Welcome to Los Santos – where your lifetime starts here, and now.
From the dazzling lights of Twilight Boulevard to the serene seaside vistas of Paleto Bay, the cities in Los Santos & Blaine County are stunning in their natural settings. Why, then, just because you don’t have a high-end PC, shouldn’t you be able to perceive things for what they are? I’m here to inform you that by making a few tiny changes to your graphics card’s settings or the game itself, you can obtain the best possible visual experience with GTA V.
My PC is by no means a gaming beast. Still, with a few inexpensive upgrades and the right settings, I can play some of the best and most graphically demanding games available, including Assassin’s Creed Origins, Call of Duty: WWII, GTA V, Far Cry 5, and Batman: Arkham Knight at 2K 1440p without the need for a 2K/4K monitor/TV, with great visual quality without sacrificing performance. Yes, you did read it right.
What does this imply, then?
Most games will inform you that you need the most recent Intel Core i5 (or a similar processor) or higher on the box. Although it’s possible that this processor was used in the game’s development, this doesn’t necessarily indicate that it requires it to function. My Intel Core 2 Quad has been with me for eleven years and continues to function well. It could be at its breaking point with some games, but the important thing is that this was not failing.
While a game’s packaging may need a faster CPU, I’m afraid that the video card and RAM—especially with contemporary AAA titles—are essential if you want close to the maximum visuals with decent performance.
The recommended minimum amount of PC RAM for installation is 8GB, which is the current industry standard. With variant consoles excepted, 4GB VRAM on a GPU also seems to be the norm for the current generation.
You don’t have to go out and spend a lot of money. I spent £129.90 to update my RAM plus graphics hardware in May last year.
That costs less than half as much as a gaming console from the current generation while offering the same gaming experience. Buying extravagant RAM with all of the bells is not essential. My RAM from Corsair Value Select performs the same function. The only thing the unusual and pricey gaming RAM have, is excessive overclocking.
Graphics cards are comparable in this regard. Yes, having a $1000 graphics card is nice, but you don’t need one, particularly if the rest of the computer can’t handle it. You can play the greatest, most recent games with some surprisingly excellent value graphics cards available today without breaking the bank. A good example is the graphics card I now have.
Extremely effective, the AMD Radeon RX550 (4GB) even allows a limited amount more safe overclocking. It may be necessary to disable some features in a game’s settings, but I can assure you that these are the kinds of settings that consume a lot of processing power and are of little use, and I can guarantee that you won’t even notice them are disabled. With this graphics card, I can play the current top AAA games almost at the highest settings and at 1440p, which is twice the resolution of HD. This applies to features in GTA V like “Soft Shadows”; there is no noticeable difference between “Soft” and “Softest,” yet the processing power needed for the two is quite different.
Several graphics cards have comparable characteristics, so I’m not saying you must use this particular one. Other graphics cards with a comparable level of quality should function just as well with these instructions.
Setting up Radeon Settings for GTA V
Because AMD is the maker of my graphics card, I utilized AMD graphics manager for this post. Please consult the Nvidia settings manager and adjust the corresponding graphics option for Nvidia. Most of these programs are almost similar, although certain options might have different names and not provide the intended results, much like AMD settings. Because of this, I cannot bear responsibility for harm, negative effects, or a worse gaming experience about Nvidia graphics cards.
Although the Rockstar Integrated Game Engine (the game engine used in GTA V) is excellent, it is not without flaws. It is preferable to let your graphics card program handle Anti-Aliasing rather than using the game engine’s solution since the engine is set up so that certain of the GTA V graphical settings are still not handled very effectively.
I’ve spent days experimenting with the graphics card and game settings to find a nice compromise between the two, so I can have a reliable frame rate without compromising visual quality. Please don’t change anything else; only the parameters that are shown.
AMD Radeon Preferences
Make sure GTA V was installed first. Open the AMD Radeon Settings program next. You may download the most recent version of the program from this page if you don’t already have it installed.
Choose “Gaming” from the main menu. The gaming config manager will be brought up. Here, you may change the graphical settings for all games or just a specific one.
Then choose “GTA V.” By doing so, you may access the GTA V graphical options, which are solely applicable to GTA V. These settings won’t impact the other games, and the same is true for any additional games you set up in this manner.
There are numerous options for customizing your graphics card, but only those that the hardware renders more effectively than the Anger software will need to be changed.
Quality of Texture Filtering
With this option, the image quality of textures used in 3D applications may be enhanced. Set this to “High” as it won’t influence GTA V’s performance much.
Surface Format Enhancement
To render 3D objects more quickly, this will utilize the driver to modify the format of the rendering surfaces. This set to “On” will offer you a small performance increase.
Observe the Vertical Refresh
Wait for a vertical refresh; one of the key gaming settings can lessen screen tearing, which happens when the graphics card’s rendering rate and the display’s refresh rate are different in terms of frames per second. Ensure this is set to “Off, unless application specifies” in the GTA V graphics options, as this setting only affects OpenGL programs.
Anti-Aliasing
This lessens the visibility of jagged lines in-game objects. A game’s visual appeal may be significantly improved by turning it on. Although some games display anti-aliasing quite effectively, in my experience—particularly for GTA V—using hardware anti-aliasing is preferable compared to using software anti-aliasing. The MSAA option in GTA V’s graphics settings will significantly reduce FPS.
Metamorphic Filtering
This AA approach is meant to improve an already-applied AA setting. Still, in my experience, it has never been helpful and, by adding a haze around the borders, actually degrades the picture clarity, particularly in writing.
Ensure that this is off.
Mode of anisotropic filtering
This improves texture quality when seen from a distance, such as when gazing down a road. This is fairly obvious when disabled in GTA V’s graphical settings; as you gaze further down the road, everything begins to seem hazy.
Ensure that this is set to “Use Application Settings” since, in my experience, it seems precisely the same whether this is rendered by hardware or software.
Triple Buffering in OpenGL
As a result, the “Wait for vertical refresh” option is now of higher quality. Only OpenGL apps should use this; therefore, ensure it is set to “Off”.
Shader Cache
This option instructs a game that uses a lot of shaders to save and reuse shaders rather than rendering them each time. However, I have discovered that along with GTA V; it may have a performance effect if left on, so make sure that this is turned to “Off.” In theory, this can significantly affect performance in ways you’d rather not have.
Super Resolution – Virtual
This one’s really cool. By producing the picture at a higher resolution and afterwards showing it at a lesser resolution, Virtual Super Resolution enables you to set your display at a greater resolution than it is, significantly improving the visual quality. This applies to more than just video games; if your GPU is powerful enough, it will also let you watch 2K or 4K movies on YouTube. But with the Radeon RX550, the most resolution I can use without stuttering is 25601440.
Open Radeon Settings and choose “Display” from the main menu to activate virtual super-resolution.
Next, turn the “Virtual Super Resolution” option to “On” by clicking the button.
Mode of tessellation
The number of polygons on an item is increased through tessellation, which portrays them as such. This may be helpful for generally flat materials and textures in such a game, like a brick wall, and can lend some depth to an otherwise flat item or picture to make it appear to stand out more. Ensure this is set to “Use application settings” since the GTA V graphics program can handle this better.
GTA V Graphical Settings Configuration
To get the most out of GTA V & GTA Online, several parameters may be adjusted. I’ll list the settings and what they should be.
First, choose “Graphics” from the “Settings” menu.
That is my hardware vs the software setup for Grand Theft Auto V. You should have the ideal mix between performance & visual quality with these GTA V graphics settings. As I previously said, certain settings are better handled by the hardware than by the in-game software.
I hope you may benefit from the advice and put it to use for yourself since it has taken us a long time to reach this position of perfect equilibrium.
I hope this guide may help establish a balance between gamers and enhance the gameplay experience for all players, as not all settings will be the same for every player since some players will observe more about other specifications and other players just do not care about visuals.
I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I hope it will make your GTA experience as good as mine.