Resident Evil Requiem showcases Sony’s upgraded upscaling tech, but expectations for 60 FPS and full ray tracing in Rockstar’s GTA 6 should remain grounded.
If you have been watching the latest PlayStation updates, you have probably seen the buzz around the upgraded PSSR upscaler coming to the PS5 Pro. Sony showed it off alongside Resident Evil Requiem, and the early comparisons look impressive. Naturally, your mind goes straight to GTA 6. You start thinking about 60 FPS, full ray tracing, clean 4K, and all the top-end visual options running smoothly on the PS5 Pro. The reality is more complicated, even if PSSR 2.0 and GTA 6 look like a great match.
Sony’s recent blog post introduced the improved PSSR 2.0, and the visual examples they shared are easy to get excited about. One of the clearest demonstrations focuses on character detail, especially hair. In the original PSSR example, the hair appears muddy and clumped. You cannot really make out individual strands.
With PSSR 2.0, that same shot looks noticeably cleaner. The strands are more defined, and the overall image feels sharper. Even small details like skin texture appear slightly improved. It is the kind of side-by-side that immediately makes you think this technology could do wonders for a game like GTA 6.
Before you go too far down that road, it’s worth remembering something important. Rockstar confirmed that GTA 6’s second trailer was captured entirely in-game on a standard PlayStation 5. Not a PS5 Pro. Not a PS5 Pro running PSSR 2.0. Everything you saw in that trailer, and likely the screenshots released alongside it, came from the base PS5 hardware. That means the visual leap you witnessed is achievable on the regular console.
Taking that into consideration, the PS5 Pro may enhance things, but the foundation is already strong on the base system.
If you are considering buying a PS5 Pro primarily for GTA 6, you also need to consider the price. At $750, and closer to $800 once you factor in taxes, it is not a small upgrade. If you plan to use it across multiple PlayStation titles, it may make sense. But if your main goal is squeezing extra performance out of GTA 6, you are spending a lot of money for gains that might be modest.
To understand why, it helps to break down what PSSR actually does. The acronym stands for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, and at its core, it is an AI-driven upscaling technique. In simple terms, the console renders the game at a lower internal resolution, like 720p, and then uses AI to upscale that image so it looks closer to 1080p, 1440p, or even 4K. The benefit is that you save processing power because the system doesn’t render every frame at full native 4K resolution.
There are trade-offs, though; you should be aware. Upscaling can sometimes introduce input lag. AI reconstruction can also introduce visual artifacts under certain conditions. That said, the technology continues to improve, and PSSR 2.0 appears to close the gap with NVIDIA’s DLSS on PC. It is not quite at the same level yet, but it is close enough that most players would struggle to see a dramatic difference in many scenes.
When you look at Resident Evil Requiem running on the PS5 versus the PS5 Pro, the improvements are noticeable.
On the base PS5, ray tracing is present but limited, and the game runs at 30 FPS with those effects enabled. Reflections can look sort of simplified. On the PS5 Pro, the game runs at 60 FPS with ray tracing enabled. Reflections in water and on surfaces appear more realistic. Lighting is more refined. Global illumination looks more natural. In some side-by-side shots, the Pro version clearly looks cleaner and more polished.
It is easy to look at those comparisons and assume GTA 6 will follow the same path. You might imagine the PS5 Pro delivering 60 FPS with ray tracing fully enabled across a massive open world. Resident Evil Requiem, on the other hand, is not an open-world game. It is more controlled, with smaller environments and fewer dynamic systems running simultaneously. GTA 6, though, is shaping up to be an enormous open-world experience filled with NPCs, traffic systems, environmental effects, AI routines, and complex physics. Those elements do not just rely on the GPU but mostly on the CPU.
This is the main problem. The CPU architecture used by the PS5 and PS5 Pro is identical. The Pro offers a modest CPU upgrade, but it has a more powerful GPU and better upscaling technology. GTA 6 and other open-world games frequently have CPU limitations. This implies that the CPU may still be the weak point, even if the GPU has more headroom and PSSR 2.0 improves image sharpness or efficiency.
You won’t magically go from 30 FPS to 60 FPS simply because you have better upscaling if the CPU can’t handle all the world simulation tasks quickly enough. A complete doubling of performance is unlikely in a large-scale open-world game, but you might notice a slight improvement, maybe 10 to 15 extra frames in some situations.
Historically, Pro console upgrades have often focused on resolution rather than sweeping gameplay changes.
Think back to Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4 Pro. The main benefit was a higher resolution output, allowing you to play closer to 4K. It did not transform the frame rate or radically alter the visual systems. That pattern may very well continue with GTA 6 on the PS5 Pro.
In reality, the best thing you can expect from GTA 6 on the PS5 Pro is clearer graphics and maybe better performance at the same frame rate. PSSR 2.0 could help you get a cleaner 4K presentation. If Rockstar decides to use the extra GPU power for ray tracing, you might see a small improvement. You probably won’t get a mode that guarantees 60 FPS across the whole open world.
There is also a broader industry angle to consider.
With PSSR 2.0 showing promising results, speculation is that Sony could push the PlayStation 6 launch further out if current hardware can be stretched even further. If that happens, GTA 6 could follow a similar pattern to GTA 5, which launched on one generation and then reappeared on the next with enhancements. That is still just speculation, but it adds another layer to your decision-making process if you are thinking about upgrading.
Rockstar has not confirmed specific performance targets for GTA 6 on either console. Sony’s blog post and Resident Evil comparisons show what is possible in certain contexts, but they do not guarantee identical outcomes in a large-scale open-world title. The PS5 Pro and PSSR 2.0 will likely make GTA 6 look sharper and clearer. The jump, however, may not be dramatic enough to justify an $800 purchase if that is your only motivation.
The best thing to do right now is to wait for official news. Before you decide, let Rockstar and Sony explain exactly what the PS5 Pro version of GTA 6 has to offer. The technology is cool, and it will improve image quality. But just don’t expect it to change the rules of hardware limitations overnight.
