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
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
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High Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Max Quality
Average FPS
95th Percentile

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

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  • lmcd - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    A great dane weighs twice as much as a bulldog so...
  • Xyler94 - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Even if Intel could... I highly doubt they'd be able to legally speaking, since that would literally be burning out competition in terms of CPU, and even Silicon productions...
  • Morawka - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link

    Intel would be better served luring TSMC's process engineers over. Most of the good ones have already been scooped up by China though.
  • bmacsys - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    Really dude. I suppose you know this firsthand?
  • lmcd - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    China's mainland fab efforts would not be as far as they are otherwise.
  • Qasar - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    and you have proof of this ? or is it just your opinion ?
  • ze_banned_because_at - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link

    Not that hard to google for "tsmc engineers poached by china".
  • RogerAndOut - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Well before any bid premium, TSMC has a market value of over $400B and so is far larger than Intel's total worth of around $240B. It would be somewhat cheaper for Intel to just buy up all of the TSMC production capacity that it can for a few years. This would allow Intel to limit the production of other players, while also giving them a chance to produce some chips that are worth buying.
  • Thanny - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    TMSC would never allow that while Intel was a competitor. Buy up all their capacity, getting rid of their customers? Then what happens when Intel stops buying their capacity? Unless Intel spun off its fabs (which is extremely unlikely), TSMC will treat them as a competitor. Intel can make some things at TSMC, but not to the extent that it erodes TSMC's customer base.
  • Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    Exactly this. Amazing how fee pro-Intel commenters can do big picture thinking.

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