# [Solved] How to cap GTA V at 30fps



## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

My fps drop from 60 to 30fps from time to time, when this happens it's not smooth,
I'm not the only one: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/825809/pc-games/gta-v-low-fps-and-low-gpu-usage-/1/ 
I want it to cap at 30fps, can this be done with adding commandline -frameLimit to the commandline.txt?
If so how do I use it to let it cap at 30fps?

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/202518358-Available-Command-Lines-for-GTAV-on-PC

If this does not work, what other ways are there to cap it at 30fps?


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## animal007uk (Apr 19, 2015)

Commandline parameters can be added to the "commandline.txt" file in the root of the game folder. If this file doesn't exist, you can create it by right clicking in the game install directory, select New and select Text Document. Rename this file to commandline.txt

For the limiter i guess you would just add like this.

-frameLimit:30

No idea if you need a space between the line and the numbers as i don't own the game to test it.

If you have the steam version you might be able to add the line by right clicking on the game in steam then click propertise then click launch options and add the command there.


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

animal007uk said:


> Commandline parameters can be added to the "commandline.txt" file in the root of the game folder. If this file doesn't exist, you can create it by right clicking in the game install directory, select New and select Text Document. Rename this file to commandline.txt
> 
> For the limiter i guess you would just add like this.
> 
> ...



Ok so I tried that, it did not work But thanks.


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## animal007uk (Apr 19, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Ok so I tried that, it did not work But thanks.



Try a space between the line and the number so it looks like this -frameLimit: 30


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

animal007uk said:


> Try a space between the line and the number so it looks like this -frameLimit: 30



Did not work either


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## animal007uk (Apr 19, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Did not work either



Only idea i have left is to try without the - at the start and this is a long shot but If you have the steam version you might be able to add the line by right clicking on the game in steam then click propertise then click launch options and add the command there. 

Here is an example of what i mean by using GTA 4, pay no attention to the command i am using though lol.


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## qubit (Apr 19, 2015)

No need to fiddle with the game directly. There's a really easy way to cap your framerate to 30fps.

Since you've got an NVIDIA graphics card, just set vsync to Adaptive (half refresh rate) as in the screenshot below. You can then run Fraps and you'll see a solid 30fps. Note that your monitor refresh, must be set to 60Hz, but by the looks of it from your specs that's all it supports, so it will be set like this anyway.


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

qubit said:


> No need to fiddle with the game directly. There's a really easy way to cap your framerate to 30fps.
> 
> Since you've got an NVIDIA graphics card, just set vsync to Adaptive (half refresh rate) as in the screenshot below. You can then run Fraps and you'll see a solid 30fps. Note that your monitor refresh, must be set to 60Hz, but by the looks of it from your specs that's all it supports, so it will be set like this anyway.



Thanks man! It worked!
My GPU runs cooler as well at 30fps!


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## qubit (Apr 19, 2015)

Cool, glad to help.


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

Ok so I played for a while and noticed that the fps was fluctuating between 30~34 with vsync to Adaptive (half refresh rate) , I have let this setting and with that I also used Nvidia Inspector and have set the frame limiter to 30fps, now the fps is 30~31.


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## qubit (Apr 19, 2015)

That's strange. It's supposed to limit the max framerate to half of the refresh, 30fps in this case. I can play old games with overpowered hardware and it always sticks rigidly to 30fps.

If you play another game and turn NVIDIA Inspector off does it stick to 30fps? Try playing an old one that your system can run at a high framerate when vsync is off and let us know.


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

qubit said:


> That's strange. It's supposed to limit the max framerate to half of the refresh, 30fps in this case. I can play old games with overpowered hardware and it always sticks rigidly to 30fps.
> 
> If you play another game and turn NVIDIA Inspector off does it stick to 30fps? Try playing an old one that your system can run at a high framerate when vsync is off and let us know.



Ok, so I tried Trackmania Forever, turned off nvidia inspector, 30~34fps.
I just use both solutions together now, then it's a smooth 30~31fps.

Edit: vsync on or off should not make a difference I think? Since the fps is only 30


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## Steevo (Apr 19, 2015)

The in game Vsync has the option for half of framerate, so it will lock it to 30.


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## Frag_Maniac (Apr 19, 2015)

Steevo said:


> The in game Vsync has the option for half of framerate, so it will lock it to 30.



^This is what I was going to say, but obviously not necessary now.


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## qubit (Apr 19, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Ok, so I tried Trackmania Forever, turned off nvidia inspector, 30~34fps.
> I just use both solutions together now, then it's a smooth 30~31fps.
> 
> Edit: vsync on or off should not make a difference I think? Since the fps is only 30





Steevo said:


> The in game Vsync has the option for half of framerate, so it will lock it to 30.





Frag Maniac said:


> ^This is what I was going to say, but obviously not necessary now.



Trackmania is a great game! I played it constantly a while back. Still, it's odd how it varies like that. I can only think it's a driver issue somehow.

Anyway, it looks like there are several ways to achieve the same effect and you're sorted now.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 19, 2015)

Just create a custom resolution with a 30Hz refresh rate.


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## kn00tcn (Apr 19, 2015)

bandicam has a good frame limiter that i've used for years, while afterburner got a limiter sometime in the last couple years (havent extensively tested it)

are you saying the in game fps is going through ALL framerates between 30-60 or that it suddenly drops to 30 in some cases then suddenly jumps back to 60? if it's doing big jumps, then you could force triple buffering (also something i've been doing for years), otherwise... cap with programs or continue using adaptive vsync, i do like using in game options if available before external tools or driver settings


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

kn00tcn said:


> bandicam has a good frame limiter that i've used for years, while afterburner got a limiter sometime in the last couple years (havent extensively tested it)
> 
> are you saying the in game fps is going through ALL framerates between 30-60 or that it suddenly drops to 30 in some cases then suddenly jumps back to 60? if it's doing big jumps, then you could force triple buffering (also something i've been doing for years), otherwise... cap with programs or continue using adaptive vsync, i do like using in game options if available before external tools or driver settings



It suddenly jumped from 60 to 30 on some roads and later back to 60 on other  roads
I may try that triple buffering sometime.


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## kn00tcn (Apr 19, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> It suddenly jumped from 60 to 30 on some roads and later back to 60 on other  roads
> I may try that triple buffering sometime.


vsync OFF should show the fps you're capable of, so if you're only dipping to 50, i would just keep vsync on with TB to enjoy higher fps.... unless you really want to reduce the heat (ugh, summer is coming)


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## P4-630 (Apr 19, 2015)

kn00tcn said:


> vsync OFF should show the fps you're capable of, so if you're only dipping to 50, i would just keep vsync on with TB to enjoy higher fps.... unless you really want to reduce the heat (ugh, summer is coming)



Yeah actually that was a bonus to reduce heat as well. Today I played at 30fps ,ok 60 was a bit smoother but 30fps is still playable. Not too bad. Im quite happy with it how smooth it plays on a laptop.


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

kn00tcn said:


> vsync OFF should show the fps you're capable of, so if you're only dipping to 50, i would just keep vsync on with TB to enjoy higher fps.... unless you really want to reduce the heat (ugh, summer is coming)



After reading a bit on the internet I have read that Triple Buffering only for open gl is.
I don't think GTA V is open gl or is it?


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## qubit (Apr 20, 2015)

No, it's DX11.

EDIT: on the Steam store page for any game, you can easily check this by scrolling down, where it shows you the system requirements.


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

qubit said:


> No, it's DX11.
> 
> EDIT: on the Steam store page for any game, you can easily check this by scrolling down, where it shows you the system requirements.



Yeah I saw it


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## TheMailMan78 (Apr 20, 2015)

@P4-630 Dude restore all your settings to default and run the NVIDIA experience in your control panel. This will automatically tweak all your settings to have a smooth 60 FPS. Reayth did that and he was running a single 670 for a week with smooth FPS. You should be way better than him with a 770.


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> @P4-630 Dude restore all your settings to default and run the NVIDIA experience in your control panel. This will automatically tweak all your settings to have a smooth 60 FPS. Reayth did that and he was running a single 670 for a week with smooth FPS. You should be way better than him with a 770.



Thats what I did first before I played it, using Geforce Experience with one click, it gave me most of the time 60fps but on some roads it just dropped to 30fps and then back to 60fps, which results in no smooth gameplay. I have a GTX770M , I play it on my laptop.


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## TheMailMan78 (Apr 20, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Thats what I did first before I played it, using Geforce Experience with one click, it gave me most of the time 60fps but on some roads it just dropped to 30fps and then back to 60fps, which results in no smooth gameplay. I have a GTX770M , I play it on my laptop.


I missed the part about the "770M". Do you think it could be your HD having issues with the loading? What's your HD speed?


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## natr0n (Apr 20, 2015)

Use msi afterburner it installs rivatuner which can limit fps to anything.
I use it myself to limit fps to 65.

Just enter frame rate limit and done will never go over what it's set to.


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I missed the part about the "770M". Do you think it could be your HD having issues with the loading? What's your HD speed?



I have GTA V installed on a brand new samsung SSD, benchmarked it and it's running fine.

I have found out that if I ONLY use nvidia inspector, I'll get a stable 30fps.

Edit: 
Ok it's not running 60fps now, but if you get frame drops is annoying, so I rather prefer a solid playable 30fps. Happy now

Maybe rockstar will release some performance update in the near future, I have seen that there are more people having these frame drop issues: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/825809/pc-games/gta-v-low-fps-and-low-gpu-usage-/1/


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## newtekie1 (Apr 20, 2015)

Adaptive vsync is just that, adaptive.  It will allow slight variation as long as the frames are synced.  When you just use standard vsync with a 60Hz panel, if you can maintain 60FPS+ then it will limit the framerate to 60FPS, if you drop below 60FPS it will run at whatever framerate the computer is capable of.  

So, say for instance, the game is running at 60FPS+ most of the time, but drops down to 52FPS.  With normal vsync, the times when the framerate dropped to 52FPS vsync would cause the framerate to go down to 30FPS.  However, with adaptive vsync, the times when it drops down to 52FPS it would continue to run at 52FPS.  When you have adaptive vsync set to half refresh mode that limits things to 30FPS, but again because it is adaptive it allows a little variation as long as things are still pretty much in sync with the monitor.

But like I said, if you definitely want 30FPS no matter what, create a custom resolution with a 30Hz refresh rate and select that in GTA(or any game) and use traditional vsync.


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Adaptive vsync is just that, adaptive.  It will allow slight variation as long as the frames are synced.  When you just use standard vsync with a 60Hz panel, if you can maintain 60FPS+ then it will limit the framerate to 60FPS, if you drop below 60FPS it will run at whatever framerate the computer is capable of.
> 
> So, say for instance, the game is running at 60FPS+ most of the time, but drops down to 52FPS.  With normal vsync, the times when the framerate dropped to 52FPS vsync would cause the framerate to go down to 30FPS.  However, with adaptive vsync, the times when it drops down to 52FPS it would continue to run at 52FPS.  When you have adaptive vsync set to half refresh mode that limits things to 30FPS, but again because it is adaptive it allows a little variation as long as things are still pretty much in sync with the monitor.
> 
> But like I said, if you definitely want 30FPS no matter what, create a custom resolution with a 30Hz refresh rate and select that in GTA(or any game) and use traditional vsync.



Nice that "Adaptive vsync" but it's not supported on my card (GTX770M): http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/adaptive-vsync/supported-gpus

Edit: Thats strange, in my nvidia control panel I CAN select "Adaptive vsync"!


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## 64K (Apr 20, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Nice that "Adaptive vsync" but it's not supported on my card (GTX770M): http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/adaptive-vsync/supported-gpus
> 
> Edit: Thats strange, in my nvidia control panel I CAN select "Adaptive vsync"!



It says here that it is supported for the 770m

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-770m/features


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

64K said:


> It says here that it is supported for the 770m
> 
> http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-770m/features



Thanks, strange, I did not see it in the link I found of the supported GPU's!
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/adaptive-vsync/supported-gpus


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## P4-630 (Apr 20, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Adaptive vsync is just that, adaptive.  It will allow slight variation as long as the frames are synced.  When you just use standard vsync with a 60Hz panel, if you can maintain 60FPS+ then it will limit the framerate to 60FPS, if you drop below 60FPS it will run at whatever framerate the computer is capable of.
> 
> So, say for instance, the game is running at 60FPS+ most of the time, but drops down to 52FPS.  With normal vsync, the times when the framerate dropped to 52FPS vsync would cause the framerate to go down to 30FPS.  However, with adaptive vsync, the times when it drops down to 52FPS it would continue to run at 52FPS.  When you have adaptive vsync set to half refresh mode that limits things to 30FPS, but again because it is adaptive it allows a little variation as long as things are still pretty much in sync with the monitor.
> 
> But like I said, if you definitely want 30FPS no matter what, create a custom resolution with a 30Hz refresh rate and select that in GTA(or any game) and use traditional vsync.



Ok, Adaptive vsync works well, no sudden slow downs till sofar!
I also enabled Triple Buffering, some people say it only works for Open Gl, others say it works for DirectX as well.
I have to play some more to see how it goes.


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## kn00tcn (Apr 21, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> Ok, Adaptive vsync works well, no sudden slow downs till sofar!
> I also enabled Triple Buffering, some people say it only works for Open Gl, others say it works for DirectX as well.
> I have to play some more to see how it goes.



the NVCP (& AMD CCC for that matter) option is for opengl yes

i like how you started researching, but i probably should have been more clear when i said FORCE, you need to use d3doverrider (if RTSS that comes with afterburner cant do it) & that's what i've been doing for years, particularly on unreal engine 3 games

some games or game engines have working TB so you dont need to force anything, that's why a good test is disabling vsync to see if the framerate is the same (so if vsync on = 30fps but vsync off = 50fps, then that means the game lacks TB & you need to force it)


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## P4-630 (Apr 25, 2015)

I want to play GTA V at 40 fps, but when I set it to 40 it's always 41 in the game.
When I enter 39 fps, nvidia inspector does not accept it somehow and the frame limiter is off.
I also tried 35 fps, this does work.
I can enter a HEX value but what is 39 fps in HEX?


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## P4-630 (May 5, 2015)

Ok so I had still some frame drops and random stutters, I found out that fraps was causing this, uninstalled it and using Steam fps counter now, upped some graphic settings and all smooth now, running at a capped 40fps now, GPU stays just under 70 degrees C and the CPU is at 65 degrees max at 2.8Ghz (capped turbo boost, otherwise it goes up to 3.4Ghz).
Happy now


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## Mussels (May 5, 2015)

as an alternative to the FPS limiting suggestions here, MSI afterburners companion app rivatuner statistics server has a framerate limiter as well, that works on AMD as well as nvidia.






In this screenshot i'm capped at 70FPS max.


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## P4-630 (May 5, 2015)

Mussels said:


> as an alternative to the FPS limiting suggestions here, MSI afterburners companion app rivatuner statistics server has a framerate limiter as well, that works on AMD as well as nvidia.
> In this screenshot i'm capped at 70FPS max.



Yeah I have installed it, and that works as well, but with nvidia inspector it is set and forget, I do not need to open nvidia inspector when I want to run GTA V.
But the weird thing is, I have set nvidia inspector to 40fps for GTA V, but it results in actually 41fps, now when I use RTSS and set to 40fps I DO get exactly 40fps..
And nvidia inspector does not accept 39fps as input


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## ChevyOwner (May 5, 2015)

I see this is marked as solved, but something for future readers.

When creating commandline.txt you need to make sure you are not nameing the file "commantline.txt" with file extensions hidden or you will probably end up with "commandline.txt.txt"
I tested adding "-frameLimit 30" and it limited the game to 2 fps. Not sure how that works.


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## ISI300 (May 5, 2015)

GTA V has a built in half refresh rate V-sync option that works incredibly well with my GTX 280. I advise you try that because it's really, really smooth. I've also tried Nvidia CP v sync option but it's nowhere near as smooth. They've done a good job optimizing this game.


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## P4-630 (May 5, 2015)

ISI300 said:


> GTA V has a built in half refresh rate V-sync option that works incredibly well with my GTX 280. I advise you try that because it's really, really smooth. I've also tried Nvidia CP v sync option but it's nowhere near as smooth. They've done a good job optimizing this game.



Ok thanks, I'll try that option for the hot summer days to keep my GPU a bit cooler.
I'm currently running it at 41 fps which is very smooth to me.


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## jboydgolfer (Nov 11, 2015)

ive been locked @ 58FPS. cannot figure out what the hell is causing it. no Vsync, not in CCC either, no monitoring programs with Frame limiters, no anythin anywhere...and yes my GPU can go higher...i can drop all setting to lowest possible, resolution too, and still...58 damn FPS..ive hit a brick wall.

its gotta be Dx3D related too, because if i change from fullscreen to windowed mode, it jumps above 65fps.


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## P4-630 (Nov 11, 2015)

jboydgolfer said:


> ive been locked @ 58FPS. cannot figure out what the hell is causing it. no Vsync, not in CCC either, no monitoring programs with Frame limiters, no anythin anywhere...and yes my GPU can go higher...i can drop all setting to lowest possible, resolution too, and still...58 damn FPS..ive hit a brick wall.
> 
> its gotta be Dx3D related too, because if i change from fullscreen to windowed mode, it jumps above 65fps.



If I don't use nvidia inspector, my framerate could go up to 59-60 at some places, haven't tested that since the latest update though.
But yeah it's a bit strange that the fps jump up in windowed mode.

@Jborg  what are your fps since the latest update?

Edit: Hmm I was just trying to set the frame limiter to "Off" in nvidia inspector but it does not want to save it I can't check the fps now with nvidia inspector frame limiter off.


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## PCGamerDR (Nov 11, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> If I don't use nvidia inspector, my framerate could go up to 59-60 at some places, haven't tested that since the latest update though.
> But yeah it's a bit strange that the fps jump up in windowed mode.
> 
> @Jborg  what are your fps since the latest update?



I have noticed that sometimes when i start GTAV, it would only get the GPU core up to about ~900mhz turning v-sync off and on fixes it and it goes back up to my OC speeds.

Hope it helps.


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## P4-630 (Nov 19, 2015)

Update:
I'm not using nvidia inspector anymore, it messes up my global display driver settings.
Reinstalled the GTA V driver.
Using RTSS now, cap GTAVLauncher.exe at 40fps, it works.


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