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[Mechanical Snowman]

Post FX seems to have a particularly large performance impact, especially at night. First shot is Very High, second is High. DOF is disabled on both. Dunno if this impact is a result of the recent patch, or if the HDR is just that intensive.

Huh, do you know what the visual difference is between these two? I'll sacrifice post fx as far as i can go without getting rid of those amazing godrays.

 

[Dick Justice]

Huh, do you know what the visual difference is between these two? I'll sacrifice post fx as far as i can go without getting rid of those amazing godrays.

High disables DOF, and also affects motion blur and bloom/HDR, as well as the quality of FXAA. You can see in the comparison that very high has slightly stronger lights and lens flare. It's not a huge deal though IMO.

 

[icecold1983]

Post FX seems to have a particularly large performance impact, especially at night. First shot is Very High, second is High. DOF is disabled on both. Dunno if this impact is a result of the recent patch, or if the HDR is just that intensive.

assuming that barely noticeable extra bit of bloom is the only visual diff, WTF

 

[Dick Justice]

assuming that barely noticeable extra bit of bloom is the only visual diff, WTF

Here's another comparison. Again, first is very high, second is high.

 

[Dinjoralo]

I've noticed that some of the settings don't seem to affect my performance, somehow. I've cranked shadows from normal to very high, with PCSS, tesselation from off to very high, post fx from high to very high with DOF on, and replacing FXAA with 2x MSAA and my performance has barely changed. The worst thing I can do is turn on TXAA, and turning up the advanced settings. I wanna be happy, but my mind is too fucked from all this.

 

[Philtastic]

Post FX seems to have a particularly large performance impact, especially at night. First shot is Very High, second is High. DOF is disabled on both. Dunno if this impact is a result of the recent patch, or if the HDR is just that intensive.

http://i.picpar.com/pftb.png
http://i.picpar.com/rftb.png

I totally agree that the image quality doesn't seem to change that drastically but switching from Very High to High netted me about a ~10-20% increase in framerate. I highly recommend using High to improve framerate consistency.

 

[Dick Justice]

Indeed. It also lowered the frame drops when aiming with a sniper rifle in foliage-heavy areas. First is high, second is very high, third is very high with DOF. Grass is set to high in all screenshots.

Also, even with DOF disabled, very high still produces a slight blur on the distance. Also notice the stronger sunlight which hides the weird shape.

 

[Allnamestakenlol]

Dick Justice, thanks a lot for these comparison shots! Very helpful stuff!

 

[Megasoum]

I'm getting really bad tearing even with VSync turned on.. Anybody knows how to fix that?

 

[Justinh]

I'm getting really bad tearing even with VSync turned on.. Anybody knows how to fix that?

um, in the nvidia control panel I mistakenly put the vertical sync option to off instead of use application settings once and I got crazy tearing even though I had it enabled in the game.

is that what happened with you?

 

[Megasoum]

um, in the nvidia control panel I mistakenly put the vertical sync option to off instead of use application settings once and I got crazy tearing even though I had it enabled in the game.

is that what happened with you?

No, I was on addaptive before and now I put it back to application controlled but still noting.

 

[tesqui]

If only there was an accessory to add a few extra gigabytes to my vram.. I have to play on normal texture quality which at times looks straight up worse than the ps360 version.

 

[Dmax3901]

Anyone with a 7970 getting super high temperatures? I'm getting over 90 degree celsius up in this.

 

[Smokey]

desert pics

what settings are you using to get 60fps in the desert?

 

[Pagusas]

I'm getting really bad tearing even with VSync turned on.. Anybody knows how to fix that?

Are you running dual monitors? If so nvidia drivers have been known to cause tearing when 2 screens are hooked up and mirrored or extended, it gets fixed and broken every few months.

 

[CHC]

So just an update, been about 4 hours using this fix I found.

So far NO crashes, not from aiming, not from character switches, not from anything else. Works perfectly. I don't really know what it did, but it works.

Short version is this:

• Open GTAV directory
• Find and delete the following items
• GTAV.exe
• GTAV Launcher.exe
• x64b.rpf
• common.rpf
• Go back to Steam and "verify integrity of game cache"
• It'll redownload the missing files, probably like 300mb
• Boot up the game and hope for the best

I can only guess it's from something getting fucked up during Steam's decrypting or pre-load. I don't know why it works but it does (at least for me).

 

[SapientWolf]

The game stuttered like a mo until I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers. It's smooth as glass now. I'm on an i5 750 and a 780, with 12GB of memory.

Averaging 60-65, with lows in the high 40s and highs in the 80s.

 

[Cannon Goose]

So just an update, been about 4 hours using this fix I found.

So far NO crashes, not from aiming, not from character switches, not from anything else. Works perfectly. I don't really know what it did, but it works.

Short version is this:

• Open GTAV directory
• Find and delete the following items
• GTAV.exe
• GTAV Launcher.exe
• x64b.rpf
• common.rpf
• Go back to Steam and "verify integrity of game cache"
• It'll redownload the missing files, probably like 300mb
• Boot up the game and hope for the best

I can only guess it's from something getting fucked up during Steam's decrypting or pre-load. I don't know why it works but it does (at least for me).

Thanks, I'll give this a try. Last time I played I had the ever-so-great aiming crash so hopefully this helps.

 

[BIGWORM]

My crashing has stopped ever since receiving that update, but if it does in the future, would I be able to delete mentioned files at the top of this page and RSC would re-download them?

 

[Helmholtz]

I have a 4790k and an R9 290 (haven't overclocked either at this point in time).
Originally I seemed to be getting a pretty choppy framerate. It was playable, but it wasn't all that smooth.
I went and installed those AMD beta drivers for GTA and it seems like I have a solid 60 now (haven't actually verified, but it feels like it). This is with MSAA disabled and settings on default (a mix of high and very high) at 1080.
Game looks amazing even with those settings, and plays very well now. Best looking game I've played so far, ever.

 

[LilJoka]

yep thats the one

Overclocked at all?

Thanks. I'll give them a whirl.

When you say the 970 has 3580mb of fast vram, is that the exact point at which the card will throttle? I always thought it was exactly 3500mb?

Common misconception. 4096MB - 512MB = 3584MB of fast VRAM. That's abbreviated to 3.5GB by many, which is correct, but not 3500MB since there is 1024MB to 1GB.

 

[DeSo]

I'm loving the performance I'm getting with my GTX 970 and 3570k @ 4.2. Biggest settings to adjust seem to be Grass Quality, Distance Scaling, Shadows Distance and High Res Shadows. With these at lower than optimal levels I'm getting a solid 60fps with no noticeable drops and 2X MSAA + MFAA. Afterburner says I'm topping out the fast memory at 3.5 but I'm not having any stutters. Is that the pagefile at work?

Finally got my self radio working too and I'm having no stutters while listening to that.

 

[Walshicus]

So I'm getting a moderate amount of stuttering at the moment. Currently I'm running:

i7 4770K @ 3.5Ghz
AMD 7850 2Gb
4Gb Ram


I'm about to pull the trigger on a 500gb SSD drive and 16Gb RAM, but should I also upgrade my GPU? I'm playing at 1080p.

 

[knerl]

So I'm getting a moderate amount of stuttering at the moment. Currently I'm running:

i7 4770K @ 3.5Ghz
AMD 7850 2Gb
4Gb Ram


I'm about to pull the trigger on a 500gb SSD drive and 16Gb RAM, but should I also upgrade my GPU? I'm playing at 1080p.

2GB VRAM is kinda low in these days. So is 4GB RAM.
I'd say upgrade your RAM first of all and make sure that you're not exceeding 2GB VRAM in the game.

 

[CecilRousso]

Installed Fraps to check my framerate, it turns that I have better performance on my rig then I thought.

I get 55-65 FPS everywhere in 1920 resolution, with pretty much everything set to high except normal textures, normal grass quality, no Vsync and no MSAA. And this with an i5 2500k and a GTX570 GPU. Pretty happy with that performance.

 

[Stevey]

So I'm getting a moderate amount of stuttering at the moment. Currently I'm running:

i7 4770K @ 3.5Ghz
AMD 7850 2Gb
4Gb Ram


I'm about to pull the trigger on a 500gb SSD drive and 16Gb RAM, but should I also upgrade my GPU? I'm playing at 1080p.

Its been using 7.5GB RAM for me, so Id get some more RAM if I was you.

 

[cHinzo]

Installed Fraps to check my framerate, it turns that I have better performance on my rig then I thought.

I get 55-65 FPS everywhere, with pretty much everything set to high except normal textures, normal grass quality, no Vsync and no MSAA. And this with an i5 2500k and a GTX570 GPU. Pretty happy with that performance.

U really should aim on high or very high textures man. It makes a world of difference between those blurry normal textures and the sharp and crisp clear textures. It also hardly put a dent in ur fps and in the worst case u could lower some of ur other settings, but having high textures is definitely worth it. Go try it out.

 

[Seanspeed]

So I'm getting a moderate amount of stuttering at the moment. Currently I'm running:

i7 4770K @ 3.5Ghz
AMD 7850 2Gb
4Gb Ram


I'm about to pull the trigger on a 500gb SSD drive and 16Gb RAM, but should I also upgrade my GPU? I'm playing at 1080p.

Your GPU is going to make it hard to hit a fairly consistent 60fps with decent settings, so I would say that yea, that should be on the list of things to upgrade if you care about that. With that CPU, you should be able to get a solid 30fps no problem, though.

But more immediately, I think that 4GB of RAM needs upgrading. It is almost definitely going to cause stuttering. 8GB should be minimum for modern gaming.

 

[CecilRousso]

U really should aim on high or very high textures man. It makes a world of difference between those blurry normal textures and the sharp and crisp clear textures. It also hardly put a dent in ur fps and in the worst case u could lower some of ur other settings, but having high textures is definitely worth it. Go try it out.

Yeah, it's mostly because the 1200gb of VRAM and the game telling me to not use it. I did disable the warning once and tried high quality textures, and it seemed to work fine with at most knocking down a couple of FPS.

 

[Revolutionary]

Man I can't stress enough how good yesterday's patch was to my aging i7 950.

I'd also like to share my settings, because I think it's optimal from a performance standpoint while looking as close to max settings as I could (with the exception of Extended Shadow Distance which degrades shadow quality wholesale).
FXAA: Off
MSAA: 2x
TXAA: On
Sliders: maxed
Texture: V High
Shader: V High
Shadow: V High
Reflection Quality: V High
Reflection MSAA: Off (unnecessary)
Water: V High
Particles: V High
Grass: High (V High and Ultra aren't worth the performance drops in the countryside)
Soft Shadows: NV PCSS
Post FX: Ultra (those headlight shadows!)
Motion Blur: set it as you like - I personally only have it at 10%
DoF: Off (I find it distracting while aiming)
AF: 16x
AO: High
Tessellation: Normal (could be bumped up higher for a minimal FPS loss in certain areas but I personally didn't think it was worth it)
Long Shadows: On
High Res Shadows: Off
High Detail Streaming while flying: On
Extended Distance Scaling: 70% (that 30% makes a 5fps difference)
Extended Shadows Distance: 0% (again, I do not like what it does to shadow quality. I can live with shadow pop-in while flying)

So if any of you have a similarly aged processor along with a GPU from the past few years (3GB minimum), it should be damn close to a steady 60.

 

[nkarafo]

I'm happy to report that after the recent update, my micro-pausing issues look like they are completely eliminated. Before, if i was on a certain, busy road, it would stutter and pause often, now i even stress tested the same road by causing chaos and 3-star police chases and i didn't even had a single pause.

There was the occasional stutter (skipped frame) but skipped frames are much better than the micro-freezes i had previously. Now the game is butter smooth and i'm even tempted to increase some graphics options too.

Edit: I forgot to mention that i even moved the game on a slow, external HDD. Still, no freezes. So it wasn't a HDD issue at all, therefore no SSD is needed.

 

[Walshicus]

Thanks guys. The RAM and SSD are getting here tomorrow midday. Any recommendations for the GPU for someone with a soft spot for AMD? I saw a 4GB 280 for a reasonable price, but honestly I'm not that in touch with the scene.

 

[AndyBNV]

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get Andy's breakdown of the settings. I know it has to be super big but he did say he was shooting for Friday prior to the weekend rush.

It's not owed to us. We don't expect the same from AMD. I'm sure he's working on it and he will have it out as soon as he can. He has put out very in depth guides and the amount of options in GTA probably takes a ton of time to sort through at that level.

Open world games are the hardest to do comparisons on (especially grabbing comparative images) and add to that the sheer number of variable settings PLUS sliders and I really don't envy Andy's job one bit.

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

 

[Qassim]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

Yeah - I can't imagine how much work it would take to do this. Either way, I'm looking forward to it, always enjoy those articles!

 

[Seanspeed]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

I hear ya man. I've never spent so much time adjusting settings and doing comparisons as I have with this game. I think I've got a good setup and then I go down the street in the game and some flaw pops up, sending me back to the drawing board.

 

[Dick Justice]

what settings are you using to get 60fps in the desert?

Specs are 2GB 770, i7 4770K and 16GB RAM (The game usually runs at 60 with Post FX at very high, but night in the desert and other particular moments necessitate bringing it down to high).

 

[LilJoka]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

This will be appreciated by many!

 

[iNvid02]

Overclocked at all.

I was so I disabled the OC but it doesn't solve it, it's not a frequent problem just random and mostly during online sessions where you're heading back to a menu

I don't think anything in my system causes it

 

[Asskicker]

Yep, I encountered that bug yesterday, it's like the game renderes another texture on top of the floor depending at which angle you look at it, nothing game breaking though.

Yeah, same here. Really odd!

 

[Betta Lines]

Has anyone found that if they change a setting that causes a momentary black screen, but not a restart (such as soft shadows), the framerate improves significantly?

I thought it was simply because I'd dropped down a setting, but no... next time I started the game, it was on the lower setting, I ran into some frame drops, and turned it back to the higher setting, and the framerate was super smooth again. I then tried a few more, and it only seems to have an effect on the ones that cause a black screen.

So now, whenever I notice a big of chugging, I go to the options, switch a setting, hit apply to make it go black, and then switch it straight back, and it's all smooth again.

 

[Corpekata]

Has anyone found that if they change a setting that causes a momentary black screen, but not a restart (such as soft shadows), the framerate improves significantly?

I thought it was simply because I'd dropped down a setting, but no... next time I started the game, it was on the lower setting, I ran into some frame drops, and turned it back to the higher setting, and the framerate was super smooth again. I then tried a few more, and it only seems to have an effect on the ones that cause a black screen.

So now, whenever I notice a big of chugging, I go to the options, switch a setting, hit apply to make it go black, and then switch it straight back, and it's all smooth again.

Which setting are you using for this?

 

[CyanideFuse]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

Your work is much appreciated and I look forward to the information you produce. I can't say I envy you!

 

[Rizzi]

And that's the game crashing. Again.

 

[Enco]

I don't know why but the game seems blurry AND jaggy.

NPC faces in first person look blurred and have no detail.

Posters/signs from far away look all messed up with weird jaggedness.

No idea why.

 

[Kezen]

I have been feeling the same, it's like AF isn't working or something, when I watch other gameplay videos it seems so much crisper despite me using higher settings.

It's the DOF I think which blurs a few meters away from you.

 

[ussjtrunks]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

Do you by any chance know what causes the micro stutter while driving, cant seem to play in borderless window mode at all

Fullscreen works fine but the vsync is all screwy and flops inbetween 60 and 30 until I alt tab out

 

[CyanideFuse]

And that's the game crashing. Again.

What error is the launcher.txt file saying for the crash; can be found in My Documents/Rockstar Games/GTA V ?

I keep getting D3DERR_DEVICELOST (and an nVidia driver crash). It seems to happen only when I play in first-person view.

What view are you in?

 

[LilJoka]

What error is the launcher.txt file saying for the crash; can be found in My Documents/Rockstar Games/GTA V ?

I keep getting D3DERR_DEVICELOST (and an nVidia driver crash). It seems to happen only when I play in first-person view.

What view are you in?

It's possible the problem is the GPU driver. Have you tried to use Display Driver Uninstaller to completely remove the GPU drivers and install a fresh copy?

 

[spuckthew]

I love how this game exposes unstable overclocks.

My game doesn't work anymore and we have the same specs. 16GB, 3770K, GTX 970. Stable for 150+ games. I run a clean system with no overclocks. I verified my GTAV Steam files cache.

I was forced to update and now the game I spent hard earned money on works for 15 minutes at a time. Maybe more maybe less. Let's call it 10 crashes since the patch.

I run the same settings as you because they were flawless for me. I'm pretty fucking pissed.

And as much as I would like you to be right, you're wrong.

He is right, though - at least in my case. I had very few BSODs for the two years that I've had my system overclocked (and only mildly to boot), but GTA5 just seems unable to run for an extended period of time if the OC is even just remotely unstable.

Yesterday I thought I was getting somewhere because I updated my BIOS and tweaked a few voltages (some that I've never touched before) and I had the game on for just over 2 hours before I called it a night and exited gracefully. Contrast the night before, I'd barely make it 20 minutes before BSOD'ing. I spent a long time tweaking and I completed no more than 3 Cinebench runs before hitting issues, but a some more voltage adjustments and I was able to pass 16 runs before I got bored and dived back into the game (where I then got the aforementioned 2 hours of play in).

This morning, however, I spent an hour on the game and then had to go out. I decided to leave it on and see if my PC crashed when I got back. It hadn't. 20 minutes after playing again, though, and I got a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR. Thinking it might be my RAM, which I had running at stock 1333MHz 1.5v, I did Memtest86...Reached 10 passes (or 40 minutes) with absolutely no errors. Again, I stopped due to boredom but I've never known Memtest86 to reveal RAM issues after about 3 passes - most RAM configurations I've seen error do so usually within the first few minutes.

On Tuesday I'm going to swap the RAM in my work PC (some Crucial 2x4GB 1600MHz kit) and see if I'm any better off. If I still have BSODs with different RAM, then I can say with absolute certainty that it's my CPU OC causing my issues.

 

[ktroopa]

Indeed, this guide is incredibly challenging. Between the 130 or so settings, influence of one setting on another, the need to restart the game, and the constantly changing game world, comparisons and benchmarking are extremely difficult. Even with Director Mode and quick saves you can't guarantee an unchanged experience, and Director Mode's fixed times prevent you from checking out some stuff and accurately gauging its impact.

So far I've taken GBs of screenshots, done hundreds of manual and automated benchmarks, and recorded nearly 500GB of video footage in an effort to accurately measure visual changes and performance. I believe I've now got a good grasp of what everything does, but even now when I'm writing I still find myself needing to go back to retest something or grab a new angle in shots to better demonstrate the changes.

I really want to finish it, but there's no point doing it half-assed.

Greatness awaits. I am sure it will be worth the wait. Thanks for the update ANDY