The Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition 'Minimum System Requirements' Gaming PC

# Running the GTA Definitive Edition Trilogy on Minimum Specifications: A Detailed Walkthrough

Hello everyone and welcome to another video! Today, we’re taking a look at the Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition trilogy running with the developer-stated minimum requirements. I’ve gone with an AMD FX 6300 CPU, GTX 760 GPU, and 8 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM for this build.

I came across a video from Joker Productions where he used the DX12 launch argument to make the games smoother. Even though the GTX 760 doesn’t fully support DX12, I decided to give it a try. It seems like it helped a bit, as the frame times were slightly better when using this setting.

All three games—GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas—default to medium settings on startup. However, if you’re watching this a month, six months, or even years after I uploaded it, things might have changed. Keep that in mind as you go through this video.

In addition to sticking with the default settings, I disabled motion blur and depth of field. I also turned down street and vehicle lighting quality all the way to low. This helped improve performance, especially during nighttime in-game scenarios.

Let’s dive into each game and see how they performed on these specs.

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## GTA III: Performance and Settings

With these settings, GTA III averaged a solid 60 FPS. The CPU, as expected, was more than capable of handling the game. However, the graphics card became the limiting factor here. Eight gigs of RAM seemed sufficient for this title, though 16GB wouldn’t hurt if you have it.

Since there’s no built-in benchmarking tool in these games, I played for half an hour and used MSI Afterburner to track frame rates and times. The lows were around 1.1, but during actual gameplay, the frame rate didn’t drop below 35 FPS.

Turning everything down to low settings made a significant difference. Screen reflections, for instance, might be the most demanding setting in the game. While it improved the average and one percent low figures, the 0.1 percent low was worse. This actually made GTA III feel a bit less consistent when playing on low settings.

Overall, I’d rather stick with default medium settings. The average FPS wasn’t as high, but the game felt more consistent.

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## Vice City: The Most Demanding Game in the Trilogy

Vice City turned out to be the most demanding of the three. With all its neon lighting effects and additional grass and trees, it’s no surprise that performance took a hit. During my playthrough, I spent most of my time in the 30-40 FPS range.

I played as a paramedic for this section, which required fast-paced driving across the island. My terrible driving skills ended up creating more chaos than rescues, but that’s part of the fun!

The minimum specs were pretty accurate here. I noticed frame rate dips when running over grass or approaching trees, but it didn’t drop below 30 FPS at any point. The game remained playable and enjoyable despite these minor issues.

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## San Andreas: The Best-Performing Game in the Trilogy

San Andreas ran the best out of the three. Perhaps it’s due to the extra time put into optimization or its more spread-out, open map design. With default settings, it maintained a solid average FPS.

During my playthrough, I noticed dips down to mid-30s but nothing too severe. The game remained playable and enjoyable throughout.

One thing I missed was the reduced draw distance from the original PS2 version. The fog effect added atmosphere, and the orange hue from that era is something I wish they hadn’t changed. Even with flying a plane at dusk over Los Santos, there were moments where the visuals felt slightly off compared to the original.

Turning everything down to low settings had a massive impact on performance. We went from averaging 60 FPS to around 90 FPS in some areas. The performance improvement was so drastic that I initially thought I’d accidentally changed the resolution!

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## Final Thoughts and Conclusion

While playing at low settings can make the games run smoothly, there are still noticeable dips in frame rates across all three titles. These drops aren’t as bad as you might expect, but they’re still present. If you have more powerful hardware, enabling DX12 could help lock the game to a stable 60 FPS most of the time.

Thank you very much for watching! This has been the GTA trilogy minimum specs system build. If you enjoyed it, please leave a like below, and if you didn’t, leave a dislike. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already! I’ll see all of you in the next video.

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This concludes my detailed walkthrough of running the GTA Definitive Edition trilogy on minimum specifications. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now in today's one we're taking a look at the grand theft auto definitive edition trilogy running with the developer stated minimum requirements i've gone with the amd fx 6300 and gtx 760 combo along with 8 gigabytes of ddr3 ram i saw a video from joker productions where he used the dx12 launch argument supposedly to make the games smoother so i've enabled that as well it seems to help a little bit even though the 760 doesn't fully support dx12 but all i know is is that the frame times were a little better when doing this all three games default to somewhere around medium settings on startup at least at the time of this video if you're watching this a month six months or years after i've uploaded it then everything i'm saying might not apply all i did here in addition to sticking with the default settings was disable motion blur and depth of field and turn street and vehicle lighting quality all the way down to low because this helps with the performance at night time in game night time i probably didn't have to confirm that but anyway we actually averaged 60 fps in gta 3 with these settings the cpu is more than capable of handling this game and the rest of the trilogy so as you might have guessed the graphics card is the limiting factor eight gigs of ram also seems sufficient but 16 never hurt anyone there's no built-in benchmarking run so all i could do was play the game for half an hour or while counting the frame rates and frame times using msi afterburner's built-in software as you can see by the 1.1 lows the frame rate did dip towards 30 though i didn't notice it dip any lower than 35 when actually playing i then turned everything down to low i think i'm not sure if the screen reflections option is the lowest but it definitely gives us the highest frame rate this is probably one of the most demanding settings so watch out for this one if you decide to play on low settings with hardware like this then you'll see an improvement to the average and one percent low figures but the 0.1 percent low is actually a bit worse this actually made gta 3 feel a bit worse this time around i'd rather play on the default medium settings to be fair the average isn't as good but the game feels a lot more consistent gta vice city is the most demanding of the trilogy perhaps because of all the 80s neon lighting everywhere that and the extra grass and trees certainly contribute to lower performance figures you'll definitely spend more time in the 30 to 40 fps range here but the minimum specs so far are pretty accurate now i quite like the art style of these games as well i know a lot of you might disagree and while i think that some magic has certainly been lost in comparison to the originals these games can still look great in certain areas nothing beats the original though and that pretty much applies to everything turning things down to low like before gave us much better results there were still frame time issues here and there but it is what it is and for the most part it's playable and enjoyable i spent my time playing as a paramedic a mini game that requires a lot of fast paced driving all over the island most of the time my terrible driving skills meant that i was creating more customers as opposed to rescuing already injured members of the public but there we go vice city as i said before is certainly the most demanding game in the trilogy due to the extra on-screen effects and things like that i think it is mainly the lighting and the trees and the grass because when you sort of run over the grass or run towards the trees the frame rate does noticeably dip but again it doesn't really go below 30 here now san andreas seems to run the best of this trilogy i don't know if it's because more time was put into it or whether it's got something to do with the more sort of spread out and open map but it runs the best in terms of an average with the same default settings as the previous two times all three games default to the same options on startup and feature the same graphical options in the menu so what you saw in the gta 3 menu is exactly applicable here and the same goes for vice city there were dips yet again to the mid 30s but the game remained playable i do miss the reduced draw distance i know the fog was used in the original game because of technical limitations but it ended up actually adding to the atmosphere i missed that sort of orange hue that the ps2 version had as well even though flying a plane at dusk like i'm doing here can still look pretty great seeing mount chiliad from ganton or even as we fly over los santos does seem a little bit off though even if it is quite impressive going down to the lowest settings here once again makes the biggest difference we've gone from around 60 fps to around 90 which is a huge performance jump the performance increased so much that i thought i must have actually changed resolution accidentally but no 1080p low transforms the gameplay in a way i can't speak for the entirety of the map or the other cities but my half hour low settings test consisting of causing carnage around los santos gave us a mostly decent experience but you should be aware that there will be dips in all of the games and although they might not be as bad as you might initially think well they are still noticeable and i think this dx12 shortcut launch thing may have actually helped a bit so that's worth bearing in mind especially if you have more powerful hardware that can lock the game to 60 frames per second most of the time anyway thank you very much for watching this has been the gta trilogy minimum specs system build if you enjoyed it leave a like down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now in today's one we're taking a look at the grand theft auto definitive edition trilogy running with the developer stated minimum requirements i've gone with the amd fx 6300 and gtx 760 combo along with 8 gigabytes of ddr3 ram i saw a video from joker productions where he used the dx12 launch argument supposedly to make the games smoother so i've enabled that as well it seems to help a little bit even though the 760 doesn't fully support dx12 but all i know is is that the frame times were a little better when doing this all three games default to somewhere around medium settings on startup at least at the time of this video if you're watching this a month six months or years after i've uploaded it then everything i'm saying might not apply all i did here in addition to sticking with the default settings was disable motion blur and depth of field and turn street and vehicle lighting quality all the way down to low because this helps with the performance at night time in game night time i probably didn't have to confirm that but anyway we actually averaged 60 fps in gta 3 with these settings the cpu is more than capable of handling this game and the rest of the trilogy so as you might have guessed the graphics card is the limiting factor eight gigs of ram also seems sufficient but 16 never hurt anyone there's no built-in benchmarking run so all i could do was play the game for half an hour or while counting the frame rates and frame times using msi afterburner's built-in software as you can see by the 1.1 lows the frame rate did dip towards 30 though i didn't notice it dip any lower than 35 when actually playing i then turned everything down to low i think i'm not sure if the screen reflections option is the lowest but it definitely gives us the highest frame rate this is probably one of the most demanding settings so watch out for this one if you decide to play on low settings with hardware like this then you'll see an improvement to the average and one percent low figures but the 0.1 percent low is actually a bit worse this actually made gta 3 feel a bit worse this time around i'd rather play on the default medium settings to be fair the average isn't as good but the game feels a lot more consistent gta vice city is the most demanding of the trilogy perhaps because of all the 80s neon lighting everywhere that and the extra grass and trees certainly contribute to lower performance figures you'll definitely spend more time in the 30 to 40 fps range here but the minimum specs so far are pretty accurate now i quite like the art style of these games as well i know a lot of you might disagree and while i think that some magic has certainly been lost in comparison to the originals these games can still look great in certain areas nothing beats the original though and that pretty much applies to everything turning things down to low like before gave us much better results there were still frame time issues here and there but it is what it is and for the most part it's playable and enjoyable i spent my time playing as a paramedic a mini game that requires a lot of fast paced driving all over the island most of the time my terrible driving skills meant that i was creating more customers as opposed to rescuing already injured members of the public but there we go vice city as i said before is certainly the most demanding game in the trilogy due to the extra on-screen effects and things like that i think it is mainly the lighting and the trees and the grass because when you sort of run over the grass or run towards the trees the frame rate does noticeably dip but again it doesn't really go below 30 here now san andreas seems to run the best of this trilogy i don't know if it's because more time was put into it or whether it's got something to do with the more sort of spread out and open map but it runs the best in terms of an average with the same default settings as the previous two times all three games default to the same options on startup and feature the same graphical options in the menu so what you saw in the gta 3 menu is exactly applicable here and the same goes for vice city there were dips yet again to the mid 30s but the game remained playable i do miss the reduced draw distance i know the fog was used in the original game because of technical limitations but it ended up actually adding to the atmosphere i missed that sort of orange hue that the ps2 version had as well even though flying a plane at dusk like i'm doing here can still look pretty great seeing mount chiliad from ganton or even as we fly over los santos does seem a little bit off though even if it is quite impressive going down to the lowest settings here once again makes the biggest difference we've gone from around 60 fps to around 90 which is a huge performance jump the performance increased so much that i thought i must have actually changed resolution accidentally but no 1080p low transforms the gameplay in a way i can't speak for the entirety of the map or the other cities but my half hour low settings test consisting of causing carnage around los santos gave us a mostly decent experience but you should be aware that there will be dips in all of the games and although they might not be as bad as you might initially think well they are still noticeable and i think this dx12 shortcut launch thing may have actually helped a bit so that's worth bearing in mind especially if you have more powerful hardware that can lock the game to 60 frames per second most of the time anyway thank you very much for watching this has been the gta trilogy minimum specs system build if you enjoyed it leave a like down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one\n"