PS5 Pro's Upgraded PSSR2 Upscaling Elevates Four Major Games with Stunning Clarity and Performance Gains

Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro launched last November with bold promises: a beefed-up GPU, cutting-edge ray tracing, and a machine learning-powered upscaling technology called PSSR (PlayStation Super Resolution). While the console’s raw horsepower was impressive, early reviews of its launch-day PSSR implementation revealed significant flaws, particularly in games with dense foliage, heavy ray tracing, or fine geometric detail. Flickering vegetation, strobing global illumination, and unstable temporal consistency plagued titles like the base version of *Silent Hill f*, undermining the Pro’s potential. Now, with the upgraded PSSR2—often referred to as PSSR Redstone—Digital Foundry’s hands-on testing at Sony’s London headquarters reveals a dramatic turnaround. Across four top-tier titles—*Silent Hill f*, *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*, *Monster Hunter Wilds*, and *Dragon Age: The Veilguard*—PSSR2 delivers near-native 4K clarity, eliminates distracting artifacts, and even boosts frame rates in some cases, proving the Pro’s upscaling tech is finally living up to its billing.

How the PS5 Pro’s PSSR2 Upscaling Fixes the Original PSSR’s Critical Flaws

When Sony debuted the PS5 Pro, the console’s headline feature was its advanced upscaling system, PSSR, which promised to bridge the gap between the base PS5’s performance and the Pro’s enhanced hardware. However, the initial implementation struggled under pressure. Games like *Silent Hill f*, built on Unreal Engine 5 with dense foliage, heavy ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), and fine texture detail, exposed PSSR’s weaknesses. Vegetation would shimmer erratically, RTGI would pulse unnaturally, and sub-pixel detail flickered, often creating an image that looked worse than the base PS5 version’s Temporal Super Resolution (TSR). The root cause? The original PSSR lacked the temporal stability and artifact reduction required for complex scenes.

Enter PSSR2, a collaboration between Sony and AMD under the codename Project Amethyst. While PSSR2 incorporates AMD’s FSR4 technology, it’s not a direct port. Instead, it merges Sony’s proprietary machine learning insights with AMD’s upscaling expertise, creating a hybrid solution tailored for the PS5 Pro’s architecture. The result is a near-seamless upgrade that eliminates the original PSSR’s most glaring issues: flickering RTGI, unstable foliage rendering, and film grain-like noise artifacts. Digital Foundry’s tests confirm that PSSR2 delivers temporal consistency on par with the best upscalers, such as NVIDIA’s DLSS, without the sharpening artifacts that plagued earlier versions.

The Silent Hill f Transformation: From Flickering Nightmare to 4K Clarity

Among the games tested, *Silent Hill f* stood out as the most dramatic example of PSSR2’s improvements. In the original PSSR implementation, the game’s ultra-fine foliage, heavy RTGI, and Unreal Engine 5 quirks created a perfect storm of instability. Vegetation shimmered, RTGI pulsed aggressively, and sub-pixel details flickered, often making the image appear shakier than the base PS5’s TSR. The new PSSR2, however, transforms the experience entirely. The pulsing RTGI is gone, replaced by stable, consistent lighting. Foliage renders crisply without shimmering, and texture detail—from character models to environmental surfaces—looks sharper and more detailed. Even film grain artifacts, a hallmark of the original PSSR, are completely absent, replaced by the smooth temporal consistency expected from premium upscalers.

On a 4K display, the difference is night and day. Where the base PS5 version struggled to maintain stability, PSSR2 delivers a clean, stable image that retains the game’s intended atmosphere without the distractions of artifacts. This isn’t just an incremental upgrade—it’s a fundamental redefinition of what the game looks like on PS5 Pro. For players upgrading from the base PS5, this is the kind of improvement that makes the Pro’s higher price feel justified.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: PSSR2 Refines Perfection with Higher Framerates

While *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth* was one of the stronger showcases for the original PSSR—thanks to its relatively high base resolutions and lack of ray tracing—it still suffered from noise and temporal instability. PSSR2 addresses these lingering issues while introducing tangible benefits: crisper edges, reduced aliasing in both motion and static scenes, and improved foliage rendering. Perhaps most impressively, the game achieves what the PS5 Pro was always promised to deliver: the base PS5’s 30fps "Quality Mode" upscaled to 60fps on the Pro, but with even higher image quality than before.

Digital Foundry’s tests confirm that *Rebirth* not only hits 60fps smoothly but does so with a cleaner, more stable image. Texture detail appears enhanced, likely due to a more aggressive negative mipmap bias—a technique that allows the upscaler to resolve higher detail more reliably. The result is a game that looks and feels closer to a true native 4K experience, even when running at half the resolution. For a title that was already one of the best-looking games on the base PS5, PSSR2 pushes it into new territory, proving that the Pro’s upscaling isn’t just about brute-force performance but refined visual fidelity.

Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon Age: The Veilguard Show Steady Improvements

Not every game experiences a revolutionary upgrade with PSSR2, but *Monster Hunter Wilds* and *Dragon Age: The Veilguard* still benefit significantly from Sony’s refinements. In *Wilds*, an open-world title that has historically struggled with visual polish, PSSR2 delivers notable gains in anti-aliasing and sub-pixel detail. Specular noise and screen-space reflections—often problematic in performance modes targeting 60fps—are far more stable, even in lower-resolution configurations. The game’s extended intro cutscenes, rendered in-engine, provided a unique opportunity to test PSSR2’s computational cost against the original. Surprisingly, the frame-time performance between the two versions was nearly identical, suggesting that the upgraded upscaler doesn’t impose a meaningful performance penalty.

*Dragon Age: The Veilguard*, meanwhile, shows modest but meaningful improvements. Foliage quality is sharper, noise is reduced, and reconstruction artifacts are less intrusive. While the changes aren’t as dramatic as in *Silent Hill f* or *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*, they’re consistent with the Pro’s goal of delivering a cleaner, more polished experience across its library. These incremental gains matter, especially for players who prioritize visual stability over raw performance.

The Frame Rate Trade-Off: PSSR2 Delivers Quality Without Sacrificing Speed

One of the most critical questions surrounding the PS5 Pro’s upscaling has been whether the image quality gains come at the cost of frame rates. Early fears were that PSSR2’s improvements might demand more GPU resources, leading to drops in performance. However, Digital Foundry’s testing suggests otherwise. In *Monster Hunter Wilds*, frame rates remained nearly identical between the original and upgraded PSSR builds, even during complex cutscenes. This indicates that PSSR2’s computational overhead is minimal, likely due to smarter training and weighting of its machine learning models.

Sony has confirmed that all the games tested featured developer-upgraded versions of PSSR2, meaning the results seen here aren’t solely the work of a system-level toggle. This suggests that Sony and its partners are still refining how PSSR2 integrates with each game’s unique engine and art direction. The near-equal frame rates in *Wilds* imply that the technology is maturing rapidly, and future optimizations could unlock even greater gains without sacrificing speed. For now, players can enjoy the visual improvements of PSSR2 without worrying about a performance hit—a rare win in the console upscaling wars.

Why PSSR2 Matters for the Future of PlayStation Upscaling

The PS5 Pro’s journey with PSSR highlights a broader truth about console upscaling: raw hardware alone isn’t enough to guarantee visual fidelity. The Pro’s GPU is undeniably powerful, but without robust, well-optimized upscaling, that power can go to waste. PSSR2 represents a significant leap forward, but it also raises questions about the future of PlayStation’s upscaling strategy. Will Sony continue to refine PSSR with machine learning advances, potentially rivaling NVIDIA’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR in raw quality? Or will upscaling features like frame generation and ray reconstruction remain exclusive to the next-generation console, the PlayStation 6?

For now, PSSR2 delivers on the Pro’s original promise: a cleaner, more stable image at 4K resolutions, with minimal trade-offs in frame rates. It’s a testament to the iterative nature of console development, where software optimizations can unlock hardware potential in ways that weren’t initially apparent. As Sony prepares to expand the Pro’s library, the success of PSSR2 will likely determine how aggressively developers adopt its features. If the technology continues to improve, it could set a new standard for console visuals, proving that upscaling isn’t just a compromise but a sophisticated tool for enhancing gameplay.

Key Takeaways: What PS5 Pro’s PSSR2 Upscaling Means for Gamers

• PSSR2 eliminates the flickering, noise, and instability that plagued the original PSSR, delivering near-native 4K clarity in top-tier games like *Silent Hill f* and *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*.
• The upgraded upscaler maintains frame rates comparable to the original PSSR, debunking fears that image quality gains would come at a performance cost.
• Games tested—*Silent Hill f*, *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*, *Monster Hunter Wilds*, and *Dragon Age: The Veilguard*—all show measurable improvements in texture detail, anti-aliasing, and temporal stability.
• PSSR2’s collaboration with AMD under Project Amethyst blends proprietary Sony tech with FSR4, creating a hybrid upscaler tailored for the PS5 Pro’s hardware.
• While not every game sees a dramatic upgrade, PSSR2’s refinements make it a worthwhile investment for players seeking the best visuals on PS5 Pro.

The Road Ahead: What’s Next for PS5 Pro’s Upscaling?

The success of PSSR2 raises exciting possibilities for the future of PlayStation upscaling. With machine learning at its core, the technology is poised to evolve rapidly, especially if Sony continues to integrate AMD’s latest advancements. Features like AI-powered frame generation or ray reconstruction—currently gated behind PC-exclusive upscalers—could one day make their way to PlayStation, further blurring the line between native and upscaled visuals. However, the timing remains uncertain. Will these features arrive as a free update for PS5 Pro owners, or will they debut with the PlayStation 6 as a next-gen innovation?

For now, players can enjoy the tangible benefits of PSSR2 in a growing slate of titles. As more developers optimize their games for the Pro’s upscaling, the console’s value proposition strengthens. The biggest question may not be whether PSSR2 is an improvement—it clearly is—but how far Sony will push the technology in the years ahead. If the company treats upscaling as a core pillar of the Pro’s identity, we could see a new era of PlayStation visuals that rivals the best PC gaming has to offer.

Frequently Asked Questions About PS5 Pro’s PSSR2 Upscaling