PS4 Pro not quite 4K

Yar, I'll give kudos to Sony for being upfront about this from the beginning. There's also a Mark Cerny (iirc) article explaining their dynamic resolution tech (checkerboard tech or whatever it's called).

AFAIK, Project Scorpio is still intended to be a 'native 4k' console, looking forward to hearing more about that one.
 
Honestly, at this point, the resolution doesn't bother me. I have a PC which is 4k capable (dual Titan XPs), and while it does look better on my 4k LG e6 OLED than the PS4 Pro, it's the improved frame rate which I prefer more. (Too bad at this time I only have a couple games which can use the PS4 Pro).
 
I care more about 60 FPS once again becoming the target framerate than rendering resolution. It seems like the target framerate has gone from 30 FPS to 24 in the past year and I'm honestly sick and tired of it.
 
A quick recording I did of how the Samsung 850 EVO compares on the base PS4 vs the PS4 Pro. I wonder if an 850 Pro would make much of a difference.



Both from a cold boot. It's a little faster on the loading. About a second faster on the boot to title screen (13 vs 14 seconds), the load to the main level (6 vs 7 seconds), the load to the bonfire (16 vs 17 seconds). I guess I could test other games. On some levels, I'm disappointed, but on the other hand, it is faster.
 
It's going to scale to 4K but won't run at Native 4K but I read you can use a 2K monitor which is interesting so maybe you will have better luck with 2K.
 
Stoly said:
While the PS4 Pro should be able to run some games natively at 4K, it seems that history will repeat itself as it will use dynamic resolution to balance frame rates.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/54889/ps4-pros-native-4k-games-trigger-fps-drop/index.html

Not that I expected otherwise...
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Sony has left it up to the developer to decide how to use the extra power. They are not mandating a specific resolution or performance profile. Balancing fidelity and performance will always be an issue regardless of the hardware. Console devs almost always favor fidelity.
 
bigdogchris said:
Sony has left it up to the developer to decide how to use the extra power. They are not mandating a specific resolution or performance profile. Balancing fidelity and performance will always be an issue regardless of the hardware. Console devs almost always favor fidelity.
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When it should be the other way around...
 
Armenius said:
A feature I wish would become the standard.
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Same here. I wouldn't mind less demanding games like the CoD games having a native 4K option just to see how it looks and runs. Of course with Sony's policy games have to run the same as they do on the original PS4 so this won't happen since it wouldn't maintain 60Fps.
 
Comixbooks said:
It's going to scale to 4K but won't run at Native 4K but I read you can use a 2K monitor which is interesting so maybe you will have better luck with 2K.
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It downsamples. So even if you use 1080p they are saying games will still look better because they'll be fitting the 4K visuals into the 1080p resolution.
 
zamardii12 said:
It downsamples. So even if you use 1080p they are saying games will still look better because they'll be fitting the 4K visuals into the 1080p resolution.
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So it upscales to 4k and then downsamples to 2k? I don't think so. While possible, its a waste of resources.

Most probably, it renders at 1080p and upscales to either 2k or 4k
 
I probably would have jumped on this if it had a 4k bluray player - I already have a PS4 and nothing so far has convinced me that this is a worthy upgrade. Right now it's looking like the Xbone S for me, but we'll see.
 
Stoly said:
So it upscales to 4k and then downsamples to 2k? I don't think so. While possible, its a waste of resources.

Most probably, it renders at 1080p and upscales to either 2k or 4k
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If you watch some of Digital Foundry's videos, it's supersampling. So yes, internally rendering at 4K, then outputting at 1080p.
 
I got my PS4 Pro last night. Playing Last of Us Remastered. Just looking by eye, it is running at the full 4K @ 60Hz. It looks awesome.

I know that is an old game, so I don't expect recent games to be able to do the same settings, but all this talk of the console not being powerful enough for native 4K is bunk.
 
Well maybe they cut some corners, but it certainly looks nearly like 4K and is fast enough to be smooth (even if it dips below 60fps in heavy scenes).
 
As for cut corners though, maybe 1440p internally would have been a better approach than 1800p. Slightly worse upscaling, but you could keep the 60 fps (well, hopefully). I don't know why they chose what they did, but I assume they had a reason for it. That said, does down sampling really make that big of a difference? It's not like it would be really hard to query the current resolution, and choose your render resolution based on that. I do play World of Final Fantasy, which I heard was a mess on the Pro, so I guess I could check that out and compare, but that seems to be a bug from what NeoGAF users are stating, as blurriness shouldn't be related to resolution.
 
I tried Need for Speed tonight on the PS4 Pro. It's not a Pro Enhanced game, but I wanted to check out the upscaling support.

It looked pretty nice, but probably not much better than if it was running at 1080P and upscaled by the TV.
 
cybereality said:
I got my PS4 Pro last night. Playing Last of Us Remastered. Just looking by eye, it is running at the full 4K @ 60Hz. It looks awesome.

I know that is an old game, so I don't expect recent games to be able to do the same settings, but all this talk of the console not being powerful enough for native 4K is bunk.
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I played Uncharted 4, Shadow of Mordor, and Infamous Second Son and they all looked incredible. Shadow of Mordor had 2 graphics options one is "Favor Quality," and the other was "Favor Resolution." I gotta say the game felt fantastic favoring resolution. No FPS drops, super clear textures. Infamous was fantastic too at 4K. Better resolution, better draw distance, and super stable 60FPS.
 
Uncharted 4 looks better in some ways (higher resolution) but the HDR mode looks washed out to me.
 
Domingo said:
Uncharted 4 looks better in some ways (higher resolution) but the HDR mode looks washed out to me.
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I don't have U4 but playing Deus Ex, The Last of Us, and Infamous with HDR I get the same thing (Sony X800D). I've tried messing around with my settings while playing The Last of Us but I just can't mimic the darker non-HDR atmosphere.
 
Supposedly the dynamic contrast setting is supposed to help. I'm going to give that a shot when I get home. I really don't feel like having to change all of my settings every single time HDR kicks in, so hopefully it doesn't look janky with everything else.
In Uncharted it really only seems to affect sunlight, but with the new sun-ray mechanic is makes the other colors look dull and like my brightness is set way too high most of the time.
 
I played around last night and Dynamic Contrast IS borderline necessary to see any benefits from HDR. Not sure it looks any better, but it at least has the same "pop" to the colors that the game does in non-HDR mode. Without it, things look washed out like the contrast setting is way, way too low.
On my setup (via an AV Receiver) I have to finagle some settings to even make that option available, so I'm a little curious if future updates to either the PS4 Pro, my TV, my receiver, or even certain games will alleviate that.
 
If you have a 1080P TV and do not plan to upgrade to 4k anytime soon is the PS4 Pro worth it?

As in just for better graphics?
 
XvMMvX said:
If you have a 1080P TV and do not plan to upgrade to 4k anytime soon is the PS4 Pro worth it?

As in just for better graphics?
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Nah, I wouldn't. At least unless you're starting from scratch with no PS4 at all. I'd probably get one instead of a normal PS4, but it isn't worth an upgrade if you already own one. Here's a list of what games are supported and how the upgrades affect each: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/every-ps4-pro-game-that-is-and-isnt-getting-an-upg/1100-6443385/
IMO, the "better visuals for 1080p" tend to be awfully vague and in some cases, almost nonexistent. Only a few games let you boost the FPS or improve the visuals in a major way.
 
No, I'm not sure getting a PS4 Pro without a 4K TV makes sense. A few games do support enhanced visuals beyond the resolution bump but it's not a substantial amount at this point.

Keep in mind that only special PS4 Pro Enhanced titles get any benefit. Pretty much 95% of the games already out there have no benefit at all, so it's not like your games will magically get better performance without a patch from the developer.

That said, if you do have a 4K TV or are planning to get one in the near future, then it's a more understandable purchase.
 
Did anyone really expect it to run in 4k? I mean if a 480 RX can't do it. You really think a slower version of the RX 480 could do it? Marketing ftl!
 
Actually, some games can run at 4K. It does Last of Us at 4K 30Hz. I play on the 60Hz mode, which drops it to 1800P, which still looks great and is hard to tell from 4K native.
 
cybereality said:
Actually, some games can run at 4K. It does Last of Us at 4K 30Hz. I play on the 60Hz mode, which drops it to 1800P, which still looks great and is hard to tell from 4K native.
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Well that is an older game. So that is to be expected. What about newer games?
 
So, I haven't tried anything else yet. From what I've heard, newer games can work too but it's a mixed bag.

For example, Watch Dogs 2, which just came out, uses 1800P checkerboard rendering and the image quality is fantastic. You'd really be hard pressed to tell by eye that it's not 4K. However, framerates are at 30Hz and surprisingly struggling in sections (even compared to the vanilla PS4 version).



So that isn't quite comforting, but many other games are working great so it may be an issue of developers getting up to speed with new hardware.
 
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