Legacy vs Enhanced
FiveM ships two separate builds: Legacy and Enhanced. This is a different split from FiveM vs RageMP vs AltV — that page compares FiveM against other multiplayer platforms entirely. This page is about the two tracks within FiveM itself.
What the split is
Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto V: Enhanced Edition for PS5 and Xbox Series in 2023, followed by a PC release. Enhanced is a rebuilt version of GTA V running on updated engine tech — ray tracing, higher-resolution textures and models, improved streaming, and other current-gen upgrades — but it is a separate game build from the original PC release of GTA V that FiveM has run on since its early days.
To support Enhanced, Cfx.re had to give FiveM two tracks:
- Legacy — the original build. This is what “FiveM” has meant for most of its history: the standard PC release of GTA V, running the FiveM client and FXServer as they’ve existed for years.
- Enhanced — a build that runs on top of GTA V Enhanced Edition, with its own client and its own server-side considerations.
These two tracks are not networked together. A Legacy server cannot accept Enhanced clients, and an Enhanced server cannot accept Legacy clients. Players and server owners each have to be on the same track to connect at all — there’s no bridging or cross-play between them.
How server owners target a build
A server’s build is a property of the server itself, not something a player toggles per-connection. Practically, this comes down to two things:
- Which FXServer artifact you run. Cfx.re publishes separate artifact/runtime builds for Legacy and Enhanced. The artifact you download and run determines which track your server operates on — you don’t flip a single server between the two, you run the version built for the track you want.
- Game build enforcement in
server.cfg. Servers can require clients to be on a specific underlying game build usingsv_enforceGameBuild(and related build/DLC-version settings). This convar is primarily about pinning clients to a minimum DLC/content build within a track, but the same category of setting is what a server uses to make sure connecting clients match what the server expects — including, at a higher level, whether they’re even capable of joining a Legacy vs. Enhanced server.
If you’re setting up a new server, decide on a track first, then install the matching FXServer artifact and configure your server.cfg around it. Mixing artifacts or assuming a config file from one track works unmodified on the other is a common source of confusing connection failures.
Practical impact on resources
Most existing FiveM content — scripts, maps, vehicle packs, whole frameworks — was built for Legacy. That has real consequences:
- Native availability and behavior. Some natives are Enhanced-only, and some natives that exist on both tracks behave differently because the underlying game build differs. A resource written and tested only against Legacy is not guaranteed to work unmodified on Enhanced.
- Assets. Models, maps, and streamed assets built against Legacy’s asset formats may need conversion or rebuilding to work correctly with Enhanced’s updated rendering and streaming pipeline.
- Framework support. Large frameworks (ESX, QBCore, Qbox) and the huge body of community resources built on top of them are overwhelmingly Legacy-first. Enhanced support is newer and growing, but coverage is far from complete.
Before committing a server to Enhanced, check whether the specific resources and framework you plan to run have confirmed Enhanced compatibility — don’t assume compatibility just because a resource works fine on Legacy.
Performance and visual differences
Enhanced brings the visual upgrades from GTA V Enhanced Edition: improved lighting and ray tracing options, higher-fidelity textures and models, and engine improvements over the original release. It also has different hardware expectations — Enhanced generally asks more of a player’s GPU than Legacy does, particularly with ray tracing enabled.
Legacy remains the lighter-weight, broadly compatible option, especially for players on older hardware.
Which one to target today
For most server owners right now: Legacy. Given the resource and framework gap described above, it’s the path of least friction for any server that depends on a large catalog of existing scripts and maps — which most roleplay and community servers do.
Enhanced makes sense if you’re starting fresh, want the visual upgrade, and are building your own resources in-house rather than depending on the existing Legacy ecosystem.
There’s no wrong long-term answer — Enhanced is where new investment from Rockstar and Cfx.re is heading — but for a server going live today, weigh the visual upgrade against how much of your resource list you’d need to rebuild or replace.