[PC] Grand Theft Auto IV
- Thread starter eezing
- Start date
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
There's a newer version for XP3.
Cheers, I'll give that a try if it gives me any more problems. For now though I think i'll keep my profile online, my internet hardly ever falls over so the benefits of being online outway the risk of the connection going down.
Well well, made some changes software-wise, and now have the game running at a far more acceptable (ie; playable) level. I don't know what particular part did the trick, but anyway... I switched back to the old Catalyst 8.10's, as I found out they were the last set where CCC still supported the X1900 series of cards (anything afterwards just bitches about there being no support for my card). Did that, disabled Catalyst AI (on the 8.12's, having AI set to Standard or High caused the game to stutter like a bitch when I went near ANY trees or shrubs, which persisted until I alt-tabbed), and I added the command line tweaks '-novblank' and '-norestrictions' followed by limiting my Vram to 460mb (don't ask why, I honestly don't even remember). I then set Textures and Rendering to Medium, with the first two sliders (what were they? Rendering distance and detail density?) to 10 each. I then made sure to set the game to Realtime priority by alt-tabbing once I reached the main menu after loading.
Doing all this has netted me a clean 5-7fps more on average, cured ALL random stuttering, made the game look a tad better to boot, and made it possible for me to actually play the missions. I know 5-7fps sounds like SFA, but it's made a world of difference with regards to the playability of the game.
Doing all this has netted me a clean 5-7fps more on average, cured ALL random stuttering, made the game look a tad better to boot, and made it possible for me to actually play the missions. I know 5-7fps sounds like SFA, but it's made a world of difference with regards to the playability of the game.
Excessive? Probably. At least it's not having any apparent negative side affects... Normally I would just duck out and nab a new video card (4870x2, hurkle), but prices just keep going up and up and I really can't be stuffed to waste so much money right now.
From what I've seen, GTA4 really loves the i7's. I can only imagine that being a big positive (assuming you've got the graphics grunt to back it up?)
Tried playing with High Priority last night. No appreciable differences... No odd stutters or bits of lag or change in framerate. But the same can be said in my case for Realtime too, so I think I'll stick with that (I played with High Priority set for a good 2 hours or so without issue).
Well well, patch 1.0.2.0 is out, lots of new options opened up.
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=393942&st=0
I'll have to give this a try... No telling how those quality and reflection settings and whatnot might help, not to mention the ambiguous optimizations added. Nvidia 7000 series was 'equal' to the x1900 series at the... If they've done some general optimizing I might have a 1-in-a-million chance of seeing some improvement.
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=393942&st=0
I'll have to give this a try... No telling how those quality and reflection settings and whatnot might help, not to mention the ambiguous optimizations added. Nvidia 7000 series was 'equal' to the x1900 series at the... If they've done some general optimizing I might have a 1-in-a-million chance of seeing some improvement.
Cool, thanks for the heads up!
Edit: Benched my play-settings and I see a 2-3 FPS increase again, now I'm up to almost 30 FPS! This is on my E6300@2100MHz and 8800 GTX, 1920x1200 res. I'm going to the Post Office to get my Core i7 later today so I'll post again when I've built the system.
One thing, do I have to revoke the license? I am thinking I have to reinstall my OS when changing mobo and CPU.
Edit2: We have 5 activation limit, so I'll just revoke this license not to lose it.
Edit: Benched my play-settings and I see a 2-3 FPS increase again, now I'm up to almost 30 FPS! This is on my E6300@2100MHz and 8800 GTX, 1920x1200 res. I'm going to the Post Office to get my Core i7 later today so I'll post again when I've built the system.
One thing, do I have to revoke the license? I am thinking I have to reinstall my OS when changing mobo and CPU.
Edit2: We have 5 activation limit, so I'll just revoke this license not to lose it.
Last edited by a moderator:
Wow, thanks for the link. This is great news. Its very nice to R* seemingly continuing a good level of support for the game. Between that and the AAAA gameplay, they might win me over yet!
Ok so I have done some testing. The first thing to note is that the patch doesn't resolve the memory leakage issues. After a while of playing, performance still tanks (and sometimes not after a while). And it still takes about 5 mins for the desktop to become useable after quiting the game (even now as i'm typing this my PC is sluggish and the HDD is churning away).
But that aside, the patch is good. Its nice to see menu options for the blur filter, vsync and clip capture finally.
I'm not sure about the other rendering options yet. Going from very high to high actually lost me fps but i'm fairly sure that was down to hitting a memory leak penalty at the same time.
Anyway, here are my benchmarks before and after the patch. After the patch had the new options set to very high and vsync off:
No Patch
Run1 32.56
Run2 30.61
Run3 30.47
Patch
Run1 33.98
Run2 33.18
Run3 34.19
So all in all it looks like this is well worth having. I'll report back though after i've had a bit more play time and a chance to play with the new options a bit more.
But that aside, the patch is good. Its nice to see menu options for the blur filter, vsync and clip capture finally.
I'm not sure about the other rendering options yet. Going from very high to high actually lost me fps but i'm fairly sure that was down to hitting a memory leak penalty at the same time.
Anyway, here are my benchmarks before and after the patch. After the patch had the new options set to very high and vsync off:
No Patch
Run1 32.56
Run2 30.61
Run3 30.47
Patch
Run1 33.98
Run2 33.18
Run3 34.19
So all in all it looks like this is well worth having. I'll report back though after i've had a bit more play time and a chance to play with the new options a bit more.
Sigh, PC pretty much shit itself when I went to use it last night. Powers on, fans run for a while, powers off. Narrowed it down to either CPU, Motherboard or Power supply, but my spares are in short supply so I can't do much about it at the moment. Later this week I'm going to pick up a 4870x2 and whatever replacement parts I need (which will probably end up being a whole new PC anyway).
*edit* It seems a solid capacitor just 'fell off' my motherboard (was hanging by a thread). With this detached, my x1900 LED'S claim a lack of power... So I'm betting it's this shitty cap that killed my 2900's too. Might try re-soldering that but assuming that will fail, it's new motherboard + video card time.
*edit* It seems a solid capacitor just 'fell off' my motherboard (was hanging by a thread). With this detached, my x1900 LED'S claim a lack of power... So I'm betting it's this shitty cap that killed my 2900's too. Might try re-soldering that but assuming that will fail, it's new motherboard + video card time.
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Okay, I've finally gotten to benchmarking GTA4 with my Core i7 920. (I forgot to backup my savegames. )
Before:
After:
Which is a little bit strange, but fine. So I upped some settings and I got this:
Next I'm going to up the texture resolution and set every setting to max. I guess I am GPU limited now.
)Before:
Code:
Statistics
Average FPS: 29.35
Duration: 37.28 sec
CPU Usage: 85%
System memory usage: 61%
Video memory usage: 91%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
Reflection Resolution: Very High
Water Quality: Very High
Shadow Quality: Very High
View Distance: 24
Detail Distance: 36
Definition: Off
VSync: Off
Hardware
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Service Pack 3
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Video Driver version: 181.22
Audio Adapter: SB X-Fi Audio [CC00]
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
File ID: Benchmark.cli
Code:
Statistics
Average FPS: 33.34
Duration: 37.22 sec
CPU Usage: 26%
System memory usage: 58%
Video memory usage: 80%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: High
Reflection Resolution: High
Water Quality: Very High
Shadow Quality: Very High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 37
Definition: Off
VSync: Off
Hardware
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Service Pack 3
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Video Driver version: 181.22
Audio Adapter: SB X-Fi Audio [EC00]
Intel Pentium III Xeon processor
File ID: Benchmark.cli
Code:
Statistics
Average FPS: 33.57
Duration: 37.18 sec
CPU Usage: 27%
System memory usage: 63%
Video memory usage: 91%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Very High
Reflection Resolution: Very High
Water Quality: Very High
Shadow Quality: Very High
View Distance: 58
Detail Distance: 70
Definition: Off
VSync: Off
Hardware
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Service Pack 3
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Video Driver version: 181.22
Audio Adapter: SB X-Fi Audio [EC00]
Intel Pentium III Xeon processor
File ID: Benchmark.cliNext I'm going to up the texture resolution and set every setting to max. I guess I am GPU limited now.
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