PS5 Emulator Runs GTA 5 at Up to 60 FPS, Though Only for a Few Minutes

The PS5 emulation project KytyPS5 can now run the PlayStation 5 version of Grand Theft Auto 5 at up to 60 FPS on PC, a significant jump from about a month earlier when the game was stuck at its splash screen. A demo shared on X showed the game's opening North Yankton scene running on a PC with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU and a Radeon RX 7900 XT GPU, with performance ranging from 40 to 60 FPS depending on the action on screen.

The emulator can currently sustain this performance for only a few minutes before crashing. In the demonstrated footage, the game crashed just before a police encounter in the opening mission. Tom's Hardware also reported that a separate user managed to get past the starting mission into the open world, where the game ran below 15 FPS before rising to the mid-40s during a Franklin and Lamar cutscene — notable because GTA V's cutscenes are rendered in real time rather than pre-rendered. The game crashed again once that cutscene ended.

Progress is not limited to GTA 5. At least four other PS5 titles have been shown running at 60 FPS on KytyPS5, including Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Pac-Man World Re-PAC, and Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. Tom's Hardware tested Pac-Man World Re-PAC directly and found it ran locked at 60 FPS even on a lower-end system with an RX 6700 XT and Ryzen 7 7700X.

A separate PS5 emulation project, SharpEmu, is taking a different approach by focusing on low-level accuracy and infrastructure rather than individual game compatibility. According to its GitHub repository, this work is aimed at fixing underlying issues preventing titles like Astro Bot from reaching a playable state; Astro's Playroom has only just reached the point of booting. SharpEmu has also achieved a milestone on Steam Deck, where Astro's Playroom booted locally on SteamOS at roughly 0.5 to 1 FPS, reaching only the intro or loading sequence and remaining unplayable.

Both outlets note that this rapid emulation progress comes as PS5 hardware demand rises ahead of GTA 6's launch, with no PC version of that game yet confirmed. TechPowerUp suggests that even at this pace, a playable build of GTA 6 on these emulators is unlikely any time soon, while Tom's Hardware frames the current developments as motivated in part by a desire to play GTA VI on PC ahead of an official release.