4K is still very young. Few games support it, and even fewer support it well. The stable of great 4K games is about to add an important entry, though, with Grand Theft Auto V promising full 4K support at its April 14 PC release. Rockstar sat down with PC Gamer, and has finally provided details as to what kind of hardware gamers are going to need to run the game in 4K, and the specifications are somewhat manageable.
First, Rockstar broke down the recommend GPU for playing the game at 1080p, at 60 frames-per-second. For this, gamers will need Nvidia GTX 660 2GB or AMD HD7870 2GB card, both of which fall into the upper mid-range of the GPUs out there.
Moving on to 4K, players will need to have at least an AMD HD 7870 2GB or Nvidia GTX 760 2GB to be able to run the game at the higher resolution and 30 FPS. Those, and cards in the same power range, sell for around $200, making the barrier to 4K entry not quite as high as many feared. Of course, there’s still the high cost of a 4K monitor, but at least from a GPU perspective, running the game in UltraHD isn’t too hard.
Of course, when moving to a 4K resolution at 60 frames-per-second, the prospect of running it becomes far more daunting, with Kevin Hoare, president of Rockstar Toronto, saying that it will require a “high-end SLI or Crossfire setup.” The cost for a setup like that is much greater than the one required to run the game at 30 frames-per-second, and will exclude many gamers.
Hoare cites lessons learned from the PC versions of Grand Theft Auto IV and Max Payne 3 on PC that players “want the freedom to configure their system to suit their preferences,” and the team behind the frequently-delayed but anticipated PC version of the game seem to be delivering on that.
