GTA IV Performance

I still fail to understand why the big fuss. Guess what - your 9600 GS's and 3650's are not going to be able to run this at reasonable settings. Why? Because they are not performance cards, despite what we'd like to believe. Even the 9700 GT and 8800 GTS for notebooks are not even close to top end cards these days.

Someone posted that a system that could play at avg 60 fps

"Well, at least there's a card that can run the game at high settings and keep the frame rates up.

Unknown CPU with a Radeon HD4870x2" at 1900x1200

That's about the same performance level as for Crysis. So what's the big deal?

Admittedly it seems that GTA4 needs some bug fixes - I've yet to hear of a game that came out in the last few years that didn't, and most seem to improve significantly performance-wise once the patch is applied. Did Rockstar release it too soon? Probably. But bear in mind the following:

1.) They are under a deadline to release the game. A deadline dictated by CONSUMERS. People want it NOW - so they rush it through for the holidays. If you think it is too soon and want a patched version - then wait, and don't whine.

2.) Many errors and problems only reveal themselves once thousands of people have been able to run and test the program. That's how this works.

3.) This is an extremely CPU intensive game because of the large amount of physics. It is also extremely GPU intensive due to obvious complex shading and lighting and high texture detail. These tax systems heavily. Arguably they could have done a better job with options that allow the game to be played more easily on lower end systems. But that also comprises the game to a degree. Sure you get a new storyline, but it would essentially be graphically similar to GTA3 San Andreas. Which, BTW, will begin to tax any mid-perfomance card here at highest level settings.

 

Does anyone know how to access the console/command line in GTA4? Is it in the shortcut path? I read through the readme and noticed that you can force textures, resolutions, and other settings. I have tried everything with no luck.

It would be nice to get access to the console and potential play with the settings and visuals.

 

Anyone else cannot connect to rockstar social club?

 

Cheffy, i dont believe that an HD4870 X2 could max it on 1900x1200 for 60 FPS.. ive seen Systems with that same card with my own eyes getting in the range of the 40's

 

anyone tried the game with the following specs: Q6600, 3GB ram and 8800m GTX?

 

With a 2.5GHz Core2duo and that ram & gfx card, I get this sometimes ( http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/2089/gtaac6.jpg )

 

Heard they are working on a patch. R* is losing a lot of money ATM. A lot of people are returning it and have lost faith...

But soon there will be a patch that fixes a lot.

 

what an optimized game xD

 

Cheffy-
While I agree with you on most of your points, the idea that the consumer is somehow (even fractionally) responsible for the gross bugs in this game is wrong. While not on the same level of importance as video games, what if a aerospace company released a new plane without properly testing and re-testing it just because a company was pushing them to get it out the door.

The bottom line is that Rockstar obviously did not do sufficient beta testing on this game (at least for the PC) or they would have caught and fixed these bugs. My guess is they did know about them and shipped it anyway.

I also think your story would be different if YOU had shelled out 50 or 60 bucks for something that is broken that you can't take back.

 

you can return it? fill me in on how lol. this game is a heap of garbage on the PC. ill just get it for xb360 ;\

 

I can't return it here in the UK or I would. Mostly because of the disappointing gameplay though (which is too real life like for me & you can't pick up prostitutes anymore!! ), not these problems. I remember on GTA: San Andreas on the PS2 I used to get these loss of texture problems for a few seconds every now and then. Other than that, it works great for me on High with 30fps+

I just ran a benchmark test on Very high with all the bottoms bars 100% full and I also managed to get 26fps. Pretty good, but that benchmark utility doesn't seem so graphics intensive to me.

 

Not even remotely comparable. People are not potentially getting hurt or dying out of this. They're just frustrated.

Probably. If they had delayed shipping until after xmas, everyone would be whinning about how they weren't able to get it for the holidays. There's no pleasing some people.

Precisely why I haven't. I'll let those who are desperate to get the game try it out and complain first, then I'll wait for the patch. I understand it can be frustrating to spend the money, but this really shouldn't come as a surprise to people. In fact, I'll probably wait until the price also drops to <$40 before I buy it too.

 

Well... You can pick up ho's... Seen videos about it

And yes, people get their money back via steam. And some stores (not many tho) do the same.

 

Cheffy-

All I'm saying is that I don't think it's fair to blame the consumer. I understand the example is not close, but the concept is the same. Bad business practices are not the fault of consumers. I also think that so many people are in an uproar because by and large, Rockstar has always done a good job of porting over their GTA games.

I admit that I made an error in purchasing this game this early, but that confession even in itself is indicative to a problem with the industry, not the consumer. I think the real problem is that with the advent of "patches" and "workarounds" gaming companies have gotten lazy.

 

Wait wait wait... did somebody just say this game has complex shaders, lighting, and detail? Are we looking at the same screenshots? The shadows are awful, the textures are blown away by even Assassin's Creed, and the detail is just not there. AA anyone? Like everybody is saying, Crysis at least looked good for how demanding it was.

 

shadows looks like Slime as i said.

 

IMO there will not be a major patch for this game. If we look at all the games that have been ported by all the companies, we will see that only a tiny percentage has been patched.

From the top of my head I can tell you that all PoP games, Fable, Jade Empire, Assassins Creed and thus far Bully have not received patches even if they do display some game breaking bugs.

PoP has a bug were if you can get stuck in a corner while fighting and not get out. Jade Empire has a bug were a quest remains active and doesn't allow you to continue the game. Bully is as unplayable as GTA4 and R* has not mentioned a patch yet. Fable has several minor texture issues. Sound in Assassins Creed doesn't work unless you disable Sound Acceleration through DX.

All the above are known and were mentioned in each company's forum but no official reply was ever given.

p.s. I own all the games mentioned except GTA4 and Bully which are on order. I've only encountered the bugs that I;ve mentioned but I'm sure that there are others as well.

 

Any reports how the game bahaves on XPS M1530-like laptop ? Has anyone played ? Is it worth buying it?

 

well this game is bigger than bully , and maybe just maybe if the cry of fans is loud enough R* will provide a patch

if not im not tooo fussed my laptop is running it with avg of 34 fps even if it dips to 22fps from time to time (or when it rains )

 

You'll get no patch out of this, ever, Rockstar already released an obvious "Cover our asses" press notice that has been posted here already. They immediately realized how poorly this game runs and to protect themselves against the backlash they're claiming it's next gen and is designed to run this poorly because it's for next generation hardware.

Shoddy programming, to Rockstar, is apparently a feature, not a bug.

 

It does sounds like Rockstar has dropped the ball on this one. If they don't plan to release a major patch, such as noted by the poster below, then that is unacceptable.

Not trying to be a jerk, just playing a little of devil's adovcate. I certainly have no sympathy for Rockstar anyway.

I wouldn't go that far, but if this ends up being the case it will cause significant damage to their reputation.

 

Runs absolutely crap and loads of missing textures.


I get around 20fps on the lowest settings.



To anyone who has an 8600m GT or a 7900gs, I would recommend that you stay as far away from this as possible.

 

A guy had problems too.


The game runs great now, and he has an 7800GT

CANT ADD LINKS

This should fix it!

 

got one question....

under nvidia control panel "manage 3d settings"
what is it set to?

 

After all the negative reactions (mostly from people who have not played the game) I finally bought and installed the game a few hours ago and I was amazed by how well it runs! Coming from the PS3 version, it runs so much better on my system and the framerate seems pretty constant. More than 30 fps on avarage I'm sure, probably 40+ because it feels really smooth. Specs:

Q6600 2.4 Ghz
Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB
4GB RAM

I'm playing at 1600x1050, textures medium, traffic 30 and shadows at 6. Very smooth, and the framerate only lowers a little (and I mean a little) when I blow up like 4 cars at a time (the PS3 chokes on 1 explosion). The game looks great at these settings. Sure, it's no Crysis, but then it's a completely different game and it beats Crysis when it comes to physics. My only problem is having to retry logging in to the Social Club several times before it connects. Overall, I'm a happy gamer!

 

Any more feedback for the 8600m????

 

Well I'm getting at max 21 fps, and lowest 15 fps (according to Fraps).

I haven't altered the settings from default apart from the resolution and the render quality. Rig specs below.

Settings =

Video mode - 1280x800 60hz
Aspect Ratio - Auto

Texture Quality - Medium
Render Qulity - Medium

View Dist. - 25
Detail Dist. - 37
Vehicle Density - 26
Shadow Density - 3

Resource Usage 397/386 mb.

It's not horrendous but does lag a bit but is reasonably playable. Thats just with walking around the first safe house and driving a bit.

Rig -

Asus M70VM
C2D P8400 2.26ghz
nVidia 9600M GS 512 MB DDR2
4 GB RAM DDR2
OS = XP

Video drivers = 180.48 from laptopvideo2go with modded inf.

I have not yet tried the game in Vista as I know it'll take a performance hit, and the performance is just about playable as it is, if I tweaked the settings I could probably get a better FPS.

I did lower the res to 1024x640 and that appeared to be a bit faster, needed some AA (1280x800 does as well but it's not too bad) but I can live with that.

I really don't see why people are complaining that it looks rubbish, looks ok to me.

I will post a couple of pics later (posting from office desktop, my rig is occupied, it's running GTA IV ).

I suspect half the performance hit probably comes from the R* version of the Steam client running in the background, get rid of that and the need to be online to save and I'll bet the game will be much better off performance wise...

 

Not terrible but not good either. The game limits how high I can push the settings with just 256mb of vram. I am able to run the game smoothly with med textures and low everything at at res of 1154x604. Not that enjoyable.

Anyone here have luck with the command line parameters? I have tried everything with no luck. It would be nice to set the graphics to my desired pref.

 

Did anyone play this on the new Macbook Pro (9600m GT DDR3, 2.53GHz CPU FSB1067) ?? Or similar configs?

I'm getting my copy this Sunday when I get back to town..

 

Ok here's my pics. Bear in mind these are screen caps using print screen and the game actually looks better than the pics do. -

Edit - added pic with settings on, forgot that earlier...

 

What are your specs? Can you drive at 17FPS?

 

Er I thought I upped a pic with them on, I'll take it again and post it, rig specs are the same as my post earlier (before the pics) and yes it's ok to drive at 17 fps, not fantastic but not undrivable. I'm using a 360 controller though, but keyboard did seem fine before I plugged my controller in (forgot I had it...).

 

Oh yeah, you have the 9600m GS DDR2.

I'm just waiting with somebody with 9600m GT DDR3 to post some benchmarks and pics.

 

Well I should think, although from what I've been reading it's not guaranteed, that the specs could be set higher and will run at better fps with that card.

Settings pic now upped and in post with other pics.

EDIT: One last thing before I go play this game for the next 24hrs without a break D) - it's set in what, current day, WHY HASN'T THE GUY YOU PLAY AS GOT AN iPOD or other MP3 player to listen to when on foot? At least a dodgy old walkman. Yeah, yeah, I know, he poor eastern european, but I bet you can't buy or "acquire" one either.

 

Raven have you played the 360/ps3 version? If so how does it look on pc in comparison.

 

So what do uou think. Is it worth trying it on M1530 with 8600Gt and 256 MB of VRAM (DDR3). I do not expect perfect graphics. The most enjoyable thing in GTA for me is driving in the city and that's what i appreciate GTA for, perfect graphics is not that imprtant. Framerate around 20 fps also satisfies me. So is it worth it ?

 

I must admit I have not, my budget does not stretch to buying a PS3 for this game alone and nor does it stretch to buying the PC and 360 versions.

To me it looks pretty darn good on the PC in the settings I am running it at though.

@W2K - I have no idea, I would imagine you'll have to run in very low res and very low settings and to be honest I don't think it would be worth it as it would probably look really terrible, but as you said your not too bothered about how hit looks.

I have now set the resolution to 1024x640 and in the nVidia control panel I have the fixed aspect ratio option ticked in the flat panel scaling settings (learned that when trying to get Crysis to run when I tried it for the first time the other day, hugely impressed with that as well, I can run it in high settings with medium shadow/shader at 1024x640 and that looks fantastic as well), don't know if that makes a difference but the lower res has made it a bit less slow, just needs a bit more AA but I'm not too bothered by that. The game still looks fine.

And my nVidia settings on the 3d preview page are set to Perfomance (3rd option, the one with the slider).

 

I won't be an entirely negative nancy, the lighting looks pretty good, but those shadow effects just kill me.

 

Is it possibel to switch them off ?

 

I'm still wondering if will run well enough with my setup to justify spending the money on it. I've had gtaIV on 360 since it came out and have been waiting to see it actually run smoothly and look better; from what I've read, that isn't likely to happen unless I wait six months and buy a gaming desktop. is going on here? My 9262 should be able to play GTAIV a hell of a lot better than a console!

 

....So much negative reviews. I'll buy San Andreas instead.

 

Funny thing is, it works for some people, and for some people it doesn't work so well at all.

 

does anyone know what I should expect for performance on my laptop (in sig)? Will it be much of a step up from the 360 version?

 

Yeah I suspect that people complaining about the game being slow in terms of fps and being unplayable because of it are looking too much into the fps and running the game in Vista.

Granted I have had to tweak the settings in-game but it runs ok and is quite playable and looks good, better than SA imo, mind you I'm running it in XP which only needs 1gb of RAM according to the requirements on the back of the box, Vista requires 1.5 according to the requirements on the box so that should tell you something...

 

Vista and XP are nearly identical in terms of gaming performance these days.

saintalfonzo,

Skim GTAforums for people that have quad cores and 8800 GTS (G80) or 9600 GT's, those are about identical to the 8800M GTX.

 

It should run it decently. It is a very CPU intensive game, but you have quadcore, right?


On a sidenote, I'm going to be throwing 64 bit vista on my 1520 and seeing if it runs it any better.

 

that amazing thing is even the guys at IGN had a hard time running it on there desktop! Here's a quote from them:

"Yet with the PC version, you're going to need a particularly powerful machine to see it in all its splendor at a decent framerate, as even on our system (Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 768 MB GeForce 8800 GTX with Vista 32) we were having performance problems even after toning down a few of the settings, and some of the effects (the shadows in particular) didn't look so hot when displayed in high resolutions. "

See there you go

 

For everybody with a Late 2008 Macbook Pro, check this out:



http://www.gtagaming.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111454

Seems to be playable @ 30FPS with high render and low textures...

 

Thing is that Medium textures on PC does not look anywhere near the 360´s Shadow settings. I have compared them both carefully. The High shadow settings on the PC is looking equivalent to the 360 Shadows.

Now shadows do look better on the 360 than on my PC, though this is because of me running on a sharper TFT and at a higher res than the 360, thereby the shadows in my opinion looks like crap, we are talking about dithered shadows here. Which the 360 had too but not as recognizable as playing on a Plasma HD TV.

Now to me even at highest settings when comparing to my 360 version it looks nowhere any better at all. Just the same, only difference is the amount of cars on the streets the view distance and so on so on.

So friggin glad I didn´t buy this game for PC, I got it for free through a friend who I took pictures for and who is reviewing the game.

Rockstar really need to bust their asses and get a patch out quickly. As I said this game is more CPU bound than GPU bound. If you had a 8600m GT with a 5GHz Quad you bet you would play it really good at 1280x800. The faster CPU you have the better you play it.

I think Rockstar should utilize PhysX instead for the physics, this would allow the game to run faster by utilizing the GPU instead for Physics Calculation. Because those shadows and lighting compared to Crysis does not seem to demand a very high end GPU in the first place.

Very High on the Render Quality is only for anisotropic filtering. Give it a try, change each settings and you´ll see that it is only the Texture settings that make the most impact in graphics quality. Other settings is only minor.

I have yet to come across a game that barely changes the graphics quality like this game does between Low and High.

 

hey magnus...im still trying to get the thing to run right...lol
i installed it on my laptop and now on my desktop..will know in about 30 minutes or so if it's going to run on a q9550 & gtx280 @1920x1200 on a 24 inch gateway monitor.