As more and more information comes out about GTA 6, it seems increasingly likely that the PS5 Pro version will run at 30 FPS, with only a small chance of a 40 FPS mode. I’ll discuss why that may actually be the best decision Rockstar could make—not only for GTA 6, but also for the games that follow it.
- What Exactly Does the PS5 Pro Improve?
The PS5 Pro’s SoC consists of a whopping 21 billion transistors, compared with the base PS5’s 10.6 billion. So where did those extra 10 billion transistors go?
Well, almost none of them went toward improving the CPU. The core count, microarchitecture, and cache structure are all largely the same, except for an 10% clock rate boost. Instead, nearly all of those additional transistors went into the GPU, including more compute units, improved ray tracing capabilities, and AI-related features.
The extra memory bandwidth also benefits the GPU significantly, but it provides little advantage to the CPU because memory latency remains mostly unchanged. With these changes in mind, we can expect the PS5 Pro to deliver a major graphical improvement over the base PS5, and a slightly better frame rate.
- How a Game Frame Is Rendered
To produce a game frame, both the CPU and GPU are needed. First, the CPU runs the game logic and decides what needs to be drawn. Then it sends draw calls to the GPU, which renders the final image.
For example, suppose a frame takes 8 ms of CPU time. At 60 FPS, each frame has a total budget of about 16.7 ms. That leaves the GPU only around 8 ms to finish rendering the frame. At 30 FPS, however, each frame has a budget of about 33.3 ms, leaving the GPU around 25 ms to complete its work.
So why can’t developers simply reduce the CPU time to 4 ms for 60 FPS instead of adjusting GPU load around the CPU? The problem is that CPU workloads in games have several important characteristics:
a) They are difficult to reduce.
You can’t simply cut out a small piece of game logic to fit a tighter frame-time budget without affecting the game itself.
b) They are difficult to split.
Large chunks of CPU work cannot always be easily divided into smaller pieces because the game must respect causal relationships. Certain calculations must happen before others.
As a result, each frame often has a relatively fixed amount of CPU work. When a game targets 60 FPS, the GPU gets only a fraction of the rendering time it would have at 30 FPS.
Things become even more complicated because CPU load is usually less predictable than GPU load. In some frames, the CPU workload may spike to, say, 15 ms, making a stable 60 FPS virtually impossible without significant sacrifices—which often means reducing the complexity, scale, or interactivity of the game.
- From the Developers’ Perspective
AAA games are expensive and risky to make. When a studio develops a game, it has to make sure the game works well for most players in a reasonable and consistent way. Because of this, developers usually choose the base console as the baseline when designing and testing the game’s core features.
That means the core design is decided early and generally does not change much across different hardware. This includes the main gameplay systems, core mechanics, rendering pipeline, asset design, and world complexity.
If developers are forced to target 60 FPS, guess what, the 60 FPS mode becomes the baseline! That means they must make compromises and spend development effort meeting that performance target—effort that could otherwise be used to make the game more interesting, more beautiful, and more ambitious.
This can limit developers’ ability to explore new possibilities, such as more complex interactions, deeper rendering pipelines, denser environments, and more lifelike game worlds.
In that sense, forcing every major game to target 60 FPS can become a lose-lose situation for the industry. Players may get a smoother frame rate, but at the cost of richer, more ambitious game design.
