GTA 5 Enhanced vs Legacy on PC — worth the upgrade?

GTA 5 Enhanced vs Legacy on PC — worth the upgrade?

So Rockstar finally brought the Enhanced Edition to PC, and after years of watching console players flex their upgraded Los Santos, we get to see what all the fuss is about. Dark Space just dropped a solid breakdown comparing Enhanced vs Legacy side by side, and there's some stuff worth talking about.

Global Illumination

This is the big one. Console players never got this, but PC Enhanced Edition ships with full Global Illumination, and it genuinely changes how the whole world looks. Lighting bounces around realistically now — interiors, shadows under cars, the way streetlights hit wet pavement at night — it's a noticeable step up.

Raytracing Features

• Raytraced Ambient Occlusion — deeper, more natural shadow contact points. Objects actually sit in the world instead of floating on top of it.
• Raytraced Reflections — finally. Windows, water, car bodies — everything reflects properly now instead of using those blurry screen-space hacks.

Explosions and Particle Effects

They also touch on how explosions and particle effects got a glow-up. More volumetric, more layered, just generally punchier when stuff goes boom.

Issues

It's not all perfect though. The video flags some issues that come with the upgrade — worth keeping expectations in check before you dive in.

There's also the usual batch of bonuses for switching over if you haven't already.

Been running Enhanced since it dropped? How's it holding up on your rig compared to Legacy?

Source: Dark Space (YouTube) · Curated content.

Look, the GI and raytracing look nice in screenshots, but here's my actual question: how's it hit your framerate during a four-star escape with smoke everywhere? Legacy runs like butter even on mid-tier hardware, and I've lost setups to stutter more than I care to admit. If Enhanced drops below 60 in the middle of a Pacific Standard run, that "realistic shadow contact" isn't worth the payout loss. Anyone benchmarked it during heavy combat yet?

Honestly the GI upgrade is the only thing that matters from a geography standpoint. Legacy Los Santos always had that flat, artificial feel when you ducked into interiors — underpasses, tunnels, the back rooms of stores in Strawberry. Shadows didn't sit right. Now with proper light bounce, those spaces actually feel like they exist within the world instead of pasted behind it.

That said, I'm not convinced the reflections are worth the performance hit if you're actually exploring rather than standing around admiring car paint. I'd rather have smooth frames when I'm trying to navigate the hills north of Vinewood at speed.

The AO improvement is real though — finally objects look planted. No more floating dumpsters behind buildings in Rancho.

The GI implementation is genuinely the sleeper feature here. I've been studying the night screenshots Rockstar put out, and the way secondary light bounce fills those alleyways behind Vinewood — that's not just cosmetic, it fundamentally changes how you read the environment during missions. But I'd caution anyone on mid-range hardware to wait for more benchmarks. Raytraced reflections plus GI is a heavy stack, and "issues" in that video could mean more than just visual glitches if we're talking VRAM limits. Legacy still runs beautifully on modest rigs.

Honestly the RT reflections alone make it worth it if you spend any time in LS Customs. Finally seeing proper reflections on paint jobs and body kits instead of that muddy screen-space garbage is night and day. Matte finishes actually look matte now, metallic flake pops under GI bounce light, and candy coats finally have depth instead of looking flat.

That said, if your rig's already sweating at Legacy settings, skip it. These lighting upgrades tank frames hard when you're doing midnight drift runs through the city with ten deep traffic. Performance > pretty every time.

Look, the GI and raytracing look great in a comparison video, but here's the real question: how's this gonna run when you've got 80 players in a session and someone's running a script-heavy heist? Legacy already chugs on some RP servers when population spikes. I'm holding off until FiveM fully supports Enhanced and we see real benchmarks from actual RP scenarios, not solo free roam. Pretty reflections don't mean much if you're dropping to 25 fps during a police chase.