Tweet
Our initial look at Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC surprised with its scalability across budget PCs, but the top-end experience is another beast entirely. Rockstar's much-delayed release makes the wait worth it by adding options to play to most GPUs' strengths - whether you're tweaking for straight 1080p60 or a more ambitious band of settings at a locked 30fps. But supposing you have the hardware to go absolutely bananas, what does a maxed-out experience really add over PS4 and Xbox One? And indeed, where do the new console versions fall on the PC's wide graphics spectrum?Updating to build 331, we spare no expense in pushing the PC release to its best results. Our top-end Core i7 4790K PC (at stock clocks) is paired with 16GB of RAM and a GTX Titan X - a combination that's certainly overkill for maxing out the game while hitting 1080p60. That being the case, we add an extra twist to this comparison by way of a full 3840x2160 native resolution (or 4K), as downscaled via Nvidia's DSR mode. That should do it.
It's an extravagance, no doubt, and it brute-forces the PC to a far higher plane of image quality than the console's 1920x1080 output with FXAA. However, this high level of image quality also plays to the PC's other main advantage: its extended draw distances. Unlike the console editions, an advanced graphics menu offers up a separate distance scale that, at 100 per cent, renders objects across Los Santos at a bewildering range. With resolutions of 1080p and above, it's a crucial addition in a release where details further afield are subject to closer scrutiny.
Read more…
More...