GTA IV Performance

[DrPepper]

I just realised its 14 odd gigabyte Compared to the consoles which are about 7gb what the hell have they added.

I do love the graphics though, I mean the draw distances and the detail level for far away objects is amazing, no wonder why it takes a beefy card to draw an entire city at that level of detail.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

True. The difference being is that GTA4 takes a good 3 minutes to get running again going through damned RGSC, lengthy "legal" screen, two rockstar images, another load screen, then you gotta freakin' drive all the way back to where you were. It also doesn't crash, it hangs. So that means another 15 seconds wasted terminating it. FO3 crashes to desktop so it only takes about two clicks and hardly any waiting to get very close to the point it crashed.

By the way, add a third tick to that hang-up list.

No game is perfect any more out of the box because of patching. They don't make them like they used to (that is, quality in a box).



My beef is they aren't as arcadish as GTA3. Seems like I spend all my time braking in GTA4 when in GTA3, it was all about going fast. Because of that, GTA3 and sons are much more exciting in chases and other high-speed events. GTA4 is pretty dull.

Fallout was just an example I used, and in my case, Fallout 3 doesn't crash to desktop, it hangs. Or comes up with the warning from Vista saying it has crashed, which I can't click on because the game is still the focus. Meaning I have to alt+tab to the desktop. Then fallout 3 is still covering the entire screeen, except the box, and I have no mouse, I just have to hit enter to close the crash warning, and then I am finally back at the box.

And in Fallout, you are pretty close to where you left off, sometime. However, I've spent an hour walking around doing things in the Wasteland, only to have it crash on me and that hour of work is gone. With GTA:IV, a crash isn't likely to cost you much time of gameplay, and once you know the game, you can get to pretty much any place in the city from anywhere else in 5-10 minutes.

As for the cars, the take a little more skill to get used to driving, but once you do, you can get going pretty damn fast. I almost never use the brakes, but I do use the handbrake a lot.

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

Ridiculous. I wonder how many returns GTA4 is going to get because they over-speced it.

I don't think I would accept returns on this game based on that reason if I was a game store. Mid-Range hardware has no problem playing this game, if I can play it on my 9600GSO, people have no reason to complain.

Originally Posted by DrPepper

I just realised its 14 odd gigabyte Compared to the consoles which are about 7gb what the hell have they added.

I do love the graphics though, I mean the draw distances and the detail level for far away objects is amazing, no wonder why it takes a beefy card to draw an entire city at that level of detail.

I'm going to guess the much higher res textures is probably the main reason.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

Fallout was just an example I used, and in my case, Fallout 3 doesn't crash to desktop, it hangs. Or comes up with the warning from Vista saying it has crashed, which I can't click on because the game is still the focus. Meaning I have to alt+tab to the desktop. Then fallout 3 is still covering the entire screeen, except the box, and I have no mouse, I just have to hit enter to close the crash warning, and then I am finally back at the box.

And in Fallout, you are pretty close to where you left off, sometime. However, I've spent an hour walking around doing things in the Wasteland, only to have it crash on me and that hour of work is gone. With GTA:IV, a crash isn't likely to cost you much time of gameplay, and once you know the game, you can get to pretty much any place in the city from anywhere else in 5-10 minutes.

I get those kinds of crashes in NFS:Undercover. They are a PITA. I usually just end up pushing the reset button on my tower when they happen.

Fallout 3 crashes do the Send Report dialog thing for me so they're quick. It doesn't seem like the game remained full screen when it crashed. I'd be driven nuts on that game too if it didn't get out of full screen. Seriously, when is Microsoft going to add a key combo to force any full screen app running off?

Originally Posted by newtekie1

As for the cars, the take a little more skill to get used to driving, but once you do, you can get going pretty damn fast. I almost never use the brakes, but I do use the handbrake a lot.

I find myself holding the brake for half a second to a second, realising it isn't enough, and then using the hand brake too. Usually I end up putting the car sideways before hitting that police car/wall.


Don't get me wrong, the game is pretty good. It beats the crap out of Far Cry 2 and Need for Speed: Undercover but, I just expected smoother gameplay (as in interruptions to the flow of the game--not graphics) like the GTA3 games.

[AsRock]

They just sent me a update for social club. don't know what the fixes are though/

Mine happened automatically maybe this is it ?.
http://www.rockstargames.com/support/IV/PC/GFWLupdate/

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

I'm going to guess the much higher res textures is probably the main reason.

I guess some of it is but 7gb is bigger than crysis worth of textures considering the other 7gb would probably contain textures as well.

I'm going to try play it on a 3450 to see if it is playable and afaik game stores around here don't let you return the game if your pc can't play it, they warn you when you buy it your pc might not be able to play it.

[ktr]

Originally Posted by DrPepper

I just realised its 14 odd gigabyte Compared to the consoles which are about 7gb what the hell have they added.

I do love the graphics though, I mean the draw distances and the detail level for far away objects is amazing, no wonder why it takes a beefy card to draw an entire city at that level of detail.

I was shocked in the previous GTA's for the PC on how big the radio sound track...about 2/3 on the game install!

How big is it in GTA4 PC?

[erocker]

Originally Posted by ktr

I was shocked in the previous GTA's for the PC on how big the radio sound track...about 2/3 on the game install!

How big is it in GTA4 PC?

Audio is 6.00GB and Data is 5.61GB

[Steevo]

I can play it on high settings, and with 40 draw distance at high settings, and max everything else but the car population, as that becomes unreasonable to play in.


I have always loved the audio on the GTA series, plus the ability to add more. There is nothing like the freeroam ability you get with this game. Plus cheats if you want to rampage, and alot of minigames. If you are buying a game for graphics only , don't get this. If you are buying a game for FPS, don't get this.



My X1800XT couldn't run GTA SA at max settings, just part of the game the the action going on.

[Mussels]

the 'constant braking' sounds like its based on a controller. PC driving is on or off, you dont have analogue throttle.

bah, that'll get annoying fast.

[FordGT90Concept]

It's not that bad. Just something they need to iron out. The worst thing is not being able to play the game straight for even 3 hours without having to reload or restart the game. I think it's all connected to the caching issue (gray world). I'll try to take a pic of it soon.

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

It's not that bad. Just something they need to iron out. The worst thing is not being able to play the game straight for even 3 hours without having to reload or restart the game. I think it's all connected to the caching issue (gray world). I'll try to take a pic of it soon.

After playing it all night I realise what you mean about the caching issue or whatever it is, eventualy i get about 10 fps and need to save and restart

[eidairaman1]

nvidia even recommends upgrading to their latest Beta Driver (180.84 or something) driver to get the best experience out of GTA 4 on their hardware.

[FordGT90Concept]

I don't use beta drivers.

Attached pic of the "gray world." This definitely isn't the worst it has been but you get the idea. You can only tell where the road is by the things on and around it. You can't tell where doors, stairs, etc. are unless you are already familar with it.

As you can tell from the previous post time stamp, it got to that point in just over an hour of playing. I think it happens quicker the more I go in and out of buildings.


If it starts looking like that pic and it decides to show a cutscene, that's when the game hangs on "Loading."

[xubidoo]

maybe a lack of vram ?

afaik the game sets all low settings if you only have 256mb vram.

[newconroer]

Well, I'd love to join you all in fretting over poor performance, but I haven't even got that far yet.

Everytime I start a new game I get the loading screens of the characters, then when it goes to start it goes to a black screen, then disconnects the display signal, turns it back on, disconnects, back on with several seconds in between. If I leave it for more than ten seconds, and I force it to close, it corrupts my Direct 3D files and I have to reinstall the GPU driver.


Phooey is the word of the hour!

[DrPepper]

I've been watching task manager while playing the game and it seems that it uses all 4 cores which makes me curious as to would my quad at stock outperform a e8600 at stock.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by newconroer

Well, I'd love to join you all in fretting over poor performance, but I haven't even got that far yet.

Everytime I start a new game I get the loading screens of the characters, then when it goes to start it goes to a black screen, then disconnects the display signal, turns it back on, disconnects, back on with several seconds in between. If I leave it for more than ten seconds, and I force it to close, it corrupts my Direct 3D files and I have to reinstall the GPU driver.


Phooey is the word of the hour!

Make sure your secreen resolution doesn't have a ultra high refresh rate (Hz). If you are using an LCD, try 60 Hz. You could try 75 Hz too--most monitors support that. If you are using a CRT, 60 Hz is the minimum you should use but I highly recommend 72-85 Hz. Any higher than 85 Hz can cause problems.

It may also help to have GTA4 and your desktop use the same settings.

[newconroer]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

Make sure your secreen resolution doesn't have a ultra high refresh rate (Hz). If you are using an LCD, try 60 Hz. You could try 75 Hz too--most monitors support that. If you are using a CRT, 60 Hz is the minimum you should use but I highly recommend 72-85 Hz. Any higher than 85 Hz can cause problems.

It may also help to have GTA4 and your desktop use the same settings.

Ill see if that's it, though it should be the same. The game says 60hz, and that's what the desktop is at as well.

[newtekie1]

Now I really don't know where people are getting their claims of poor performance. I just ran it on the lowest of my gaming rigs. Athlon X2 4400+@2.8GHz, 2GB DDR, HD4670 It runs perfectly smooth at 1280x1024 medium settings.

[Mussels]

i'm installing GTA IV on system in specs. will let you know how it goes.

[sneekypeet]

Well I was greeted with the no texture issue. I have so far swapped drivers (from 180.48 to 180.84beta), done all windows updates, and eliminated all game content at this point. For now I am waiting the reinstall to see if any of them helped. Sorta sux, but if I can get it to work I will share a more in depth version of the BS I've went through.

Running on system in specs.

[Polarman]

Source: GTA Forum

Patch Is On The Way

We are working on making a patch available in the next few days. Since Grand Theft Auto IV is a Games For Windows – Live game the patch must be certified by Microsoft before release. The patch is already at Microsoft and we expect a speedy approval.

The patch contains a variety of fixes including:

-A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
-Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays
-Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice
-Fix for ATI 1900 shadows
-Overall savings to memory
-Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors
-Multiplayer character settings are preserved
-Support for DirectInput controllers. Note: The current hack way of supporting these controllers may not work with the improved functionality. So we recommend you remove the hack before upgrading to the patch.

Issues with power management software have also been fixed (slow speed, double speed issues). Even after the patch comes out setting power management software to maximum performance is recommended. We’ve seen cases where power management software does not detect the game is running and puts the CPU in green mode.

Besides the patch we’ve also improved the way the Social Club handles data this should have greatly reduced or eliminated the Mma10 error. If you are still receiving this error after logging in and out of Social Club we would like to know as much info as you can about it.

Like i said b4, I'll wait until they get their act together.

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by Polarman

Like i said b4, I'll wait until they get their act together.

I'd say they did a great job to begin with.

[erocker]

A GTX260 plays this game very nicely! Just tried one out today. Awesome!

[sneekypeet]

just to refresh from a days worth of effort.

I had the no texture issue on both the 180.48 from the start and installed the 180.84's to see if it would correct it. Well it comes down to this. I tried other methods that should have corrected and have worked b4, but this time it didnt. So I ended up going to control panel and eliminating the Cuda first then the VGA driver...boot to safe mode and run driver sweeper....restarted. Redownloaded a fresh 180.84 from Nvidia's BETA section, and bam I has no more issues!