According to recent leaks, the PS6 will theoretically offer ten times the ray tracing performance compared to the PS5, but in practice this is expected to result in only about a threefold increase in the frame rate.
Since ray tracing calculations only make up a part of the overall rendering process, the still necessary rasterization tasks limit the actual performance gain in gameplay, as AMD leaker KeplerL2 explains.
The misinterpretation of the AMD documents
The excitement surrounding a massive performance increase of the PS6 This is based on a misinterpretation of internal AMD documents. The insider KeplerL2 clarifies that the specification "10x RT perf" refers solely to the computing power of the hardware units for ray tracing.
In reality, a frame in a video game consists of various components. While the PS6 can process the specific ray tracing tasks extremely quickly, geometry, textures, and AI calculations still need to be calculated conventionally. Since this conventional part often accounts for over 50% of the processing time in modern titles, overall performance can never scale linearly with ray tracing capabilities.
Example calculation for Assassin's Creed Shadows
Data from "Assassin's Creed Shadows" illustrates the discrepancy between theoretical ray tracing performance and actual frame rates. The following table shows the projected time savings per frame for ray tracing tasks in milliseconds:
| Task | PS5 FrameTime | PS6 Projected Frame Time |
| Screen Space Tracing | 0,54 ms | 0,18 ms |
| World Space Tracing | 1,38 ms | 0,14 ms |
| Lighting | 1,17 ms | 0,39 ms |
| Denoising | 1,91 ms | 0,64 ms |
| Total RT tasks | 5,00 ms | 1,35 ms |
Even if the PS6 almost eliminates ray tracing tasks, the remaining frame (rasterization) still takes about 25 ms on the PS5. Assuming the PS6 triples its overall processing power (approximately 8,33 ms for this part), this results in a total frame time of about 9,68 ms. This equates to roughly 103 FPS compared to the PS5's 33 FPS – a factor of about 3,1x, far from a tenfold increase.
Realistic outlook for next-gen hardware
Even with titles that use path tracing, which place significantly higher demands on the hardware, the performance increase will not reach the 10x mark. The bottleneck remains rasterization performance.
Technically, this means for the PS6:
- Not an RTX 5090 killer: The assumption that the PS6 could outperform a high-end GPU like the RTX 5090 through the RT factor is physically and architecturally unfounded.
- Focus on image quality: The additional performance will likely be used for more stable 4K resolutions at 60 or 120 FPS and more complex lighting effects, rather than for absurd jumps in frame rate.
Anyone hoping for an "FPS miracle" from the PS6 should adjust their expectations. While AMD's hardware architecture is making enormous strides in ray tracing efficiency, as long as games aren't 100% path tracing, rasterization performance will remain the dominant factor. A massive leap in visual fidelity is certain, but computational logic dictates a realistic performance increase of around three times that of the current base console.
