A Side-by-Side Look at Vanilla Grand Theft Auto 4 Versus RTX Remix Path Tracing

Seventeen years after its debut, Grand Theft Auto 4 is still stuck with the same ancient engine it first trotted out way back in 2008. But even as the streets shine under those familiar sodium lamps, it all just looks kind of flat. Shadows aren’t really doing much, reflections are dull and matte, and every surface goes for that tell-tale sheen of a game that was built before global illumination went mainstream. Then the magic happens with the RTX Remix mod courtesy of the genius Xoxor4d. Path tracing kicks in, and suddenly Liberty City is a whole different world.

Let’s start with that opening shot of the Broker Bridge as dusk is falling. In the original, the sky’s pretty much just a bland orange-to-purple gradient while the water’s a dark, featureless flat. Cars crossing the bridge leave behind blocky shadows that get stuck in the guardrails like they’re stuck in time. Fast forward to the altered version, and… wow. Sunlight shines through the haze, bouncing off the damp asphalt and into every nook and crevice of the suspension wires. The river has the exquisite detail of the skyline, and delicate ripples capture the remaining rays, making everything look deliciously realistic. Oncoming headlights create these gorgeous small pools of light on the road, whereas brake lights make a scarlet trail across the asphalt.

Cut to Algonquin at night, and the old GTA 4 just renders neon signs as flat decals. Their glow just stops dead at the billboard edge. Path tracing on the other hand treats each little light bulb as a proper light source. Pink and cyan start pouring out of those brick walls, colouring the passing taxis and people. Puddles on the sidewalk transform into mirrors, reflecting all these distorted storefronts and flickering streetlamps. Even the steam coming out of the manholes catches stray light and glows a lovely orange.



Character models tell a rather harsher story, though. Niko Bellic’s leather jacket still shows those low-res seams in both versions. The mod can’t just rewrite the polygons or recolor the textures. What it does do though is make the light wrap around his face. In the base game, daylight just hits him like a spotlight, leaving one side all blown out and the other completely dark. Path tracing sorts that out. His cheekbones catch some lovely natural light from above, and the shadow behind his brow starts to deepen naturally. Rain starts dripping down his coat, each little droplet catching the light from the oncoming headlights.



The interiors benefit the most, as you can see when you walk inside Roman’s cab depot. The original lighting is just a single, naked bulb overhead, which casts these stark circles on the concrete floor. The mod does its magic, replacing that with dozens of lovely bounces. Daylight starts streaming through the dirty windows, scattering off those oil-stained walls and settling into all the places that used to be dark. Toolboxes and spare tires now have real gradients instead of just being a dull grey.


Performance demands shoot way up along with the video quality. At 4K resolution on an RTX 5080, you’re already gonna see some stuttering on crowded avenues – no surprise, really: we’ve known for ages GTA 4 was hard on the CPU since the day it launched. And it’s no different now – path tracing really puts a lot of stress on the GPU, so you can expect to see framerates drop to 35-45 fps. Even if you use upscaling to try and boost things, DLSS 4 in performance mode can get you up to a respectable 55-85 frames per second. But then along comes frame generation – and suddenly your config is handling an easy 100+ fps in most scenes. And that’s exactly what Digital Foundry found too – the CPU is the real bottleneck here, not the graphics card.

Early access is only possible if you’re willing to cough up a bit of cash on patreon – Xoxor4d is the person you need to hit up for that. Once the full version drops, though, its likely all going to be free to play – but as for when that might happen, who knows. In the meantime, the comparison video over at MxBenchmarkPC is probably your best look at what a real GTA 4 remaster might’ve looked like, if it actually delivered – ie: light behaves like light, and this 2008 city finally looks like it actually belongs in the 2020s.