Let's clarify expected performance of the GTX 970 with GTA V

[garneroutlaw]

Hi guys, I'm having trouble finding reliable sources on the web; it's been mixed responses on how the 970 is performing with GTA V. My build is as follows: GTX 970 FTW+, 8 GB DDR3, I7 4770, Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD, Corsair CX600M, H87 motherboard. I did move my page file over to my 500GB HDD yesterday to prevent memory crashes, but I'm still suffering from what seems to be lower than expected performance.

Here are my graphics settings:
Resolution: 1080
FXAA: On
MSAA: Off
VSync: On
Population Density: Max
Population Variety: Max
Distance Scaling: 75% of max setting
Texture Quality: Very High
Shader Quality: High
Shadow Quality: High
Reflection Quality: High
Reflection MSAA: Off
Water Quality: Very High
Particles Quality: High
Grass Quality: High
Soft Shadows: Nvidia PCSS
Post FX: High
Motion Blur Strength: None
Anisotropic Filtering: X2
Ambient Occlusion: Normal
Tessellation: Normal

Adv Settings:
Long Shadows: Off
High Resolution Shadows: Off
High Detail Streaming While Flying: On
Extended Distance Scaling: 25% of max

Summary: Only a few of my settings are maxed, and many are at normal/high levels.

With these settings, The GTA V benchmark runs almost flawlessly, but I'm getting dips down to low 40s in game. I've read dozens of posts that are claiming max settings with the 970 and a solid 60 fps. I'd also like to note that Jayztwocents just benchmarked the game with an R9 290x 8 GB a few days ago and found performance similar to what I'm seeing with my 970. So what is really is going on? Is there a problem with my card/setup or are people making baseless claims on the performance of the 970? I'll post a Valley Benchmark of my rig following this post. Thanks for taking the time to read/respond.

 

[Suztera]

Here is my settings. I personally prefer these settings compared to what Geforce experience suggests. In some areas my pc can maintain 60fps but can occasion dip to low 40 fps as well but I don't notice this so i guess it doesn't happen that often unless I looking directly at my fps reading. I suspect it occurs when I am moving and the world is loading in new textures as my VRAM usage was always near the 3.5GB.

Spoiler

Resolution: 1080
FXAA: On
MSAA: x2
VSync: off
Population Density: 100
Population Variety: 100
Distance Scaling: 100
Texture Quality: Very High
Shader Quality: High
Shadow Quality: High
Reflection Quality: Ultra
Reflection MSAA: x2
Water Quality: Very High
Particles Quality: High
Grass Quality: Very High
Soft Shadows: Nvidia PCSS
Post FX: Very High
Motion Blur Strength: None
Anisotropic Filtering: X16
Ambient Occlusion: High
Tessellation: High

Adv Settings:
Long Shadows: Off
High Resolution Shadows: Off
High Detail Streaming While Flying: Off
Extended Distance Scaling: 100
Extended Shadows: 0

 

[garneroutlaw]

Valley Extreme HD benchmark score of 2427, FPS: 58.0, Min: 28.5, Max: 108.6.

 

[BamStache]

Similar setup except I have a i5-3470 for my cpu
My settings are the same except Post FX is on with DoF enabled and Filtering to x16 and advanced graphics completely off

I understand how you feel about the reviews saying that the GTX 970 performs exceptionally well on very high settings around 80-90 on very high

I usually preform around 66 in desert and 40's in the city

I was faily sure that it was a cpu bottleneck but I have friends with lower setups and they run at ultra always above 60 with a 680 and a 2nd gen i5

I've been scouring for solutions since launch and I still can't find anything that helps

 

[jedah]

Running on similar system with 970. I had almost everything maxed out except MSAA. Running stable at 60 fps, but there were some drops now and then, i played around with the settings for some time and even noticed that when I was looking one direction i had 60 fps, turned around and then it dropped down to 30. Almost nothing had any significant diffirence in performance except grass quality... I had to turn it down to normal ( just shows much less of it). Now it's stable at 60 fps, which plays much better.

 

[koolguy978]

i too am getting around 40-55 frames maxed details in the city. with 2 gtx 970 sli and i7 4970k. i tried to use the geforce optimal settings which is lower that the maxed out setting and still get the same amount of frames/ps

 

[elektrichead22]

Something is up with the Maxwell gpus. maybe at this architecture the discrepancy between Maxwell dies is so varied that uniformity between end products is unachievable and performance between each individual card has huge swings in terms of productivity? It is not just gtav where I have read about huge swings in performance. Each manufacturer says they test the dies before making the gfx cards but I wonder what the standards are? Luckily I think I got a good gpu

amd 8350 oc
msi 970tf (had to turn the oc off for stability in the game was getting a xfx d3d error)
8 gig gskill dom 2133

 

[CitricHusk]

I am in the same boat with the whole low performing in GTA V. My setting are all set to lowest as possible with a few exceptions:
Texture Quality = High
Post FX = Ultra; why? because for some reason it improve my fps

As for a solution, I look everywhere but no luck. I did tried a few stuff on my own which did somewhat improve the performance.
OC my CPU to 4Ghz, GPU slightly w.o touching the voltage, and along with other usual suspect like re-installing drivers. There is some talk that the recent patch that was suppose to improve the quality of the game being the culprit but that is just speculation at this point. It's sad to read that other who has nearly identical hardware specs able to go above 60fps in Very High setting while I have issues with massive frame drop, random freezes, and occasional "I see you in a pursuit at 40fps, let me drop it to 10fps and pop in indestructible object while I'm at it.".

---
My specs:
i7 3770k @ 4ghz
msi gtx 970 [slight oced w default voltage]
16gb 1600mhz corsair vengence

 

[Xmatty87]

Hi there my specs are
I5 2500k oc 4.4 ghz 8 gig ram 1600mhz evga gtx 970 sc

I am running at a solid 60fps almost 100% of the time in the air sea city or desert here are my settings hope they help
DirectX Version : DirectX 11

Screentype : Fullscreen
Resolution : 1920 x 1080
Aspect Ratio : Auto
Refresh Rate : 60hrtz
Output Monitor : 1

FXAA : Off
MSAA : X4
NVIDIA TXAA : On
VSync : On
Pause Game On Focus Loss : On
Population Density : Maximum
Population Variety : Maximum
Distance Scaling : Maximum

Texture Quality : Very High
Shader Quality : Very High
Shadow Quality : High
Reflection Quality : Very High
Reflection MSAA : Off
Water Quality : High
Particles Quality : Very High
Grass Quality : High
Soft Shadows : Soft
Post FX : Very High
Motion Blur Strength : Off
In-Game Depth Of Field Effects : Off
Anisotropic Filtering : X16
Ambient Occlusion : High
Tessellation : High

Advanced Graphics::

Long Shadows : Off
High Resolution Shadows : Off
High Detail Streaming While Flying : On
Extended Distance Scaling : [||-----------] (Two points from the bottom)
Extended Shadows Distance : Disabled

 

[3ogdy]

I believe a lot of GPU work is commanded by the shadows and FXAA. Try lowering (and / or disabling FXAA) some of them and see how much your performance improves and try to find a balance between shadows and performance.

Use software such as AIDA to record CPU and GPU usage while playing GTA V and then see which could possibly be the bottleneck. Also, GTA V can take up quite a lot of VRAM, but it is generally a good idea to have a bit of VRAM free (use 3.2GB - 3.3GB out of 3.5GB for instance).

I'm not sure whether nVidia fixed the VRAM issues with the GTX 970 or not, but you may want to limit VRAM usage to what I've mentioned and see if there's any difference, as the last 500MB of VRAM are not as fast as the first 3.5GB on the GTX 970. Make sure you check that out.

 

[TaylorBlakeH]

3ogdy, I have to correct you here regarding FXAA affecting performance... FXAA is that LAST option in all of GTA's settings that should have an impact on performance. It is a post-processing method of anti-aliasing with almost zero performance cost and it strictly relies on the CPU instead of the GPU to complete anyways. It just filters images after they've been rendered at the pixel level and blends similar colors together creating a blurring effect to smooth out edges. Perhaps you were referring to anti-aliasing in general using the term FXAA? If this is the case it is understandable. But I just felt the need to clarify that FXAA would not have any impact on performance as a post-processed AA method.

As far as my experience goes, up until last night, I had only one GTX 970 (reference model) with an i5-2500K overclocked to 5.1 GHz, I can say that fortunately, even with this one card my game runs amazingly well. Max settings enabled aside from the extended distance scaling and grass on high instead of very high, I would always have 80 FPS (refresh rate set to 80) except for at night when I would drive with head lights on through grass. All of the shadows that I would create were a little much and the framerate would sink.

I added a second 970 in SLI last night and it performs beautifully! I have everything up to max included extended distance scaling and it still doesn't drop. Aside from distance scaling, a single 970 should get you everything this game has to offer at 60 FPS. I hate to see that you aren't experiencing that for one reason or the other. If not using SLI, i HIGHLY recommend that you enable MFAA in the NVIDIA control panel and set your MSAA to 2x (disable FXAA; it makes things blurry). This will give you 4x MSAA quality with slightly less than 2x performance cost.

 

[cima]

I agree with TaylorBlakeH.
One Gtx 970 does very nice playing on 1080p with more than 60fps on all settings set to very high. I dont find often to drop FPS to 40 and I don't even notice that.

Still I had to be carefull with MSAA settings ... disabled it. With that enabled I had problems under 30FPS in rain or when traveling. So I disabled that without any significant visual quality loss.

I left Advanced settings at default, didn't tuch that at all.

On 1440p with the same settings I had bad performance "sometimes" when crashing cars in the city, quick movements, stunts, rain and stuff. So I am playing at 1080p now.

So playing GTAV on 1080p is very nice.

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Intel Core i5-6600K @ 4,4 GHz (Skylake) Sockel 1151
ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX DC2OC, 4096 MB GDDR5
Team Group Dark Series Weiß, DDR4-3000, CL16 - 16 GB Kit
Super Flower Leadex 80 Plus - 550 Watt
Samsung 850 EVO Series 2,5 Zoll SSD, SATA 6G - 500 GB