Today's Hard|Forum Post
Today's Hard|Forum Post
Date:
Tuesday , May 26, 2015
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Grand Theft Auto V Image Quality Comparison - Part 5

In our final look at Grand Theft Auto V we will look at image quality comparisons in this game. We will focus on the main graphics options that affect performance the most and we will get to the bottom of which soft shadow option is best to use. We will also find out if FXAA and TXAA affect texture quality.

Introduction

We are at the end of our in-depth evaluation series into Grand Theft Auto V. In today's evaluation we are going to look at image quality comparisons. Please keep in mind there is no way we could evaluate every single graphics option and how it affects image quality. This game is vast in options and vast in combination of options that affect image quality. If we looked into every graphics option it would take one man a month to get to it all.

Given that, we are going to focus on the major image quality options that change visual quality and performance and are the most pressing when it comes to figuring out which options to use. The first option we are going to look into is antialiasing in GTA V. We are first going to find out if FXAA and TXAA affect texture quality. Then we will compare FXAA to MSAA to TXAA and figure out which one brings the best visual quality to the game and does the best job at removing jaggies on every object.

Then we will move into shadows, specifically soft shadows. We will compare Rockstar's Softest setting to AMD CHS and NVIDIA PCSS and determine once and for all which one is better! Finally, we will show you what some of the other options look like that affect image quality, like Grass for example since "Ultra" Grass takes such a large hit in performance.

We will conclude with our opinions on which graphics options to prioritize for your gaming based on the visual impact and performance for that visual impact.

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Here are our five previous reviews covering GTA V performance with specific looks at what IQ features impact framerates the most.

Grand Theft Auto V Video Card Performance Preview - Start your reading here, this summarizes the in-game graphics options and preliminary feature testing.

Grand Theft Auto V Single GPU Performance Review Part 1 - Continue here where we dive into single-GPU performance and find out what settings are best playable on a lot of video cards.

Grand Theft Auto V Multi-GPU Performance Review Part 2 - Then continue here as we dive into multi-GPU performance and find what is playable with SLI and CrossFire and 4K resolutions.

Grand Theft Auto V IQ Features Performance - Part 3 - In Part 3 we dove in deep in specific feature performance comparisons. We found out how intense MSAA, Reflection MSAA, and TXAA really are including the VRAM impact. Then we looked at Grass performance, Tessellation performance and Extended View Distance performance.

Grand Theft Auto V Shadow Features Performance - Part 4 - In Part 4 we dove into shadow performance in various configurations and CPU utilization with TITAN X SLI.

Test Setup

We are using the latest drivers, Catalyst 15.4 Beta, and GeForce 350.12. We are also running the latest build of the game, Build 350.

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