3 years later, GTA 5’s Enhanced edition finally comes to PC, and it’s somehow 22GB smaller than GTA 5 Cool Original flavour

Michael sunbathing in GTA V
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

GTA 6 is somewhere, dimly, on the horizon, but Rockstar must be a bit worried it's forgotten how to release a Grand Theft Auto game in the last 12 years (maybe with good reason). To get some practice in, the studio is finally releasing GTA 5's next-gen update on PC next week on Tuesday, March 4.

This is the update that has, for the last three years, been strictly console-exclusive, and contains a whole bunch of up-dazzles and modernisations for the venerable old carjacking sim. That means stuff like raytracing, DirectStorage, DLSS 3 (plus FSR1 and FSR3) and all sorts of other graphical and gameplay treats. The good news? You can actually preload it on Steam right now, presuming you already own GTA 5 Cool Original.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced has its own Steam page, cunningly obscured from regular Steam search, but you probably don't actually need it. If you're a GTA 5 owner, you'll find that the original version of the game has been renamed Grand Theft Auto 5 Legacy in your Steam library, and there's a whole new entry called Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced, which you can download ahead of its release next week.

Another surprise: the Enhanced version of the game is actually smaller than the original, unless Steam is lying to me. Where GTA 5 Legacy says it wants 114GB of your hard drive, GTA 5 Enhanced only lays claim to a slender 92GB. That's a 22GB saving! You could install KOTOR 1 seven times over in the space you've freed up, there.

If you're wanting to carry over progress—either online or in-story—over to GTA 5 Enhanced, there's another hurdle to leap. Once you've got the Enhanced version preloaded, boot up original GTA 5 and you'll be able to transfer over your save on the pause screen. GTA Online transfers require a bit of a wait, though—you'll only be able to do those once GTA 5 Enhanced actually comes out.

The good news is it's a full transfer: you'll get all your in-game gubbins and cash and, barring some kind of terrible crisis, not lose a single thing from your dragon's hoard of GTAO goodies. Plus they'll all be ray-traced now. So that's nice.

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Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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