# Grand Theft Auto V Performance Analysis



## W1zzard (Apr 15, 2015)

In this article, we put the GTX Titan X, R9 295X2, GTX 980, R9 290X, GTX 970, R9 290, GTX 960 and R9 285 through Grand Theft Auto V. We do so at resolutions of 1600x900, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 4K to assess what hardware you need to play this recently released top-title.

*Show full review*


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## NC37 (Apr 15, 2015)

Wow, Rockstar can actually do a decent PC port if they try...never thought I'd see the day. So used to the sloppy ports they've done time and time again.


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## The Quim Reaper (Apr 15, 2015)

> Single GPU 4K is also possible using the Titan X, but I'd recommend a GTX 970 SLI



My gamble has paid off!!

Back in January I added a second Asus Strix 970 to my rig in the hope of being able to play GTA V at 1440p 60fps and maybe 4K @30fps, to now know that 970SLI and 4K are just about the best price/performance option out there for this game is great news!.

Now all I need to see is if upgrading to a i7 4790K is worth it or whether my i5 4690K is just fine.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Apr 15, 2015)

NC37 said:


> Wow, Rockstar can actually do a decent PC port if they try...never thought I'd see the day. So used to the sloppy ports they've done time and time again.


If we were living in the GTX280 days, and GTAV was released, I am pretty sure people would say "Performance sucks, what a sloppy port.". GTA4 in max settings imo, was ahead of its time.

GTA3, Vice City and SA were decent ports as well imo.


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## jigar2speed (Apr 15, 2015)

Thank you for the review - I have a query - what was the CPU usage while playing GTA V ? Far cry 4 shows 70% cpu usage on i5 4670K.

The reason to ask this question is that i am doubting that my 4 Cores CPU will hold good in future, i might have to pull the trigger for 8 cores CPU in a year or 2.


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## ZoneDymo (Apr 15, 2015)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> If we were living in the GTX280 days, and GTAV was released, I am pretty sure people would say "Performance sucks, what a sloppy port.". GTA4 in max settings imo, was ahead of its time.
> 
> GTA3, Vice City and SA were decent ports as well imo.



I so agree man, people are honestly rather weird when it comes to performance conclusions.
GTA4 could have just had console visuals with a small small bump and everyone would be able to run it just fine, just rename what is now Medium in GTA4 to Very High and people would suddenly deem it a good port?
Its like they dont judge it for the quality of the visuals etc, just if the highest settings can be done by current hardware.

Also GTA4 had the same system with tracking video memory and it also showed which settings affected what PC component (cpu, gpu, ram).
Great system, btw also used in Max Payne 3 which is also a good port imo.

Baffels me that such a system, where it shows what settings affects what component, is not yet a standard for all PC games.


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## AsRock (Apr 15, 2015)

NC37 said:


> Wow, Rockstar can actually do a decent PC port if they try...never thought I'd see the day. So used to the sloppy ports they've done time and time again.



Yeah if you like the fact some of the cars drive like they are on a pivot, It does look nice and maybe the story is better than GTA 4 but from what i been seeing the rest of the game sucks compared.



Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> If we were living in the GTX280 days, and GTAV was released, I am pretty sure people would say "Performance sucks, what a sloppy port.". GTA4 in max settings imo, was ahead of its time.
> 
> GTA3, Vice City and SA were decent ports as well imo.




BUT GTA 5 has lost what GTA 4 had and still has that console game play.

And GTA4 plays really well on today's hardware and it maybe not  look as pretty but the game play is tons better.


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## EzioAs (Apr 15, 2015)

Maybe I'm blind, but I can't seem to find what settings the game was benchmarked?


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## KrachB00Mente (Apr 15, 2015)

The cake is a lie.
As is see it, the performance is nowhere close to real life performance. The GTA V Benchmark produces much higher Framerates that the actual game does.
Max Detail (and i mean Max 1080p 4x MSAA everything to the far right) produces slowdowns and on my 980.
980 SLI on the other hand seems to be above 60fps all the time. Vsync on so i don't know what is the limit.
What i can say that a single Gtx 980 (Strix in my case ) is not enough to play 1080p 4x MSAA at 60FPS with Vsync on.
If it does 110fps in some scenes - the normal behavior is to drop below 60fps while actually playing.

The game itself scales extremely well with SLI and runs perfectly smooth while looking great even on older hardware.

(Testet on 5820k @4,3ghz 16gb DDR4 Asus X99 Win8.1)


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## st2000 (Apr 15, 2015)

as i saw from benches gta v depends more on cpu power cause there is no such difference like in metro 2033(and i cant say that gta v on ultra is something epic - it's just technical progress and i cant understand why single 980 cant handle it 1080p60hzUltra)
hooray we need cpu progress for games, hope intel will give us it - not that shit that it released for last 4 years, compare it for ex with 1996-2000, 2000-2004, 2004-2009
hopefuly amd can compare in x86-64 but i dont believe in that(sad but true)


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## Cybrnook2002 (Apr 15, 2015)

EzioAs said:


> Maybe I'm blind, but I can't seem to find what settings the game was benchmarked?


Slide #2 - Only resolution changed


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## BigMack70 (Apr 15, 2015)

Just a PSA: if those settings are ultra as shown in the first screenshot on the settings page, your real in-game framerates are going to be MUCH lower than that benchmark in many places on the map, particularly out in the hills.


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## Trocien (Apr 15, 2015)

Uhhh.............so which Graphic Settings were those Performance FPS's for?  I do not see anywhere where it says.


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## EzioAs (Apr 15, 2015)

Cybrnook2002 said:


> Slide #2 - Only resolution changed



The top one then? Thanks. W1zzard could've stated it though so that it'll be clearer.


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## Cybrnook2002 (Apr 15, 2015)

EzioAs said:


> The top one then? Thanks. W1zzard could've stated it though so that it'll be clearer.


He will likely revise it a bit, was probably too excited to try and be the first on the market with game play benchmarks. (Was probably a bit tired and zonked when it was posted) So, that's probably why it's a little unclear for us.

@W1zzard


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## newtekie1 (Apr 15, 2015)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> If we were living in the GTX280 days, and GTAV was released, I am pretty sure people would say "Performance sucks, what a sloppy port.". GTA4 in max settings imo, was ahead of its time.
> 
> GTA3, Vice City and SA were decent ports as well imo.



I was just going to say similar.  The thing is GTA IV had basically the same level of adjustability, and Rockstar came right out and said they didn't expect the highest settings to be playable or even really used.  They only included/allowed the highest settings because they wanted to show what the engine was capable of.  But everyone whined about how it was a terrible port because max settings weren't playable.

But the fact was the game was playable on a wide range of hardware, Rockstar actually put a lot of effort into optimizing the game so it would run on low end hardware.  And really, if they had just limited the maximum settings to say 75% of what they did, there would have been no complaining about GTA IV being unoptimized...but simply limiting max settings is not optimization...

Hell, I played through GTX IV the first time on a Athlon x2 4400+(3.5 Years Old at GTA IV's release) and a HD3850(2 years old at GTA IV's release).  And even with that older hardware it still looked WAY better than the console version of the game.


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## vega22 (Apr 15, 2015)

my mate said his 970 is hitting the 500mbgate vram all the time and crippling his fps.

did you notice much stuttering with that too or did you limit the settings so prevent it happening?


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## erocker (Apr 15, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> my mate said his 970 is hitting the 500mbgate vram all the time and crippling his fps.
> 
> did you notice much stuttering with that too or did you limit the settings so prevent it happening?


How? In the options there's a little graph claming how much vram the game will use based on settings. Tell him to set things under 3.5Gb's. Easy.


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## vega22 (Apr 15, 2015)

well some people expect £600s worth brand new gpu hardware to be able to max out new games so they crank it all to 11.


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## Antykain (Apr 15, 2015)

I have about 10 hours or so of gametime in GTAV and really loving it so far.  I've played, and own, the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game and there is a pretty good margin of IQ difference betweeen the PS4 version and the PC version for sure.  Quite impressed with Rockstar and this release of GTAV on PC so far.  It's does have some issues with hard FPS drops in some areas and other random times, but I'm sure that'll be stamped out with future patches, hopefully.   I'm playing at Max quality settings with the rig in my 'System Specs' to the left.  Ignoring the Video RAM recommended msg.   

When GTAIV was released back in 2008, I built a AMD rig for it.. I was rolling with a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE paired with a EVGA 9800 GTX.. Used to love that build.  Played GTAIV pretty well, not completely maxed, of course, but mostly high settings if my memory serves me correctly.  Good Times..


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## Fluffmeister (Apr 15, 2015)

Couple more:

http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/grand-theft-auto-v-test-gpu.html

http://pclab.pl/art57777.html


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## W1zzard (Apr 15, 2015)

Oh yeah, I forgot to post the settings indeed. It's very high on everything, no MSAA, just FXAA. MSAA really doesn't make sense with its huge performance hit.


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## BiggieShady (Apr 15, 2015)

erocker said:


> How? In the options there's a little graph claming how much vram the game will use based on settings. Tell him to set things under 3.5Gb's. Easy.


Maybe also additionally consult this graph to predict the "real" vram consumption




Light blue is what the game says, dark blue is real


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## Rauelius (Apr 15, 2015)

I'd like to see CPU benchmarks. It's be nice to see if a game ported from a console with 8-Cores will take advantage of the 8-Cores of the FX-8350 and the 8-Threads of the i7 4790k.


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## BiggieShady (Apr 15, 2015)

Rauelius said:


> I'd like to see CPU benchmarks. It's be nice to see if a game ported from a console with 8-Cores will take advantage of the 8-Cores of the FX-8350 and the 8-Threads of the i7 4790k.




 
Source


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## silapakorn (Apr 16, 2015)

This game is worth upgrading your rig for. The eye candy is overwhelming. Best looking sandbox game out there.


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## kgbird (Apr 16, 2015)

I think the AMD R9-295x2 tests are wrong.  The R9-295x is two cards and crossfire doesn't work in windowed mode. All of the settings show that resolutions less than 4k were windowed so you only used one of the GPU's for those tests.

--Rick


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## W1zzard (Apr 16, 2015)

kgbird said:


> I think the AMD R9-295x2 tests are wrong.  The R9-295x is two cards and crossfire doesn't work in windowed mode. All of the settings show that resolutions less than 4k were windowed so you only used one of the GPU's for those tests.
> 
> --Rick


we used fullscreen of course. the settings screenshots are just to illustrate what settings are available (and i used windowed to make it easier to screenshot)


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## kgbird (Apr 16, 2015)

I figured as much but the numbers look really weird in that the 290 and 295 aren't as far apart as I would have expected unless your doing 1440p or 4k so I had to ask.  Thanks for the quick response.

I think AMD has some work todo on their drivers.

--Rick


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## W1zzard (Apr 16, 2015)

kgbird said:


> I figured as much but the numbers look really weird in that the 290 and 295 aren't as far apart as I would have expected unless your doing 1440p or 4k so I had to ask.  Thanks for the quick response.
> 
> I think AMD has some work todo on their drivers.
> 
> --Rick


yeah at lower res CF doesn't seem to scale a lot


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## raptori (Apr 16, 2015)

W1zzard did you set the texture on very high on GTX960 with 2GB yet you still get that 75fps@1920x1080 ? didn't that 2GB run out , I have GTX680 which suppose to performe better than GTX960 yet I'm unable to get 75 as an avarge .

EDIT : Ok I see you used in game benchmark for that FPS.


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## Conti027 (Apr 16, 2015)

W1zzard said:


> Oh yeah, I forgot to post the settings indeed. It's very high on everything, no MSAA, just FXAA. MSAA really doesn't make sense with its huge performance hit.


I'm guessing all advanced settings were off?


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## Steevo (Apr 17, 2015)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> If we were living in the GTX280 days, and GTAV was released, I am pretty sure people would say "Performance sucks, what a sloppy port.". GTA4 in max settings imo, was ahead of its time.
> 
> GTA3, Vice City and SA were decent ports as well imo.




Quite the contrary, my 1100T and 7970 overclocked are running it on Very High settings with 8X AF and maintaining 40-60FPS with the average closer to 60. My CPU is probably the biggest hurdle currently.

Fraps Benchmark, being as hard on it as I can, driving really fast with a fresh game run, around downtown. Vsync on.

2015-04-17 00:09:47 - GTA5
Frames: 11724 - Time: 240000ms - Avg: 48.850 - Min: 30 - Max: 61

I can provide the csv files too.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 17, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> my mate said his 970 is hitting the 500mbgate vram all the time and crippling his fps.
> 
> did you notice much stuttering with that too or did you limit the settings so prevent it happening?



What settings is he using, and what are the rest of his specs?  Because I've played a few hours with all the settings maxed @1440p and basically been pegged at 100FPS(vsync on, 100Hz monitor) and no stutter.



marsey99 said:


> well some people expect £600s worth brand new gpu hardware to be able to max out new games so they crank it all to 11.



From his post it sounds like he is using a single 970, which $600 and definitely isn't going to max this game out(well maybe close to max @1080p).


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## TheGuruStud (Apr 17, 2015)

2 thread game? I won't be buying this crap.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 17, 2015)

TheGuruStud said:


> 2 thread game? I won't be buying this crap.



Umm...look at the results, it is playable on 2-core CPUs, but the game definitely benefits from 4-Cores.  This is probably the first game to actually take advantage of more than 2 cores.

That is why the i3(2c/4t) 3.8GHz is outperformed by the i5(4c/4t) 3.0GHz by almost 10FPS.


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## NC37 (Apr 18, 2015)

Wow, you praise GTAIV's port yet everyone at the time it came out said it was one of the worst Rockstar did. Heck the port was so bad you couldn't really play it on anything less than quad cores. I remember playing it on a X2 5000+ and it was utter crap. Then I popped in a Phenom X4 and it went from a sloppy mess to actually playable. Sure it looked better either way but the game was not playable on dualies.  

You look at it now and would say it was awesome that it used all the cores. Trouble was, that wasn't how it was back then. It wasn't because Rockstar designed it from the start to use quads on PC. It was because the consoles were at least triple cores. They didn't want to take time to translate it so they did the bare minimum. If it didn't work right, they didn't care. People would be forced to upgrade to quads to get it to be somewhat playable. Not to mention it was just plain buggy anyways. 

LA Noire was another horrific port but it wasn't as messy as GTAIV. Its just more in dire need of a HD texture pack.

I suspect GTAV got a better port due to the fact the consoles are all x86 right now. Unlike GTAIV which was on RISC hardware, they wouldn't have to invest in translating it to x86 because PS4 and Xbone both already are on x86. Probably why it paid off to do a PC version first internally then scale it down for PS4/Xbone.


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## vega22 (Apr 18, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> What settings is he using, and what are the rest of his specs?  Because I've played a few hours with all the settings maxed @1440p and basically been pegged at 100FPS(vsync on, 100Hz monitor) and no stutter.
> 
> From his post it sounds like he is using a single 970, which $600 and definitely isn't going to max this game out(well maybe close to max @1080p).



when did £600 mean $600?

£300 each 970s dude, and 2 fail to max gta 5 at 1080....

all max with no aa and it is a "stuttery mess" he said. but he is also thankful for the ram bar so he can drop settings accordingly. other than that i know not what settings he used as that is all he has said about it.

shame really as having seen it run on a rog swift with 2 980s it does look sweet at 144hz.


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## Steevo (Apr 18, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> when did £600 mean $600?
> 
> £300 each 970s dude, and 2 fail to max gta 5 at 1080....
> 
> ...




Based on the overwhelming reviews and testing from users and some sites it seems your friend is having other issues. Anyone thankful for a RAM bar instead of running FRAPS, Afterburner, or some other tool is plain silly. 

60Hz and up will make little difference in GTA, you are better off running lower FPS with higher draw distance.


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## vega22 (Apr 18, 2015)

which reviews maxxed all the settings out and then ran their tests?

from what i have seen all reviews tailored the settings to show most cards in their best light and none tried to use the game as the new crysis.


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## Steevo (Apr 18, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> which reviews maxxed all the settings out and then ran their tests?
> 
> from what i have seen all reviews tailored the settings to show most cards in their best light and none tried to use the game as the new crysis.



Well first you have to understand that at 4K AA isn't really needed, so your premise is flawed to begin with, at 1080 my single 7970 is pushing it nicely with advanced settings turned on, and considering its about 2/3 of what a 970 can handle there is no reason a 970 shouldn't be able to run almost maxxed settings at 1080 with 2X AA or something.

But back to the idea that we need a "new crysis" thats a load of crap for the time being, once the modding community gets their hands into GTA5 I fully expect it will be able to put a hurting on QuadSLI Titans, or Xfire 295X2's. 








http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4K-NoMSAA.jpg

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1080p-NoMSAA.jpg

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1080p-8xMSAA.jpg

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4K-2xMSAA.jpg


A run with all settings maxxed, it kept giving me warnings so I had to use CCC to enable AA and AF, and pushed Tessellation to use application settings.


2015-04-17 19:42:23 - GTA5
Frames: 10260 - Time: 240000ms - Avg: 42.750 - Min: 27 - Max: 61


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## vega22 (Apr 18, 2015)

thanks for the effort steevo 

but i think your assumption has somewhat missed my point. what is needed or not is a person opinion to each user, personally for me i hate aa as i find it just muddies the crispness of the images. to use the benchmark as a tool for comparison, one which will have legs going forward you want to use all the eye candy it has to offer so as to push the performance of the hardware to its limits. like people did with crysis and why it was a title used in reviews for a few years. now the flip side to that is no game wants to be the next crysis as it was a sales failure because of the fact it was so demanding.

much like how all the reviews which i have read have run card v card tests at reduced settings so as to show that hardware in a better light. i mean joe bloggs looks at those charts and he will think take those numbers as fact. were the settings all to 11 he would see lower numbers and think either the gpu are not so great or the game is a pig (like they did crysis).

imo to think the pc gaming world does not need a new crysis is silly. but i also do think this has kinda fell into that role atm. it is the new poster child for the "pc master race" banner carriers as it rightly should be i guess. its huge sandbox world, breath taking 4k eye candy and endless fun in mp are everything pc gaming is about. throw mod support on top and i can see many people losing weeks if not months to it. as we have already seen with many videos it puts the consoles to shame on high end pc hardware and really shows the future of what, i hope anyway, video games can do.

tahiti cards are still great cards for 1080 imo, was i still running 1200p i think i might still have mine tbh. after watching that tb vid i think i will try to talk my mate into moving his install to his revo drive as it is faster than his ssd. tb had what looked like massive drops in load and fps on his sli run which i would have to guess is a data bottleneck from his ssd too. he was getting lower lows in his vid with sli than the single 980 so it really does show that the game still has some issues.

as for skyrim and mods...that game was pushing dx9 near its limits out the box. the mods just show why dx9 needed to be replaced by a more efficient api imo.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 18, 2015)

NC37 said:


> Wow, you praise GTAIV's port yet everyone at the time it came out said it was one of the worst Rockstar did. Heck the port was so bad you couldn't really play it on anything less than quad cores. I remember playing it on a X2 5000+ and it was utter crap. Then I popped in a Phenom X4 and it went from a sloppy mess to actually playable. Sure it looked better either way but the game was not playable on dualies.
> 
> You look at it now and would say it was awesome that it used all the cores. Trouble was, that wasn't how it was back then. It wasn't because Rockstar designed it from the start to use quads on PC. It was because the consoles were at least triple cores. They didn't want to take time to translate it so they did the bare minimum. If it didn't work right, they didn't care. People would be forced to upgrade to quads to get it to be somewhat playable. Not to mention it was just plain buggy anyways.
> 
> ...



And I praised it back when it was released too.  Why?  Because, just like GTA V, it played on a wide range of hardware.  Like I said, my first play through was on a X2 4400+ and a HD3850.  The CPU was over 3 years old at the time and the GPU was 2 years old.  Not only was it playable, but it looked better than the console versions.  To say it was unplayable on dual-cores is total BS.  The only thing that made it unplayable on dual-cores was cranking the settings up.  If you left them at reasonable levels(levels still higher than the levels used on the consoles) the game played just fine on dual-cores.


Rockstar said from the beginning that maxing the game wasn't something the current hardware at the time could do.  They did this on purpose.  To allow the game to grow with hardware.  This is something we should have been applauding, it is something I wish more game developers would do, but instead everyone bitched because the game wouldn't run maxed out on their high end rig.  But it would run, and look damn good, if everything was at about 75% or high settings(not very high, just high).  The ironic thing is, GTA IV would have likely not receive any flak about being a bad port or "optimized" if they had just limited the settings available.  The game would have still looked fantastic in comparison to the consoles and yet it would have run on high end rigs.



marsey99 said:


> when did £600 mean $600?
> 
> £300 each 970s dude, and 2 fail to max gta 5 at 1080....
> 
> ...



Well $600 means £600 when two GTX970s cost $600.

Oh, and 2 don't fail to max GTA 5 at 1080, in fact they max it at 1440p.  I've been playing it on 1440p, max settings(FXAA, no MSAA), at 100Hz and it is smooth as can be.

I don't care what "your friend" says, it isn't a stuttery mess.  I don't think W1z would recommend SLI 970s for 4k if it was a stuttery mess at 1080p...


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## AsRock (Apr 18, 2015)

+1 
But i wish they added much better car damage models along with much better physics ( in the options ) more to what GTA 4 has. As to me it just looks pretty and with some laughs in SP and that's about it in fact i believe they have taken a step backwards to stop people bitching when they cannot max out their game lol.

As it is it's a $20 with addons aand it's the 1st GTA game i have done this with


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## vega22 (Apr 18, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> on a X2 4400+ and a HD3850.
> 
> Well $600 means £600 when two GTX970s cost $600.
> 
> I don't care what "your friend" says, it isn't a stuttery mess.  I don't think W1z would recommend SLI 970s for 4k if it was a stuttery mess at 1080p...



so you was one of the people who found gta 4 fine on a dual core too?

interesting as i found it to be a laggy mess on faster c2d than any amd x2 and it was only really playable for me with an x3 or quad core.

oh so you can read and not just look at the posts and make your own version of what it says, i am glad to see that at least...

because you seem to be one of the lucky ones who has not seen the last 500mb of ram issue it does not exist??

does that mean it aint really raining here if the sun is shining on your door too? lol

seeing as how w1z has already cleared up what settings the tests were ran at, and they were not all the way up it does not shock me to hear it can play the game at high res. but the kicker is this, aint nobody in their right mind going to go out today and pay £600 (less now as they have cut prices since the 500mb-gate) for 2 of these to not be able to run max settings. makes more sense to save £150 and take the 295 as that way you get about the same frames (more at higher res like 4k) and you can turn the setting up to fill all the vram without worry.

all that being said i care not what you say either, i will see what fell is on about this weekend and we can laugh at his decision to buy gimped hardware.


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## Steevo (Apr 18, 2015)

I built a quad core machine and a 1GB 4850 just to run GTA4, most of my current upgrades from my 5870 were to run GTA5 as well as a few other games. 

Also don't do jumps on sport bikes, or you die.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 18, 2015)

marsey99 said:


> so you was one of the people who found gta 4 fine on a dual core too?
> 
> interesting as i found it to be a laggy mess on faster c2d than any amd x2 and it was only really playable for me with an x3 or quad core.



Once you turned off that stupid game recording feature, and adjusted the settings to medium-low, yeah it played just fine on a dual core and looked awesome compared to the console versions.  Heck, they even put out a nice little guide on what the console equivalent settings where.  First off the consoles were only rendering at 720p, so since I was able to run it at 1366x768, I was already ahead of the game.  Then the consoles had the view distance set to 21 out of a possible 100!  I was able to run it at 25.  Detail distance on the consoles was only 10!  My rig let me run it at 20.  Render quality on the consoles was low, I could do medium.  It goes on like this for all the settings.  Basically my 3 year old dual-core and 2 year old GPU could run GTA IV at higher settings than the consoles.  That is pretty impressive.  Oh, and the consoles only got 20-30FPS, I was steady over 30.

If you didn't go crazy with the settings, and actually used reasonable settings, the game was playable on some rather low end hardware.  But _some_ people seem to think that if you can't run max settings on shit hardware the game must be an unoptimized crappy port...



marsey99 said:


> oh so you can read and not just look at the posts and make your own version of what it says, i am glad to see that at least...
> 
> because you seem to be one of the lucky ones who has not seen the last 500mb of ram issue it does not exist??
> 
> does that mean it aint really raining here if the sun is shining on your door too? lol



No, I just don't blame every performance problem on it because it really doesn't cause as much stutter as people say it does.

Again, W1z wouldn't be recommending SLI 970s for 4k at max settings(no MSAA) if there were noticeable stuttering, and if we believe "your friend" stuttering so bad at 1080p that the game isn't playable.

Oh, and if you don't believe W1z, the guys over at NCIX did a performance analysis too.  And you guessed it, they also recommend SLI 970s(or a Titan X) for 4k.  Man, you'd think if the 970s and the 0.5GB RAM issue was so bad, either W1z of the guys over at NCIX would have experienced...right...right?!?  But "your friend" says his 970s are to blame, so it must be.  Definitely no chance of it being some other problem.  Those professionals, that deal with graphics card testing FOR A LIVING, have no clue what they're talking about.  But "your friend", he's the source we should believe...




marsey99 said:


> seeing as how w1z has already cleared up what settings the tests were ran at, and they were not all the way up it does not shock me to hear it can play the game at high res.



You make it sound like he ran it on low settings.  The only settings not maxed out were MSAA(already explained why), Reflection Quality, Grass Quality, and PostFX.  And the only one of those that affect memory usage is Reflection Quality, and it doesn't make a big difference(and the visual difference is unnoticeable when playing the game).

And again, he ran it at 4k using almost maxed out settings.  Your claiming it is a stuttery mess at 1080p!  Even at absolute max settings, even with some MSAA, SLI 970s should be running just fine.  As Steevo pointed out, it seems your friend is having other issues.



marsey99 said:


> aint nobody in their right mind going to go out today and pay £600 (less now as they have cut prices since the 500mb-gate) for 2 of these to not be able to run max settings. makes more sense to save £150 and take the 295 as that way you get about the same frames (more at higher res like 4k) and you can turn the setting up to fill all the vram without worry.



The 295x2 has its own set of problems.  The first one being, at least here in The States, it is about $50 more than a pair of GTX970s.  Sure the 295x2 is about 15% faster at 4k than a pair of GTX970s _if _it stays at full speed constantly.  Which is can do in an open test bench, but once I put my 295x2 in my case it would throttle after about 15 minutes of gameplay and framerates would drop 10-15FPS.  I tried turning the fan around to pull in cool air, and managed to stop it from throttling as quickly, but it still throttled after 30-40 minutes of gameplay, and I don't think the rest of the components in my case were too happy with 500w+ of heat  being dumped in the case.  Plus when using the 295x2 my room got uncomfortably hot, which hasn't happened since I had my GTX470s...


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## FYFI13 (Apr 18, 2015)

jigar2speed said:


> Thank you for the review - I have a query - what was the CPU usage while playing GTA V ? Far cry 4 shows 70% cpu usage on i5 4670K.
> 
> The reason to ask this question is that i am doubting that my 4 Cores CPU will hold good in future, i might have to pull the trigger for 8 cores CPU in a year or 2.









i7 4790K @4,7GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM @2133MHz, GTX680 @1275MHz.

Game settings: 1080p, "normal" texture quality and all other settings at "high", FXAA, no MSAA. 85-110FPS while driving in city.


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## buggalugs (Apr 19, 2015)

Is this comparison test sponsored?


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## FYFI13 (Apr 19, 2015)

buggalugs said:


> Is this comparison test sponsored?


Yes, I've sent a crate of green bananas to W1zzard. Not sure if he received them though. Just to be fair, i wanted to send him a crate of red bananas too but couldn't find any in my local shop.


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## Sah7d (Apr 19, 2015)

Cybrnook2002 said:


> Slide #2 - Only resolution changed





> These are not the settings we used for performance testing, this page only illustrates the range of available settings


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## Cybrnook2002 (Apr 19, 2015)

Correct, w1zzard has since corrected the review since I posted that. Old news now....


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## jigar2speed (Apr 20, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Umm...look at the results, it is playable on 2-core CPUs, but the game definitely benefits from 4-Cores.  This is probably the first game to actually take advantage of more than 2 cores.
> 
> That is why the i3(2c/4t) 3.8GHz is outperformed by the i5(4c/4t) 3.0GHz by almost 10FPS.



Nope, Far cry 4 and the older gold - Metro 2033 used 4 cores.


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## xorbe (Apr 21, 2015)

TheGuruStud said:


> 2 thread game? I won't be buying this crap.



What, you want a game like Far Cry 4 that artificially refuses to launch for dual-core and tri-core owners?  (Unless the game is pirated, then the restriction is removed, but I think they were clever and broke something else in the game for pirates.)


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## newtekie1 (Apr 21, 2015)

xorbe said:


> Unless the game is pirated, then the restriction is removed, but I think they were clever and broke something else in the game for pirates.


The pirated versions still have the restriction, the hack is just easier to use with the pirated versions.



jigar2speed said:


> Nope, Far cry 4 and the older gold - Metro 2033 used 4 cores.


FarCry 4 definitely doesn't use for 4 cores, the just implemented a stupid restriction for 4 cores.  Using the hack and it runs just fine on a dual-core and there really isn't a noticeable performance degradation.

I'm not sure about Metro2033, but I don't seem to remember there being that big of a difference between a dual-core and a quad.


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## Jetster (Apr 21, 2015)

Well I ran the bench test and at 2560 X 1440 I get 60 - 80 fps. The same as I get in actual game play both story mode and on line. I also confirmed it with fraps.  Nice looking game


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## Krahl (Apr 21, 2015)

Running it at 1440P with quite high settings and its damn smooth. Not complaining one bit

GTA4 was ahead of its curse GPU demanding wise - was using at gtx260(896gb ram) when it came and it looked good. Then on gtx 460/570 - was brilliant looking. Never thought of it as a bad port

*edit* Can see some of my specs are old specs. updating now


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## Dextar (Apr 23, 2015)

Nvidia needs to just release the 980 Ti already. I've been waiting for a good single card solution for 1440p long enough.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Apr 24, 2015)

This could be one of the better open-world game for PC, albeit it's somewhat massive filesize. Graphic engine is one of the most highly scalable to date for the PC platform, so those who owns an entry grade, gaming ready PC should have no problem running the game, though you'll need an SSHD to load the game as traditional ones will take a little longer, which is the only trade-off. Ran the game using my Y50 is a breeze with everything on High, FXAA & V-Sync enabled. Smooth 60fps with small drop on rare occasions.


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