The Last of Us Remastered is one of the first games that will take advantage of the PlayStation 4 Pro’s increased power and native 4K gaming abilities, but according to a new video from the Digital Foundry team, the game doesn’t hold up at 60 frames per second.
In its analysis, Digital Foundry discovered some noticeable drops in the frame rate while running The Last of Us Remastered in its 60 fps mode at 1800p. In comparison, the standard PS4 was able to handle the game at 60 fps perfectly fine at 1080p. The takeaway is that even with an upgraded GPU, trying to run 60 fps consistently at 1800p is too much for the Pro to handle, and the game suffers because of it.
In the video, Digital Foundry keeps a running graph at the bottom of the screen comparing the consistency in frame rate while playing. While the standard PS4’s line never drops below the 60 fps mark, the PS4 Pro’s line jumps around quite a bit, going from 60 fps to 50 fps and jumping back up again. Even with the 2.3x boost in GPU power that the PS4 Pro offers, with a pixel boost of 2.78 times the original resolution, it appears that the Pro just can’t handle that kind of strain at 60 fps.
“Ultimately, we can look at this 1800p resolution as the culprit for the worse performance,” Digital Foundry states.
Additionally, because the more noticeable drops in performance come from alpha transparency effects — an effect that allows background images to show through and mix with foreground color — the reason for the performance issues comes as a direct result of the GPU’s allocated bandwidth more than anything else.
Despite the drop in frame rates, however, the Digital Foundry team concludes that if played in the 30 fps mode, the game delivers native 4K gaming. While that means players will sacrifice the preferred 60 fps gameplay, the better option to get the most out of the game’s new visual capacity is to play at 30 fps. The frame rate remains steady there and feels “better optimized for its intended purpose,” according to Digital Foundry.
The version 1.07 patch for The Last of Us Remastered, which allows PS4 Pro users to play the game in 4K and enables HDR color, has been released by Naughty Dog and is available to download right now. The PS4 Pro is available to purchase for $399. If you’re still thinking about whether you need to upgrade to a Pro, check out Polygon’s review of the system.
