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[Soodanim]

Click on .exe to online/story mode selection: 32 seconds
Click on .exe to in-game: 57 seconds

I'm using the RSC version. My times include verifying/logging in.

Cheers, I appreciate you taking the time to measure that. When you say significantly faster than HDD, are we talking double times for that? I can't decide what to do! I know I could easily free up another 20GB on SSD which would leave me 50GB free with GTAV installed, so maybe that's the way to go.

 

[LilJoka]

Is it just me or the fps is smoother now after the patch? Overall more consistent, yet to see it drop below 58-59fps.

 

[BIGWORM]

Cheers, I appreciate you taking the time to measure that. When you say significantly faster than HDD, are we talking double times for that? I can't decide what to do! I know I could easily free up another 20GB on SSD which would leave me 50GB free with GTAV installed, so maybe that's the way to go.

I'm talking at least another good 30-35 seconds on HDD to fully load into SP.

 

[Friend of Sonic]

I'm talking at least another good 30-35 seconds on HDD to fully load into SP.

Wow. I hate that load time. That's a life changer.

 

[Rhaknar]

was looking at the face off thread and at the pictures of grass comparison between ps4 and XB1, is that what the grass setting does on PC? it makes it so theres alot more grass out in the countryside?

if so I need to bump it up then, I thought it was just a quality thing, but if its a quantity thing, I like my grass to be plentiful (no pun intended lol)

 

[AndyBNV]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

 

[Stevey]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Sweet

 

[Dave_6]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Awesome! Can't wait to check it out!

 

[Philtastic]

This whole thread explains the reason why i don't PC game

It's a bloody ball ache lol

Options are completely optional. You can just install the game and play it using default settings and it will look good and probably beat 30 fps.

If you're talking about install problems or bugs, well, there's a lot of that on console these days as well.

 

[Enco]

Options are completely optional. You can just install the game and play it using default settings and it will look good and probably beat 30 fps.

If you're talking about install problems or bugs, well, there's a lot of that on console these days as well.

To be fair he has a valid point.

PC gaming is filled with issues and is one of the weakest points.

 

[Purest 78]

This whole thread explains the reason why i don't PC game

It's a bloody ball ache lol

When I check this thread I come away thinking the same thing.

 

[AJLma]

This whole thread explains the reason why i don't PC game

It's a bloody ball ache lol

What're you talking about?

The tweaking and testing is the best part .

 

[TronLight]

This shot though:

 

[Kezen]

In Grand Theft Auto V though, no AO shadows are to be found because of a game application bug. Expect it to be fixed in a forthcoming update, at which time we'll reevaluate its impact and update the guide.

Weird. AO works on my system, it looks a bit blocky though.
Shame about no HBAO+. :/

 

[Dick Justice]

Weird. AO works on my system, it looks a bit blocky though.
Shame about no HBAO+. :/

The supposed lack of AO would explain why there's no performance difference when turned off.

 

[chromatic9]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

In the feature graphic it looks like they're taking in the guide the guide too and Trevor is thinking I'll need more than a beer for this.

Thanks very much Andy

 

[Krappadizzle]

oh crap with MSAA off I can play in 3840 x 2160 with barely any drops (drops to 55 while driving), what sorcery is this?

So jelly. Wish I could play at the resolution, but I'm more than happy with performance at 1080p.

for those maintaining a locked 60 while driving, what settings did you have to lower to acheive it?

Really depends on the card/cpu combo more than anything. At 1080p I can max the game out mostly completely, literally ever slider maxed except Long shadows/High Detail Streaming While Flying/Extended Shadow differences Off. MSAA is at X4(and looks great)/reflection MSAAX8, Nvidia PCSS. I could raise the sliders if I wanted at the cost of MSAA and I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. All of that at 1080p60 fps. It's amazing.

But it's on a 780/i74770k combo.

 

[epmode]

To be fair he has a valid point.

PC gaming is filled with issues and is one of the weakest points.

It's relative. Modern PC games are precisely a billion times easier to run and tweak than old games and it's incredibly rare to run into something that just doesn't work.

Most of the stuff in this thread is from people trying to get the perfect framerate with their hardware, something that is entirely impossible with console games where you're stuck with whatever the developer managed.

Honestly, I love tweaking graphics stuff. And judging from the niggly bullshit I've seen in Digital Foundry threads, lots of people on this forum would feel the same if they could get over their Stockholm Syndrome. Get consoles for exclusives, PC for everything else.

 

[OldLogos]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Thanks Andy! Been eagerly waiting for it!

 

[Kezen]

The supposed lack of AO would explain why there's no performance difference when turned off.

Look at the shots in the Eurogamer article. You can clearly see AO.

 

[Philtastic]

To be fair he has a valid point.

PC gaming is filled with issues and is one of the weakest points.

Which issues are you referring to and which ones aren't on console? Because this is what GTA V on console was like for many:
http://kotaku.com/users-of-older-xbox-360s-say-grand-theft-auto-v-crashes-1366187910
http://www.gamepur.com/news/12101-g...also-be-due-bad-disc-or-failing-x360ps3-.html
http://videogamemanor.com/gta-5-freezing-solutions

Most people here are tweaking not because they have to but because they WANT to to get the best graphics for their hardware. The default settings in many games are very conservative such that the large majority of people can just start playing right away and have great performance.

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Sweet! Thanks for doing all of this work! I didn't want to do such a thorough analysis myself since many of the settings required a lengthy game restart so I'm glad that you did it for us

 

[[Asmodean]]

Man, anyone who hasn't tried the Nvidia PCSS shadows yet, do yourself a favour and give it a try. PCSS + High Resolution Shadows + Shadow Distance maxed out, looks amazing. Really adds to the overall scene lighting.

I actually think they might be the best looking shadows/shading that I've seen in a game, thus far.

If anyone's looking for a HW to settings reference, I'm running everything maxed - except for Grass is on Very High(ultra's not worth the fps hit in scenic areas for the minor visual difference imo), and HW AA is disabled, at 1440p. Average frame rate is 60fps, it can dip to the 40/50's in nature-heavy areas, though.

i7 3770k @ 4.4
GTX 970 Strix @ 1500/1983
8GB 2133 CL9 1T

Some graphical settings are buggy atm (well known, I guess). Such as VSync, AF, and Triple Buffer, etc. Force AF/VSync from the driver, and if you don't want to use adaptive vsync to sort out the buffering issue - just tab out, and back into the game when you load it up, to fix it.


#Edit:

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Thanks for the hard work, man =). I actually feel bad for the effort that you must have gone through, to do this. I do tweaking also, and this game is quite annoying to do accurate comparisons for some of the settings, etc.

 

[LilJoka]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!

Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Amazing job.

Interesting to see for sure that some settings had literally no effect on my TV when viewin your controlled screenshots.

Also interesting to see extended shadows are not having much impact. Ive put this to 50% on my PC now, still locked 60fps.

I will stick to high resolution shaows off since with softest shadows setting there isnt a noticeable impact.

 

[Rhaknar]

So jelly. Wish I could play at the resolution, but I'm more than happy with performance at 1080p.

I actually dropped down to 1440p because I was getting drops to the low 50s driving around with lots of cars or crashes, so I imagine it would be even worse in highways or in the countryside

 

[viveks86]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Fantastic work. Very thorough with relevant comparison shots. Any chance Nvidia is gonna come up with some optimization for the grass?

Also, the game seems to be hitting all kinds of bottlenecks. When I crank all the settings up, quite often I see both GPU (Titan X SLI) and CPU (5930k) underutilized, but fps dropping below 60. Any thoughts on that?

 

[Zimbardo]

This whole thread explains the reason why i don't PC game

It's a bloody ball ache lol

with a demanding game like this, it can be a bit of a pain in the ass (for most people) if you're trying to get a steady 60fps.

but if you aren't fussy over 60fps ...you can easily set vsync to 'half' giving you a steady 30fps and then allowing you to increase graphic quality that you couldn't get away with @ 60fps.

things like that are part of the beauty of PC gaming, imo. you can't do anything like that on consoles, and are stuck with whatever the devs throw at you.

 

[Justinh]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

I hadn't heard about these before I saw them mentioned in this thread. This is really neat. Thanks for the hard work.

 

[SoulClap]

Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

Is this a poll? I vote for Witcher 3.

 

[[Asmodean]]

Is this a poll? I vote for Witcher 3.

If it is a poll, I second that for The Witcher 3 ;p

 

[Jibbed]

Runs like a dream for me, getting 50-60fps with V-sync on. 1080p with a mix of High and Very High, maxed all LOD bars.

i7 2600k @ 3.4GHz
GTX 770 2GB (stock clocks)
16GB RAM

 

[chromatic9]

For the extended distance scaling, 70% looks to be a good choice in the Nvidia guide.

Going to put the extended shadows to 100

 

[Hattori]

Does any one know what the latest patch changed because the game is running much smoother, in fact I have Ultra Grass and High Res/Long Shadows in it still running smoothly

I have:
I5 4690k
GTX 970
1080p Resolution

 

[Kezen]

Does any one know what the latest patch changed because the game is running much smoother, in fact I have Ultra Grass and High Res/Long Shadows in it still running smoothly

I have:
I5 4690k
GTX 970
1080p Resolution

It's possible AO has been disabled. I'm sure it worked prior to the latest patch.
I've yet to run the game extensively with it installed.

 

[Hattori]

It's possible AO has been disabled. I'm sure it worked prior to the latest patch.
I've yet to run the game extensively with it installed.

It's on high at moment... it's never been this smooth for me so I'm quite curious (58-60 everywhere except high vegetation areas where it drops to between 48-52)

 

[AndyBNV]

Thanks Andy! Been eagerly waiting for it!

Thanks everyone, seeing the positive feedback makes these things worth it. Lookin' at a solid week of work for this one thanks to the metric ton of settings (workload me likes the Metro way of doing things; enthusiast me likes this way with lots of settings with a single function)

RE: AO

It might be baked, or the detail level options are broken. Regardless, we've been told there's a bug and it'll be fixed. Here you can see the current difference between detail levels:

http://international.download.nvidi...-interactive-comparison-1-high-vs-normal.html

http://international.download.nvidi...-interactive-comparison-2-high-vs-normal.html

http://international.download.nvidi...-interactive-comparison-3-high-vs-normal.html

Spoiler

There isn't one

Fantastic work. Very thorough with relevant comparison shots. Any chance Nvidia is gonna come up with some optimization for the grass?

Also, the game seems to be hitting all kinds of bottlenecks. When I crank all the settings up, quite often I see both GPU (Titan X SLI) and CPU (5930k) underutilized, but fps dropping below 60. Any thoughts on that?

We're always looking for optimizations, so never say never.

Regarding your performance, I reckon it's probably to do with draw calls or some such. I haven't had the time to dive into specifics, but I know from some general testing that the game scales well with CPU OCs and cores, but only to a point. Definitely suggests a bottleneck in some other part of the chain, and draw calls would be the most likely culprit.

 

[Dick Justice]

If anisotropic filtering is enabled via the control panel, does the in-game option still need to be enabled? I ask because I turned it off in-game to test, and the effect was disabled despite being enabled in the CP.

Also do you know why a bunch of people would have had performance drops after the first patch?

Really appreciate the guide BTW, very eye-opening on a lot of things.

 

[Dr Dogg]

Fucking hell Andy no wonder that took you a while, that has to be the most indepth article I've seen on just a single game. I take my metaphorical hat off to you sir.

 

[CarbonFire]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Awesome Andy, thanks for the hard work!

This convinced me to give DSR a shot, the difference seemed quite noticeable over the 1080p native. If I play with my settings a bit on my 780ti, I think I can still hit that magic locked 60, now with more clarity!

 

[AndyBNV]

If anisotropic filtering is enabled via the control panel, does the in-game option still need to be enabled? I ask because I turned it off in-game to test, and the effect was disabled despite being enabled in the CP.

Also do you know why a bunch of people would have had performance drops after the first patch?

Really appreciate the guide BTW, very eye-opening on a lot of things.

Shouldn't need it enabled in-game in 99.9% of games as NVCPL's function is an override.

 

[Gumbie]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Thanks Andy! I just want you to know (and you can pass this on to your bosses) your communication with gaf and the time you take to do these guides is a very nice perk for an nvidia gpu owner. My last few cards have been nvidia and when I'm looking at my next upgrade things like this are a definite plus in the green column.

 

[Zom]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Daaaang now I know how crappy my game looks, need to change my gpu again lol

 

[icecold1983]

Great guide as usual. hopefully patches fix some of the problems

edit - Andy, what happened to the recommended settings chart you usually conclude your guides with? geforce exp settings seem way off.

 

[Loris146]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Thank you andy. My GTX 670 at 30 fps is still a fucking queen...

 

[viveks86]

Regarding your performance, I reckon it's probably to do with draw calls or some such. I haven't had the time to dive into specifics, but I know from some general testing that the game scales well with CPU OCs and cores, but only to a point. Definitely suggests a bottleneck in some other part of the chain, and draw calls would be the most likely culprit.

Yeah I guessed the same earlier in the thread. Still good to hear it from someone who actually knows what he's talking about

Direct X 12 can't come soon enough!

 

[Smokey]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Reading through it all to show support. I imagine you are sick of this game and I haven't even made it through the whole guide.

The grass quality....normal vs High+ is like lolwut

Is there a specific reason why you choose the 2880x1620 resolution for your bench marking?

Kudos on an amazing guide man

 

[The Llama]

I've cleared the final hurdle, it's here!



Now, what's next? Project Cars? Witcher 3?!

P.S. If anyone's awesome at Photoshop and has the time to make a better feature graphic I'll happily use it.

Thanks, I enjoyed reading through this a lot!

Spoiler

Going to adjust 2 or 3 settings on my AMD GPU because of it >_>

 

[Rhaknar]

I assume grass quality only affects your performance once you hit the countryside? I bumped it up to ultra earlier and didn't see a difference in fps (I'm only at the very beginning)

 

[DeaviL]

Is there any difference in high vs very high grass quality?
Cause i can't see it and i'd rather save those frames if there really isn't any noticeable difference.

 

[AndyBNV]

Reading through it all to show support. I imagine you are sick of this game and I haven't even made it through the whole guide.

The grass quality....normal vs High+ is like lolwut

Kudos on an amazing guide man

The open world actually allowed me to avoid all the story grind and repetitive replaying that I have in a linear game, and I've waited for this game for a damn long time so you can bet your ass I'm gonna play it properly soon

 

[viveks86]

I assume grass quality only affects your performance once you hit the countryside? I bumped it up to ultra earlier and didn't see a difference in fps (I'm only at the very beginning)

Correct. Run the benchmark if you don't want to drive all the way up north. You will see noticeable drops during the Vinewwod flyover and the penultimate segment with the jet.