GTA IV and the 9600m GT DDR2

After beating Farcry2 and being board with multiplayer, I am in search of a new game. I never bought GTAIV on console so I thought now would be the time for me to buy...but for portability. I keep getting conflicting answers from searching around. How well can my sig run it. Some say the 9600 can play on medium so say its not playable on low. Does it even look decent on low? Is it playable? How many frames for this game is playable? Am I wasting my time/money?

 

don't get gta4 it's horribly optimized. look at l4d or something else

 

played it on console already. I need something that will keep me interested for a while and is not called fallout 3/wow

How bad would GTAIV run?

 

I think its low on 1650x1050 and medium for your resolution (1280x800). Id avoid it because of all the issues. They even offered refunds because it was that bad.

 

horribly it's like trying to play crysis on you laptop you might get playable if you mess with the settings

 

Crysis is playable on a 9600/8600m GT

 

I haven't tried GTA4 on PC yet but I wouldn't expect optimal results from your config, it doesn't run perfectly even on extremely powerful desktop rigs I hear. But I do feel it will improve in time from official and unofficial patches, I hope. I'm still hopeful to see GTA4 be moderately successful on the PC to see all the mods the user community will concoct and hopefully for the Xbox 360 exclusives episodes to come to the PC as its a Games for Windows LIVE title.

 

heres my story which is as down to businness honest as it gets

i was in the boat as you about 1 month ago thinking of whether to get it or not with my t5750 2ghz,4gb,3659 ddr2, and after much consideration i finally bought it. my first week with it was very bad - i didnt want to play it, it looked bad and played bad and thought whyd i buy this pos and wanted a refund. however after doing god knows what i bumped the settings UP from what i had which running at low and sliders low and rez low to native 1280x800 medium settings all and sliders at ~30 and god only knows why its miraculously working at 18-20fps on avg which might not sound like much fps but its really really playable and it looks SICK like driving across highways and thru star junction at night with your own music on independence radio is an incredible experience. i still have some texture z-fighting issues but nothing too bad and you have a 9 series nvidia so it shouldnt happen to you and now i actually am really enjoying the game now. its really an incredible experience and i would reccomend the game to anyone whose rig can run it. check youtube for some ppl playing it on laptops with specs like urs at good settings/fps

its your call on whether u want to still buy it but i did in ur case a month ago and i dont regret it now

 

it was $19 at staples so I bought it

- 1 hour install including all the crap you have to sign for
- online authentication
- securom
- disk check
- Rockstar Social Club
- Games for Windows Live run time
- benchmark launches game when finished
- 30-35 fps on low detail on 2.66 C2D and 9600m GT DDR3

some positives
- video setting config shows impact of video memory usage

Maybe the best feature is the VRAM usage model, which should help end the stupid discussions on how you 'don't need more VRAM.'

 

I wouldn't bother buying that game to play on low. GTA IV is to be enjoyed in all its glory on high settings with its great physics and graphics. I play it on high and get over 40 fps after the recent patch at native resolution, but your spec will only run it at low settings because the CPU isn't fast enough for it, and your GPU is also limited so will not deal with any high resolutions.

I played it on low once and it reminded me of GTA SA.

Many who get bad performance in this game have their settings at an overly ambitious level when compared to their spec.

 

The P8400 will limit you severely when it comes to GTA IV. If you overclocked that sucker, then it would be better, but there are still people who have issues with even though have an E8400 in their desktops. Trust me, I have it, and on a clean OS (Windows 7 clean install) it still isn't that great. You'll be lucky if you get over 25 FPS.

 

You can run it on a T61p with a T7700 and a 570M (8600M GT) at medium settings...i think you are overestimating what this game really needs to run decently

 

I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call 15 FPS decent. Plus, the 8600M GT is actually below the minimum required specifications.

 

Hell with a bit of tweaks and the right settings, my P8400 and 9600M (same specs as OP actually) runs it just fine.. as "thinkpad knows best" says you are seriously overestimating what the game needs.. Install the latest patches, get a few FPS tweaks and stuff, and you'll be rolling trust me.. Its not gonna be a huge fps, but around 30, and some places even 50, which is fine for me

 

I wonder how it would play on my Q9650 w/8600M GT lol. I hope the quad would help out quite a bit?

 

It helps at alot. GTA 4 is a CPU game and it really enjoys a quad, and takes advantage of all cores.

 

That is good to know. What sort of settings would it play at you reckon?

 

Hard to say..

 

hmm since you have basically same specs as me, is that HIGH 40fps with GTAIV out of the box? what resolution? i mite also pick it up for my PC and defeat it AGAIN, ive beaten GTAIV on my 360 to 100%, as well as the Lost and Damned to 100% and now looking to beat Gay tony to 100%. if i can enjoy GTA on my pc with those settings (and gain moar achievmeents ), then i'll buy it. if you did do some optimizations (besides patching etc.), plz tell?

 

Out of the box you won't get anywhere near 40 fps because the automatic config is way too ambitious. I play on 1680 X 1050 native resolution, clip capture disabled, everything high apart from water medium, Vsync disabled, Shadow density set to 1, View Distance 32, Detail Distance 28, Vehicle Density 31 and definition enabled.

Although 40 fps is the highest I get, the frame rate varies a lot anything from 30 fps, 38, 34, 40 fps and down to 25 fps for a short time during really heavy scenes then back to 30. It is always playable and I could always reduce the eye candy settings for more performance. I would say 34 fps is the most common frame rate but you can easily lock settings to a maximum of 30 fps for smoothness.

I usually play with the Realizm IV Mod though but that no longer works after the recent update. Since the recent update has improved my performance I am staying with that though.

My settings look a lot better than the Xbox360 and once you play you will realise that the Xbox360 version runs quite slowly, something like 20 fps.

(I have an Xbox360 collecting dust).

That extra content you mentioned will also be coming to the PC and there are some seriously excellent mods too.

 

Does everyone in the Gaming section of this forum need to enjoy every game on high settings? Nobody can enjoy a game like GTA 4 on low settings? GTA 4 still looks fantastic on low settings to me. Alot of you seem to be spoiled with all these incredible GPU's on the market. 15FPS with a T7700? LOL, i'll bet you i get a considerable amount more than that, you really are exagerating what this game now needs to run adequately.

 

Well 15FPS is a little low, but it certainly looks just fine for me at mid textures, and 1024x768.. its the physics i enjoy the most anyway, i can get hours of fun massacring the city ect. Besides i enjoy being able to play it at school ^^

 

hmm so clip capture, what is that? nothing else besides just finding the rite settings? that's good enough imo, im SURE that the pc version even @ medium+low settings will look much better than the 360. after witnessing the epic SP of MW2 with shots like these...

i went to play GTA:TBoGT and im like srsly? wth is this...reminds me of ps2 haha.

some of the settings i would like to play @ with CPU @ 2.45GHz and GPU @ 585/950/1475 are...

1080p
no v-sync
that no clip-capture thing (by that do u mean not having the ability to record/save films? im fine with that, fraps ftw!)
most high like textures etc...
view distance i would like high
detail distance higher...
rest of the settings same

hoping for ~30fps with those settings, playable? lol

 

You are right, even on low resolution the PC version looks so much better than the Xbox360 version. I guess that's why I can't play that version again anymore lol.

Clip capture allows you to record 30 seconds of IV gameplay at the touch of a button but I find it can significantly lower frame rates when enabled and cause stuttering. Using fraps to record will probably slow it to a crawl though.

Your CPU @ 2.45GHz will help with performance.

View distance and Detail distance are really heavy on the resources, if you set that to high / higher than my settings, for example 80, you will get much lower frames. I have found that even 25 fps in this game is playable but 30 fps is definitely possible although 1080p will stress the GPU out a bit more though.

You should do a fresh install, update GFWL, update IV straight to 1.0.04 and then defrag the IV folder.

Some find that a few of the IV environment and realism mods increase performance. I am testing out one now and just tried a trainer that worked perfectly, makes for a fun free roam mess about.

I find that the default driving speed in IV is too slow so you might want to change that using a handling mod if you are also bothered by this.

 

I was just playing L4D 2 on my T61p, temps never got over 75 with medium-high settings and 1400x900 res. I wouldn't feel the need i don't think to turn up the res much when i get GTA 4 to try on the T61p, for the performance hit, it just looks fine enough on low res. Not 800x600, but 1024x768 is fine for me, i'd rather have very high detail level than fine res.

 

i have gta4 for 9600m gt i actually get around 48fps on medium settings, which is barely noticeable from 60fps

 

wow, what settings in specific?

 

Maybe a little more than that. Who knows? All I know is that my P8400 gets 25FPS tops, and since your T7700 is roughly the same in terms of performance, I think you will be about the same. Maybe a tad higher.

 

Yeah, I corrected the specs issue LOL (although an i7 would be hella better - I'll grab an ES C2Q when I see a good deal on eBay). Now I just have to get SLI working in this game.

 

For most people, the idea of getting gta4 on the pc is to experience better graphics, however if you are running it at a super low res with low settings, you may as well just get it on console. When I first got it, I had to run it at 1280x720, with medium settings and that would give me on average 30fps. However, after a patch, I can now play it at 1920x1200 with all settings on high, view and detail distance at 35, and it runs at 40fps (dipping to about 25 when there is 20 cars exploding). Now it looks amazing and you can really appreciate the pc's potential compared to consoles.

Blazin

 

lulz for bumpin a dead thread.

but ya, got GTA IV off steam for 7.50...wow that is freaking cheap.

played it, 195.55 beta drivres, windows 7

C2Q @ 2.447GHz, GTX 260M @ 550/925/1375.

settings

resolution - 1920x1080
aspect ratio - auto
textures quality - high
reflection resolution - medium
water quality - medium
shadow quality - high
texture filter - high
view distance - 40
detail distance - 65
car density - 45
shadow density - 4
definition - on
vsync - off

results
avr. frame in benchmark = 37.75FPS
but nono...that isn't my average. i get usually 20-40fps in streets. and it is mainly between 25-35 during night.

any ways for better FPS...it's fully playable. just that...i want to get better. mods/change in settings/other recommendations?

 

Set shadow density to 1, detail distance should be a lot lower as should car density. 195.xx drivers are the worst for this game in my opinion, official 186.81 will give you better performance. Make sure you are patched to 1.0.04 and also use this Universal GTA 4 Shader Patch

You will probably find no performance difference from changing your medium settings to high and in some cases better performance is found by some.

I get a steady 40 fps and highs of 50+ fps but where you have settings of 40 and 65, I have 26 and 26. I also have the Realizm IV 6.2 Mod installed and other scripts running in game which do take up a bit more CPU power. Take a look at the link in my sig if you are interested in some of the Mods I use.

 

hmm, what does shadow density do? i read it online, and somewhere it said that setting it to 3 will give more objects in GTA shadows. for instance...setting @ 3 = NPC and trees (or something, cant remember and lost the source ) shadows. i really wanted to play GTA with high quality shadows since FREAKIN xbox doesnt have hardly any. makes me appreciate the PC version a lot more.

im going back to 186.82...these BETA drivers arent very good for oc'ing. i tried 3dmark06 when i freshly installed win7, and it failed @ an OC that was perfectly fine with 186.82. dam the 19x series!

 

i just bought it i was worried about the same thing. it runs fine on medium settings though for me (although my gpu is overclocked) i do have a few rendering issues going on though. odd reflections.

 

after much hassle, i got 186.82 driver installed (wow u dont want to know how it screwed my system up...couldnt install 186.82 after safe mode driver sweeper, suddenly my LAN went dead and had to scavenge for my drivers CD where LAN drivers were no where to be found in the auto-install list, so i had to search through many subfolders just to find the realtek...yadda yadda...now it works lol)

gonna reboot soon and try the settings you mentioned. im not very keen on patching GTA, since this is steam and i dont want any problems. if any one w/ steam has done this, plz do tell!

 

When Steam is connected online it will automatically patch / update to the latest version. I also recommend 186.81 because myself and a few others had powermizer problems with that 186.82 version which resulted in higher GPU temps due to the clocks staying high for long after idle. Shadow density can reduce your fps by a huge amount with no major visual difference between having it set to 1 Vs 2.

 

Just disable reflections.. You'll get used to not having them and they take a good amont of FPS, atleast at me.

 

try the config, and just set draw distance to 1 everything else can be set to high. I average like 25 fps at 1280 x 800 with a hd 2600.

 

186.81... they run cool and u should have no problems...

 

I did the comandline tweaks i managed to squeeze some more FPS on my HD4570 and also installed the latest patch which i got a noticeable FPS increase in medium settings

 

Hmm, so 186.81 seem pretty good? I'll try them out tonight.

 

I tested at your settings and was surprised that I got pretty decent performance. For better performance I found reducing shadow density to 1 gave a much smoother performance and it looked pretty much the same to me. Note that I am on a lower native resolution than you though (1680 X 1050).


I think I had gotten so used to playing GTA IV with settings that were best for the 2.0 Ghz Q9000 that I forgot how much more capable my 2.5 Ghz QX9300 was. I managed to push all of the sliders up to near 60 and still get good performance.

I have the sliders all set to 38, everything else high apart from water quality at low and even during huge police chases, I no longer get any slow downs. Very strange that a higher settings performs better than a lower one though.

 

Waaa, I run everything at 1440 x 900 with 75 View Distance, Detail and Cars, everything else set to High with Shadows at Medium and Shadow Density at 1 with Details on. Real smooth on my 4850 512MB, that might change when I get my 1080p monitor sometime this week or next.

 

lol, set the car density @ someth. like 20-30, less cars = easier game haha and MORE FPS!

 

Maybe so but a high car density is great for grenade explosions and police chases.