GTA V Benchmarked

Engine, Benchmarks, and Results

For the original German article, see here.

GTA V is based on the RAGE engine (not to be confused with the Ego shooter from id Software), which has been tweaked with additional engines like Euphoria (character animation) and Bullet (physics simulation). The end result is a spectacular PC experience which offers convincing textures, shadows, lighting and vegetation at high to max settings.

Although now and then objects may appear unclear during fast rides (cars, planes, etc.), this problem of rendering shadows and quality settings exists in almost every Open World game. In a direct comparison to Watch Dogs, GTA V performs better. The lighting is more realistic despite lower hardware requirements.

If you were expecting the PC port of GTA V to be a huge disaster, you can rest easy now. During our benchmarks we almost never encountered serious bugs or crashes. However, we did encounter some issues starting the game on Nvidia laptops. Although the latest GeForce driver, the ForceWare 350.12, was installed, the systems, equipped with Optimus, did not want to start up the Rockstar Social Club, preventing the game from launching. Google contained the answer: open the device manager, disable the Nvidia adapter for a little while, start GTA V and as soon as the Social Club starts, turn on the graphics card.

In general, our experience with the game was not smooth. At around 60 GB (~3 hours download with VDSL 50; the shop version includes 7 DVDs!), GTA V sets a new record (negative) for loading times (game start, save games, etc.) and the integrated benchmark only works if both Intro missions have been absolved.

The system requirements are not too bad. Yes, GTA V would like a quad-core CPU (compare the performance of the Schenker M504 [GTX 850M + dual-core] and the M503 [GT 750M  + quad-core]), but halfway potent dual-core processors, like the Core i5-4200M, can suffice. The same applies to the VRAM. Although the requirements rise to 2 or 3 GB with higher settings (similar to Wolfenstein: The New Order and Shadow of Mordor), the game remains playable, as we saw from the GTX 960M with 2 GB VRAM (quite fluid at high settings).

In most scenes, the graphics card is the limiting factor. However, at low or medium settings, the processor can be the bottleneck (as seen from our desktop PCs which use a Core i7-3770K and a Core i7-4790K and the Schenker W504, whose Core i7-4700MQ is the limiting factor [starting at the GTX 860M]).

If you disregard the somewhat awkward control with a mouse and a keyboard, the PC version of GTA V is technically okay. In no way is it like the stutter disaster which is GTA IV. The hardware requirements are appropriate, with the exception of a few settings. The same cannot be said of many other games, like Assassin's Creed Unity. Most systems will have some graphical errors (for example, the Radeon R9 280X @Ultra) and sadly the graphics menu does not offer descriptions for the options, which we hope will be remedied.