PS5 Pro Could Be the Only Place You Can Play GTA VI at 60 fps Until the PC Version Arrives

In the gaming world, the heated debates about 60 fps (frames per second) has never been so historically prevalent as it is now. At least not before the 2020 console generation hit with the November launch of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. OK, maybe we'll include the Series S as well.

Grand Theft Auto VI is arriving only on consoles in 2025 and might just end up being the biggest and probably most-sold entertainment product of all time. The reveal trailer is currently the second most viewed video game trailer, raking in almost 181 million views at the time of writing.

It put Minecraft on the number three spot with over 168 million, and currently, it's only beaten by some very old Subway Surfers videos, of which the most viewed one hit the 361 million mark. Because the number one video is from September 2012, the first GTA 6 trailer from December 2023 might surpass it in 12 years.

My hunch is that when the second trailer hits, garnering close to, if not over, 100 million views in the first 24 hours, it will set off a chain reaction that will raise the first Grand Theft Auto VI trailer by as much as half its total view count.

Record-crushing aside, let's talk geeky tech stuff now. From what we've seen so far, the game runs at 1440p 30 fps on consoles, but some evidence suggests that ray tracing was enabled. The pixel-counting wizards from the Digital Foundry YouTube channel pointed this out. If true, this could mean GTA 6 might also have a 60 fps Performance mode somewhere in the graphics settings.

Now for the tin-foil hat theories. First, Rockstar Games confirmed that the game will only arrive at launch on "PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems." Given they used the plural "systems," could it mean that the gameplay from the trailer could have been running on the upcoming PS5 Pro and not the standard PS5 or Xbox Series X? Most likely not.

Because the PS5 Pro leaks say it can handle ray-traced graphics up to four times better than the base PS5, maybe it could handle GTA 6 at 60 fps, ray tracing and all, while the trailer is capped at 30 fps. In other words, the gameplay we saw is most probably running on the standard console versions. Digital Foundry has also said this is more likely to be the case than the trailer running on a PS5 Pro.

The allegedly leaked specs for the PS5 Pro show that it has 33.5 TFLOPS (teraflops) of power, a three times increase compared to the standard PS5 with 10 TFLOPS. For those that don't speak fluent geek, think of teraflops like horsepower, but for consoles. The more you have, the better the games run at higher resolutions and framerates.

So, given that the Pro version is at least three times more powerful, and the GTA 6 trailer was 1440p at 30 fps, the math doesn't really pan out. If it was running on the Pro at a max 1440p 30fps, then a standard PS5 should roughy, but mathematically correct, run the game at a third of that resolution with severely impaired framerate.

It's completely out of the question, given that games like Horizon Forbidden West on PS5 can hit native 4K at 30fps or 1800p at 60fps using some upscaling magic. If the PS5 Pro is three times more powerful, that would result in a much higher resolution and framerate on the PS5 Pro, ray tracing or not.

Now, could we also dream about GTA 6 hitting a locked 120 fps Performance Mode on the PS5 Pro, especially with the new PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) upscaling solution?

Well, it's more of a pipe dream. An Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti has 22 TFLOPS, an Nvidia RTX 4070 has 29 TFLOPS and an RTX 4070 Super clocks in at 36 TFLOPS. So, the 33.5 TFLOPS PS5 Pro is between the latter two.

On a PC, even with some graphical downgrades and heavy lifting on the upscaling software, it's very unlikely to hit a constant 120 fps with such a GPU, let alone on a console with above Medium graphical settings. The power revolves around the PS5's CPU and the changes made there; it's not just the GPU doing the work.

A supposed 8K mode update is planned for the console's future. Although that's an entirely different conversation in and of itself, given that 8K is four times 4K. This marketing feature has a best-case scenario of upscaling native 4K or 5-6K in some games to 8K. But consoles are at least a generation away from handling true 8K. Not to mention that people haven't even fully adopted 4K displays.

A February Steam Hardware & Software survey reveals that 58.82% of users have Full HD (1920x1080) monitors, 18.99% have 1440p monitors, and only 3.54% of Steam users have 4K (3840 x 2160) screens. The world isn't nearly equipped for 8K.

The hardware technology is not there yet, including PC graphics cards, nor are the TVs and 8K content widespread enough. Even current games running at 8K on an RTX 4090 crash and burn because they're not optimized to run at that resolution.

In short, don't expect to hear GTA 6 and 8K in the same sentence unless the words "PC," "Nvidia 5000 series," and "DLSS" are nestled in between somewhere. Consoles usually help market next-gen TVs with hype and buzzwords, but we're far removed from that future moment.

The PlayStation 5 Pro leaks suggest that PSSR can perform the same visual magic and framerate gain we've seen from DLSS, where I constantly get between 25 and 35 fps at the Quality option. Not to mention the minimum 30-50+ fps I get on my RTX 4080 at Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance.

Rendering should also be 45% faster on the PS5 Pro, so when you take all that power and upscaling technology, paired with the fact that Rockstar Games allegedly has been working on GTA VI for the past 10 years, who knows what sort of optimized beast we're looking at... I'm not a betting man, but with PSSR involved, I could see GTA 6 on PS5 Pro running close to native 4K resolution at 60 fps.

The good news is that a PS5 Pro seems likely to hit this holiday season, and while Grand Theft Auto VI is coming out sometime in 2025, we can only hope Rockstar Games has a 60 fps mode ready for the most hardcore players. If not, there's always the PC version on the horizon, possibly in 2026.

Oh, and for those of you wondering why a mid-gen Xbox isn't part of the discussion, it's because the leaks and rumors suggest there won't be one. Microsoft's Xbox President Sarah Bond said they're working on a next-gen console that will be "the largest technical leap."

Unless the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, pulls a mid-gen refresh out of a hat, it's unlikely we'll see a PS5 Pro equivalent from Xbox anytime soon. However, it's not all set in stone, so who knows what surprises lie in wait from the green team of gaming.