GTA IV Performance

[Mussels]

this game looks like total ass.

no AA, textures are low res and blurry, motion blur is so bad its not even properly aligned with the things meant to be blurring... on driver 180.48

[erocker]

With the textures on high it looks much, much better.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by erocker

With the textures on high it looks much, much better.

you wanna send me a 1GB card? or at least a hack to make it work...

[eidairaman1]

Originally Posted by Mussels

this game looks like total ass.

no AA, textures are low res and blurry, motion blur is so bad its not even properly aligned with the things meant to be blurring... on driver 180.48

180.84 Beta, Recommended for GTA 4- straight out of NVs starfish

[Miracus]

Interesting FPS tweak.

I have made an Interesting discovery on my system which lead too a good 10FPS increase in GTA 4. This will most likely only work for single & multi nVidia GPU user's. I haven't confirmed this with actual FPS comparisons but my tweak makes such a noticeable improvement I didn't feel the need too. Anyway I can't promise it'll work for everyone but HEY what's the harm in trying! lemme know how ya's go.

First things first I have an nVidia SLI enabled setup, but I noticed it worked for both Single or SLI (Better on SLI of course). Also I run GTA 4 under Windows XP 32bit.

Current Drivers: Forceware 180.84 Beta (http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html)

STEP 1:
nVidia Control Panel Settings:

• Anisotropic filtering = App-Controlled
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction = Off
• Antialiasing - Mode = App-Controlled
• Antialiasing - Transparency = Off
• Conformant texture clamp = Use hardware
• Error Reporting & Extension Limit = Off
• Force Mipmaps = Trilinear
• Maximum Pre-rendered frames = 2 (KEY ASPECT IN THIS TWEAK)
• Multi-Display/mixed-GPU acceleration = Single Display Performance Mode
• SLI Performance Mode = Force alternate frame rendering 2
• Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias = Allow
• Texture Filtering - Quality = High Quality
• Threaded Optimization = On
• Triple Buffering = On
• Vertical Sync = Force On

Both SLI and GPU PhysX are enabled too.

STEP 2:
GTA IV Settings:
NOTE: I have tweaked my GTA IV shortcut to bypass the Graphical restrictions. To do this make a shortcut on your desktop for the "LaunchGTAIV.exe" under your GTA IV root directory (Note: this file does not have a normal GTA icon, so it doesn't stand out easliy). Next right click on the desktop shortcut, click properties and copy "-norestriction" (not the quotes) and paste it into the end of the "Target" line after the quotes so it should look something like this.

"C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe" -norestriction
(Location may vary from user to user)

Then ALWAYS launch your game from this shortcut NOT from the damn "PLAY" button on the Rockstar SocialClub launcher.

• Resolution = 1650 x 1050
• Aspect Ratio = Auto
• Texture Quality = High (Before Tweak = Med)*
• Render Quality = Highest (Before Tweak = High)*
• View Distance = 25
• Detail Distance = 50 (Before Tweak = 25)*
• Vehicle Density = 25
• Shadow Density = 6 (Before Tweak = 3)*

* These were my specs before I did the tweak and It was barely playable!

PC Specs at the end of my post.

Now that all my settings are out of the way I want to cut to the most important tweak that I came across throughout my hours of fiddling, start n' stopping and updating etc. You may have noticed earlier i mentioned "KEY ASPECT IN THIS TWEAK" beside the "Maximum Pre-rendered frames" setting on my nVidia Control panel, well of all the minor adjustments I made, THIS setting made the most notable improvement, and by that I do mean from literally unplayable on LESS settings than what I'm NOW using to VERY PLAYABLE on MUCH HIGHER settings. Basically the whole basis of my tweak lies solely on this lucky number 2, because I tried every other number of Pre-rendered frames up to 5, surprisingly 0 pre-rendered frames didn't free up the CPU anymore than when it was pre-rendering 4 frames, 3 improved my FPS notably, but 2 improved it even more, once I went down to 1 my FPS dropped again.

As I have said over and over again, this worked considerably well for me, my suggestion would be try these settings on your own system but changed the number of pre-rendered frames numerous times whilst restarting the game to see if there are any changes.

I hope this works as well for you guys as it did for me. =)

[NazGulPRB]

Cat 8.12 WHQL vs 8.11 (2x4850 CF)

13 FPS up (52 vs 39)

1650x1280 med/high settings

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by NazGulPRB

Cat 8.12 WHQL vs 8.11 (2x4850 CF)

13 FPS up (52 vs 39)

1650x1280 med/high settings

thats ALOT for a driver change

[NazGulPRB]

Yep. Checked it a couple of times though in the 8.12 setting. Could be that 8.11 result was a bit low...

[FordGT90Concept]

I just got my first exit to the desktop--no error messages, no send error report dialog. I was looking through stats and just clicked on "Misc" when it happened. At least it auto-saved a few seconds before.

[oli_ramsay]

This game is a huge disappointment. The jaggies are killing me, it looks AWFUL without AA! Also the shadows are fucked up, I think they're called "soft shadows" and they're made up of thousands of dots, it's like watching a million black ants crawl around infront of you. Also the -noresctrictions command in the target hack isn't working for me.

Originally Posted by oli_ramsay

Also the shadows are fucked up, I think they're called "soft shadows" and they're made up of thousands of dots, it's like watching a million black ants crawl around infront of you. .

I am getting that too, i thought maybe that was just me or the drivers.

That happens to me in COJ too

[erocker]

It's what medium textures looks like at high resolutions, the shadows seem to be affected too.

[oli_ramsay]

Every time I try to launch the game via the GTAlauncher shortcut (which has -norestrictions in teh command line) it fails to launch, instead brings up the R* social club window. That must be why I can't access the High texture quality in-game. Anyone found a way around this?

[erocker]

How much vram does your video card have?

[oli_ramsay]

"only" 512MB, however the -norestrictions command should still allow selection of high texture quality, I just can't launch the game via the shortcut which has the norestriction command. I can only launch it through the "play" button on the R*SC window

[FordGT90Concept]

I launch GTA4 only through RGSC. Try adding the flag to RGSC and starting GTA4 via RGSC. I'm not certain RGSC passes the flag on to the game but that's really the only way you could add flags to it that aren't ignored.

[Steevo]

The new 8.12 drivers pushed me up


Statistics
Average FPS: 38.20
Duration: 37.40 sec
CPU Usage: 59%
System memory usage: 76%
Video memory usage: 74%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 70

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.630
Audio Adapter: Speakers (SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio)
AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor

File ID: benchmark.cli



And I bought a new controller, and it doesn't work. apparently the game only supports the 360 controller. Asshats.


the missing textures are now also less of a issue, and the CPU useage has dropped.

[Steevo]

And a friend posted this elsewhere.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Put a text file called commandline.txt in the same folder as launchgtaiv.exe.

Paste the following into it:
-norestrictions -nomemrestrict

[erocker]

Here's some screens of the game lookin great.

[Steevo]

A captured video, 891Mb transformed to a 15Mb MPEG 4 in 22 seconds. Then uploaded.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuf0gIsX-gE



Fraps takes a heavy toll on gaming performance when capturing fullscreen, 30FPS video.

[xubidoo]

it does support other controllers

i installed the game on my 2nd pc and my Logitech Rumblepad 2 wireless works fine in it.

[timta2]

There is also a controller hack. Details in this link...
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=379477

I used the software that came with my Saitek controller to map keyboard buttons to it. It took a while and then I realized that the game is unplayable without making me sick to my stomach because of the low frame rates. I can't wait until we get some updates!

[oli_ramsay]

those SS's look awesome erocker, what settings are you using there? I take it that the texture's on "high".

[miloshs]

Just tested it on my sig rig...

On average 27-ish FPS.... lowest 16 FPS, highest 39 FPS, 5 minute run...

Settings were:
Res - 1680x1050
Tex - medium
the next one (forgot what it was ) - high
draw dist - 25 (wont let me set higher)
cars - 100
details -100
shadows - 16

Thats kinda OK... but what annoys me the most is the following..

I realise that most of you guys are not from easter europe (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia...) so you can't relate with Niko Bellic, but imagine this... Well our Niko and his buddies throw in some Serbo-Croatian sentences/words every once in a while, and while you guys don't understand it i can't help it but feel funny as i hear my language get spoken in the ways of MICROSOFT SAM!!! It's bloody ridiculous... get a bloody actor or someone off the street who would do it for 500$ or less... This is ridiculous for a game of this magnitude!!! If you're gonna do it, do it right... am i right or am i right?

Imagine a game in English spoken by Microsoft SAM!?!?!? OMG....

[oli_ramsay]

Figured out how to enable high texture quality another way; create a new text doc in the GTA folder (the one with GTAIV.exe and LaunchGTAIV.exe) and name the text file commandline.txt

Put:

-norestrictions
-novblank
-nomemrestrict

in the document and save it.

Next time you run it it should allow you to select "high".