Running GTA 5 On Lower End Rigs

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.

While GTA V has been optimized well enough that it technically can run on extremely low-end machines, you'd need to twist the settings all the way down and even then the game would only just chug along. 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. From tweaking system settings, overclocking hardware and configuring your display, you can do a dozen different things to get a better FPS.

Not everyone is all that tech savvy though and might need help with optimization. 60 FPS purists avert your eyes — this will probably cause a seizure.

These numbers are based on a particular PC build, so they will be different for you and might need a bit of fiddling to get right for your situation, but the method is what is important. Depending on your display, either with the settings or with third party software, you can alter the refresh rate.

One user with pretty low settings took his refresh rate down to 50Hz, freeing up GPU capacity to push his FPS up to 50. The human eye cannot differentiate between 50 and 60 FPS, however the performance increase was significant. This allowed other settings to be turned up, improving overall experience.

The thing with default in-game settings is that even when you select the lowest possible options, there is still more performance that can be squeezed out of the game with some extra tweaking. The video linked below will show you how to turn the game's settings further down while freeing up more resources on your computer as well. It requires some files to be downloaded, but the GTABOOM team verified them to be harmless.

• First, you need to download the zip file from the video description.
• Three folders, neatly labeled in order, all contain files and a readme with instructions.
• All you need to do is follow the readme instructions.

This process will multiply the average framerate of GTA 5 even on extremely low-end PCs, allowing you to run it at a smooth 60 FPS — provided you don't care about the visuals!

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