Gaming Tests: GTA 5

The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is.

GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.

We are using the following settings:

  • 720p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max

The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data. The benchmark can also be called from the command line, making it very easy to use.

There is one funny caveat with GTA. If the CPU is too slow, or has too few cores, the benchmark loads, but it doesn’t have enough time to put items in the correct position. As a result, for example when running our single core Sandy Bridge system, the jet ends up stuck at the middle of an intersection causing a traffic jam. Unfortunately this means the benchmark never ends, but still amusing.

AnandTech Low Resolution
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Average FPS
95th Percentile

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

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  • brunis.dk - Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - link

    It's nothing compared to the price premiums Intel used to charge for their performance leadership.
  • Diggodo - Monday, January 11, 2021 - link

    You might want to rethink what you've just claimed.. and I'm very confused why you would think 5950x is worth it unless you absolutely need the extra cores for work. Its $750 MSRP compared to $550 🤦‍♂️. I'm curious why you say otherwise because every Intel 10th gen-11th gen chip have been duds really.

    The 5900x is a steal for it's price and is a killer chip. The price hike means nothing because the 3900x was 499 when it came out.
  • Santoval - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    Not just in price/performance this time, in performance period.
  • leexgx - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Rip anandtech server been overloaded (to many views I and to reload like 8 times just to get to this page about to try and use the print to show all pages good luck to me trying that so I can read everything )
  • NickOne - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Yeah, probably Intel server
  • Drkrieger01 - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Just my $0.02 as a sysadmin, it's likely a limited bandwidth issue, not server access/drive IOPS.
  • lmcd - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Probably all the other website editors looking for the best one-line quote to include
  • Orkiton - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Intel will buy TSMC and Rip out Amd :))
  • Hifihedgehog - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Wishful thinking. That's like a Bulldog trying to eat a Great Dane.
  • fazalmajid - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Er, TSMC’s market cap is double Intel’s.

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