PSSR Upscaling PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution

What PSSR is

PSSR is the machine-learning upscaler built into the PlayStation 5 Pro. Sony's own description is an AI library that analyzes game images pixel by pixel as it upscales them, and by February 2026 it had been used to boost the effective resolution of over 50 titles on the console. A game renders internally at a lower resolution, then PSSR reconstructs the output image at 4K before it leaves the console over HDMI. The TV just receives a normal 4K signal, so PSSR is a console feature, not a TV setting, and it is unrelated to the scaler inside the television. The PS5 Pro product page lists it as AI-enhanced resolution for 4K TVs and pairs it with support for 60 Hz and 120 Hz displays.

What it costs and what it saves

The trade is pixels for performance. Digital Foundry's reading of developer documents in 2024, relayed by VGC, was that a game rendering internally at 1080p could be upscaled to a convincing-looking 4K image, and that PSSR carries a 250 MB memory footprint. The PS5 Pro gives games 13.7 GB of memory against 12.5 GB on the base PS5, a 1.2 GB gain that Sony tied partly to PSSR and partly to ray tracing structures. Sony's own studio examples are more conservative than 1080p: Naughty Dog says The Last of Us Part II Remastered renders at 1440p and upscales to 4K via PSSR at a 60 fps target, and Square Enix says Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's enhanced mode runs at 60 fps and uses PSSR to reach a resolution on par with its graphics mode. Crimson Desert, per 80 Level, outputs upscaled 4K at 60 fps in its performance mode with ray tracing on PS5 Pro.

The pixel arithmetic shows how much PSSR invents. A 4K frame has 8,294,400 pixels. A 1080p internal frame has 2,073,600, which is 25% of the output, so 75% of the final pixels are reconstructed. A 1440p internal frame has 3,686,400 pixels, 44.4% of the output, so 55.6% is reconstructed. That is why a 1440p source looks much closer to native 4K than a 1080p one, and why developers choose the internal resolution to hold 60 fps.

The upgraded PSSR (2026)

On February 27, 2026, PlayStation's lead architect Mark Cerny announced an upgraded PSSR rolling out globally, taking a very different approach to both the neural network and the overall algorithm. Resident Evil Requiem, which shipped that day, was the first title to use it. Sony says the algorithm and network stem from its Project Amethyst partnership with AMD, the work that PC gamers have seen as FSR 4, with a further six months of refinement for PS5 Pro. On March 16, 2026, a system software update added broad support, and selecting "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" in Settings applies the new PSSR to any PS5 Pro game that already supports PSSR, without a patch.

Studios named by Sony as adopting it include Konami for Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill f, Electronic Arts for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Remedy for Control and Alan Wake 2, Ninja Theory for Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, Square Enix for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Koei Tecmo for Nioh 3 and Rise of the Ronin. Sony's summary of the gains is image stability, clarity in fine detail and more consistent performance. Remedy's graphics technical director says the upgrade allows efficient stochastic sampling without sacrificing stability, and Square Enix says Rebirth shows less flickering and afterimage than the original PSSR.

PSSR vs DLSS and FSR 4

Digital Foundry's early analysis, summarized by Push Square, found the upgraded PSSR compared well with FSR 4 and DLSS 4.5 on PC, with some extremely minor aliasing in places and many of the original PSSR's problems resolved. Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia called the results good enough that the differences stop mattering during play. The fair summary is parity in practice on a TV at a normal seating distance, not a measured win in every scene, and that rating applies to the upgraded version. The first PSSR had visible issues in games such as Silent Hill f, which is why Sony's system-wide toggle matters. See Game Mode and input lag for the display-side settings that pair with it.

What your TV needs

PSSR needs nothing special from the display beyond what the PS5 Pro already uses. For 4K at 120 Hz, a TV needs HDMI 2.1 bandwidth; see 4K120 and VRR. Seating distance decides how much of the reconstruction you can see, which the viewing distance tool helps with. Our roundups of the best TVs for PS5 Pro and 120 Hz HDMI 2.1 TVs list sets that carry the signal cleanly.

Common confusions

PSSR is not available on the standard PS5, and it is not an automatic upgrade for every game: the toggle improves only titles that already support PSSR. It is also not a TV upscaler, which acts on whatever resolution the console outputs after PSSR has run. Sony describes it as an upscaler, and I did not find a source describing PSSR itself as a frame-generation feature. Finally, I did not find a Sony publication of the network architecture, training data or layer details, so any claim about how PSSR works inside beyond Sony's description (an AI library co-developed with AMD) is inference.