GTA 3 & Simcity 4 issues with current graphics cards

[Lordberek]

GTA 3 jerky on my Geforce 3 and my friends Geforce 4. Why is it jerky? Not laggy, but jerky, like when I don't have my AGP drivers updated, games will jerk every second... GTA 3 does this even though both our systems are updated with latest hardware, Windows XP and drivers updates. I have to turn down the resolution to 1024x768 and 16bit color to make the jerkyness go away. I still don't feel the game is being perfectly smooth even after this. If I have it at 1280x1024 at 32bit color, it will be extensively jerky, then after I drive around the city for while it will go away somewhat, but not a lot (the 2nd island is worse than the 1st).

Is this simply bad programming on GTA3 part? I have no other games that are like this... wait, Simcity 4 is completely laggy, not jerky but just simply laggy (could be same thing though, different inteface so hard to compare). No reason when the game just doesn't seem that intesive for graphics... yet after a short time Simcity 4 will just CRAWL.

I have 1.5 plus ghz systems... 512 megs ram, decent hard drives WD1200JB. I don't understand why these two games have issues. Will a Radeon 9700 solve my problems over my Geforce 3 and Geforce 2's? Is this my missing link over these two poorly programmed games? Or will nothing I do really help in these respects.

I am currently waiting for the new ATI and Nvidia lines to come out, then once the price drops below $200US for a Radeon 9700, I'm going to pick two of them up.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Thnx.

[V3]

For GTA3 try reducing AGP memory to 32MB.

For Sim City, try upping your memory to 2 GB.

Hope that helps.

[Lordberek]

What! 2gig? Yea right... NO game deserves 1gig, let alone 2gigs. If you seriuosly need 2gigs of main memory to run the game smooth, then the game sucks plain and simple. Horrible programming, that type of game with what it has is no exscuse for the performance that is has. Sorry, venting a bit but I can't imagine 2gigs hehe. Something else perhaps?

And GTA3 I have tried all the agp aperature sizes. Does anyone have a Radeon 9700 that has GTA 3? What kind of performance do you get at 1280x1024 32bit color? If I set it at that with my GeForce 3, it lags horribly, even after driving around for while.

[BoddoZerg]

GTA3 doesn't seem to work at all on my GeForce4. My brother's Radeon9700 rig runs it, but with massive texture problems that occasionally pop up for a few seconds then disappear.

I think GTA3 is just a piss-poor shoddy port. Thank god I didn't pay for it. (hey, when a game has "theft" in its name... :p)

[Lordberek]

GTA 3 and Simcity 4 both his HORRIBLE programming. The performance way below (especially Simcity 4) what should be for there level of detail and such.

But, even with bad programming and making of the game, sometimes massive upgrades in hardware will fix that.

You said that his 9700 gives texture issues and such? Does it run smooth though even at 1280x1024 at 32bit and all? Smooth as in SMOOTH, no lag ;)

Maybe there is a setting in the bios or something or updated drivers that might fix that issue?

Do you have Simcity 4? The previous person who posted suggested 2gigs of ram, possibly meaning virtual, I am not sure. Virtual I can deal with, but real, that is insane :)

V3, could you post again what you meant by that. If it's just virtual, and pumping it up to 2gigs really does solve the problem, that would be nice neat fix.

Thnx

[V3]

Lordberek,

GTA3 is laggy like that, even on PS2, its like that. I thought PC would fix it but no luck. its a pretty crap game, if you ask me. BTW Have you try turning off the blur in the option ?, it helps a bit but not much.

SimCity 4 still run horrible, but its playable on 2 GB. I have not try the game on 512MB, so I don't know how bad it is. I think it might be CPU limited as well. Should ask someone with fast P4 system and SimCity 4.

Its a good game though SimCity 4. I am going to get my self a proper gaming rig soon, instead of this one, but I am still waiting for faster CPU and GPU and everything else to come out. So I am stuck with this old rig for now, which really not setup for gaming, but for work, but most PC game that I like play well on it.

[Dave Glue]

GTA3's lagginess is simple - a poor streaming engine. If you look at your HD light when playing, you'll notice the jerkiness coincides with HD activity, GTA3 is constantly streaming data in, much like the PS2 has to do.

The reason it gets smoother after a while is that most of the data eventually becomes cached. A pretty shoddy port that doesn't even take advantage of PC's with more than 256 megs of memory, though.

[BoddoZerg]

GTA3 on my brother's Radeon9700/Athlon2700 system lags pretty badly. Lag coincides with texture problems and/or hard drive streaming. The texture problem can be best described as "all the roads and streetlights become transparent, you see cars and people floating in midair". During texturing problems, the framerate drops to single digits, even at 640*480*16.

On my Geforce4/Athlon2000 system, GTA3 loads up, but nothing works at all. The menu system is a mess of colored rectangles, none of the text displays properly. When you start up the game, everything is flickering textures, black squares, and tearing textures. The HUD and text do not show up at all, or show up as colored rectangles. The game runs at single-digit framerates and eventually crashes to desktop.