FPS can be low in game and yet game run smoothly?

My m15x with an 8700m gt gpu can run GTA4 at 1400x900 with all settings close to high, except for textures which I think refuse to budge from medium and my frames run at about 15fps, yet the gameplay seems pretty smooth to me.

I recall back in the old days when you had low frame rates, your game was choppy and very unplayable, yet at about 10 to 15fps, I am racing around GTA4 without stuttering, without choppiness. I feel like I'm running at 30fps.

I'm running the game under Vista. Any thoughts about what appears to be pretty smooth gameplay at 15fps?

 

wow a 8700 gt running gta is pretty good

what driver did you get

 

Latest ones released by Nvidia for notebook computers, 179.48_notebook_winvista_32bit_beta

 

Frame counter must be inaccurate, its hard to believe its fluid at 15fps.

Try using FRAPS or Rivatuner to display the in game FPS

 

The new drivers raised my performance too!

 

Am unsing Rivatuner, but it does say something about not recognizing the graphics card or something at the start of the program. I'd type out what it says, but it's not posting the message.

 

I think that means your driver doesn't support overclocking (correct me if I'm wrong - that's what happened when I ran rivatuner on stock drivers)...

Either way, sounds like the FPS counter is wrong - enjoy it lol XD

 

The temps are in the mid 70's, and the gameplay is smoooooth, I'm not gonna complain Just wondering if 15fps was suppose to play smooth, since I recall 15fps use to mean sucky gameplay.

 

Tried GTA4 for about 40 minutes, gameplay pretty smooth, at least very playable, no stuttering, no choppiness. Here are the game settings.

1440x900 (60hz monitor refresh rate)
aspect ratio auto
Texture medium *can't change this*
reflection very high
water very high
shadow quality high *can't change this to higher*
render quality very high
view distance 36 *these settings I basically try to bring them all up as far as memory on gpu will allow
detail 33
vehicles 24
shadow density 5 * could add more to fill up the memory on the gpu*
definition on
vsync on

I did not turn on any anti-aliasing. I'm sure the game would probably become rather unplayable with that, but I may try it later.

40 minutes of gameplay, temp got to 78 and twice went up to 79 for a while.

 

15fps can't be smooth, the human eye needs at least 24fps to not see the individual frames IIRC.