***Official Grand Theft Auto V watch thread***

[baseline bum]

Are you using the GeForce performance guide? It's awesome. The settings that I turn down leave me with performance that drops in the low 60's, but usually stays around 75-80 FPS.

Extended distance scaling all the way up is a killer. The buildings are all still visible, but the amount of detail at distances is reduced. Mine is at 20%.

Grass is a killer like you mentioned, I run mine on high. Ultra gives you slightly better grass, but much better grass shadowing.

Reflections on ultra vs very high are hardly noticeable, but will give you like 5 FPS back on very high. Reflection MSAA is worthless.

Ambient Occlusion is bugged at the moment, I turned mine off.

Because of my reduced settings, this afforded me more room to turn shadows to high, combined with Nvidia PCSS for soft shadows (another tech way better than AMD'S version, screw you Cry Havoc) with high resolution shadows on in the advanced graphics. You'll see in the GeForce guide how much better this combo is.

Long Shadows is pretty much worthless.

I think the ultra grass looks way better than the very high grass. I'll check that optimization guide. I'm leaving the reflections on ultra because I make all my cars in my garage all chrome and I want that maxed out at all costs. They looked incredible on X360 and I can't wait to see them on my 970 once I get far enough in the game to do it.

[DJR210]

Wow, the internet is full of . I heard lots of people complaining about GTA V on the GTX 970, and having just got this the 970 demolishes the game. I have everything on Very High except MSAA is off in the Graphics settings and I'm pulling 75-100 FPS driving on the highway, 100-120 FPS on foot in the city, 70-90 FPS on the mountains in areas with dense grass even in the rain, and the whole benchmark runs mostly 100-120 FPS except the last segment in the Hummer when it runs 80-100 FPS. Just ing butter smooth when I turn VSync on to 60 FPS. I haven't messed with the Advanced Graphics tab yet. But all these things I heard were performance killers like setting shadows to softest, turning grass up to the highest setting, maxing out pedestrian density, etc don't seem to affect the i5 + 970 combo at all. Maybe it was just a problem on the initial release, but it definitely doesn't seem to be one now. BTW I never use MSAA anymore now that postprocess antialiasing looks so good. I hate how GeForce Experience always recommends 4xMSAA for practically every game that has that option. Oh yeah, turned off motion blur too since that's useless when you can push 60 FPS; only makes sense to turn that one when you're getting 30 FPS like on the consoles.

Rockstar really did an amazing job optimizing this game. And what a difference on i5 + GTX 970 vs XBox360. I mean Vice City looked a lot nicer on a good gaming PC than XBox/PS2, San Andreas looked somewhat better on PC, but V looks night and day better. Especially the road and building textures.

MSAA gets turned off on all my games. It just isn't worth it with FXAA like you said, on a smaller monitor. Better AA becomes more of a requirement for me when I hook up my 55" HDTV.

[baseline bum]

I'll probably just overclock my 970 again to get a few more FPS. I have been running it at stock because I was getting crashes in Dragon Age Inquisition, but it turned out to be a hard drive problem (god damn it sucks to lose my save 100 hours into a ing game when my hard drive dies).

[baseline bum]

MSAA gets turned off on all my games. It just isn't worth it with FXAA like you said, on a smaller monitor. Better AA becomes more of a requirement for me when I hook up my 55" HDTV.

Yeah, MSAA. It actually makes the graphics look worse in Far Cry 4.

[baseline bum]

Are you using the GeForce performance guide? It's awesome. The settings that I turn down leave me with performance that drops in the low 60's, but usually stays around 75-80 FPS.

Wow, didn't know Nvidia had these for more games than just GTA V. Too bad they only do the guides for Gameworks games though.

[DJR210]

Wow, didn't know Nvidia had these for more games than just GTA V. Too bad they only do the guides for Gameworks games though.

Yeah, all the major releases. They have one for Dying Light too that was really helpful. I like them because they include the screens that save a ton of time and allow you to determine which settings actually benefit your visual fidelity, or satisfy your OCD by knowing you can fully max a brand new game.

[DJR210]

Yeah, MSAA. It actually makes the graphics look worse in Far Cry 4.

Yeah in some cases it looks night and day clearer w/o the MSAA. I remember MSAA X8 in FC3 looking great though.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, all the major releases. They have one for Dying Light too that was really helpful. I like them because they include the screens that save a ton of time and allow you to determine which settings actually benefit your visual fidelity, or satisfy your OCD by knowing you can fully max a brand new game.

The only advanced feature I enabled in GTA V was the one for reducing pop-in when flying planes. The extended draw distance looked like a whole lot of nothing for the performance hit. I still can't believe the difference ultra grass makes vs very high when driving east of Los Santos though, my framerate is almost double on very high grass.

[DJR210]

The only advanced feature I enabled in GTA V was the one for reducing pop-in when flying planes. The extended draw distance looked like a whole lot of nothing for the performance hit. I still can't believe the difference ultra grass makes vs very high when driving east of Los Santos though, my framerate is almost double on very high grass.

Yes sir, same here. All advanced options off except for the streaming while flying option. The extended draw distance is only noticeable if you are stopped admiring the scenery and actively looking to spot the difference in polygons that haven't loaded yet. If I wanna screenshot some I'll turn it up to 100%, but if not 20% is fine w/ me.

[DJR210]

Did a custom West Coast radio station to make my in game experience that much better.. if you aren't sure how to do it on PC, drop your music files in: this pc/do ents/rockstar games/GTA V/user music - then use "self radio" in game.

[baseline bum]

Did a custom West Coast radio station to make my in game experience that much better.. if you aren't sure how to do it on PC, drop your music files in: this pc/do ents/rockstar games/GTA V/user music - then use "self radio" in game.

I think it's cool when you go to the oldschool West Coast station Julio G is hosting that . He was on K-DAY which was the original LA hiphop station, and then was brought back when KDAY came back in the mid 2000s.

[Bynumite]

[baseline bum]

^

[ElNono]

GTA V PC Performance, 4K And 3 GeForces

http://hothardware.com/reviews/gta-v...eforces?page=1

[baseline bum]

GTA V PC Performance, 4K And 3 GeForces

http://hothardware.com/reviews/gta-v...eforces?page=1

3x SLI is such a ing waste of money.

About the only game I know of that scales well with more than two cards is Crysis 3, and that game is boring as .

[ElNono]

3x SLI is such a ing waste of money.

About the only game I know of that scales well with more than two cards is Crysis 3, and that game is boring as .

Yeah, he even says 2x SLI is enough... plus 2xAA or 4xAA on 4k? Just overkill.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, he even says 2x SLI is enough... plus 2xAA or 4xAA on 4k? Just overkill.

I don't even see the use for MSAA and SSAA at 1080p nowadays with how good postprocess antialiasing looks for no performance hit whatsoever. I used to always use it back in the 1024x768 days but it has such diminishing returns for modern resolutions.

[DJR210]

I don't even see the use for MSAA and SSAA at 1080p nowadays with how good postprocess antialiasing looks for no performance hit whatsoever. I used to always use it back in the 1024x768 days but it has such diminishing returns for modern resolutions.

Don't front, if MSAA or SSAA had the same hit as FXAA you know you'd use it. I like both, but they're not worth me chopping it up console style for it.

[baseline bum]

Don't front, if MSAA or SSAA had the same hit as FXAA you know you'd use it. I like both, but they're not worth me chopping it up console style for it.

I'd use it but only because of the satisfaction of turning every dial to the right. Maybe if I was gaming on a 1080p bigscreen TV MSAA would be noticeable, but on a 27" inch 1080p screen it doesn't improve image quality much.

[baseline bum]

Speaking of GTA V, I just tried Watch Dogs courtesy ^^nosTEAM^^, and what a piece of in comparison. Watch Dogs reminds me of GTA IV with the whiny lead character, the really stiff driving and walking, and on top of that it runs like a dog when you're driving while not looking half as good as GTA V which I get a locked 60 fps on. And the first thing you do with a game like that is start blasting people so you can get in gunfights with the cops. I think I must have executed about 30 people in the street and still no police show up.

[redzero]

I just realized, after watching a few Mad Max movies, that the Duke O' Death is based on The V8 Interceptor. I might have to wander around Blaine County in it for a while.

[baseline bum]

Damn GTA V looks ing incredible on PC. Just drive through Vinewood in the rain in my chrome plated car and the reflections and rain effects look spectacular. This is one of the best looking games I have ever seen, I can't believe how solid the framerate is with the image quality it has.

[DJR210]

Damn GTA V looks ing incredible on PC. Just drive through Vinewood in the rain in my chrome plated car and the reflections and rain effects look spectacular. This is one of the best looking games I have ever seen, I can't believe how solid the framerate is with the image quality it has.

Yeah, love the game. I'm smoking a few bowls now, bout to drive around listening to music doing nothing as usual.

[Bynumite]

Wish i still had my poverty 360 copy of the game. Haven't even tried heists yet. Last game i truly enjoyed before gaming got kinda stale to me.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, love the game. I'm smoking a few bowls now, bout to drive around listening to music doing nothing as usual.

And then for the other side of the coin I got Witcher 2 last night, tried it on ultra, am I'm getting ing 45 fps in the tutorial? And the image quality isn't that good either. What the ? When that game came out SLI 580 was extreme high end and a single GTX 970 significantly outperforms SLI 580.