PS5 Pro - Teraflops. Do They Matter?
In this guide, we lean into the question of teraflops. We answer what they are, and see if they matter in the context of the PlayStation 5 Pro and other consoles.
The release of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S took place in an atmosphere of a unique race for teraflops. These units were used by Sony and Microsoft not only to showcase the technological leap that the ninth-generation consoles were supposed to represent compared to their predecessors but also to demonstrate the superiority of one next-gen console over the other.
The topic of teraflops returned like a boomerang after the announcement of the PlayStation 5 Pro. In this article, we describe what they are, and also check whether they have any significance (and if so, what kind).
What are teraflops?
- Teraflops is a unit of measurement of computing performance, defining the number of floating-point operations a computer or console can perform in one second.
- While "FLOPS" is an abbreviation for "floating point operations per second," the prefix "tera" means trillion.
- In short, 1 teraflop is the ability of a computer or console to perform 1 trillion floating-point operations per second.
Do teraflops matter?
- As mentioned earlier, before the launch of the ninth generation of consoles, their teraflops became the primary point of comparison. However, they only determine the performance of the GPU (graphics system), so they are only one of many determinants of device performance.
- The architecture of the processor, the quality of the tools used by developers, and optimization all have a much greater impact on how a particular game works on a given console.
- This often results in a situation where a particular game runs and appears more impressive on a console that may seem weaker due to its lower number of teraflops.
PS5 Pro - how many teraflops does it have?
- As we learned from the leak of technical specifications, the performance of the PlayStation 5 Pro graphics system is supposed to be 16.7 teraflops.
- In theory, we can see a significant leap forward compared to both the Xbox Series X (12.1 teraflops) and the standard PlayStation 5 model (10.3 teraflops).
When comparing the performance of devices in terms of the number of teraflops, it's worth remembering about:
- Not comparing consoles and computers in this way, nor products from different manufacturers (such as AMD and Nvidia).
- Due to different GPU architectures, individual companies use different types of calculations to determine the performance of their hardware.
- The most meaningful comparison is between consoles from one company within a given generation, such as the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, or Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
