How to always start GTA V in High Priority mode

Setting GTA V to High CPU priority through task manager can help with performance issues. However, it can be annoying to manually go into task manager and set GTA to high priority every time you start the game. This guide will let you know how to create a batch file that will start GTA V in high priority mode automatically.

WARNING

Only follow this guide if you are already setting GTA V to High Priority in task manager to fix performance issues. If you're not already doing this, then you in all likelihood don't need to. Messing with program priority can cause instability on your computer, so only do it if you understand the risks.

Before you get started

Enable file name extensions: Do this by opening File Explorer, clicking the 'View' tab at the top, and ensuring 'File name extensions' is ticked. Then, to the left of that, click 'Options', select the 'View' tab, and ensure that 'Hide extensions for known file types' is unticked.

Enable the GTA V landing menu: This will make sure that you load into the main menu of the game instead of straight into singleplayer. Do this by opening up settings in-game, going to the 'Saving and startup' section, and setting 'Landing Page' to on.

Creating the batch file

Create a .txt file on your computer. I have mine on my desktop for easy access. Do this by clicking on some blank space, selecting 'New', and then 'Text Document'. Make the name of the document you just created 'gtav.bat', making sure that you've removed the '.txt' extensions that was already there. Windows will give you a warning about changing extension names, just click 'ok'.

Now that you have a batch file, right click it and select 'edit'. Now, copy and paste the following code in:

start steam://rungameid/271590
timeout 60
wmic process where name="GTA5.exe" CALL setpriority "128"
wmic process where name="Steam.exe" CALL setpriority "128"

Save the file and close it. Now, by double-clicking the batch file, you can start GTA V and it will automatically be set to high priority.

What does the code actually do?

start steam://rungameid/271590

This tells Steam to start GTA V (the number is GTA's game ID).

timeout 60

Waits for 60 seconds. Gives enough time for GTA V to start.

wmic process where name="GTA5.exe" CALL setpriority "128"
wmic process where name="Steam.exe" CALL setpriority "128"

This sets the GTA and Steam processes to both have high priority. '128' is the code that means 'High Priority'.

The reason why Steam is set to high priority as well is because if you use a controller that runs through Steams API then it will cause a lot of input lag when GTA is given priority over Steam. If you don't use a controller with the game that goes through Steam then you can remove this line of code. Keep if you're experiencing input lag.

Some things to consider

Start Steam before running the batch file. If you don't it will probably take longer than 60 seconds for steam and GTA to start.

If you use discord while using GTAV and are having issues with your voice glitching out for other people, add this line to give discord high priority as well:

wmic process where name="Discord.exe" CALL setpriority "128"

Note that if you use the public test build of Discord then the process name will be 'DiscordPTB.exe'. If you use a different voice client then replace it with the process name of that client.

Make sure to set Steam and any other processes back to normal priority after you're finished playing GTA.

That's all, if you have issues leave a comment and I'll try to help. Please give this guide a like if it helped you!

[76561198984006195]

what do i do if it says my computer cannot support making the .batch file?

[maxobe]

thanks this is neato

[James May]

wowo this is cool, very cool.