Performance tests are at an all-time high in popularity thanks to the iterative upgrades of console versions. What was once a PC-only enterprise, has grown to include PlayStation and Xbox owners wanting to know if their platform outpaced the other. While we wait for the Xbox One X upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, PS4 Pro owners got their update recently, clocking in at a relatively small 100MB file.
The results were some pretty substantial improvements on the visual side of things, which brought in features from Wild Hunt's PC version (which unsurprisingly remains the best). That said, the Pro was also hit with a slight dip in frame-rate of some of the more dense areas.
Check out the video (courtesy of Digital Foundry):
As Digital Foundry points out, the PS4 Pro is outputting half the number of pixels of what we would consider a "true 4K image" coming in at a 1920×2160 image. The system gets around this by sacrificing horizontal resolution using checkerboarding to create the illusion of a 3840×2160 image.
While that doesn't sound all that impressive, the result is an image that is an authentic upgrade over the standard the 1080p quality put out by base PS4s.
The big negative though comes at the cost of a little bit of frame-rate performance, as areas such as Crookback Bog (highlighted in the video) or cutscenes with heavy alpha effects can dip the frame-rate to about 25 FPS whereas the base PS4 can maintain 30. Even changing the PS4 Pro's options over to the 1080p mode can't stop the dip, so that's a little bit of a disappointment.
We'll see what CD Projekt RED has in store for the Xbox One X upgrade, which will likely surpass the Pro's enhancements, though, given the studio's history as a PC developer, it's likely that the Master Race will continue to have the last laugh in the end.
