Today, Rockstar has released the much-anticipated Grand Theft Auto V PC update, which the developer dubbed GTA V Enhanced. This free update is effectively a new version of the game, as you can check in your Steam or Epic Games Store library, where the previous version is now labeled as GTA V Legacy. The distinction makes sense, as the new version has much higher system requirements compared to the original version.
Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 (latest service pack)
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770 | AMD FX-9590
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 (4GB VRAM) | AMD Radeon RX 6400 (4GB VRAM)
Storage: 105 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 10 Compatible
Additional Notes: SSD Required |*Compatible PC and/or device required. 3D Audio via Windows Spatial Sound compatible audio systems
Recommended:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 11
Processor: Intel Core i5-9600K | AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (8GB VRAM) | AMD Radeon RX 6600XT (8GB VRAM)
Storage: 105 GB available space
Sound Card: Windows Spatial Sound-compatible audio system; solution containing Dolby Atmos support required for a Dolby Atmos experience
Additional Notes: SSD with DirectStorage compatibility
It's also important to make sure your configuration is up for it since progress can be copied from the Legacy version once, and while you will be able to continue playing from where you left off in GTA V Legacy, progress cannot be copied back. This goes for both Story Mode and GTA Online progress, including Characters, GTA$, Progression, Stats, Vehicles, Properties, Weapons, Clothing, and Player-Created Jobs.
Let's review the bulk of the new features available in GTA V Enhanced:
- Ray tracing support, including reflections and shadows (previously released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X) and the PC-exclusive global illumination and ambient occlusion
- Upscaling support for AMD FSR 1 and 3 and NVIDIA DLSS 3
- Faster load times powered by DirectStorage support
- Enhanced 3D audio with support for Dolby Atmos (for those with compatible sound systems) and improved fidelity of speech, cinematics, and music
- Support for the DualSense controller's Adaptive Triggers feature, which is enabled to let the player feel directional damage, weather effects, rough road surfaces, explosions, and more
- General optimization
First things first. Rockstar still didn't add support for High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) displays, which is underwhelming in 2025. The NVIDIA App does not recognize the new version yet, and therefore, tweaking the ApplicationStorage.json file to implement the new DLSS 4 transformer models is not possible. At least Rockstar added built-in support for DLAA, which can be selected directly in-game.
Each ray tracing setting (shadows, reflections, global illumination, and ambient occlusion) can be individually enabled and set up to Ultra. There's also an extra setting called Scene BVH Quality, which maxes out at Very High. Those are the only new settings in the graphics menu. For the testing on my rig (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, GeForce RTX 5090 Founder's Edition), I pushed every setting to the max, including High-Resolution Shadows and Extended Shadows Distance.
After jumping into the game, the visual upgrade over the vanilla version of Grand Theft Auto V was immediately clear. By far the two most impactful enhancements are ray traced global illumination and reflections, which literally elevate the graphics of most scenes to an entirely new level of fidelity. Of course, when you look closely, you can still see that the models and textures are from a relatively old game. For that, you'll need to use mods, though that might only fly for the single-player mode now that Rockstar has introduced the kernel-level anti-cheat BattlEye to combat cheating in GTA Online.
Still, there's no doubt that GTA V Enhanced is the best the game has ever looked. On the aforementioned rig, the game also runs smoothly, even without Frame Generation (which should be added in a future update, said Rockstar), reaching 123 average frames per second in a free-roaming session of around 20 minutes. Support for NVIDIA DLSS Multi Frame Generation could potentially triple this result. I would be particularly interested in bumping these 1% low and 0.1% Low to get a more consistent experience, though.
GTA V Enhanced is definitely a way to entice players to get back into the game just as GTA VI looms on the horizon, but one could also take it as a positive sign for the next game's PC version, which is rumored to launch sooner than expected in early 2026. Support for modern features like ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS/AMD FSR (and soon Frame Generation), Dolby Atmos, and the DualSense controller is a step in the right direction for a developer that has too often relegated PC users to second-class citizens, as evidenced by the huge delay of this 'Next-Gen' update compared to consoles.
However, there's still work to do. For example, whether you own the game on Steam or the Epic Games Store, you still need to pass through the dreaded Rockstar Games Launcher and this affects the DLSS version, too, since the Launcher replaces the DLSS file with the default version if you've updated it to a newer one. Thankfully, there's already a mod available on the Nexus that monitors the GTA V Enhanced process and replaces the DLSS file automatically when the game is started, restoring it to the original upon quitting the game. This is exactly the kind of stuff that annoys PC gamers; Rockstar should take note for GTA VI.
