Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my video. This is the second video in a new series where we are analyzing performance of different settings inside games. Today we are taking a look at GTA V, where we will take a look at the different settings, how they compare in terms of with both FPS and fidelity. And lastly, I'll show my own optimized settings that I would personally use. If you have any suggestions for future games you would like for me to analyze, feel free to write them in the comments below. If you like the video, please consider liking and subscribing for future videos. For this video I have also divided it into chapters or parts which you can find in the description or just be able to see on the timeline of the video. Once we are testing all of the settings, you will be able to see the name of the setting the current FPS and the percentile difference between the different settings. The most important part is the percentile difference because the FPS can be important, but you won't have the same system specs as I do. So you won't get the same FPS no matter what. I started out testing in 1440p and then I switched over to 4K because I wanted to make sure that I was stressing my GPU and not my CPU, but I was actually hitting the limit of the game in terms of FPS with some settings. My own specs is a core i7-8700K and a 1080 Ti. Before we go into the specific settings, I wanted to showcase the two extremes of all low and all ultra to see both the performance and the fidelity between the two. This is the footage you see right now running in the background. With that in mind, I have two important notes. One is that they were both using the same amount of system RAM, which is interesting. The other is that the game's engine have an FPS cap of 188, so if you want to, you can't get any higher FPS than 188, should you have a 240 Hz monitor or something like that. And if you are hitting the cap, you'll experience horrible stutters, which I would never recommend. But let's get right into the video. First off we have FXAA and MSAA. I have chosen to test these two settings together because they work very well together to try to remove all the jacked edges you see in foliage on different buildings, cars and so on. That's a really good setting to have enabled because you are able to get a much smoother image. However, here in GTA, this is the most heavy hitting setting of them all. Having these two enabled, especially MSAA. Having that enabled up to 8X will really kill your performance So if you only change one thing in the settings in GTA, this is the one. As you can see, we go from 100% with having both of them turned off to only 64% of that same performance when we have it at 8X. That means we lose around 36% of our performance from turning it all the way up. Plus, it might be difficult to see in the video, but I couldn't notice any difference between the two. To be honest, that might be because I'm playing a 1440p. I'm not sure, but what I would recommend is to just leave FXAA on and MSAA on 2X, to atleast have something that tries to remove the jacked edges. And if you have an Nvidia graphics card, you can enable their own Nvidia TXAA. As far as my testing goes, I couldn't see it harming the performance in any way. Plus, it supposedly makes the image look a lot sharper again. I honestly couldn't see the difference, but it doesn't hurt to have it on, so you might as well just enable it. Once you enable it also makes it, so if you have FXAA on, MSAA 2X and Nvidia TSAA, then you basically have It's the same as having MSAA 4X, but without losing the same amount of performance, I would highly recommend doing so if you can. Now let's take a look at Population Varity. Population Variety determines how varied the different NPCs in the game will be, but that's how varied they'll be in terms of how they look, what kind of clothes they're wearing and so on. This has 0% performances and it can be a bit difficult to show in a video the difference in terms of how much they actually vary. But since it has no impact on your performance whatsoever, you might as well just leave it at 100% and then at least you may get some more variant in NPCs. Next up we have Population Density. Population Density controls how many NPCs will spawn around the world, so the higher the number, the more NPCs will spawn and the more alive the world will feel like, it will feel more realistic. However, in my testing, as you can see in the video, I couldn't see any difference in the amount of NPCs that I actually saw, at least in this benchmark. I did also try, just outside of the benchmark, just driving around in the different parts of the map and I couldn't really notice any difference at all. And as you can see, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever on FPS. Either way, it's basically within the margin of error. So I suggest you just leave this at 100% and don't worry about it. Next up we have Distance Scaling. Distance Scaling determines how far away in the distance different objects will load in, and when there are different textures on these objects will load in. Leaving it at 100% means that different objects in the distance will load in faster. In this example, we can see it with the rock in the middle of the screen where you can see it loads in slightly faster at 100% and at 50% distance scaling compared to 0%. It's only slightly faster, but since it only takes a couple of percent of your performance away, I would highly recommend leaving this at 100% because you can avoid some pop ins and pop ins can be really annoying in games, they can really ruin your immersion if you have to get really close to an item for its textures to load in. Next up we have Texture Quality. Texture Quality determines the quality of the different textures in the game, be it as the texture of a building of a billboard, the sidewalk, the animals, everything. In this game, it doesn't seem to make any difference in FPS whatsoever choosing between normal or going all the way up to very high. However, it does have an important impact on your VRAM. While I had it on normal, I was using around 4GB of VRAM, and once I turned up to very high, I was using almost 5GB of VRAM, so it does make a huge difference in terms of VRAM. So if you do not have enough VRAM, this is certainly a setting you want to maybe put down one or two steps, but if you have enough VRAM, I would just recommend leaving it at very high. Next up we have Shader Quality. Shader Quality determines the quality of the different lighting in the game. This is especially apparent when you're looking at something like the sun, like in this clip where I have slowed down the time so you're able to see the difference between normal, high and very high. And as you can see, there's a clear difference between normal and high. High to very high seems to be about the same. I can't really see any difference, and you can also see that the difference in FPS is the same. Whether you go from normal to high or normal to very high, you lose around 4% of your FPS. Whether or not you want to enable it kind of depends on how much of a headroom you have in terms of FPS. If you have the headroom, I would recommend just putting it all the way up to very high because it does look a bit better and makes it a bit more realistic. However, if you need the FPS, you can also just leave it at normal. It's not something you notice that much because you don't normally just stand around looking up into the sun, but it's nice to have if you can spare the FPS. Next up we have Shadow Quality. Shadow Quality determines the quality of the different shadows in the game. In this particular game, it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference in terms of either FPS or in terms of fidelity, as you can see in terms of FPS, it's within margin of error. And actually somehow I gained some FPS from turning it up. So yeah, it's probably from margin of error, and it doesn't seem to make any difference to FPS whatsoever. I also tried to look into VRAM and such, but it doesn't seem to make any difference there either. So I would just recommend leaving it very high. I found one example here, you can see where there is a difference between normal and very high, but it's I'll say very solid compared to other games. So if you want to leave it at normal, you can. But for my testing here it doesn't seem to make any difference, so might as well just leave it at very high. Next up we have Reflection Quality. Reflection Quality determines the quality of the different reflections in the game that can be reflections on different surfaces. In this example we have the car moving around as you can see when you have the reflection quality on normal, it is essentially the same as turning it off. Between high and very high the difference in quality is very subtle. You really have to look for it to actually find a difference. However, as you can see, the difference in FPS is a bit higher. You lose around 4% from having it on normal and 3% between high and very high. So I would recommend leaving it a high to have some of those nice reflections that do look nice in the game, but without losing too much FPS. In conjunction with the last setting, Reflection Quality, we now have Reflection MSAA Reflection MSAA works the same as normal MSAA in that it tries to remove the jacked edges. Here it just tries to remove the jacked edges from our reflections. However, even between having it completely off and at 8X, I couldn't find any difference in quality whatsoever. However, you do lose a little bit of FPS, not much, but you do lose some, so I recommend just leaving it completely off. Next up we have Water Quality. Water Quality determines the quality of different water sources in the game that could be down by the beach or near a big lake. As you could see, I tried to pick the part of the benchmark where you have the most water, which is when you're flying over or besides this large lake. However, I couldn't see any difference in either FPS or in quality. I also tried to just go down to the beach maybe see if the waves from the water or something like that would be different, but I couldn't find any difference, so I would just leave it at very high just to be sure that you don't miss out on anything, but you're not going to lose any FPS and you might not lose any quality from having it on normal anyways. Next up we have Particle Quality. Particle Quality termines the quality of the different particles in the game, that can be explosions, bullets, sparks, kicked up dirt, fire, smoke, all of them. From my testing within the benchmark, I couldn't see any difference whatsoever. In terms of FPS, it's basically the same and in terms of quality, I also had a really hard time seeing any difference. I tried to slow down this part of the benchmark to see if you can tell the difference. But since there's no difference in the FPS, I would just leave this as very high just to be sure that you don't miss out on any particular quality. Next up we have Grass Quality. Grass Quality determines the quality of the different grass in the game. This is most notable when you are actually outside of the city, because once you're in the city, you only notice it once you're inside gardens or maybe some grass plains here and there around the city. But once you get outside of the city and out into the hills, you'll really start to notice the difference. The difference in quality is not the biggest. I have just freezed the frame right here, this is the best spot I could find in the benchmark and it really shows not so much the difference in quality, you really have to look closely to find that, but the difference in FPS where you can see we have around 60 FPS on normal and around 47 FPS on ultra. That's a really huge difference in that spectrum. I would just recommend leaving this at high. You get a bit more quality without losing too much FPS. Next up we have PostFX. PostFX enables bloom, high dynamic range lighting and generally other post process effects on lighting, so that's most noticeable when looking at a sunset or sunrise or something similar where you have a lot of bloom around the lighting to make it look more natural. As you can see here in this frame that I have frozen, you can see the difference between in this sunset between normal, high, very high and ultra. And as far as I can see, there's not much difference once you go up too high. Normal and high is a big difference, especially almost like turning it off when you leave it a normal. But once you go up into high, it's actually not that much of a difference. Once you go higher than that to very high and ultra, however, you do lose a lot more FPS from going from high to very high and even ultra, you can see we lose around 10% more range from doing that, which is a lot of FPS. This is one of the most heavy hitting settings I found in the game. So what I recommend would recommend is just leaving this at high. You get a bit more detail. It looks a bit more natural, but you don't lose that much FPS. Next up we have Depth of Field. Depth of Field is something you can either enable or leave disabled. Depth of Field will make it so when you are aiming, you get that kind of a bokeh effect around on everything else besides the thing you are aiming on. This is to make it more realistic I think it's generally something you find in games, but it can be a bit distracting, especially in shooter games. You can see here where I've frozen the image. You can see how much more blurry the tree is on the right when you have it on, compared on the left, it might be a personal preference. I always keep it off if it's in shooter games to actually be able to clearly see everything around me while I'm aiming my gun. I will also say that it is causing an 8% performance difference when you leave it on. It actually does hurt your performance quite a bit, considering what it's actually doing. So my recommendation would be to leave it off. If you really like it, you can keep it on, but I would recommend to leave it off. Next up we have Anisotropic Filtering. Anisotropic Filtering increases the sharpness of different textures viewed at either a distance or when you're viewing them at an angle. In this game, I can't see much difference when you have it off all the way up to 16X. You do lose around 2% performance, but that's so close that it can almost be down to margin of error. I would recommend just leaving this at 16X. If you really need to get all the FPS you can and you're struggling to get enough FPS, you can turn it off or maybe leave it at 2X or 4X, but I would recommend just leaving it at 16X because it's such a small performance and it might help textures in certain situations look a lot better either in the distance or when viewed at an angle. Next up we have Ambient Occlusion. Ambient Occlusion adds soft shadows to different crevices in the game. This can make the image look more natural because if you turn it off, it can look very bright compared to what you would think would happen. Like with the shadows you would think would be there. The best example I can give is here by the waterfall where you can see on the right of the waterfall the rocks looks a bit more dark, a little bit more natural if you want, on normal and high compared to having it turned off. I would recommend at least having this at normal because without it, some scenes can look a bit weird because they are so weirdly bright and compared to what you logical would think it would look like. But you do also lose up to 4% when you have it on high. I'll just leave it at normal. You have it enabled, he looks a bit better the image, but you don't lose that much FPS. Next up we have Tessellation. Tesselation adds extra geometric detail to different trees, to water surfaces and generally just other smaller game elements. In this game I couldn't find any either visual or FPS difference from having it either turned completely off or on very high. You can see the performance is completely the same and in terms of fidelity, I couldn't find any difference at all. I would honestly just recommend just leaving this at very high. Next up we have Long Shadows. Long Shadows is an advanced setting you can turn off or on. Once you have it on it's supposed to give you more realistic shadows, especially within the city from the big skyscrapers, so the shadows will actually go much further and like the name suggests, you have longer shadows. In my testing this does not impact your performance at all. I even tried to look into VRAM and such, but I couldn't see any difference at all, so I would just recommend leaving it on. In terms of fidelity. It was hard finding an example from the benchmark and just in general while I was testing, but you might find some situations where it's nice to have, but I would just leave it on. Next up we have High Resolution Shadows. High Resolution Shadows is another one of the advanced settings that you can either have turned off or on. Once you have it turned on, it will increase the resolution of the different shadows in the game. Visually speaking, this can be very difficult to actually see any difference, and in terms of FPS, you can see my overall FPS were basically the same. However, if you look closely in this scene where we are driving through the city, my FPS is a bit lower when I have it on, and since I can't really find, I really tried to pause and see if I could really check, but I couldn't find any difference in terms of the quality of the different shadows. I would just leave this off just to have a bit more FPS in certain scenes. Next up we have High Detail While Flying, which again is one of the advanced settings which you can either have turned on or off. When you have it turned on this will increase the complexity and the detail you can see while you're flying in the game, so it will only affect if you're actually flying in the game. If you never fly in the game, you can just leave it off or leave it on if you want to, but it's not going to make any difference. Only when you're actually flying, it will make a difference. In terms of the difference that it actually does make I couldn't really see the difference, but that might just be because you're flying around it can be hard to spot the subtle extra details in the environment you're flying over. I would say if you're flying a lot in the game, it might be worthwhile losing the 2% of performance you do lose to maybe have a bit more extra detail while flying around, but that's up to yourself. That depends on how much you're flying in the game and how much you are willing to lose that 2% to maybe gain a bit more of fidelity. Next up we have Extended Distance. Extended Distance is a bit like the last setting we just looked at and it extends the amount of distance where different items, mountains, buildings, all of that will load in. So how far away these different items will load in on your screen when you're driving around or flying, it doesn't matter what you do, they'll load in at a much further distance. When you have it, the higher you have it. So we have it here from 0% completely off all the way up to 100%. At the minimum I would recommend having it at 25% because when you have it at 25%, we remove the worst of the pop ins, which is basically what this setting can do. It can remove pop ins almost entirely when you have it at 100%, but I would recommend no matter what, at least take it at 25%. It's worth the 3% FPS you lose because you're going to remove a lot of the pop ins. Now if you have the more performance to give, I would recommend going all the way to 100 because personally and that might just be personal preference, but I hate pop ins. It's some of the worst illusion breaker in a game because if you're dying and driving and you certainly see a building loading in while you're driving, that completely ruins the immersion. In this clip I have the scene with the rock. You need to notice the rock out in the distance in the middle of the screen and then you will be able to see this is the best example of when it will render in on the different settings. Then you can decide for yourself and take what setting you prefer. Again, I would recommend at least 25%, but it's up to you. I will also say just before we go to the next one that the higher you go, the more VRAM you will use. So if you don't have that much VRAM on the graphics card, this is one of the settings you should probably be turning down because for my testing it was a bit difficult to see because sometimes it will just use more VRAM than others, but at least around 1GB of more VRAM just from turning this all the way up to 100 from 0%. Just be aware of that. Next up we have Extended Shadows. Extended Shadows does a bit of the same as extended distance does, except just for shadows, so it will extend the distance on how far away you can actually see the shadows and how far away they will render in on your screen. However, unlike extended distance, I couldn't find any difference between 0% and having it at 100% and the FPS speaks the same thing. There's also basically within margin of error. There's no difference at all, so I don't know why that is. It's a bit weird. I also tried to check if it was impacting my VRAM like extended distance was, but that was not the case either, so I would just leave this at 100% because it doesn't seem to impact your performance and it might give you some bit longer, bit more detail shadows out in the distance in certain scenarios. Lastly, I'll quickly go on my own recommended settings. These are the ones I would personally use and they're based on the recommendations I have made throughout this video, after which you will be able to see the performance of these settings. Given that I'm currently rocking a i7-8700K with a 1080 Ti in my PC. From my testing in both the benchmark and the actual game. With these settings, I'm getting around 80 to 100 FPS, with my lowest tips being around 70 FPS, which I think is perfectly fine for a game like this. If you want more, you can always go towards the low end of my recommendations since I've gone for the high end of my recommendation. That means that one throughout the video. When I have recommended both minimum you could choose and the max you could choose. I have chosen the max, but it's all going to depend on your specific system and the specific FPS you are getting with the settings. But thank you all for watching if you made this plan been able to use this video to get better FPS in GTA V, please like and subscribe for future videos. Where we will take a look at other games. If you have any suggestions for other games that I should make a video on, please leave it in the comments below. If you're interested in these kind of videos, maybe check out the video I made on Ark Survival Evolved. Hope you all have a nice day, bye bye.
