PS5 will receive variable refresh rate support in the coming months

Sony will be adding vrr to the PlayStation 5 in the coming months. That feature, which has been present on the Xbox Series X since the beginning, synchronizes the frame rate of the screen with the PS5 output. That leads to a smoother experience without stuttering and tearing.

In the announcement says Sony not when exactly the vrr support will be added. It became clear shortly after the release of the PS5 in November 2020 that a system update would be coming that would add vrr, but when that would happen has been unclear until now.

The manufacturer indicates that VRR support on the console does not automatically mean that all games can use it. Previously released PS5 games must be optimized for VRR via a patch. Future games may include vrr support, but that’s not a certainty. It’s probably up to the developers to build that in or not.

Sony says players do have the option to enable vrr for PS5 games that don’t support the functionality. For some games, this can improve the video quality, the manufacturer says, but there can also be ‘unexpected visual effects’. In the PS5’s settings, the vrr option can be turned on or off manually, as well as a separate toggle to apply vrr to games that don’t support it.

This is VRR as part of the HDMI 2.1 standard. The support for this only works on televisions and monitors that support HDMI 2.1. That standard has not become clearer after a decision by the licensor, but in principle this means that vrr only works on displays that support an HDMI bandwidth of 40 or 48Gbit/s. The PS5 also supports a maximum bandwidth of 32Gbit/s.