Hi everyone,

The last day or so I haven't been playing the game's story line as most of you are (I've already played through it a few times on the old versions), instead I've devoted my time to observing the game's graphic options and characteristics. In general, seeing what I can do to squeeze the best graphics out of it with the best FPS possible. After doing countless reboots and benchmark testing, I've found a few helpful things. 

Not all of us are able to afford expensive computers, but that doesn't mean you can't enable higher quality graphics.

As of now, I am able to run the game on Ultra (1080 resolution) with 40 fps average, sometimes higher. Though on the advanced graphics menu, I have all enabled except the extended distance/shadow sliders all the way down.

My hardware:

Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.2 Ghz

 EVGA GTX 680 Superclocked (2 GB)

 12 GB of RAM.

I consider my rig at least mid grade or entry level high end.

All in all, I've found several ways to increase performance:

• Run in Borderless Window mode. This allows you to turn off VSync, and you also won't have any screen tearing. Easy FPS boost.
• On the Population Variety Slider, feel free to move it down. This is a very VRAM hungry option. I believe it has to do with the amount of extras on Peds, such as backpacks or items in general, or the variety of vehicles on the street. If I'm wrong please correct me. I moved it down and noticed little to no difference. Use your sacred VRAM on something more useful! Additionally, if anyone is experiencing random performance drops (such as the game locking up, super low 1-5 fps out of the norm) this is likely caused because of overloading. Decrease this to ease your VRAM. I personally suffered from this and decreased the slider to the near bottom (2 notches) and no longer experienced this. 
• NVIDIA cards - Use FXAA instead of MSAA. While it may not look as good, it has nearly no performance cost and I can't really see any difference. Additionally, enable it through your control panel rather than in-game for more FXAA options (different levels mostly), while in game you only have one option, which I assume is 16x. AMD cards should also use their equivalent if they want to increase performance. 
  NVIDIA cards - Go to the NVIDIA control panel. Enable Threaded Optimization, set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 3, and under power management mode, select Prefer maximum performance. 
• Additional note: You may select "Ignore Suggested Limits" to On in the in-game graphic settings menu. This allows you to exceed your VRAM limit. I'm personally around 800 MB over my limit and suffer no issues in regards to performance. For those of you who want the most out of this game graphically, I suggest you do the same. 
• If you prefer to have VSync for any reason, don't enable it in game. Instead, do it through you graphic card's control panel. Along with this, enable Triple Buffering. This helps increase performance while VSync is enabled. 

Overclocking:

Note: Overclock at your own risk. I am NOT responsible for any damage caused to your card. You have been warned! 

Download the program for your respective card. For us NVIDIA users, I recommend EVGA Precision X. 

I was able to increase GPU CLOCK OFFSET by 42 MHz, and MEM CLOCK OFFSET by 115 MHz. I have not gone any higher, nor do I plan to as I found the sweet spot for my card. Pushing your card too far may cause overheating, instability, game crashes, and possible damage. You may also increase the fan curve and voltage. Don't mess with voltage unless you know what you're doing. 

I hope this helps many of you and you can enjoy this amazing game to its highest potential. Also, a special thanks to Murphy and Sniper296 for aiding my research. 

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reply,

Nick 

 

Edited January 22, 201610 yr by Original Light

Reducing the resolution can also increase performance. People can for example reduce resolution while increasing some in-game details to get a good balance.

 

EDIT: I say that because I've looked on Youtube for videos with people having similar specs to me, and they were running the game in 1366x768 but with settings on Very High, and it was running at 60FPS. Here, for curious people: 

 

Edited April 15, 201511 yr by Hystery

I'd like to point out that the VRAM bar on top is pretty much completely wrong. With the default settings, mine said it was using 2800 MB, but a program I have says only 800 MB was being used at any one point. Ignoring that maximum shouldn't cause any issues at all.

With my rather suboptimal graphics card, I found significant improvement switching to DirectX 10.1.

The game also has a large problem of memory leak it seems. Many people posted on Rockstar websites about experiencing stuttering in game after a variable ammount of time even though their rig is way above the recommended. The hard drive keeps loading data while playing, making the game having small sutters of 0.5-2 seconds depending on the computer. Many people hope for a patch for this, me included as I experience this stuttering as well after roughly half an hour of game.

Edited April 16, 201511 yr by Hystery

The game also has a large problem of memory leak it seems. Many people posted on Rockstar websites about experiencing stuttering in game after a variable ammount of time even though their rig is way above the recommended. The hard drive keeps loading data while playing, making the game having small sutters of 0.5-2 seconds depending on the computer. Many people hope for a patch for this, me included as I experience this stuttering as well after roughly half an hour of game.

​Many people have fixed this "stuttering" by updating their drivers. Nvidia as well as AMD has released driver updates containing fixes/optimizations for GTAV specifically.

16GB of ram and my Radeon R9 280 seem to be holding up fine on high, I do experience texture issues (possible memory problem, just like in IV but less heavy), usually when loading a mission on online, or sometimes textures will start to fail to load, after about 4-5 hours of straight gameplay. nothing major though.

​Many people have fixed this "stuttering" by updating their drivers. Nvidia as well as AMD has released driver updates containing fixes/optimizations for GTAV specifically.

16GB of ram and my Radeon R9 280 seem to be holding up fine on high, I do experience texture issues (possible memory problem, just like in IV but less heavy), usually when loading a mission on online, or sometimes textures will start to fail to load, after about 4-5 hours of straight gameplay. nothing major though.

​Many people also didn't have their issue fixed by updating their drivers, as many people (me included) updated their drivers to the newest released especially for GTA V release way before playing the game for the first time. The stuttering might be linked to the page file of the hard drive which is used for when the RAM is fully used. Problem is it loads way slower, causing the stuttering when driving cars (as the stuttering actually doesn't occur when on foot).

Here's an example of what I'm talking about on this topic: https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/communities/public/questions/203473047-GTA-V-PC-Stutter-Issue

Edited April 16, 201511 yr by Hystery

Here's a tip for a performance boost if your computer really can't handle GTA V (in addition to following the other tips in this thread): in the settings.xml, which you can find in Documents > Rockstar Games > GTA V, changing the number in "<ShadowQuality value="(1-3)" />" to "0" will disable shadows in-game (this can't be done in the in-game graphics settings). This increases performance the most in the city, where shadows from the tall buildings lag many computers.

It won't look very good, in comparison to how GTA IV looked without shadows, because there isn't compensation for places that would normally have shadows even on a cloudy day, such as under bridges and cars (indoor areas look like rooms in 3D programs that haven't been rendered yet), because it isn't really "legitimate" to turn shadows off in GTA V (since you have to go into the files to do it).

Edited April 20, 201511 yr by iansonwheels

I'd like to point out that the VRAM bar on top is pretty much completely wrong. With the default settings, mine said it was using 2800 MB, but a program I have says only 800 MB was being used at any one point. Ignoring that maximum shouldn't cause any issues at all.

I don't think that this is true. I do have afterburner/rivatuners on screen display and I do only have 1GB of vram. At my current settings, its set to use 1.1GB with everything high/very high except for post fx and textures and population variety turned down. I experience no stuttering and my vram usage remains below 950mb. Now when I turn textures (textures have a very low performance impact other than needing the vram) to high and vram enters the 1800mb range, stuttering eventually occurs although the vram usage isn't marked as high. 

Cleaning out the dust from my PC seemed to fix the stuttering issues for me, but i think it's different for everyone. 

Edited April 20, 201511 yr by Illusionary

Cleaning out the dust from my PC seemed to fix the stuttering issues for me, but i think it's different for everyone. 

After some research I decided that the stuttering was caused by a memory leak (which other people had also suggested in threads about the stuttering) which I then found to be relative to the amount of RAM I have. I have 6GB, and the recommended is 8GB, so I'm upgrading to that. But I think Rockstar still has to change the game to manage the available memory better (currently it seems to keep unnecessary things loaded).

Maybe unrelated, but my temp folder is stupidly full (776) after cleaning it out and playing GTA V for a few hours.

After some research I decided that the stuttering was caused by a memory leak (which other people had also suggested in threads about the stuttering) which I then found to be relative to the amount of RAM I have. I have 6GB, and the recommended is 8GB, so I'm upgrading to that. But I think Rockstar still has to change the game to manage the available memory better (currently it seems to keep unnecessary things loaded).

Maybe unrelated, but my temp folder is stupidly full (776) after cleaning it out and playing GTA V for a few hours.

I have 8GB of ram and have noticed usage up to 6GB with the minimum being 4 so that may very well be your issue 

Check out this guide.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/grand-theft-auto-v-pc-graphics-and-performance-guide   BTW - super lengthy read if you need to squeeze out every single point of FPS from your game.

I feel it doesn't so much as tell you what the settings should be.  But show you the differences with its neat image viewer.  And you make the choice of what you are willing to sacrifice to maybe gain a few FPS.

 

For GTA V I favour an immersive, beautiful, living environment and will give up stable 60fps.  Couldn't get that with the default settings anyways and not much that I am willing to turn down atm. (my rig slightly above recommended. -i5 3570, 8gb Ram, GTX 770.)    

The section on Grass Quality was really informative for me.   And currently trying to wrap my head around particle quality.  (mentioned in the guide,  some things are hard to compare due to randomness of the scene..)

AND again,  there is a lot to read but very much worth it.

 

Check out my top 3 Settings To watch out for in GTA 5 might help some of you Video

I may have discovered a tweak to play on max graphics settings without overclocking and losing FPS on low end and medium PC's If you want credibility, I created this post a while back: http://www.lcpdfr.com/topic/1211-how-to-play-gta-iv-smoothly-on-a-low-end-computer/

I recently bought a GTX 970 so I'm okay now, but when I had my old Radeon card these things helped, I didn't know about the TXAA being that much better.

The game also has a large problem of memory leak it seems. Many people posted on Rockstar websites about experiencing stuttering in game after a variable ammount of time even though their rig is way above the recommended. The hard drive keeps loading data while playing, making the game having small sutters of 0.5-2 seconds depending on the computer. Many people hope for a patch for this, me included as I experience this stuttering as well after roughly half an hour of game.

Alt-tab and tab in game again, that fixes my issues sometimes.

Finally something that really works, although. I used to lower most of the settings to get a better FPS and results, but it doesn't matter I just made the game to run on Borderless mode, and without VSync.

seems like its a low end PC i would try maybe an enb series for a low end pc 

Thanks for this post! It answered a lot of my questions, and I had population variety on full and was running the game in full screen.

Edited April 12, 20179 yr by N4Cer