Best Graphics Settings For GTA V on PC

Image: Rockstar North, Rockstar Games via HGG

Human Made

My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Despite releasing nearly a decade ago, Grand Theft Auto V is to this day a good-looking game with smooth gameplay and lots of graphical options. The PC version of the game features loads and loads of different ways to tweak your graphical settings.

Whether you are looking to get the best visual quality possible, or you just want to get an FPS boost, you’ve come to the right place. In this walkthrough, we’ll be going over the best graphical settings in GTA V for PC. This will include both the best settings for looks, as well as how to increase your FPS.

Best Graphics Settings: The Details

Let’s get right into our walkthrough covering the best graphics settings in GTA V for PC!

Best Graphics Settings For Looks

Both the minimum and recommended graphics settings for GTA V can be viewed in the image above.

If you are looking to get the best-looking graphics while maintaining a minimum FPS between 30 and 60, you’ll need to check and ensure your computer is up to date with at least the specs shown on the right.

Once you’re sure you’ve got that covered, you can pause the game and head into the settings menu to begin tweaking things. If you happen to have a 4K monitor, you can turn the resolution up to its max setting. However, I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have a very powerful computer.

If you play online it’s best to leave the resolution at 2560×1440. This gives you a nice upgrade over 1080p without tanking your FPS too much. A lot of the other settings in the game can be turned up, but most don’t make a huge difference.

Specific Settings to Change

To keep your game looking nice without ruining your framerate, you should make sure the following settings are set to high or ultra:

Shadow Quality
Grass Quality
Texture Quality
Anti-Aliasing

As previously mentioned, some settings make little difference in visual quality (at least, based on my experience). You should be able to safely lower or ignore the following settings:

Shader Quality
Post-FX
Particle Quality

Brightness Settings

Lastly, another graphics setting you’ll definitely want to tweak is the brightness. The default brightness on GTA V is fairly high, and it makes the world look very white-washed and overly bright. If you turn it down a bit, it will make shadows and black colors really pop, and it will even bring out some higher texture quality in a lot of objects.

The exact best setting depends on your monitor.

Head into single-player and mess around with it (you can’t change brightness in online mode, for some reason). Just be sure not to set your brightness too low, as it can be hard to see in some interiors. This is especially a problem in GTA Online, as you’ll also be at a disadvantage in PvP when it’s night or you are in a darker area.

Additionally, you’ll want to turn off the in-game depth of field effects. When this setting is enabled, it will cause your screen to blur when you are aiming down sights. I’ve always found this to be distracting, and I don’t see much of a reason to keep it on.

Best Settings For High FPS

Now onto those of you with less-than-stellar computers.

If you are looking to maximize your FPS, I’ve got a few tips and tricks for you I’d like to briefly go over. First, you’re going to want to keep your resolution down to 1920x1080p if it isn’t there already. You can also lower it down even lower if you don’t mind the lower resolution.

Next, take a look at the other graphics options and lower and/or disable some of the following options:

Texture Quality
Grass Quality
Water Quality
Motion Blue
Population Density
Population Variety

These are some of the biggest factors that determine your frame rate in Grand Theft Auto V. If you are on Windows 10, you should have an app pre-installed called Xbox Game Bar. If you press and hold the Windows Button + G it will pop up. It can tell you your FPS, which is very handy for tweaking your graphics settings.

Join The High Ground!

And so ends our article covering the best graphics settings for GTA V for PC. Did you find this article informative? Or do you still have questions? Let us know down below!

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