Grand Theft Auto V

I wish I could read all these.

I'm about 7 and a half hours in--just met Trevor and did a few missions with him. Good game so far. Nice and varied. The character-switching thing is pretty inspired. The first heist was fun, and I really enjoyed the element of planning your approach and picking your team. I wish the actual heist had reflected that kind of strategy a little more than it did, but still, pretty fun. I look forward to going back and playing it the other way. Hope to see more of that going forward.

golg - Have you downloaded the AMD Beta driver? It's supposed to give extra performance with their cards.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

@Tatty
Yep, on the AMD beta, and I've canned all the swish stuff. Tesselation off and 'normal' post production so no DoF etc. Draw sliders are still at 70%ish actually so should def try that. DX10 tip sounds intriguing too

@Iro

*EDIT* Sorry Yods

The story honestly isn't RDR level, but there are some fun bits to chew over

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

@Golgot - to answer your question, yes.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Hmph, that's a bit silly.

Well, this is Grand Theft Auto we're talking about.

The video editor's already churning out great stuff:

Okayyyy, so switching to DX10.1 and dropping Distance Scaling down to about 20% got me into the 45-60fps range pretty comfortably . (Although it would still dip down to 30fps in that final Vinewood boulevard chase and explosion, depending on how it played out)

But it still looked fugly as anything. So...



So much prettier And running pretty solidly in the 30-40fps range Which is fine by me in many ways, as what I'm trying to do is avoid buying a next gen machine by getting close to emulating one. It's just so much more fun to play when it looks this nice, especially in first person.

The texture hike doesn't seem to hurt me beyond about a 2/3fps drop thanks to my onboard graphics ram. Shadows are a bit ugly in places, but hopefully I'll be able to sneak a few more performance gains as we go.

Interesting back end tinkering here which might be worth a try for others. (Max pre-rendered frames: 1 / Prefer Max performance / V-sync: Adaptive etc). It's a bit trickier on AMD but might give it a go later.

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Had a play with the radio and it seems to work with no issues for me Only prob are songs which are a bit quiet. Would still love to be able to nest different styles in folders for it to cycle through, but just dumping a selection of shortcuts in for the day then doing a one-off scan seems to work.

My route for dialling down settings has always been shadows, then AA, then lighting. You could probably bring the shadows back to Normal and save some load. DOF always used to be heavy on a system but I've not noticed any problems here.

I've got it turned off for purely aesthetic reasons, same as motion blur.

Yeah I've kept the main shadows setting on Normal still I think. I am getting some ugly jagged undersides to outcroppings though, so would like to massage it a bit. Whacking up the softening is too heavy. Really can't do any more than this for now though as I do dip below 30fps occasionally in the most hectic bits. (I do like shadow tricks as a rule though - like the SSAO option in other games - it just makes people and objects seem more part of the world).

Yeah feel the same about DOF - I don't feel like it works given it's not aware of your focal point, so sometimes you'll flick your eyes down the road or whatever and be looking straight at blur. Fine for screenshots I guess

If you ever get the brute force required to run them, ENB packages give wonderful shadows.

Here's a nice little app in these days of massive game installe eating into your hard drive space. The TikiOne Steam Cleaner

Basically, it deletes the redist folders from your game installs, so make sure you've run the game once before using it. I deleted 8GB when I used it earlier.

I've been buying garages. Getting bored now...







Trev's been buying other things too.



And just hanging out.

Oo Tiki looks handy.

Yeah I'm struggling a bit with retreading old ground. My draw distance solution has some drawbacks too - roads work fine, but snazzy water effects decohere into a pile of jaggies in front of you

Quite liking first person for key moments though. Saving M's errant wife from the fuzz felt more 'intimate' somehow like that, and warehouse shootouts are def more fun and intense, even if it does feel pretty lumpy.

Still, when it works it works

You obviously need a new graphics card. Titan Xs in SLI should cover it.

I'm feeling increasingly cruel trying to make this editing machine play games

(I will totally be picking your brains at some point about the best way to upgrade it. Now that upping the CPU looks like a complete motherboard swap I am leaning toward some super GPU instead. Would it really make that much difference without the Ghz behind it tho?)

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Teetering on buyer's remorse in G-land, but a spread of novelties are saving it at the moment. I am really enjoying flicking to first-person for missions (it feels like flipping to: 'Game on, time to focus!' mode ). Plus it's easier to slip into roleplay-lite when you feel you're in their shoes, and the shooting itself is def more enjoyable this way.

The over-familiarity is still a bit deflating, and the lack of that original 'explore every corner' buzz, but I still find myself hearing new dialogue & stumbling on new oddities & locations. The game really is incredibly stocked on that front. The expanded radio & personal station are helping keep it fresh too. It all added up to me flipping from 'meh' to finding myself lost in a string of silly self-appointed missions again last night . (Right I'll just head there, oo this car glides well in the rain, actually I'll take that bike off that mugger, woo bunny hopped off two cars in a row, etc )

What CPU have you got? All the reports are that GTAV is pretty CPU intensive so it will make a difference.

You can get round the underpowered processor problem (and I've done it a few times myself) by buying a beefy GPU which will be throttled somewhat by the CPU but still give you a noticeable upgrade. To do that with something like GTAV you'll need a 970, and that's pushing £300.

A new motherboard, an i5 and a 960 will probably give you the same results (and cost more money than a 970 on its own) but you'll be set for the console generation with possibly only a new GPU required by the end of it.

No easy workarounds unfortunately although I see the game's had an update today.

CPU is lil ole AMD 4 core (3.2ghz) - A8-5500. It is over-clockable apparently but haven't really looked into it. Got a reasonable fan so might be worth a look.

Yeah figured I just can't afford to splash on the whole works, so if GPU alone can make significant difference that might be the best place to put cash for now - then get to CPU after.

Yoda's got a similar CPU doesn't he? Confirm or deny, boss!

If so then I'd say try a GTX 960 like he has. You'll pay between £160 and £190 depending on flavour and might even be able to swing a free game if you buy from official Nvidia suppliers. They're giving away Witcher 3 right now, but that game might just be with 970s and 980s.

EDIT - The stupid end of the PC building community goes something like this: One out of four front USB ports fails on your case, do you -

A) Make do with three, seeing as you rarely have any more than one thing plugged into the front of the PC at a time?

Or

2) Spend £70 on a new case?

Some people really are too daft for words...

The case arrives tomorrow, by the way.

Oo intriguing. Right, I'm moving this to the 'Puter Twerking thread before we swamp this place

*EDIT* Oh wait dammit, we don't have a thread like that. Thought we did. Have made one...