The PlayStation 4 Pro released a couple of days ago with increased specs to achieve higher frame rates and up to 4K resolutions. After its release, Digital Foundry ran tests on the hardware comparing the performance of the PlayStation 4 Pro with the original PlayStation 4. During these tests, they found that increasing the display settings of a couple of games actually reduced the performance of the title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a58dH2OzgB0

The first game that Digital Foundry showed off this discrepancy was The Last of Us Remastered where on the original hardware at 1080p the game normally holds a consistent 60FPS whereas the 1800p setting on the PS4 Pro drops between 5-8 frames where no problem was being had before. The issues found in The Last of Us Remastered on the PS4 Pro don't seem to appear when playing the game in the 4K/30FPS mode meaning that you will get a native 4K experience with HDR with a consistent 30FPS throughout the entire game, the trade-off being it's not running at 60FPS.

Side by side comparison of the depth of field issue in World of Final Fantasy (Image credit to AlphaFoxWarfare)

Other games that have had issues include Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Hitman, Mantis Burn Racing, Skyrim Special Edition, and World of Final Fantasy. Most of the issues across these games are the same except for World of Final Fantasy where the issue of the game on the PS4 Pro is to do more with the field of depth in the game, this issue can be fixed by rolling back your update on your console.

Using the PS4 Pro on a 1080p monitor instead of a 4K monitor will also not help any of these issues as the image is still being rendered in the native resolution selected but then downscaled to 1080p, working as supersampling, giving the appearance a sharper look as a similar effect to anti-aliasing. Some games are getting around this type of issue by providing several choices for running the game. For example, The Witness has 3 specific modes for the PlayStation 4 Pro. The first is a 1080p/60 PFS mode that runs on 1080p monitors with ultra settings essentially as it runs with 4x MSAA and other high settings. If you have a 4k screen your options are, a 1440p up-rezzed version that runs at 60 FPS, or a 4k Native, 60 FPS version. Some other games are using a similar approach, and it may be the way for games to get around issues like this.

Digital Foundry and Eurogamer presented their findings to Sony who responded saying "We are aware of the issue and currently investigating." We have also reached out to Sony in the hopes of acquiring further details and will update this if we learn more.

If you want to see the full video from DigitalFoundry explaining why some of the PS4 Titles are slower that the standard PS4 you can below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKWxHu9l5ys

What do you think of the performance issues some games are having on the PS4 Pro? Have you been experiencing any of these issues yourself?