GTA V's PC version is lauded as the game's definitive edition. While the popular and versatile Rockstar Editor has since made its debut on current-gen consoles, the PC version still enjoys the advantage of the superior visuals, modding and tweakability. Those superior visuals come at a pretty high price however.

On a low-end machine, turning settings down can help, but performance will still depend on your hardware. Not all of us run several thousand dollar rigs with a couple of Titans in SLi.

If you're a gamer on a budget, you've probably already become quite familiar with the methods of squeezing the best performance out of your hardware. Tweaking the options of the game to find the best possible performance while upping whatever settings aren't too taxing is just the first step. The steps below focus on the game's own graphics options.

For the original PC release discussed here, use the game's built-in settings as a starting point, then compare the result on your own hardware.

The particular PC build originally linked here described one user's settings. A result from one PC is not a performance target for every rig.

The original post has since been deleted, but surviving comments describe one user choosing a 50 Hz refresh rate and reporting room for higher graphics settings. That observation applies to that setup; it does not establish that lowering a display's refresh rate increases the number of frames the GPU can render.

For a built-in starting point, NVIDIA's 2015 graphics guide identifies options whose cost varies with the scene. Try the following changes one at a time, comparing results rather than assuming a fixed gain.

  • Set Reflection MSAA to Off. If rural areas are demanding, try Grass Quality on Normal, accepting less vegetation.
  • Keep Extended Distance Scaling at its minimum while finding a baseline.
  • Run the in-game benchmark several times and check a similar gameplay area after each change. Restore a setting if the visual trade-off is not worth the result.

These changes trade some image detail for a chance of better performance; they cannot guarantee 60 FPS on an extremely low-end PC. Keep the combination that works acceptably on your machine.

What tips do you have for GTA V fans playing on a budget?