Sony has equipped the PS4 Pro with 1GB of additional DDR3 RAM, and the increase in available memory can be seen “as somewhat substantial”.

　　That’s what Crytek’s technical director, Rok Erjavec, told Gamingbolt in a recent interview. Due to the additional 1GB of DDR3 memory inside the PS4 Pro, the same amount of DDR5 RAM is freed up. Sony allows half of that amount, 512MB, to be used for PS4 Pro games, while the other half is being used to render the interface in 4K resolution.

　　In the interview, Erjavac highlighted the benefits of the additional available memory inside the PS4 Pro. According to the technical director, the extra RAM is quite beneficial when it comes to development effort as well.

　　“The system gives us back an additional 0.5GB over thePS4, which is enough to fill in the increased requirements from things like 4K, higher quality rendering features, etc,” he said. “Coming out at about a 10% increase, it can be seen as somewhat substantial relative to the base console, but mainly it’s there to transparently allow for PS4 Pro-specific improvements without developers having to jump through complicated hoops.”

　　Crytek’s development experience can be considered extensive, but according to Erjavac, the PS4 Pro offers “interesting” enhancements that need to be experimented with to determine all the possibilities.

　　“There’s a list of interesting enhancements that Pro brings to the table that we haven’t had the opportunity to work with so closely in hardware before,” he said. “Some things (like color compression) are transparent efficiency improvements, so really more of a balancing tool to allow high utilization of the increased compute resources despite the relatively smaller bandwidth increase. Others – like the ID buffer or hardware-multi res – actually pave the way for new rendering pipeline workflows, and as such still need to be experimented with to determine all the possibilities.”

　　The PS4 Pro is available now for $399 – quite a lucrative price for a console that offers 4K-like visuals.