GTA IV Performance

brainer...you didn't get your copy yet?

 

nope, my copy hasn't arrived yet. although it should have today (shelled 100$ for it.. its hard to get legal stuff here, i feel robbed lol)

 

where are you at?

 

Palestine.. rofl

 

wow, i didn't know you we're that far away.

so over there you sometimes have to pay twice as much as over here? and in others...you probably do way better than us over here...

 

well, i could buy a pirated version for 1$ but.. i like to support devs

 

yeah, but then i couldn't beat up on you in multi player mode....lol
j/k

 

yeah thats true, there are games that you NEED to buy, like Left 4 dead.. i mean the game has brilliant AI but what the hell.. the game is supposed to be played online.


EDIT: Johnksss you might wanna check the XG 180.84 driver eh?

 

Can someone please explain to me how johnksss's 3.0 GHz (correction) quad core with 9800M GTX benches the same configuration, at higher resolution, with 13 more FPS than my Q6600 @ 3.2 Ghz and HD 4850? Is my 512 MB video memory really costing me 13 FPS? If so that's pathetic on Rockstar's part.

johnksss, what were your vehicle and shadow settings in that benchmark?

Statistics
Average FPS: 28.66
Duration: 37.75 sec
CPU Usage: 49%
System memory usage: 62%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Service Pack 3
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Video Driver version: 6.14.10.6869
Audio Adapter: Realtek HD Audio output
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 3.20GHz

 

Well, for starters I think your drivers might be a bit old (6.14x is around Catalyst 8.9-8.10). Also, the game won't even allow me to set the texture quality to high with high resolution. You seem to be able to pull that off even though both our GPUs have the same amount of memory. The 9800M GTX has 1gb of memory, giving it a much higher advantage in this case to run high quality textures with less stress. Add that with a QUAD core 3.0ghz processor, and you get really good numbers.

Lastly, it seems that the ATi cards are having generally poor performance. In my case, my fps numbers remain relatively constant, even at high and low res with the same quality settings.

 

ichime: im still not sold on my gtx numbers i think they should be lower since it's suppose t be running off one card. im still testing and been playing the game as well. ill let you know what i come back with in a little while

 

Ah yes, I misread his benchmarks. Still, 1 GB of graphics memory should not be leading to such drastic results. I scoured the net for comparisons between the 9800M GTX and my HD 4850, and from what I can tell, at the same resolution, same settings, running Crysis' benchmark, my 4850 scores 7-10 FPS better (all settings set to high) at the same resolution. There's no excuse for GTA IV to score 13 FPS lower.

 

im thinking it has to do with my settings...but then i benched my gtx280 as well and it was in the 47 fps range as the other q6600 over clocked at 3.6...

edit: i guess we can now all put to rest this thing about "not" using memory above 512 on a 1 gig card.

 

What were your shadow / vehicle distance settings? Those don't show in the benchmark result. I know that your notebook with SLI is a bit faster than my desktop, but it shouldn't be with just 1 card.

 

vd=32
dd=70
vd=51
sd=10
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

edit: your also running a lower res (1680x1050) and windows xp

 

i guess the 9800 gtx has survived the sands of time

You'd thing the GTX280 would be alot more dominant but it doesnt seem so

 

gtx280 is based off a single gpu, guess we see what happens when they introduce their dual gpu card....

 

The GTX 280 is much more dominant than the 9800M GTX, this game just suffers from poor performance scaling.

 

yeah that is probably accurate as GTX 280 benchmarks are substantially better

 

The 280 is about the size of my keyboard.

Believe it's a godzilla compared to the 9800M GTX. You can overclock the 280 in ways you cannot w/ the 9800M GTX, rendering the 280 about 100-200% better performance.

Didn't that guy break 30000 w/ 2xGTX280s =O

 

Does anyone know what the setting for Vehicle Density is to make the game have as many cars on the road as in the console version?

I'm just wondering so that I can narrow down whether or not my rig will run the game with better or the same level of details than the console versions, albeit in a low res (1024x640) and at best 25 fps, usually around 19/20 (which I find ok to play at)...

 

A setting of 20 gives the equivelent of thet console version.

That aside, I am claiming bullcrap on GTA IV looking better for the PC than it does console (PS3). The lighting and shadows were far better on the PS3 version. There are places on the PS3 version, such as the Caberet Club, where I could almost believe what I was seeing was real. On the PC version, everything maxed, it looks ragdollish and flat, due to lighting being toned waaay down.

My biggest gripe now with GTA IV is that my GPU is laughing and having a good time while the CPU crawls on its knees. I want lighting/shadows/reflections, etc brought back. The GPU has plenty of power for it. I have NEVER seen a console game look better than a PC game. What gives!

 

i understand what you are saying Emike, all the screens that i have saw so far has Slime-like shadows.. although they are on max


and about your performance, as you have noticed Nvidia now is trying to take Strain of the CPU and put it on the GPU, maybe you havent noticed, but check your Cards temps, they should be cooler than Usual

 

Aha that's what I've got it set to. Thank you Emike.

I tend to agree with you about the shadows, they are a little bit sloppy but I don't have the PS3 or 360 versions to compare the PC version to so I'm happy with the way it looks and on my rig I am surprised I can run it so, I would like a little bit more fps though considering I'm running it in the same settings as a console would albeit in a lower resolution...

Another tiny little thing they should look at is the vibration, I'm using a 360 pad and not really getting a lot of vibrations, I only get it when I go for "warm coffee", when there is a thunderstorm, when on the train, and occasionally when I hit a wall and apart from thunderstorms and "warm coffee" the vibes are pretty weak...

 

check this out

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=380489&st=0

ignore Step 3 since its illegal

 

Yep done all that, including step 3. Sue me, I have the original files that were overwritten, so who's to know.

And to be honest step 3 didn't give me any gain in fps, it's just handy not having to have the disk in now...

Do note however I don't advocate piracy, I own the original game so I don't see any problem with a step 3 as long as it's only for personal use.

I've read many posts here, and at GTAForums on how to gain fps and most of the time it involves a rig that is better than mine so I think I've hit the max I can unless R* come up with some fix.

Seems like either people completely fabricate their "tips and tweaks", or do something that actually does give them a few fps extra, and don't know what it was they did, so they just post what they think they did that worked...

Might help other people though so it's always worth a read.

 

it's simple... most of them did not use "application default" once you make one change, it reverts to a custom altered profile. any change to gain frames has to do with dropping the detail down at some point or stage. which defeats the purpose of highest/high settings.

 

Hmm with forced settings through commandline.txt I must say GTA IV looks better on my PC than on my 360. Here we are talking textures specifically which is double in resolution on High on the PC than the 360. Besides the 360 uses the blur filter which I assume the PS3 does too. This blur filter looks good on a HDTV which is not at sharp as a TFT Monitor. But running this filter on my Samsung TFT just makes the game look worse in my opinion.

With some tweaking to the colors, saturation and contrast GTA IV looks better definitely on my desktop than on my 360

Besides the insides, i.e rock clubs etc etc looks reallly good in regards to lighting on my desktop. Now I am not playing this game anymore on my 360. PC all the way now. Funny thing is with all the complaints on the game running poorly I have to take that back. Sat yesterday and ran the game on my 360 and oh man we are talking frame drops here out of this world compared to my 8800GTX and Core2Duo 3 GHz desktop.

I have got it to run smooth on my desktop 8800GTX

Besides the shadow settings, it is only during night and dusk those apply to the game. So run fraps and check the framerate during dusk or night. The benchmark does not apply to this I can assure you. It is at special times of the day those shadow settings comes in handy.

During daytime there is no difference in performance whether you have shadows set at 16 or at 0 since the whole city uses one type of shadow. But during night, dusk etc it is different.

This is why when I see people averaging 70 fps they are not actually having 70 fps in dusk nor night when there is lots lights on and so on

Also seems like the game suffers from some kind of memory leak bug.

 

hey mag, where does the command line text file go?

 

just make a .txt file and name it commandline.txt and put it in the GTA IV root folder i.e where you have GTAIVLaunch.ext and GTA IV.

Now just put in whatever commands you want to use, like -norestrictions, shadowdensity, renderquality etc etc. Now the game starts up with these every single time. Besides those that have trouble adding this to the gtaIVlaunch.exe shortcut and it does not work. Commandline.txt make it work

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

 

thanks. gonna go try it now

 

I am glad I still have my 8800GTX with 768MB Vram. Since my 8800m GTX though SLI 512Mb can´t run the game with textures on High without funny things like cars floating above the roads or buildings dissappearing

Basically 512MB Vram users are screwed unless they run the game in very low res. However those High textures takes up around 600MB of Vram I read. And the game do look much better with textures set to High than Medium.

 

Thanks! I installed the new nvidia driver and now my graphics settings won't save for some reason, that command line did the trick. (The game kept using the default settings everytime I start the game even though I already changed the settings and clicked save before quiting the game) However the vehicle density setting are still going back to default even though I added the "-vehicledensity #" into the command line. Did I do something wrong?

At the moment I'm using this:

-nomemrestrict -norestrictions -novblank -percentvidmem 100 -width 1680 -height 1050 -detailquality 4 -viewdistance 9 -texturequality 1 -vehicledensity 15 -shadowdensity 0 -renderquality 1 /high

 

maksin I noticed that the veichle quality can not be set through a commandline. So it does the same for me I hope this gets fixed in the patch since it is a little tedious to set the veichle quality back every single time you start up the game.

 

I see... Yea I'm getting sick of changing my settings everytime too.

 

Yeah it is a buggy port. Though in game I have not noticed any bugs but this with not be able to save settings and so on is just ridiculous.

Though the game is highly enjoyable on my PC and with my Logitech Chillstream controller I am glad it runs better and looks better than it does on my 360 though

 

i think im going to let you guys do all the work on this one while i just sit back and try your end results..

 

Just upgraded to 180.84, and I guess its the same or maybe a little better but nothing too outstanding.

Still waiting for the rockstar patch though because this game is crashing every 15 minutes or so. Farking annoying.

 

Well, adding those settings would allow me to change texture to High but then it goes over the 500 VRAM and then I get problem with texture rendering. So it isn't of much help really for those with less than 768 vram.

I've added the following syntax thouugh:
-novblank -percentvidmem 100 /high

and maybe it works a bit better. But just maybe, because I haven't bechmarked anything.

Brainer, thanks for that post. I was going to start looking for a crack soon anyway because otherwise I can't have 2 batteries in my laptop as I need to keep the CD drive in.

 

True crystak with those exact settings I wrote there in the commandline.txt and at a res of 1440x900 I only exceed my 8800GTX Vram by around 50MB. But trying the same on my notebook with 512MB 8800m GTX SLI and with a res of 1920x1200 I exceed with around 300MB and it does not work, buildings dissapear and cars floats above the roads

johnkss you with 1GB of Vram it should work out great with those settings and 1920x1200 and especially on your desktop GTX 280

 

desktop is still doing the rotating camera bit and the cars get stuck in drive mode. the laptop i got it up to 1100 but it didn't come on. going to try a few other things in a sec.

 

Hmm rotating cars, that sounds strange. Do you run in Vista or in XP?

 

running vista 32
the gas pedal is stuck in the cars so to speak.
and your camera that follows you. well mine doesn't just follow. it starts sping around in a big circle making me sick!.LOL like if you hold your camera in your hand and start filming but your making big circles doing it.

 

so.. the game is basically like Stalker Clear sky? only lags on certain time of day?


anyways, ive checked on my order, but still i'll need to wait 5 more days o_0

i hope there will be a patch as soon as i grab my copy

 

Sounds like a pirated version of the game.

 

Hmm, I got something similar once or twice where the camera would keep rotating and shaking a lot but I moved my mouse around fast, jumped and pressed Esc and then it was back to normal. I never got the cars stuck in drive mode problem.

 

so game stop is selling pirated copies of the game are they? you could have just said something like...have you tried to reinstall it first.

hopefully right before you get your shinny new copy, that patch will be already on your computer waiting on you to install. i think im gonna wait for the patch then reinstall again. it's way to many problems for me spending my hard eraned 50 bucks for it not to work right out the box. when this laptop didn't work, it went right back. and that game is pretty close to doing the same if this patch isn't working.

 

Lol I would not have fun pirating 13GB of hell.

 

Well in his defense you are describing what people who pirate the game are seeing. They call it 'drunken camera', where the game detects that you are using a pirated game and starts screwing with your camera.

 

The "drunken Camera" glitch is to do with using a crack for the game. I suggest finding a more recent one if you are using a crack!