Evening everyone. I'm in terrible need of some answers as to why my game stutters when playing. I'm new to PC gaming and the LCPDFR community in general, so I figured I'd ask you all for some advice.

So, when I launch the game, the game runs smoothly for about 5-10 minutes, at which point the FPS begins to stutter. This primarily happens when I'm driving, but it also occurs on foot. About every 30-45 seconds, the game will become incredibly choppy and stutters for about 5-10 seconds. It's almost like playing the game in super slow motion. After the 5-10 seconds of doom is over, I get about 30-45 seconds of smooth 60 FPS gaming, then it acts up again. And the process repeats itself. It's very consistent. Almost like it's programmed or something. PC specs below. Please let me know if this is a hardware issue:

• OS: Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit SP1
• CPU: AMD FX-9590 (average temp. 15 degrees Celsius)
• RAM: 8.00GB @ 805MHz
• Motherboard: Ltd. GA-970A-UD3
• Graphics: 2048MB ATI AMD Radeon R7 200 Series (1360x768 @ 60Hz)
• Storage: 111GB

R* has acknowledged that the last patch seems to have introduced FPS drop, apparently. Even my rig is struggling now when it ran pretty smooth before.

Hello!

First, I'm not anywhere close to an expert on how computer work, so if this is a hardware issue, I wouldn't know. However, seems you're above the minimum requirements for the game. Make sure you optimize what graphics options you have.

However, I'm fairly certain this isn't hardware related. I've had something similar before, and not to mention the game seems to have a few performance issues, which was enhanced since the last title update. My diagnosis is that you'll just have to sit tight. With the issues the new update brought along, I have a feeling Rockstar will roll out an patch for it.

Thank you, both of you. A patch sure would be nice right about now. If anyone else has any other ideas, please let me know.

Same thing is happening to me now.

GTX 970

i5 2320

Downtown is bad... Looks like i'll be sticking to blaine county :/ 

I had this issue too, whether it's primarily based on the latest title update or not I don't entirely know. I remember reading in a few articles that GTA V suffers memory leaks, if this was addressed and fixed in a previous patch I couldn't tell you. However, as I got these "stutters" at one point I found in a few work around articles that putting V-sync to half and turning off Page file seemed to at the very least reduce this annoyance, also turning 'Population Variety' down, or even off helps a lot too. All Population Variety does is adds extras to pedestrians, example like backpacks, certain pieces of clothing, believe it also randomizes pedestrian ethnic background and maybe how often the genders are randomized (I don't know if it has anything to do with Vehicles though). This loads up the cache quite expensively and could cause that much more stress on an already possible broken part of the game. 

Might be worth trying out until they fix it, if it is indeed all because of the latest title update.