GTA-V PC Graphics Performance Review - Video memory usage - Final Words & Conclusion

Graphics memory usage (VRAM)

So you would like to know how much graphics memory the game utilizes it versus your monitor resolution right ? Well, have a look at the chart below.

 Radeon R9 290X 8GB - In dark blue the VRAM measured in AfterBurner - In light blue what the game indicates as VRAM usage with our settings. So overall in the city the VRAM requirement can run higher than prognosed.

We have seen some scenes use a little more and others a little less, so please take a healthy deviation of the used VRAM count into consideration, say 15%. Ultra quality is and will be hard on the GPU, it looks good though. With 2x MSAA enabled up-to 1080P you'll reach roughly 2~3 GB of graphics memory. They balanced that out nicely. 

Once you go to WHQD at 2560x1440 we'll pass 3 GB and since card in that resolutions often have 3 to 4 GB graphics memory, that's good as well. In Ultra HD you'll need a lot more memory as we jump towards 4 GB of VRAM usage. But hey, that's Ultra HD and MSAA for ya. It's also indicative that say a GeForce GTX 780 Ti with its 3 GB of graphics memory will seriously run into issues. 4GB is the minimum, that or lower image quality settings and AA levels, in Ultra HD.

Concluding

We can complain about Rockstar in terms of how nauseating long the PC community has been ignored and had to wait on this game. But we also need to give credit where credit is due, GTA-V is a terrific game and it is a very worthy addition on triple A gaming titles.
 

The gameplay is sophisticated, enjoyable and overall the graphics experience is what you can, may and should expect from a title of this caliber.

A note - since we measure in the online city and not the internal benchmark, you will spawn at random places with random weather and differences in day an night. This will cause an adverse offset in frame-rate. So please use these numbers as indicative at best. There can be weird variations in-between the performance of graphics card just because at one point it rains, the the next card had say dry sunny weather. This WILL impact the FPS. So keep a 15% margin at hand and please again, consider these indicative results.

Due to the note above, we might re-do the entire session with the internal benchmark, but there are some bugs in this initial release that will need to be squashed first and we do think that testing in the actual city running and shooting around, is more representative of the real performance.

So yes, the game itself looks and plays surprisingly well, it requires a relatively normal amount of GPU horsepower for what it needs as to renders and isn't a graphics memory hog like the previous title really was. Once you start to hit monitor resolutions of 2560x1440 or Ultra HD, that's where you need to bring out the big guns in terms of graphics hardware.

But hey, if you do not have a high-end class graphics card you might want to drop to a normalized AA level and Full HD and WQHD will remain to be the perfect domain to game at. For gaming up-to Full HD, a GeForce GTX 960 will do fine, on AMD's side that is the Radeon R9 270 series. Up-to WQHD a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 280 series will suffice. Once you bump it upwards to Ultra HD or heavy graphics with stuff like VSR/DSR down-sampling That where a GTX 980/Titan-X comes in to play or from AMD's side the Radeon R9 290X or 295x2.

This review is work in progress, over the next few days we'll be adding Crossfire/SLI Frametime recordings and some more mixed quality mode results as well.

Enjoy GTA-V  

-== Hilbert out, peace. ==-

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