Don't expect any major miracles though.

The latest big firmware update for the PlayStation 5 was officially released on September 15. With it came the long-awaited ability to install third-party M.2 drives for adding increased storage capacity to your console. This was the update that entered into beta trials back in July.

It seems as though there was another benefit not documented in the changelog. The tech wizards at Digital Foundry discovered that select titles saw minor performance gains with the new firmware when compared to the previous firmware release.

In their new Digital Foundry Direct Weekly, the team found that "in very select scenarios, it does seem as though PlayStation 5s are running faster than they were before with this new firmware." Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter went on to say that the performance gains are very minor, to the tune of about 2-3% in games like Control and Devil May Cry 5. This percentage difference equates to only about 1-2 FPS gains, but it's still something.


The team initially discovered these minor gains when they tested the new PlayStation 5 hardware revision that features a different internal cooling system and a better thumbscrew for the stand. Curiously, they found that the old PS5 model was running ever so slightly better than the new model. After looking into it, they realized that the old PS5 was running on the updated firmware release while the new model was still on the older firmware still.

Upon updating all of their hardware to the latest firmware, Digital Foundry found that it was the firmware itself that was leading to these performance differences.

Will you notice a 1-2 FPS difference? Probably not. However, a performance gain is still a gain at the end of the day.

Also, in case you were wondering about any thermal differences between the old and new model, it's kind of a nothing burger. Testing conducted by both Digital Foundry and Gamers Nexus found that there were differences of only a few degrees here and there. Some components were a couple degrees hotter, while other components were a couple of degrees cooler. There was no impact on performance as a result of this revised cooling solution.