How Grand Theft Auto V Legacy & Enhanced Edition Compare on Steam Deck

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If you've lost track with what's happening with Grand Theft Auto V, we wouldn't blame you. The game has been out for over 10 years at this point, and much like Skyrim, there are different versions flying around, as well as updates to the game every so often to further muddy the waters.

But you may have remembered a little while ago that Grand Theft Auto V was enhanced for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, well that update has now reached the PC in the form of Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced Edition, and has relegated the original Grand Theft Auto V PC release to the "Legacy Edition". So let's take a look and see how these 2 editions compare, both visually, and in terms of performance on the Steam Deck.

Grand Theft Auto V Legacy Vs. Enhanced - Visual Comparison

First up, let's take a look at how the two editions compare in terms of their visual fidelity. For this, I'm pushing the settings as high as I can while maintaining a fairly stable 40 FPS, as this is a pretty nice experience in a game like Grand Theft Auto V, I'm not a big fan of playing at 30 FPS with this one.

The Legacy Edition achieves 40 FPS by having all the settings on "Very High" with most Advanced Graphics settings disabled aside from Long Shadows. The Enhanced Edition has to lower those settings to "High", again with Long Shadows on. Likely this is because the Enhanced Edition's settings don't exactly line up with the Legacy Edition, so "High" on one may not deliver the same results as "High" on the other.

Visually, it's a mixed bag. The Legacy Edition has very "accurate" shadows, in that each leaf on the tree above is portrayed in detail, whereas the Enhanced Edition favors more approximate shadows, but they're quite noisy and somewhat blurry, very Unreal Engine 5-esque. The Enhanced Edition definitely has more detailed foliage, however.

This is pretty much how the rest of the game goes, the Enhanced Edition tends to elaborate more on the smaller details, particularly things such as foliage and density, but in turn, that means other settings must be lowered, meaning you have to make sacrifices on how the game looks elsewhere.

Noticeably, the Enhanced Edition adds things like caustics to the edge of water on beaches, another nice addition, but whether or not it's worth the hit to the other visual settings and battery life is up to you to decide.

Grand Theft Auto V Legacy Vs. Enhanced - Performance Comparison

Performance, is again, a mixed bag between these two editions. In order to achieve the desired 40 FPS target I set for myself, the Enhanced Edition has to lower its settings to "High", whereas the Legacy Edition can run on "Very High". It's not really a fair comparison, as the settings don't quite match up between Editions, but you can look at the images above to see which you prefer.

I will say, that the Enhanced Edition did seem to be more stable. In busier areas, the Legacy Edition did occasionally stutter when the Enhanced Edition did not, likely due to the population density, despite both Editions being set to the same level on the slider and seemingly having the same amount of NPCs in the game.

I believe this change in stability is likely down to CPU optimizations with the Enhanced Edition. The Legacy Edition tends to draw less power from the CPU, often around 3W. Whereas the Enhanced Edition likes to take around 8-9W. This significantly affects the battery life, but improves performance in busier areas, and I would hazard a guess this is down to the Enhanced Edition making better use of all the CPU threads modern systems have.

Both editions are capable of holding 40 FPS at the specified settings, however.

Final Thoughts

So which edition of Grand Theft Auto V is best for the Steam Deck, Legacy or Enhanced? Really, this boils down to personal preference.

The Enhanced Edition has some nice extras, like water caustics, more detailed foliage, more particles, and a different lighting engine which may or may not be to your taste. It also has some CPU optimizations that can smooth out some stutters. The power draw is worse though, often using 20-22W resulting in a low battery life.

The Legacy Edition on the other hand, allows you to have higher settings in general, which can make the game look better than the Enhanced Edition in many places, as well as using less power, around 15-19W, giving you a longer lasting battery. It does suffer from the occasional stutter, but it isn't game-breaking.

Personally, I would choose to go with the Legacy Edition of Grand Theft Auto V still, as Online mode isn't a factor for the Steam Deck anymore, this edition just looks better with the settings we can use, and it will give you an extra hour or so of battery life.

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