The start of pre-orders and the release of new screenshots for Grand Theft Auto VI have sparked intense debates within the gaming community regarding the game's technical aspects. The main question worrying players: will Rockstar Games be able to ensure a stable 60 frames per second on current-generation consoles? Experts from Digital Foundry, having analyzed the available data, offer a discouraging forecast: a 60 FPS mode on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S is extremely unlikely.

The problem is not the graphics, but the console's "brain"

The main reason for the specialists' skepticism lies not in the capabilities of the graphics processing unit (GPU), but in the colossal load on the central processing unit (CPU). The Grand Theft Auto series has traditionally been famous for its incredibly complex systems for simulating a living world, and the sixth installment takes this complexity to a fundamentally new level.

Analysts highlight several critical factors that hinder achieving a high frame rate:

  • Scale of city simulation: The level of detail of the streets, crowd density, and artificial intelligence behavior in Vice City (Leonida) appear significantly more massive than similar systems in such heavy projects as Dragon's Dogma 2 or Baldur's Gate 3. In these games, the processors of current consoles are already working at the limit of their capabilities.
  • High speed of movement: Unlike classic role-playing games, in GTA 6 players move across land, water, and air at huge speeds. This requires the instant calculation of complex car physics and the instant loading of assets into memory, which creates an additional load on computing power.

Rockstar's Philosophy: Quality over Speed

The studio's historical approach also plays an important role. Rockstar Games has always preferred maximum visual perfection and cutting-edge technologies (including ray tracing) at a stable 30 frames per second. All their past hits—from GTA IV to Red Dead Redemption 2—were released on consoles with exactly this limitation.

Rumors and reports from retailers about the presence of separate "Quality" and "Performance" modes are called by Digital Foundry experts as standard boilerplate text that is automatically added to many modern PS5 releases and do not reflect the developers' actual plans.

Will PS5 Pro help?

Many players are pinning their hopes on the recently released PS5 Pro console, considering it the main savior for achieving 60 FPS. However, specialists remind us of the architectural nuances of this platform. Sony's improved console does indeed offer a powerful graphics chip, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and the proprietary PSSR AI upscaler. However, it has only a minimal increase in central processor power.

Since image upscaling does not help relieve the CPU, the Pro version will not be able to radically change the situation with the frame rate.

Realistic Compromise: 40 FPS Mode

The only realistic compromise in this situation, analysts see, is the introduction of a special 40 FPS mode for screens with 120 Hz support. In terms of frame time, 40 FPS is exactly halfway (25 ms) between slow 30 FPS (33.3 ms) and fast 60 FPS (16.7 ms).

Such a solution, game analysts believe, will allow Rockstar's graphics to remain at the highest level while simultaneously providing a smoother gaming experience than the standard console limitations of previous years.