Grand Theft Auto V on PC is finally getting ray tracing and some graphics options

Grand Theft Auto V's PC port finally gets long-awaited ray traced graphical effects, bringing it up to and beyond par with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions. (Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Earlier this morning, Rockstar Games announced in a blog post that the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V, long left languishing without the addition of ray-traced shadows and reflections available on PS5/XSX, would be receiving a free update to add those graphical features among several other exclusive tweaks to the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V . This free update is being released as a new executable, so the old version of the game, which is far easier to run, will still be available to gamers whose PCs can't meet the new specification requirements.

Besides ray-traced reflections and shadows being added from the next-gen console versions of GTA V, other ray-traced features coming exclusively to PC include RTAO (ambient occlusion) and RTGI (global illumination), bringing the picture far more in line with other ray-traced games instead of rasterized titles with a few RT effects. DirectStorage support for improved SSD performance has also been added alongside Dolby Atmos support.

Finally, a suite of display options and image enhancement technologies, including AMD FSR 3 and Nvidia DLSS 3 with Frame Generation (and "higher" framerates in general, though it hasn't been specified if they will be unlocked) have been added. Enhanced support for "higher resolutions" and "higher aspect ratios" are also mentioned, which would seem to indicate Ultrawide support and some degree of high-DPI scaling for the HUD.

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Minimum and Recommended Specs for the Grand Theft Auto V PC update. — Minimum and Recommended Specs for the Grand Theft Auto V PC update, now leveraging a new executable. The old executable with the original system requirements will still be present, but segregate online play.(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Overall, the new Grand Theft Auto V PC requirements with RT enabled still seem pretty reasonable, considering how great the game already looked before all these RT effects were added. Unfortunately, Rockstar doesn't tell us what the resolution and FPS targets for the "Minimum" and "Recommended" specs are, and we do anticipate those hoping to make the most of high-res, ultrawide, or high-refresh displays will want to invest in yet higher-end gaming CPUs and RT-capable gaming GPUs.

Anyway, that's all of the technical information. A bevy of in-game bonuses are also being added with this version of the game, which we recommend perusing in the official blog post or allowing to surprise you when the update drops on March 4. There's even DualSense adaptive trigger support! The only real downside of this update seems to be the lack of support for multiplayer between the old GTA V executable and the new one, which will somewhat segregate low-spec players from high-spec players and vice versa— otherwise, this is a clear win and arguably overdue update for GTA fans on PC. (At least, until the long wait for GTA 6!)

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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.