[PC] Grand Theft Auto IV

[kyleb]

...with everything set to low ingame (textures, render quality, view distance, shadow density, all right down).

Turning texture quality down bellow your avalable VRAM won't gain any performance anyway.

It does occur to me though, Sobek, your not running with AA/AF/vsync or some other performance sapping setting turned on in the control panel are you?

Vsync doesn't effect performance aside from capping the max framerate at the refresh rate, that is unless isn't used with triple buffering, but GTA4 does by default.

But yeah, 15fps sounds low even for an old x1900. A friend of mine runs and x1950 along with an e6400@2.8GHz and found the game unplayable, but he was stll usually getting notably better framerates than that until he got into CPU heavy action.

 

[Sobek]

1280x1024 (from his post )

Thats marginally higher than the consoles (although the 360 runs with 2x MSAA aswell) but not high enough to effect the framerate so drastically.

It does occur to me though, Sobek, your not running with AA/AF/vsync or some other performance sapping setting turned on in the control panel are you?

That framerate just doesn't seem right, i'm getting more than double that on a GTS640 at the same settings.

Definitely nothing being forced via CCC while playing, everything there is set to App Controlled. Isn't an 8800GTS considerably more powerfull than an x1900XT (yep, it's an XT 512 pjbliverpool )?

I don't know what to tell you. Latest drivers, game is patched, Windows is clean as a whistle and everything else runs and performs right in line with how it should on this card. I can't think of anything else that would be negatively affecting GTA4 in particular. Occasionally driving around I see 20 or 25 fps, but it's shortlived and soon enough fluctuates back and forth around the 15-20 mark.

Tonight I think I'll try some things suggested over on GTAForums.com (shudder), such as disabling the Clip Save feature (for replays and such), killing the Social Club process once ingame, and giving GTA4 High or Realtime priority (though I'm a but dubious about Realtime, I'll try it anyway).

 

[pjbliverpool]

All of those things are likely only to save you CPU power though which you should already be fine with.

I guess it might be a vertex shading bottleneck. Xenos and G80 wouldn't be affected by this while its possible RSX is getting some major help from Cell.

Generally a GTS 640 is probably only 50% faster than the XT even in the best case scenario.

 

[Sobek]

I'd really like to find some more people who have tested abd benchmarked GTA4 with x1900's and C2Q's (or even just x1900's!). But they seem incredibly hard to find.

 

[Neb]

...and giving GTA4 High or Realtime priority (though I'm a but dubious about Realtime, I'll try it anyway).

Nooooo!!!

Never do that, especially for a game. It will make everything else besides the game unresponsive!

 

[Neb]

I'd really like to find some more people who have tested abd benchmarked GTA4 with x1900's and C2Q's (or even just x1900's!). But they seem incredibly hard to find.

I think it is becouse most of the x1900's burnt up after a while...

 

[Sobek]

Nooooo!!!

Never do that, especially for a game. It will make everything else besides the game unresponsive!

Right, I know. Until I Alt-F4 the stupid game I used to use Realtime once to solve a strange issue with an old game I played, took about 30 seconds to get back into the game after setting Realtime, but once ingame a simple Alt-F4 killed it and returned all to normal.

I think it is becouse most of the x1900's burnt up after a while...

Well... Yeah. Can't really argue with that. Runs cool but damn the stock cooler is great at destroying your ear drums.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Here's some more evidence of GTA4's CPU limitation....

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...7_far_ahead_of_Core_2_Quad_in_CPU_benchmarks/

Just look at how it flies (relatively speaking) on the i7.

We're also seeing massive increases when moving from duo to quad. Around 65% when you take clock speed differences into account on the Core2's.

This also shows that garphically, a single 4870 1GB is more than enough to handle this game well as long as the CPU limitation is removed.

Thats not to say the game isn;t still horribly GPU limited of course. I would love to see some older GPU's tested out on an overclocked i7. That would make for some very interesting reading.

 

[DJ12]

Wonder how the Phenom II 945 will fair.

I am to cheap to splash the cash on a top spec Intel system when it's all going to be outdated in a few months.

 

[Bludd]

I am >< this close to splurging for a Nehalem system, but I am torn on the GPU. Maybe I'll keep my 8800 GTX for a while until some new stuff comes. Aaaaaaa, I can't wait to get back to playing GTA4.

 

[Davros]

toms hardware just built an i7 pc for a feature and the motherboard cost more than the cpu - bloody hell

 

[a.tard.living.in.his.own]

Wonder how the Phenom II 945 will fair.

I am to cheap to splash the cash on a top spec Intel system when it's all going to be outdated in a few months.

wut? i think what gelsinger throw in the trash bin of obsolete things on the idf 2007 was definitely NOT a nehalem...definitely.

anyway; keep dreaming with your amd though

 

[Neb]

Competition is good, let's hope the best for both.

 

[Sobek]

wut? i think what gelsinger throw in the trash bin of obsolete things on the idf 2007 was definitely NOT a nehalem...definitely.

anyway; keep dreaming with your amd though

Interesting. Wha?

Anyway, sorry guys, didn't really get a chance to try anything else out on the game... Ended up staying in at work until 10 or 11pm (stuffed if I can remember what time it was), but I've got plenty of time tonight to fiddle.

 

[Neb]

Interesting. Wha?

Anyway, sorry guys, didn't really get a chance to try anything else out on the game... Ended up staying in at work until 10 or 11pm (stuffed if I can remember what time it was), but I've got plenty of time tonight to fiddle.

You want a modded car/ped LOD file with some other perfomance saves from default as base?

Also I included my current config, original backup and lower bloom mod. Tool to allow GTAIV modding included.


http://rapidshare.com/files/180566003/GTAIV.rar.html

 

[Sobek]

Oh awesome, I'll give that a try... Nicely packaged too

 

[Sobek]

Nice. Using the "What I use" config gave me an increase of, on average, probably 2 or 3 fps. One thing that surprised me however was that just about everyone complains that the game runs absolutely terrible at night, however even on the stock Visualsettings.dat, night time runs BLOODY GOOD for me. I spent 20 minutes or so driving around at night and the framerate was always over 20 - ALWAYS. Some areas (areas I would expect to run bad that normally do), even went over 30 on occasion, which was great.

One thing I've noticed though is that the bloom effects are really blocky. I seem to recall this being a known issue on x1900 cards (along with vehicle damage and some shadow problems), but I've got the game patched. My cars damage correctly and the shadows (as terrible as they are) are fault-free. I'll see about getting a screenshot up but needless to say edges on vehicles and such where the bloom is strongest are horribly blocky looking. I like reduced bloom, but still having it on is a preference.

 

[pjbliverpool]

night time runs BLOODY GOOD for me. I spent 20 minutes or so driving around at night and the framerate was always over 20 - ALWAYS. Some areas (areas I would expect to run bad that normally do), even went over 30 on occasion, which was great.

You have a GPU thats significantly more powerful than either Xenos or RSX and yet at lower settings your barely getting 2/3rds of their performance.

I'm afraid its not running good, not good at all

 

[Sobek]

You have a GPU thats significantly more powerful than either Xenos or RSX and yet at lower settings your barely getting 2/3rds of their performance.

I'm afraid its not running good, not good at all

Eeeeyyyyy, rub it in some more! :smile:

Sure it isn't running good, but what I really meant was that it was running good *at night* in comparison to how it ran *at day*. In which case, it was running goooood. I could actually do stuff without a 10 second delay

 

[pjbliverpool]

Look on the bright side, at least your not playing Saints Row 2! Expect a good solid 3 fps with that GPU!