Grand Theft Auto V Performance Analysis

[W1zzard]

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.

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[NC37]

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.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

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.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

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.

 

[jigar2speed]

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.

 

[ZoneDymo]

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.

 

[AsRock]

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.

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.

 

[EzioAs]

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

 

[KrachB00Mente]

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)

 

[st2000]

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)

 

[Cybrnook2002]

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

Slide #2 - Only resolution changed

 

[BigMack70]

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.

 

[Trocien]

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

 

[EzioAs]

Slide #2 - Only resolution changed

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

 

[Cybrnook2002]

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

 

[newtekie1]

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.

 

[vega22]

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?

 

[erocker]

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.

 

[vega22]

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.

 

[Antykain]

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..

 

[Fluffmeister]

Couple more:

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

http://pclab.pl/art57777.html

 

[W1zzard]

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.

 

[BiggieShady]

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

 

[Rauelius]

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.

 

[BiggieShady]

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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