Leonida Press
Gear

The TV settings that matter for GTA 6, and the ones nobody can tell you yet

Every “best TV settings for GTA 6” page you will find between now and November is guessing, and it has to be. Rockstar has not published a single figure for how Grand Theft Auto VI outputs. No resolution, no frame rate, no performance or fidelity modes, no HDR, no ray tracing, no 120Hz. We checked the places such a claim would have to appear and it is in none of them.

That changes what this page can honestly be about. You cannot tune a television for a game whose output nobody has described. What you can do, in about ten minutes and usually for no money, is make sure the handshake between console and screen is not quietly discarding whatever the game does send.

What is actually confirmed, which is almost nothing

The PlayStation Store listing for GTA 6 carries six capability lines: in-game purchases optional, offline play, one player, Remote Play supported, vibration and trigger effects for the DualSense, and PS5 Pro Enhanced. No HDR badge, no 4K badge, no 60fps badge. The Xbox listing is barer still, with exactly five entries, which are single player, optimised for Xbox Series X|S, achievements, presence and cloud saves. No 4K, no HDR, no 120fps, no Dolby Vision, no spatial sound.

The one display-adjacent claim in existence is that PS5 Pro Enhanced label, and Sony’s own footnote declines to say what it means for any particular game: “Feature only available on select PS5 games that have been enhanced for PS5 Pro when compared with PS5. PS5 Pro enhanced features will vary by game.” The badge tells you Rockstar has done something for the Pro. It does not promise 4K, a frame rate, PSSR or ray tracing, and anyone telling you it does is reading in a guarantee Sony explicitly withheld. Our note on how we cover GTA 6 explains why we would rather say that than fill the gap.

Start with the cable, because one console ships the wrong one

This is the single most useful thing on this page. Microsoft’s support documentation lists what comes in each box, and the two consoles do not get the same cable. Xbox Series X ships with an “Ultra High Speed HDMI cable”. Xbox Series S ships with a “High Speed HDMI cable”. Those are different certified categories rather than marketing adjectives.

The HDMI Licensing Administrator defines both. High Speed is “tested to handle video resolutions of 1080p and beyond with support up to 10.2Gbps bandwidth”. Ultra High Speed “is applicable for system configurations supporting up to 48Gbps maximum bandwidth and 8K@60 and 4K@120 formats”. Microsoft names the cable as one of three requirements for 4K120, and Sony states it flatly: “To display 4K 100/120 Hz or 8K picture, an Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable that supports 48 Gbps is required.”

PS5 owners are fine as shipped. Sony’s guidance is to use “the cable included with the PS5 console or an Ultra High-Speed Cable that is rated for 4K 120 Hz output”.

If you are on a Series S, or your console has been through a house move and is running on whatever cable was behind the TV, a certified Ultra High Speed cable is the one purchase this guide actually recommends. Buy it on the certification rather than the packaging copy. That certification is mandatory for the category, and every certified cable carries a label you can scan with an ordinary QR reader. The trade body is blunt about why: “Resellers may use a variety of marketing terms and may not use the official HDMI Cable name designations, and many websites may recommend cables only based on receiving affiliate payments. And worst of all, some cables are counterfeits.”

This page carries an affiliate link, so treat that warning as applying to us too. Check the label rather than taking our word for it.

“HDMI 2.1” on a TV box guarantees nothing

This one catches people who did their homework. A television can be legitimately marketed as HDMI 2.1 and still not do the thing you bought it for. The HDMI Licensing Administrator says so in its own FAQ: “Support for each HDMI 2.1 feature is optional.” And more pointedly: “Specification version numbers are not feature sets as the features are optional.”

A manufacturer promoting HDMI 2.1 compliance “is required to list the HDMI 2.1 features supported by the product next to that messaging”, so the information is supposed to be there. Read that list rather than the version number. The three features that matter here are 4K at 120Hz, VRR and ALLM, and each is separately optional.

Then find the right port, because it is often not all of them

On many sets only some HDMI inputs carry the full bandwidth. LG publishes a per-model table of which ports do, headed “FRL Port”, and nine model lines in it read “Port 3 / 4 Only” rather than “All Ports”. Sony puts it plainly: “Available HDMI signal formats depend on your model and the HDMI input.” On Sony sets that control sits under Settings, then Channels and Inputs, then External inputs, then HDMI signal format, and it applies per input rather than to the whole television.

So check your model’s manual for the right port, move the console to it, and see whether that input needs its enhanced mode switched on. A surprising number of “my TV cannot do 120Hz” problems turn out to be one toggle on one input.

The PS5 settings, in Sony’s own words

Everything here is under Settings, then Screen and Video, then Video Output.

  • Resolution. Set to Automatic or 2160p, which is the first thing Sony’s own 4K 120Hz troubleshooting checklist asks for.
  • 120 Hz Output. “Turn on to enable 120 Hz video output for your TV and games that support 120 Hz frame rate.”
  • VRR. Leave it on if your set supports it. There is a sub-option called Apply to Unsupported Games, which Sony describes as a way “to stabilize the frame rate for games even if they don’t support VRR”, with the caveat to turn it off if anything looks wrong. Whether GTA 6 supports VRR natively is unknown, so this toggle may end up mattering.
  • ALLM. “If your TV supports ALLM (auto low-latency mode), it automatically switches to low-latency mode while playing games.” It is not independent of VRR, though. Sony says that even with ALLM off “it automatically switches to low-latency mode when you’re using VRR output. To completely turn off ALLM, you must also set VRR to Off.”
  • Video Transfer Rate. Leave on Auto. The minus one and minus two options limit output when a screen flickers, and one of the things they limit is 4K 120Hz.

Sony is unusually candid about 4K 120Hz generally, calling it an “emerging technology” that “isn’t fully supported in the market” and saying it is still working with TV makers on it.

The Xbox settings, in Microsoft’s own words

Settings, then General, then TV and display options. Microsoft’s caution is that “Some of the settings below won’t appear unless your TV or monitor supports them”, so an absent option is usually the television’s answer rather than a fault.

Under Video modes, the ones that matter are Allow 4K, Allow HDR10, Allow auto low-latency mode and Allow variable refresh rate. Microsoft states one real requirement for VRR: it “is only available when connected to a TV that supports either HDMI-VRR or AMD FreeSync”. On a Series X the 4K120 combination is Resolution 4K UHD plus Refresh rate 120 Hz.

There is also a diagnostic most people never open. Under Setup, 4K TV details reports what your television has actually told the console it can do, which beats any spec sheet. Microsoft describes it as detecting “your TV’s capabilities and what types of content it can display in 4K and HDR”. Start there when something is not working.

One documented contradiction, which we would rather flag than resolve by guessing. Microsoft’s Series X FAQ describes Series S as “designed for disc-free gaming at 1440p (with the ability to upscale to 4K)”, while two other live support pages tell Series S owners that to “game in 4K@120Hz, you’ll need to acquire a certified Ultra High Speed HDMI cable”. Both are current first-party text and we do not know which reflects the console’s real behaviour.

Game Mode costs you something, and Microsoft admits it

Game Mode and ALLM are normally the right call, but they are a trade rather than a free win. Microsoft explains the mechanism: “Low-latency mode is achieved by the TV disabling its processing features that would otherwise introduce latency.” Those features are partly why the picture looks the way it does, so turning them off can leave HDR washed out and contrast flat. For a slow, art-directed open world, some people will prefer more processing left on.

HDR, and the setting the HDR group disowns

Calibrate HDR on the console rather than eyeballing the television. PS5 has Adjust HDR under the same Video Output menu, and Xbox has Calibrate HDR for games under TV and display options. Neither company publishes the steps inside those tools, so we will not describe screens we have not seen documented. Run them and follow what they say.

While you are in the TV’s menus you may meet a setting called HGIG, and it is worth knowing what that is not. The HDR Gaming Interest Group describes itself as “a volunteer group of companies from the game and TV display industries” that publishes guidelines, and it has posted a notice disowning the menu item outright: “HGIG mode is not a product function defined in the HGIG guidelines.” It adds that it is “not a standardization body” and runs no certification programme. LG, which does document its own implementation, says selecting HGIG means “the screen may look darker than in the case when Tone Mapping ON is selected”. Treat it as one brand’s tone-mapping option to try rather than a standard to chase.

If you game on an OLED, one habit is worth forming now

GTA games are long, and a launch weekend is the pattern that worries OLED owners. LG’s support page lists the causes of burn-in, and one is specific enough to act on: “Pausing a video game and leaving the TV on for prolonged periods.” A paused game holds a static HUD on screen at full brightness for as long as you are away. Use standby.

Both makers ship protections. LG has a logo brightness control and an automatic pixel refresh. Sony has Pixel shift, which it says to leave enabled, and a manual Panel refresh carrying a warning most people never read: “Avoid performing it more than once a year because it may affect the usable life of the panel.” One thing to know before planning around a warranty: LG’s US OLED television limited warranty lists “image burn-in” among the things it does not cover.

What we are not telling you to buy

A television. If your set does 4K at 60Hz with HDR and you are happy with it, GTA 6 is not a reason to replace it, and nothing published yet says it would look or play meaningfully better on something newer. The cable is cheap and occasionally necessary. Everything else here is free. If you are spending money before launch, storage is the better place to look, and our storage guide explains why the answer there is often “wait” too.

What will change this page

Three things, and we will re-date it when they do.

  1. Any statement from Rockstar about resolution, frame rate or graphics modes. That turns this from a setup guide into a tuning guide.
  2. An HDR or 4K capability appearing on either store listing. Both are silent today and we check them.
  3. Whatever PS5 Pro Enhanced actually means here, which Sony’s footnote leaves to Rockstar to define.

Until then, get the cable and the port right, run the console’s own HDR calibration, and leave the rest alone.

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