Best GTA V settings for Steam Deck

If you’re looking for the best GTA V settings for Steam Deck, read on.

At the end of the day, Steam Deck is a PC, not a handheld console like Nintendo Switch. This means that, unlike on the Switch, games are seldom (or never) optimized for the Steam Deck out of the box. That is your job.

While low-demanding games like will run at a stable 60 frames per second without any issues, other games, like GTA V, need much more involvement from your side to ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

If you want GTA V to run as smoothly as possible on your Steam Deck, you need to fiddle with some of its graphics settings. With that in mind, let's take a look at the best GTA V settings for Steam Deck.

Does GTA V run well on Steam Deck?

GTA V's recommended requirements suggest that the game requires 8GB of RAM and 2GB of GPU memory to run smoothly.

Valve's handheld PC has 16GB of unified memory, shared between the CPU and the GPU. The GPU can access up to 8 GB of the shared memory depending on workload.

Steam Deck does have more than enough RAM and GPU memory for GTA V to run well. But since the game is not optimized for Steam Deck, you need to tweak the graphics settings to achieve the best performance.

Read more: Will Returnal be on Steam Deck?

Best GTA V settings for Steam Deck

Many Steam Deck users have reported lag and stuttering issues in GTA V. However, some users have managed to solve the issue by lowering the in-game graphics settings.

Particularly, this Reddit user managed to achieve "the smoothest 60 fps experience" with some smart tweaking. Today, we are going to share this person's secret recipe to play GTA V without any lag or stuttering on Steam Deck.

Here are the best GTA V settings for Steam Deck:

• DirectX Version - DirectX11 (minimum)
• Screen Type - Fullscreen (switch to Windowed Borderless for maximum FPS)
• Resolution/Aspect Ratio - Set to native resolution
• FXAA - Off
• MSAA - Off
• NVIDIA TXAA - Off
• VSync - On
• Population Density- 50%
• Population Variety- 100%
• Distance Scaling - Maximum

• Texture Quality - High
• Shader Quality - Normal
• Shadow Quality - Normal
• Reflection Quality - Normal
• Reflection MSAA - Off
• Water Quality - Normal
• Particles Quality -Normal
• Grass Quality - Normal
• Soft Shadows - Soft
• PostFX - High
• Motion Blur/Depth of Field - Off
• Anisotropic Filtering - X2
• Ambient Occlusion - Normal
• Tessellation - Normal

With these GTA V graphics settings, players should be able to get the game running at 60fps fairly consistently. It strikes a perfect balance between smooth gameplay and impressive image quality/graphics. These settings will also help you avoid crashing in GTA V on Steam Deck.

Can you run GTA V on max settings on Steam Deck

To get the best experience out of GTA V on Steam Deck, you can choose to play at maximum settings. This video is proof that your $400 handheld PC can indeed run games like GTA V and Max Payne 3 at max settings.

However, there is a trade-off; playing GTA V at max settings will drain the battery of your Steam Deck faster. Also, you may notice your device overheating and the fan getting louder - which is undesirable.

So, we recommend you stick to the GTA V settings we provided for Steam Deck. Using these settings optimizes GTA V for the best battery life and performance on Steam Deck.

Now that you have the best GTA V settings for Steam Deck, learn how to install GTA V mods on Steam Deck.