GTA THE TRILOGY DEFINITIVE EDITION: PERFORMANCE & STUTTERING FIX

Tired of having a bad performance meanwhile you play GTA THE TRILOGY: DEFINITIVE EDITION? Here you have the way to fix it fast!

GRAND THEFT AUTO THE TRILOGY: DEFINITIVE EDITION PERFORMANCE & STUTTERING FIX

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1546970/Grand_Theft_Auto_III__The_Definitive_Edition/

As you know, GRAND THEFT AUTO THE TRILOGY DEFINITIVE EDITION has It's own issues since It was released, partly because of the developer behind this remasters, Grove Street Games.

With this guide you will be able to play to this trilogy without any performance issues. As you know, every PC It's a world, but in my case, I did this spending a lot of time, testing everything to be sure that everything was working fine.

This fix does not modify any file of your game, just improves the performance and gives you the chance to implement VULKAN into your game.

USE VULKAN INSTEAD OF DIRECTX 11 & 12

I was watching on Steam forums that DirectX 12 improves the performance and fixes the stuttering, but after a few tests, I notice that Vulkan works better than DirectX 11 or 12. The game itself does not support VULKAN, but you can do add it easily.

DOWNLOAD AND ADD VULKAN TO THE GAME

First of all, you must know that using Vulkan has It's pros and ♥♥♥♥. The pros is having a great performance and the ♥♥♥♥ is the stutter you have for a bit until the game stabilizes It's performance, but you will have a great experience after a few minutes.

All you need to do is download this VULKAN driver[github.com]

Download dxvk-2.0.tar.gz



Once you downloaded that file, you need to go to your Steam game library, right click to Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition and then go to Manage and later to Browse local files.



You will be inside Grand Theft Auto 3 Definitive Edition folder:




Now go to Gameface:



Then to Binaries:



And finally to Win64. You will be inside the game's folder.



Now open dxvk-2.0.tar.gz that you previously downloaded (using 7z or WinRar).

You will start on dxvk-2.0:



Select x64:



And finally, select dxgi.dll & d3d11.dll:



Drag and put both files dxgi.dll and d3d11.dll inside the game's folder:



And that's it! Run the game as usual and enjoy!

WARNING: Not all the GPUs supports VULKAN. Make sure your grahpics card supports it.

USING DIRECTX 12 - IF VULKAN DOES NOT WORK

If the VULKAN method does not work for you, you have also the method of launch the game using DirectX 12.

Go to your Steam game library, right click to Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition and then go select Properties.



On GENERAL tab you will see the LAUNCH OPTIONS. Over there, just add this line: "-dx12" (without the quotation marks).



Close that window and launch Grand Theft Auto III Definitive Edition as usual and enjoy!

WARNING: Not all the GPUs supports DirectX 12. Make sure your grahpics card supports it.

SETTING THE GAME

Now is when the serious part comes, because I have seen something that really hits the performance (in a bad way), so, let's talk about Car Reflections and Map.



Car Reflections is the only thing I have seen that hits badly our performance so, I recommend you to put it on the lowest setup possible: Planar or Planar (Low Detail).

When you use the MAP to mark places to go or even to guide yourself around the cities, you should know that has some sttutering when you are using it, but doesn't affect to the game itself (looks like Grove Street Games were quite lazy and didn't notice it or fix it either).

Using VULKAN in some situations you will have some stuttering (something usual), but after a few minutes driving around the place, will work smooth as butter. Also with some explosions you can experience some stutter when you explode a car, but after a few ones, the game must be stable.

Here you have the recommended settings to play the game (leaving aside the resolution):

Visual Effects: High
Display Mode: FullScreen
Resolution: 1920x1080
Frame Rate: *60
VSync: OFF (ON using **Nvidia's Control Panel)
Anti-Aliasing: TAA+
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Distance Scaling: Ultra (or Far If the performance is bad)
Texture Quality: High
Car Reflections: Planar (Low Detail)
Cloud Quality: Volumetric
Reflection Quality: High
City Flow Effect: High
DLSS: Unsupported with this method
World Shadow Quality: High
Ambient Occlusion: SSAO
Bloom: ON
Lens Flare: OFF
Motion Blur: OFF (up to your preference)
Depth of Field: ON
HDR: Unavailable with this method
Streetlight Quality: High
Vehicle Light Quality: High

*It seems If you run the game above 60 FPS you can suffer some bugs, so It's recommended to keep it to 60 to have a great experience.

**Activate Triple Buffer too If you still have problems and also cap Max Speed Frame to 60.

If you want to understand how each setting works, you have this useful video that will help you to understand how to tweak the game (in case you have problems).

THE GAME LOOKS DARK!

Just go to GRAPHICS and lower the CONTRAST to 0 and the game should look way better.



Here you have the difference before tweaking the contrast and after:

Before



After

UNREAL ENGINE GAMEFACE FATAL ERROR

If you are using mods to play any Grand Theft Auto game of this trilogy and you have the usual Unreal Engine Gameface Fatal Error and closes at certain point of the game, I recommend you to install them one by one and see which one was causing that error.

Looks like Grand Theft Auto 3 has problems with mods quite often, but as far as people's experience, Grand Theft Auto Vice City & San Andreas seems to be more stable with mods.

USING PLAYSTATION BUTTON PROMPTS (PS4 & PS5)

Do you want to enjoy your game with PlayStation button prompts? No worries, I've got you covered! It's simple and easy, and in a few steps you will be enjoying the game with your favorite button prompts!

Downloading the button prompts

Download the PlayStation button prompts[www.nexusmods.com] (requires a Nexus Mods account).

Once you download the file, open it and select which button prompts you want (PS4 for PlayStation 4 folder and PS5 for PlayStation 5 folder).



You will have this 3 files:

500-PSLayout-III for Grand Theft Auto 3
500-PSLayout-SA for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
500-PSLayout-VC for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City



Adding PlayStation button prompts

First of all, go to your Steam game library, right click to Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition and then go to Manage and later to Browse local files.



Once you are in the main folder of the game, select Gameface:



Go to Content:



After that go to Paks:



And insde of Paks create a folder named ~mods



Over there, drag the layout of your choice. Open the game and enjoy your PlayStation button prompts!

FINISHING THIS GUIDE

This fix works for all the games of this compilation: Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft: Auto San Andreas.

I don't know If will work for everyone, but at least I took my time to find a solution after the terrible launch of this trilogy. I hope this guide works for you and solves the awful performance that sometimes we have playing this superb franchise.

Don't forget to rate the guide and leave a comment If It worked or If you have any problem!

[Mythion]

F TAA. Play with that shit off!

[Fady]

Thank you so much, this guide fixed all stuttering issues after using Vulkan, and applying the same mentioned graphic settings, and the game is running now with no issues at all.

I think Rockstar Games should provide this guide when someone buys these games.

[Wanted]

Amin bro, i was looking for this for days

[Elite]

Vulkan engine got rid off all the random crashes for me

[spotifeye]

this is actually really useful thanks

[Willi]

OK THE FIX IS: create a new savegame

[Willi]

i get a endless loading screen, do you know why?
using 4090

[Sir_Arsen]

Okay, for some reason game just decides to drop your fps after some time you unlock second island after doing some side missions and this is the case for me with third island too, I don't know what I have to downgrade now to make game run 60 fps again, anybody had that happened to their game?

[Sir_Arsen]

I had my fps frop 2x and sometimes even up to 5fps on second island, what seem to help me is setting City Glow Effect setting Off and Distance scaling on Far, also Car reflection to Planar (Low detail) and Vehicle Light Quality to Low which helped me to get my fps back to stable 60

[LiuKi]

Thank you so much it finally stopped stuttering when I used vulkan. If you guys try vulkan remember that you might lag a bit when you just load up but after a couple minutes it becomes stable.