GTA IV Performance

john are you running Vista? I have both XP and Vista. I can say in Vista the texture corruption happened right away. The car can be seen but around you it is just black and corrupted textures.

In XP on the other hand the game works flawlessly, try that if you are having problems.

Also with your 9800m GTX 1GB you will run Textures High without any trouble. It is textures that takes the most VRAM then after than comes the viewing/drawing distance. But you should be able to balance it out really well. On my 8800GTX (desktop) at 1440x900 I use with High Textures, Very High Render Quality and drawing distance at around 30 a total of 840MB of VRAM and I have 768MB Vram, but it works.

 

Hmm, I disagree, I have many games which function much better in XP with the same setting as I run them in Vista. C & C 3, CoD 5 (WaW), C & C Red Alert 3 to name three recent ones.

I will see about installing GTA IV in Vista this evening, I've been playing it all night in XP so I should have a good idea of how fast, or not, it is, and I can use fraps in XP before I switch to Vista (advantage of a dual boot system) and make a note of the fps I get.

I'll post some results tonight, I'm suspecting Vista will be slower...

 

The good thing about XP is that when running SLI XP is much better at it than at least Vista 32. Here I mean stuttering.

 

how many times can this software be activated before it won't run anymore?

 

Hmm not sure. I have deactivated and activated around 6-7 times now. No trouble so far.

 

oh, so you can deactivate it then?

 

yup, thats true, but there are some Vista features that you can just skip because they forced you to them , IE:Multisampling in Gears of war.

 

here goes quite a few things you can try to get it to work correctly....
courtesy of "ramzy"
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762088

 

Yes you can deactivate it.

 

Is it true though that you can't save unless you're online?

 

Great post, a definite bookmark!

 

No, it's not true. You can start the game in offline mode and save to your hard drive.

 

What's about the framerate of GTA4 , using Geforce 9600m GT DRR3? Is here anybody, who tried to play this game with Acer 5930? Is it possible to play fluently?

My notebook: P7350 2x2Ghz, Geforce 9600M GT ddr3, 4 GB RAM, Vista SP1.

 

Since GTAIV seems to be such a poorly optimized port to the pc - along with the fact I already spent money on the 360 version the day it came out - I feel anyone who has done the same should feel justified in not spending money to play this one. There is no reason for it to suck this bad with the exception of apathy on the part of Rockstar, and I can't believe there aren't more noticable improvements with all the time they made pc gamers wait for it. It's pretty amazing that performance on an over 3-year-old console is equivalent to performance on cutting-edge computer hardware from a year ago. This is why most people don't waste money on gaming laptops and save gaming for consoles. Technically pc gaming may be superior in most ways, with the exception of release dates and availablilty of titles, but at what cost?

 

depends on who you are relying on to get your games. release dates depend on the developer, and yeah there is a higher quantity of titles available for the consoles. doesn't necessarily mean that they get higher quality games. that is what you imply and that requires a separate argument.

valve games show up on the pc first or at the same time. same with a bunch of other games. bethseda (oblivion and fallout 3), IW/Activision/Treyarch and the call of duty series...

what other games could you possibly want? i basically only buy games made by valve and infinity ward anyway...

 

For 8800Mgtx owners this is what I play really smooth:
Statistiche
Media FPS: 35.96
Durata: 14.44 sec
Utilizzo CPU: 95%
Utilizzo memoria di sistema: 61%
Utilizzo memoria video: 86%

Impostazioni Grafiche
Risoluzione: 1440 x 900 (60 Hz)
Qualità texture: Media
Qualità rendering: Molto alta
Distanza visuale: 40
Distanza dettagli: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Home Premium
Service Pack 1
Adattatore video: NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX
Versione driver video: 180.48
Adattatore audio: Altoparlanti / Cuffie (SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9000 @ 2.80GHz

ID file: benchmark.cli

It's been tough to find the right conf but the game is really fun.
Hopefully I will be able to obtain a much better performance once patch and Sli are supported.

cheers

 

indeed!

thanks magnus

 

hai any dv 5t user pls tell me how the gta 4 works with nvidia 9600 gt 512 mband with vista service pack 1 pls post some screens

 

Now with textures!!!

Statistics
Average FPS: 33.01
Duration: 37.14 sec
CPU Usage: 96%
System memory usage: 58%
Video memory usage: 96%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1440 x 900 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 25

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Home Premium
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS
Video Driver version: 180.70
Audio Adapter: Speakers (IDT High Definition Audio CODEC)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

 

Graphics Settings
Average FPS: 41.62
Duration: 37.05 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 81%
Video memory usage: 93%

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: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX
Video Driver version: 180.48
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9100 @ 3.51GHz

 

Emike, is the game playable at that Framerate? getting mine tomorrow.


EDIT:Hovering around the net, it seems that the game's reflections are causing the Huge Framerate drop, too bad they cant be lowered or disabled.

 

Yeah I found that out last night when my interweb died on me....

Lucky really because if I hadn't been able to save due to being "offline" I'd not have been very happy.

Installing the game in Vista as I type, if it's anything like the install speed in XP it'll take an hour or two...

...I'll post pics and fraps fps info and settings info when I'm able to, I just want to either prove myself wrong or prove my point that some people (i.e. those of us without a quad core cpu and nVidia 9800 card) are better off running it in XP...

 

Well ... now my game won't launch at all ...

 

i actually Believe it will run better on XP.. why? because then , you'll be using Less VRAM "Aero anyone"? and ofcourse, you'll be saving yourself atleast 300mhz of processing power, which this game really needs

 

nope! and it maxes out at 985 vmem and mine is messing up as well.
180.70 doesn't work for me, but stock driver does...then the screen camera starts rotating in a circle and that's it...nothing else.

edit: it does the same thing on my desktop works for a minute then starts the screen rotating in a big circle.

 

Johnksss while SLI enabled or disabled?

 

sli disabled

 

This game runs on shader model 3 right?

So does AOC and when i played AOC for the first time with my 8800 GTX and Shader model 3 i got average 15 FPS or something, but when i set it to SM2 i got like average 70 FPS. What if u put it to SL2? Than u should be able to get a lot better FPS right?

 

that's an interesting score you got there. does the game actually work for you now or are the textures still messed up?

 

Game is now running great for me. Still buggy though. Framerates drop to 10fps or so when turning around, seeing lots of cars, etc. Inside buildings I get a framerate of 55+fps. So frames are pretty good for me now, but the CPU is still huggin things up. If only they wrote this in DX10.

I fixed the textures by flashing my vBIOS to 0608, which makes everything think I've got a new video card in. I then reinstalled the 180.48 drivers, flashed back to 0617, reinsatalled 180.48, and that alone fixed the problem with textures. 180.70 is bad for business...

 

thats great to hear emike...i guess the physics outside really is killing this game.

 

Well that would probably help a lot with mid/low end rigs like mine, but how would one go about telling the game to use shader model 2 then? There doesn't appear to be any option to do so.

 

I find it lulzable that GTA IV for PC, being an nVidia TWIMTBP title, doesn't support SLi and would require a patch as mentioned by Rockstar in the future, to support it.

Anyways, I grabbed a copy from my local GameStop, and will try it out and post info when I get home.

 

ok, fellaz. tried it today and was quite surprised to find out that it runs pretty decently on my 6860 w/ 8800m gts. it autoconfigured the game for me, so i didn't bother messing with it yet. it laggs a little, but overall pretty playable.

 

Ok I just got the game installed in Vista.

And yeah ok I concede there is no difference in fps between XP and Vista, which makes a change as all my other games run better in XP than in Vista.

 

Did some more research on how this game runs, and well, it seems to be much more CPU limited than expected, which is pretty much in support to what emike experienced when OCing his CPU to 3.5ghz. Just a quick example of how much the CPU affects the game's performance, a few people at hardocp (hardforum) used a single GTX 280 paired up with a Q6600 OC'd to 3.6ghz, E6750 @ 2.6ghz and OC'd later to 3.2 ghz. Long story short, with texture quality set to high and render quality set to highest at 1920x1080, The Q6600 @ 3.6ghz got 47.62 fps, the E6750 @ 2.66ghz got 34.5 fps and when OC'd to 3.2ghz, got 42.94 fps.

There is more info in the following link that has more examples of other machines:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1371219

Edit: the Q6600 was OC'd the 3.6ghz actually

 

that's pretty close to what i got as well ichime. about 48 fps no over clock of anything.(q9550 @2.83ghz/1920x1200/4gb ram/gtx280)

 

Well here´s a trick to force whatever settings you want in GTA IV. Make a .txt file in the GTA IV root folder where the .exe files are located.

Name that .txt to commandline.txt.

Here is what I have in my commandline.txt for my desktop


-nomemrestrict -norestrictions -novblank -percentvidmem 100 -width 1440 -height 900 -detailquality 15 -viewdistance 30 -texturequality 2 -shadowdensity 5 -renderquality 4 /high

Actually that /high switch at the end is for the game to use all CPU power it can use. I actually noticed a little more smoother gameplay with this switch.

Those that runs the game in Vista can also add a -DX9 switch to the commandline to play the game in DX9 instead

 

nVidia just came out with a desktop driver for GTA IV (here http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html) and people over at gtaforums.com report having +10 FPS increase.

Actually the results are kinda mixed. Some people are getting no improvement, but I still think it's worth for Dox or LV2GO to mod the driver for us laptop users...

 

im all over that!

 

hmm desktop user really do have all the fun

 

well this driver seems to be working a bit better than all the rest.
sli seem to make some sort of difference...but i'll test further and get back with that.

 

Here are some results with my machine. I'm using the drivers provided to me with this notebook (I think Catalyst 8.10?)

Statistics
Average FPS: 22.32
Duration: 36.92 sec
CPU Usage: 97%
System memory usage: 66%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Low
View Distance: 10
Detail Distance: 46

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

 

ichime what do you get on 1280 resolution on high for both textures and render?

 

I'll check that too.
Also, according to the GTA ReadMe file seen here, only Catalyst 8.11 and up support Crossfire, so this maybe a run of a Single 3870 card. I'll verify this though.

 

Ok, it won't let me set texture quality to high; it only works when I'm at 800x600 res. So I set it to medium with the render quality set to highest:

Statistics
Average FPS: 23.40
Duration: 36.84 sec
CPU Usage: 96%
System memory usage: 67%
Video memory usage: 67%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 960 (59 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 38
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

Now I'm going to update the drivers to see what I get.

 

thanks alot, 23.4 isnt that bad i think its still playable if you could have got this game at 1280 x 1024 it would have been good i guess 960 is fine though how do you compare the 1280 at medium high to the 1920 at medium low?

 

It's a bit playable, but check out the following. This is after I updated the drivers to 8.11:

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.60
Duration: 37.25 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 57%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.79
Duration: 37.24 sec
CPU Usage: 93%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 800 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.87
Duration: 37.24 sec
CPU Usage: 95%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.29
Duration: 37.27 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 800 (59 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Low
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.81
Duration: 37.25 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Low
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 50

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 25.72
Duration: 37.64 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.78
Duration: 37.30 sec
CPU Usage: 95%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 68%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
View Distance: 14
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 27.16
Duration: 37.26 sec
CPU Usage: 96%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 68%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 800 (59 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 38
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

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

Statistics
Average FPS: 26.94
Duration: 36.86 sec
CPU Usage: 95%
System memory usage: 57%
Video memory usage: 68%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (59 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 38
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3870 X2
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So basically I went from 22-23 fps to about 27fps on average, but that seems to be constant regardless of the graphical changes I made. For example, running 1920x1200 at medium yields basically the same FPS at 1280x800 at medium. Interesting to say the least.

I think this game may be bottlenecked mostly by the CPU if anything. I'm going to OC my CPU and after that, install the 8.12 drivers and report back.

 

the new nvidia 180.84 are out. anyone tried them yet?

 

well, i may have a reason for that....if you over ride the default settings of "let the application decide" then no mater what you do..it will pretty much stay the same.... allot of nvidia users do this and then wonder why they have jaggies....

trying them as we speak.

nothing over clocked

Statistics
Average FPS: 50.71
Duration: 37.57 sec
CPU Usage: 73%
System memory usage: 73%
Video memory usage: 91%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 70

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX
Video Driver version: 180.84
Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9650 @ 3.00GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

everything set to high except view distance.
Statistics
Average FPS: 41.41
Duration: 37.77 sec
CPU Usage: 74%
System memory usage: 77%
Video memory usage: 92%


Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: Very High
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX
Video Driver version: 180.84
Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9650 @ 3.00GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli