The PS5 Pro’s PSSR upscaling got a full overhaul built on AMD’s FSR 4 foundations via Project Amethyst. It fixes shimmering, ghosting, and ray-tracing artifacts from v1. A March 2026 system update adds a global toggle that applies the upgrade to all 100+ supported games instantly.
Sony just confirmed that the PS5 Pro’s most talked-about feature is getting its biggest update since the console launched in November 2024. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR, is receiving a major overhaul, and the first game to run it is Resident Evil Requiem, which hit shelves on February 27. The upgrade has been a long time coming, and based on early technical analysis, it delivers.
PSSR is Sony’s proprietary AI-powered upscaling technology built exclusively for the PS5 Pro. The system works by rendering games at a lower resolution, sometimes as low as 1080p, and then using a trained neural network to reconstruct the image frame by frame, pixel by pixel, into a sharp, clean 4K picture on your TV.
The idea is the same as Nvidia‘s DLSS on PC or AMD‘s FSR: instead of burning GPU power brute-forcing native 4K, the console renders less and lets AI fill in the gaps. Sony’s Mark Cerny, lead architect of the PS5, described it at launch as capable of adding “an extraordinary amount of detail, increasing the effective resolution of the games.”
Since the PS5 Pro launched, over 50 titles adopted PSSR, with the library of PS5 Pro Enhanced games now surpassing 100 titles total, including The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Alan Wake II.
What the upgraded PSSR actually changes
The new version comes out of Project Amethyst, a technical collaboration between Sony and AMD. It’s built on the same foundations as AMD’s FSR 4, the upscaling tech that PC players on Radeon RX 9000 series cards have already been using, with an additional six months of refinement specifically for PS5 Pro hardware.
Sony confirmed all of this directly on the PlayStation Blog through Mark Cerny, who wrote: the algorithm and neural network in the new PSSR take “a very different approach” compared to the original version. If you want to go deeper on how PSSR compares against DLSS and FSR 4 on PC and understand where each technology stands in 2026, GeekRealmHub broke down the full picture here.
The original PSSR wasn’t without its problems. Critics and technical outlets pointed out shimmering, flickering on fine textures, and artifacts in certain games, particularly those with ray-traced lighting. Some titles, like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, didn’t handle it well at all. Digital Foundry noted at the time that PSSR struggled in lower resolutions with ray-traced lighting effects, partly because Sony trained the AI primarily on its own first-party games, which don’t all use ray-traced lighting.
The upgraded version addresses exactly those weaknesses. Capcom‘s senior manager for engine development, Masaru Ijuin, confirmed that for Resident Evil Requiem the new PSSR successfully processes details like hair strands and intricate textures that were traditionally difficult to upscale cleanly.
Digital Foundry’s technical breakdown of the game on PS5 Pro noted another meaningful win: the new PSSR eliminates ghosting entirely in Resident Evil Requiem, the faint trails that appear on moving objects, something that both FSR 4 and DLSS still struggle with in certain scenarios. It’s not a perfect sweep; DLSS still edges ahead on text readability and some distant detail, but the gap has closed significantly.
Should you turn it on? Here’s the short answer
Yes, and a system update arriving in March 2026 will make it easier than ever. Sony confirmed that PS5 Pro owners will be able to go into Settings and select “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” to apply the upgraded version to any game that already supports PSSR, without needing individual patches from developers. That’s a meaningful move: it means dozens of games in your existing library could look noticeably sharper overnight, the moment the firmware update drops.
In terms of how PSSR is handled in games right now, it varies by title. Some games apply it automatically with no option to disable it. Others offer it as a toggle within their graphics settings, bundled into Quality or Performance mode options. A small number of titles don’t use it at all. So the experience isn’t uniform, but the March system update will give PS5 Pro owners more direct control at the OS level than ever before.
For players sitting back on a couch with a 4K TV, which is exactly the setup PS5 Pro is designed for, the new PSSR is a genuine step up. Digital Foundry pointed out that first-gen PSSR couldn’t always hold up in living room conditions, but the new version comfortably does.
Sony is clearly betting heavily on AI-driven upscaling as the core of its graphics strategy going forward, and with over 100 PS5 Pro Enhanced games already in the catalog and more being added regularly, PSSR is only going to matter more as time goes on.
The PS5 Pro’s $700 price tag was controversial at launch, and some questioned whether the upgrade was worth it. Updates like this, free improvements that make your existing game library look better without touching your wallet, are a solid argument in Sony’s favor.
Guest article by GeekRealmHub. Entity links and editorial additions by DropThe.