It’s not good news for the GTA 6 PS5 Pro or Steam Deck

It seems whether you’re a console player or a PC player, not all of your GTA 6 wishes are going to come true. Achieving 60FPS in Grand Theft Auto will be relatively simple for future GTA 6 PC players with good enough hardware (especially if they meet the GTA 6 recommended specs), but it seems PS5 Pro gamers might not be so lucky. 

With the official PS5 Pro specs revealed, it now seems very unlikely that the GTA 6 PS5 Pro version of the game will achieve a stable 60FPS experience, according to a Digital Foundry tech expert. 

Assuming you can afford the $699 price tag of the PS5 Pro (a price which has caused quite a lot of backlash online), you’re only getting a better GPU which boasts advanced ray tracing and up to 120+FPS for “select PS5 games that have been enhanced for PS5 Pro.” You’ll also get more storage space, but there is one critical issue limiting the PS5 Pro’s performance when it comes to GTA 6: the CPU.

For some reason, the CPU of the PS5 Pro is the AMD Ryzen Zen 2 (8 core, 16 thread, 3.5GHz) which is identical to the basic PS5.

According to Digital Foundry Technology Editor Richard Leadbetter, the improved GPU will do a lot of heavy lifting for the PS5 Pro in achieving 60FPS for a lot of games, but it won’t overcome the CPU dependency present in games like GTA 6. “I still expect GTA 6 to be a 30FPS game barring some kind of technological miracle and there’s no enabling technology in PS5 Pro to change that.”

Simply put, GTA 6 and its predecessors have complex simulations which put a significant burden on processors. Amping up the graphics card might improve the overall graphical fidelity, but you’ll still encounter significant performance issues if your CPU isn’t up to scratch. 

As a result, it is very likely that GTA 6 will only run at 30FPS on the PS5 Pro, which, honestly, isn’t a big deal. The overall experience might not be as smooth as 60FPS (particularly on 60Hz monitors and up), but 30FPS is perfectly serviceable and shouldn’t impact the enjoyability of what will be one of the hottest games of 2025 (and 2026 if you’re on PC). 

Unfortunately, there is one final bit of bad news for GTA and by extension GTA 6 following Rockstar’s rollout of the BattlEye anti-cheat. This new anti-cheat is designed to crack down on PC GTA Online cheaters, but has had a knock-on effect for Steam Deck players. The Steam Deck rating for GTA 5 has been downgraded to “Unsupported”, stating that the singleplayer campaign is still playable, but not the online experience. 

For GTA 6, this could mean that its future online mode could also be unplayable on the Steam Deck. However, as details of GTA Online’s future have not yet been fully discussed or confirmed, it’s hard to say how accessible it will be.

We’re still a long way off from the GTA 6 release date, so solutions may well be in the works already to both the 60FPS issue, and the playability of the online mode on Steam Deck. 

Until then, ensure you don’t miss out on the latest news by following GTA Db on Google News, and keep your eyes peeled for the next GTA 6 trailer.