Millions of PC players have the same concern: GTA 6 promises to be the most brutal technical leap of the decade, but most users don’t have 1,000-euro graphics cards.
Does that mean you will miss out on playing Lucia and Jason’s adventure in Vice City if you have an old PC? The answer has nuances, and there is a “trick” that most are ignoring.
The real problem isn’t the graphics, it’s the CPU
When we think of “low-spec games”, we usually think of lowering the resolution, removing shadows, and setting textures to low. However, the RAGE Engine (Rockstar’s engine) is famous for being a processor devourer.
GTA VI will not only have hyper-realistic graphics; its world is alive. Crowd behavior, random traffic, water physics, and police reactions consume physical cores of your CPU. If you have a very old 4-core processor (like a 4th or 6th generation i5), the game will suffer massive lockups (stuttering) even if you have the absolute minimum graphics.
Which “old” components will survive?
Based on current technical simulations, this is the estimated survival line:
- Survival Graphics Cards: A 6GB GTX 1060 or an RX 580 will likely be the absolute bottom of the barrel. They will be able to boot the game at 1080p and 30 FPS on low quality, suffering quite a bit with VRAM.
- Limit processors: If you don’t have at least a Ryzen 5 1600 or an Intel Core i7-8700K (6 cores with hyper-threading), it will be very difficult for you to maintain a smooth experience.
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The Ultimate Trick: “Cloud Gaming”
Is your PC literally a 10-year-old toaster and you don’t want to spend €1,500 on a new one? There is a giant salvation that the gaming industry is promoting just in time for GTA 6: Cloud Gaming.
If GTA 6 enters services like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming, the only thing you will need is:
- A good fiber optic internet connection.
- Buy the game.
- Pay the service’s monthly subscription.
This means that you will be able to play GTA 6 on Ultra graphics and at 60 FPS from a 300 euro office laptop, or even from a tablet, because the game is running on NVIDIA’s or Microsoft’s supercomputers and you only receive the video.
Conclusion
Rockstar Games knows how to optimize. They proved it with GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. They will do everything possible to make GTA 6 work on the largest number of computers in the world to maximize their sales, but technology advances and miracles do not exist. If you have a pre-2018 PC, get ready to make the jump to the cloud or start saving for a motherboard upgrade.