We haven’t gotten official word from Rockstar yet on GTA 6‘s frame rate, but if you’re holding out for a 60fps mode, the prognosis is not looking good. A new tech analysis suggests that it would be uniquely challenging for even high-end PCs to run GTA 6 at 60fps – never mind current-gen consoles.
That’s according to Digital Foundry, which has gone over the footage from GTA 6 extended look with its usual fine-tooth comb. They found that the game appears to be running at a native 1440p on base PS5, with a simple upscale to 4K. That’s a damned impressive resolution target given GTA 6’s visual fidelity, and, given the base console’s limitations, it’s downright astounding that the game manages to hold 30fps as well as it does.
It’s impossible to do a full frame rate analysis given the limitations of Rockstar’s upload of the extended look video, DF says, but the outlet has found that the footage indicates “a relatively stable and well-paced 30fps output, with only very occasional single frame drops.”
The consistency of that frame rate output indicates that “Rockstar has clearly spent immense effort balancing CPU and GPU workloads to fully saturate the hardware. That makes a 60fps version extremely unlikely on console hardware.” PS5 Pro could, in theory, throw more GPU power at the problem, but that’s unlikely to improve performance by much when the game is so heavily focused on a densely detailed open world and vast crowd tech – two things that normally require more CPU power.
We know that GTA 6 will feature some enhancements on PS5 Pro, but Rockstar reportedly hasn’t settled on whether any sort of performance mode will ever be introduced. High-end PC hardware has, of course, already well outclassed Sony’s monster machine, and it sounds like even the theoretical PC port of GTA 6 would struggle to reach 60fps on all but the latest and greatest CPUs.
“The CPU demands of a world this complex – tuned around console Zen 2 cores at 30fps – could make hitting 60fps genuinely challenging in a way we don’t often see,” Digital Foundry says, “and will likely require a high-end CPU like a recent Ryzen X3D to avoid bottlenecks.”
A stable 30fps would still be the best performance we’ve seen out of a mainline GTA game in decades, as GTA 4 and 5 both had consistent, severe frame rate dips when they originally launched on Xbox 360 and PS3. Standards have admittedly changed over the past decade, but I doubt a 30fps cap is going to dissuade too many GTA fans from picking up the long-awaited blockbuster.