PS4 Pro are their main selling points, so giving Scorpio a pass due to some arbitrary performance number for its GPU is a bit of a stretch. Then, there is the price difference.

You're not really fooling anyone. A PC gamer would rightfully see the Scorpio as utterly redundant at this point. What gives?

Loved reading through the first chapter of your book. But as an example The Last Guardian has better frame rates on the Pro.

Every court has it's jester.

I did not read all the OP, but seeing the Pro at 350$ only a few spots above the X on Amazon, which is 150$ more expensive, I think the mistake Sony did was maybe stick too closely to the 400ish price point. You want more power you'll have to pay for it, and X went a little further in that sense. The thing with the low prices is a mixed bag, if someone is going to spend 1- 2K on an OLED TV or midrange LED, I do not think they will mind an extra 100-200$ on the usual console price.

I think these mid gen upgrades are great, I cannot comment on the Pro really because I don't own one but that's my 2 cents based on my recent experience with the X. I would not be as satisfied, I believe, if the X was weaker at 500$. I'm glad they came out with a higher price like that.

1. They are not the same, there is a big difference. At minimum the X offers 4k@30fps with superb image quality. A lot of times the games will have dynamic resolution that still gives you 80% of 4k at 30fps which would still give a fantastic 30 fps presentation on a 4k. Sometimes the X gives you the full 4k and 60 fps like it does in Wolfstein. The PS4 Pro at worst gives you 1080p at 30 fps but let's say it can do 1440p at 30 but with same assets as regular PS4. The PS4 stinks for a 4k display. The X is great for a 4k display. The only downside to the X is that most of the time it offers that great image quality for 4k at only 30fps.

In other words, the PS4 Pro is really a 1080p tv system while the X is designed for a 4k display. The cows are damage controlling by saying 30fps is garbage while hiding behind their PCs. They think this means even when you play a game like Assasin's Creed Unity on the X which offers absolutely stunning image quality in 4k, it is irrelevant because an enthusiast level PC can run it at 60? The point is it offers phenomenal image quality for 4k tv owners and locked solid 30 fps which is great.

2. I have a gaming PC and I gave a lot of though about buying a second gaming PC for my living room. Then I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. The best device in my opinion for the living room right now is the Xbox One X and also the Nintendo Switch is great as well. A high end PC is truly great and maybe my favorite of all the platforms but it's not for the living room. You can argue until you turn blue in the face and claim it's so easy to be in the living room with big picture mode steam and controller and so on and so forth but it's bs. For a living room, console is really the easiest. That is why consoles are still not only relevant but the bulk of the market. PC is great but it's really on the sidelines. Btw, I have the steamlink and I play PC with my Xbox controller in my living room but you know what, the Xbox is better than that. The Xbox also has a UHD player so it's just bonus after bonus.

It's only $500, any gamer with a decent 4k tv that doesn't buy an Xbox One X is really screwing themselves whether they know it or not. Of course alternatively they can hook up a high end PC to their TVs and it would be better than an Xbox One X but realistically no one does that. The PS4 Pro is laughable as a competitor and not a viable alternative.

The Pro was higher than where the Scorpio is last year fyi.

Are you auditioning?

I love my Pro. It was a great purchase! I see huge differences between it and when I had my PS4.

Yeah i'm gonna have to disagree with OP.

Scaling a 1080p image up to 4k using the TV scaler, vs scaling up a 1440p iamge to 4K also using the tv scaler will still give you a sharper image from the Pro's native 1440p image. This doesn't matter if the textures are the same as a PS4, the fact that the models are rendered at a higher resolution to start with means the final image will be crisper and less aliased.

On 1080p screens, that means the pS4 Pro can downscale the image for an even sharper 1080p image, so the Pro is worth it if you like that extra clarity. I think what OP is mixing up here is the idea that graphics are better, but they arent, just resolution, and that's ok.

That being said, i'd still prefer to get an X1X for all multiplats and a cheaper standard PS4 for teh exclusivz which some cows think are the only games that exist.

Did Trump just build the wall made out of text?...because that OP is huuuge.

In Canada,PS4 Pro is just about a $500 price tag on it.That is to much nickel's and dimes for my pocket. I don't have that much cash to pass over.Sorry Sony,lower your price a bit.?

? So much butthurt damage control from lems after getting rekt at NPD.

The public has spoken, Xbone in all forms is a turd. Take your L lemming and stop crying in here with butthurt walls of text.

Do we need to be reminded that the Pro is a comedian?

Anyway, it is the PS4 to own if you don't already hands down.

But is it a TRUE comedian?

If you compare a PS4 game output at 1080p upscaled on a high quality tv such as a Sony x900e vs the PS4 pro outputting to a low quality 4k tv such as a Spectre for example which one wins? Or a PS4 outputting 1080p to the Sony x900e vs the PS4 Pro internally scaling the image and sending it to the x900e, who wins that? Even if the pro wins, how big is the difference really?

Meanwhile the X offers an image that is best suited for a 4k display with 4k assets and a resolution that is 80% of 4k or better.

No its dynamic. :)

Plus it didn't flop like Xbox X and it made MS shitcan Kinect.

Well played PS4 Pro-The world's first professional video game console in the history of video games!

The TLDR is 4 paragraphs...

anyone have a summary?

Shut up

So I have a question for the TC:

What if I wanted to play HZD at a higher resolution than 1080p, and have a 4k television?

@Pedro:

With more and better exclusive content than the other comedian named x1x. Fancy that.

Looks like its back to attacking PS4 Pro; industry leading mid gen upgrade and only professional console, now that the BonerX has been certified DOA.

shut up fool! How much butthurt do you have to say this shit!

The truth hurts, I know. I would not be happy either if I was stuck playing multiplats at 30fps.

Xbox one x is just as pointless. No one should be buying any of the mid gen upgrades(including the switch).

Wait until PS5.

The truth hurts for the cows that used the power advantage for almost four years and now have to run to the PC to hide. The Xbox One X is the most powerful a console has ever been and some like you can't handle that. You have to compare it's CPU to one's that cost $200 or more on the PC. LMFAO Get that Pentium shit out of here because it doesn't have built in DX12 command buffer.

No, it's significantly more powerful than the Pro... so at worst, it's LESS "pointless" than the Pro.

@xhawk27: WTF are you going on about? I bash all consoles. I don't give a **** if it is Sony, MS, or Nintendo. If the quality is not there, I will talk shit about it.

Buy neither a Pro or an X and wait for a console that can do 4K/30 consistently around the board with an optional 1080/60 mode. These refreshes are a bust. In the meantime, invest in a PC, and change out the parts you need at your own leisure.

The PS5 most likely not coming until fall 2020.

Lol, you just described the Xbox One X. You are confused by the PS4 Pro because you think the X is similar.

The console that you are waiting for is already out. It's called the Xbox One X.

The Xbox One X is quality.

Can you show how the X delivers 4K/30 consistently in every game? And has a 1080p/60 mode option as well?

In a lot of games it does have those options.

Since when is 30fps quality?

can you list a few?

VR, super-sampling, Boost mode, 4K stream, enhanced graphics, improved frame rates.

Its an improved PS4 fuk 4k!