 For a while now, one of the major selling points of going with a PC gaming setup instead of buying a console has been support for running games at a higher resolution, with 4K being the latest woman in the red dress. But no more! Console gamers are finally getting their first taste of the 4K experience with the Xbox One S, a console that upscales 1080p games to 4K. But what if you want your console to natively render games in 4K like a PC? Sony advertises dynamic 4K gaming and 4K entertainment, asterisk, and native 4K on Pro. But what does that little star mean? Let's find out. TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. To try TunnelBear for free, check the link in the video description. Like the Xbox One S, the PS4 Pro isn't part of a new generation of consoles, as it largely resembles the base model of the PlayStation 4, with only a few key differences. Aside from just being larger and packing an extra USB port. Most notably, the GPU or graphics processor has been seriously overhauled, with 36 Radeon compute units, twice as many as the original, along with a 111 MHz increase on the graphics clock. Combine that with a 500 MHz increase on the CPU and 24% greater memory bandwidth, Sony has certainly given themselves some room to play with when it comes to increasing performance. There's also an HDMI 2.0 port, as opposed to the HDMI 1.0 port on the base model. So it's pretty clear Sony is targeting users with 4K displays. And the addition of HDMI 2.0 isn't just a gimmick, as the PS4 Pro does feature some titles that will run at 4K 60 frames per second. Mind you, these are either older or less graphically demanding games. The HDMI 2.0 port also supports high dynamic range with the HDR10 standard, so even if not everything runs at 60 FPS, you'll get richer colors and more accurate black levels for better detailing if you have a compatible TV and you're playing a supported game or watching supported streaming video content. But how does it work? Well, older games like Skyrim will just natively render at 4K, they don't need to do anything else. But many newer titles will use techniques like dynamic scaling, where frames are rendered at some resolution between full HD and 4K, even depending on the scene within the single game, and then they're upscaled to, well, 4K. Then there's what's called checkerboard rendering, which only renders half the pixels on a 4K display. The way checkerboarding works is that it renders pixels in a diagonal pattern instead of leaving out entire vertical lines. This makes it easier, at least in theory, for the system to guess at the missing pixels, resulting in sharper images and better anti-aliasing than traditional upscaling. But does it really? What's the best way to find out? We initially thought about doing a more traditional video with screen captures, but with YouTube video compression being what it is, and us not even having a compatible HDMI 2.0 capture card anyway, which is important as the PS4 refuses to push even a 4K at 30Hz signal over an HDMI 1.4 connection, we decided to do something a bit different and more real world. Remember the Pepsi challenge from the 1990s? Now I'm going to pick this up and tell me which one you chose. Pepsi! Well, instead of doing a blind taste test between Pepsi and Coke, we set up three identical monitors side by side and let some of our team members tell us which system they preferred. A PS4 Pro running at 4K, a base PS4 running at 1080p, and a PC running at 4K with an RX 480, which we chose because it can handle 4K at reasonable settings, and frame rates, and a value-minded 4K gamer might be able to afford it with the money he or she saved on a PlayStation Network subscription. Colton, Linus, and Tyler were our guinea pigs in the PS4 Pro challenge, in which they played Rise of the Tomb Raider and Skyrim on each of the three systems, recording their thoughts in between. We chose these games due to their different rendering methods. Rise of the Tomb Raider uses checkerboard rendering to accomplish 4K upscaling, while Skyrim runs 4K natively. So what did our participants prefer? Well, let's find out. Alright, so I think A is the PlayStation 4. What's B? I think B is the PC. Okay. And I think C is the PS4 Pro. Okay. You be correct. Thank you. I thought the PlayStation 4, when looking in comparison to PC, was like terrible. Just terrible. I was like, okay, wow. Yes, I did get my guesses right. Like Colton said, it was a lot harder to tell in Tomb Raider. It's a very well-optimized game, so frame rate dips were much less noticeable. PS4 Pro and PS4, texture quality-wise, looked very similar to me. Oh, I couldn't really tell a difference. It was mostly in the sharpness of the image that I could tell the difference between the two. Skyrim, on the other hand, the PlayStation 4 is a dog in Skyrim. There's obvious frame rate dips when you pan the camera around. PS4 was probably dipping down to like 22 frames per second when I was panning the camera around. PS4 Pro held steady at 30. Like I could really tell that that cinematic judder was consistent at the very least. But the PC was obviously running at 60 to 90 frames per second with really low frame times. You actually got your guess. 100% wrong. In Tomb Raider, I thought for sure that A was the PS Pro, that B was the PC, and that C was the PlayStation. Okay, so you got the two versions of PlayStation mixed up. What about in Skyrim? And then on Skyrim, it was really hard. I was still pretty confident that C was the PlayStation, but it was hard for me to tell between A and B. When I was playing Tomb Raider on this, I kind of felt like, okay, this one doesn't have as great graphics as the other ones, but it's still a good game experience. I feel like I could sit down and play it and not be really pulled out of it. Whereas when I played Skyrim on C, if I had sat down to just play it, I probably would have felt upset at the graphics. So it looks like our results depended a fair bit on what game was being played. For a closer look, here are the 4K screenshots from the PS4 Pro as well as our PC running Rise of the Tomb Raider at high and very high presets. Texture quality between the PS4 Pro and the PC on high is quite similar, though the PC does a better job with foliage, shadows, water effects, and color, while very high far outstrips both with much more articulated textures and shadows. But what if you're like me and you don't own a 4K TV? Well, in this case, the PS4 is definitely a tougher sell, but that doesn't mean that Sony totally forgot about gamers who are rocking a mere 1080p display. A number of PS4 titles are supersampled on the Pro. This means that they're rendered at a higher resolution, like 4K, and then scaled down to fit a 1080p screen. One such game is the aforementioned Skyrim, and the PS4 Pro's supersampling makes a big difference here. Both of these screenshots are 1080p, but you can see the big difference in texture detail on the PS4 Pro versus the base model in this scene, with the ground, the wooden steps and planks, the tree branch in the top left, and the grass roof all looking much nicer on the PS4 Pro. But unfortunately, these games don't support the PS4 Pro's much-bally-hooed high dynamic range, or HDR capabilities, which is supposed to give gamers more accurate colors and more detail in bright and dark areas of the screen. So we connected our PS4 Pro to Linus' LG Signature OLED 4K TV with full HDR10 support, which you can learn more about in our review right up here, and fired up Deus Ex Mankind Divided, one of a handful of PS4 titles with HDR support. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to screen capture HDR content properly and directly, but we were able to snap these shots from the Dubai level. This room is quite dark without HDR, but with it turned on, you can definitely see more detail in the darkest parts of the image, such as in the sand, the equipment in the lower left, and the far wall on the right side. While the image quality isn't at the same level you could get on a PC, HDR definitely makes the scene pop more. And speaking of popping, should you be popping the PS4 Pro into your living room setup this holiday season? Well, at $400, it's definitely a little more than a lot of folks are used to paying for a new console these days. It's $100 more than Microsoft's mid-cycle refresh of the Xbox One S, and that's without 4K Blu-ray support, a perplexing and frustrating omission. But to the discerning eye, it gets us closer to PC-quality 4K than has ever been possible on a console before, and that's really cool. The rumors of its melting death seem to have been greatly exaggerated, and while the price is higher, it's still a pretty solid value. If you have a PS4, I probably wouldn't upgrade. If you have a 4K TV and no PS4 and you want something really easy to plug into it and get a really solid 4K experience, it might be a solid option. dbrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins that are available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, controllers, and more. 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It is the Xbox One S review. We released it not even way too long ago. They seem to come in pairs.