DF Weekly: Is GTA 6 at 60fps really out of the question for PS5 Pro?

When you speak as a journalist, it's a bit strange to see the things you say turn into news stories, but that happens sometimes because of the Digital Foundry profile. So it was last week, when the big – for many – takeaway from our reaction to the PS5 Pro specs was our claim that Grand Theft Auto 6 on the new machine would likely be… no It runs at 60 frames per second. Of course, there are caveats to this particular statement, and we spent some time in DF Direct Weekly #155 discussing them.

The entire PS5 Pro/GTA 6 discussion started when the release date floated for Sony's new console seemed to position it as the highest-performing console on the market to power Rockstar's next-gen console. Assuming the PS5 Pro arrives later this year, that's a perfectly reasonable assumption, considering Rockstar's current release date will see the game arrive in 2025. Rockstar may choose not to support the PS5 Pro, but the balance of odds suggests they will.

From here, the question turns to how the enhanced console improves over the standard console: what is it designed for, what are its specifications, and how can the additional resources be used in an open world game like GTA 6. Here is where we can make some fairly confident predictions, Because it's more so than the PS4 Pro and Xbox One

However, before we go any further, there's a big caveat: Grand Theft Auto 6's first trailer was released as a 30fps video. All previous GTA console titles dating back to the first 3D offering, Grand Theft Auto 3, targeted 30fps (and often short, depending on the load). Red Dead Redemption titles also ran at 30 frames per second on their original host platforms. However, until Rockstar says so, the chance of a 60 FPS mode in GTA 6 cannot be ruled out.

• 0:00:00 introduction
• 0:00:44 News 01: Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra wows at premiere
• 0:18:56 News 02: AMD announces FSR 3.1
• 0:30:52 News 03: Latest PS VR2 update brings PC access
• 0:40:37 News 04: Can GTA 6 reach 60 FPS on PS5 Pro?
• 0:57:46 News 05: Covert Protocol demo shows off AI characters
• 1:10:17 News 06: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth gets new graphics options
• 1:16:05 Pro Q1: What should Microsoft and Sony do to differentiate their next-gen devices?
• 1:36:44 Pro Question Two: Why doesn't Microsoft take more advantage of the machine learning capabilities of its consoles?
• 1:43:09 Pro Q3: Should Sony invest in creating frames? Does PSSR indicate a lack of confidence in AMD's upgrade technology?
• 1:49:24 Pro Question #4: Could backward compatibility hinder Switch 2?

So it makes sense if The new game has a 60fps mode on current consoles, and it follows that GTA 6 will also have it on PS5 Pro – and it may offer a more stable 60fps, thanks to a faster CPU and GPU. However, and this is the point we're making, if the consoles run at 30fps, as shown in the trailer, then the chances of the game getting a 60fps mode on the PS5 Pro are remote.

Dense open world titles require a lot of GPU power to render, but more importantly, they also require a good degree of CPU throughput. The CPU's job is to simulate the entire world and everything in it. The CPU runs the AI ​​for all NPCs and the animations for those characters. The in-game physics are also taken care of by the CPU. Based on what we know about the consoles' capabilities as well as the simulations shown in the trailer, it's hard to believe there's a lot of CPU headroom available to double the performance. Remember: The PS5 Pro's CPU clocks are only 10 percent higher than those of the standard model.

We're not ruling out that some base PS5 games might run at 30fps while the Pro runs at 60fps, but that would require the title in question to be heavily limited by the GPU alone, not the CPU. Game makers typically look to exploit both the CPU and GPU, and with the PS4 Pro and Xbox One All it did was take you into a 40fps no man's land where the game quickly encountered harsh CPU limits.

However, caveats aside, assuming 60fps is off the table, what should we expect from the PlayStation 5 Pro version of the game? It all depends on how well Rockstar uses its features, of course. From a CPU perspective, a 10 percent performance increase could mean that simulation-based bottlenecks within GTA 6's target frame rate will be less noticeable as they would be on the base PS5.

In our reaction video to the initial trailer, we noticed strong evidence of global illumination based on ray tracing. Rockstar could take advantage of the PS5 Pro's much stronger RT performance and either increase the resolution, add additional features, or even both. Additional GPU power is available, with Sony noticing a 45 percent baseline improvement in performance — which means higher resolution, stronger locking to target frame rate, or improved quality for whatever graphical features Rockstar cares to target.

However, we hope to see the developer target PSSR – Sony's approach to machine learning-based upscaling, a response to Nvidia's excellent DLSS. This would provide much better improvements in image quality compared to the software-based upscaling used on the base PlayStation 5 and could even work at a lower resolution than the standard device and still present in a more detailed manner. From there, GPU performance can be used to optimize pixels Quality Instead of pixels amount.

Ray Traced Reflections upgrade tested for Grand Theft Auto 5 on PS5 and Xbox Series

With all this in mind, the takeaway is fairly clear: At the very least, the PS5 Pro will do what the PS4 Pro did – improve image quality through improved resolution and potentially provide a closer lock to the target frame rate. If the game doesn't reach native 4K resolution, the machine learning chip should at least give a very close representation of how the full 3840 x 2160 resolution is rendered, assuming Rockstar uses it. If the standard PS5 features RT support, key elements required for it (such as BVH tracking structures) can be reused for more or better RT effects.

However, assuming the game is targeting 30fps, the extra performance simply isn't there to run game emulation systems at twice the speed to hit 60fps – raising the question of who this machine is aimed at and what this audience's expectations are. The PS5 Pro can take current PS5 games running at 60fps and make them look much better – and this will address one of the primary concerns we've had with current-gen console games: performance modes with really dodgy image quality. Frame generation techniques can also be used to make 60fps modes look good on 120Hz displays (sorry, but 30fps to 60fps is unlikely, given latency and manufacturing challenges).

However, I'm not sure the PS5 Pro has the specs to dissuade users looking to buy another console instead of a more powerful PC. In a world where the Ryzen 7 5800X3D offers more than double the CPU performance for less than £270/$280, and when the more budget-friendly Core i5 12400F or Ryzen 5 7600 are a lot faster, there are cost-effective ways to get a GPU boost Centralization that Sony is unwilling or unable to offer. Ultimately, it will be up to Sony to clarify where the PS5 Pro stands when it chooses to do so and we'll go from there.

Returning to the original point, and assuming there are no delays, the PlayStation 5 Pro will indeed be the most powerful device out there to run GTA 6 – and I hope Rockstar takes advantage of its capabilities. Although a computer may be more powerful, that won't help in a world we have no idea about when Rockstar may release a PC port.