[PC] Grand Theft Auto IV
- Thread starter eezing
- Start date
Yeah thats why I said yor are GPU limited! :smile:
Maybe I would be GPU limited at that res to. Cant check though.
Yep definatly GPU limited there.
How about the gameplay, does it feel any smoother?
How about the gameplay, does it feel any smoother?
Yeah, it feels smoother, but it doesn't look like all my cores are being used. I think I'll turn Turbo back on since I'm not going to be OCing anymore with the stock cooler. I can still run the memory at 1600 MHz DDR, though. 2:12 ratio, baby! Hah.
You should get a cheap 24" 1920x1200 display. It is day and night compared to 1280x1024 at what? 17"? 19"?
Yes sir. I am scanning the web for a good LCD monitor.
Well I fixed my motherboard (thankyou, Sir Soldering Iron!), and got everything back up and running. Patched the game to 1.0.2.0 and... Wow. Dropping the reflection, water and shadow quality options that it opens up to lowest has no real negative impact on the visuals, but the game is absolutely playable now. Playable as in 30fps or higher just about all the time.
The only downside is that the patch has absolutely ruined the shadows. They're all over the place, flickering, tearing, 'waving' all over things. I tried raising the various shadow quality settings to see if they'd help but nothing did... Not sure what's up with that. But otherwise the game runs so much better now.
So much for YOU CAN'T CHANGE RESOLUTION MAP OR SHADOW QUALITY SETTINGS INDEPENDENT OF YOUR RESOLUTION BECAUSE THEY'RE TIED AND YOU NEED A FUTURE PC TO HANDLE IT!
The only downside is that the patch has absolutely ruined the shadows. They're all over the place, flickering, tearing, 'waving' all over things. I tried raising the various shadow quality settings to see if they'd help but nothing did... Not sure what's up with that. But otherwise the game runs so much better now.
So much for YOU CAN'T CHANGE RESOLUTION MAP OR SHADOW QUALITY SETTINGS INDEPENDENT OF YOUR RESOLUTION BECAUSE THEY'RE TIED AND YOU NEED A FUTURE PC TO HANDLE IT!
So much for YOU CAN'T CHANGE RESOLUTION MAP OR SHADOW QUALITY SETTINGS INDEPENDENT OF YOUR RESOLUTION BECAUSE THEY'RE TIED AND YOU NEED A FUTURE PC TO HANDLE IT!
Haha!
Future PC my ass. Pegged them to highest setting and even increased some detail settings and lost 1-2fps.
Yeah the patch certainly smoothed things out for me. I play with the new settings at high as opposed to very high and haven't noticed a significant drop in visual quality.
I have to say though that with those settings at minimum I saw a very noticable drop in quality. Shadows went very blocky and the water looked like crap for me.
Interesting is the step increase in VRAM between high and very high shadow settings. Anything under high and it looks like before or worse.
Just noticed how horrible the water looks on lowest last night, but I honestly don't care - It's still water, it still ripples like water, and the only time I really view it is from way up in a helicopter anway
I've got an HD4870 arriving tomorrow. Was going to get an X2 but the prices just keep rising and they're typically $750-$800 now. Might just get a second 4870 a little down the track like I did with my 2900's, that worked out great.
Still no word on a fix for the horrible horrible game-breaking wavey / flickering shadows
I've got an HD4870 arriving tomorrow. Was going to get an X2 but the prices just keep rising and they're typically $750-$800 now. Might just get a second 4870 a little down the track like I did with my 2900's, that worked out great.
Still no word on a fix for the horrible horrible game-breaking wavey / flickering shadows
PCIe limited
I thought this might interest you guys. The second graph in particular.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...full_use_of_512_MiByte_graphics_cards/?page=2
HD4870 512MB - 1680x1050
PCIe @100MHz: 40FPS avg, 36 min
PCIe @120MHz: 49.5 avg, 44 min
I thought this might interest you guys. The second graph in particular.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...full_use_of_512_MiByte_graphics_cards/?page=2
HD4870 512MB - 1680x1050
PCIe @100MHz: 40FPS avg, 36 min
PCIe @120MHz: 49.5 avg, 44 min
Interesting indeed; they're testing with an X48 chipset, which indicates PCIE 2.0 bandwidth in play. I wonder if it's really just texture overflow swapping going on, or if we're seeing video readback behavior which is limiting framerate. I'm actually guessing quite a bit of the latter, especially when they test with only 477mb of video usage and still get such a big bump in performance.
Hmm...
For some reason I thought the G80 series were all PCI-E 2.0? A quick Google suggests they are, unless it's something specific to your card?
Ahh, that's how I got confused.
Hahah, wow. Installed my single new 4870 last night (going to grab another cheapie in a months time perhaps as I did with my 2900's - that solution actually worked perfectly), and performance is truly amazing. I mean, with all the shit you read about the game and how performance hogging it is, I honestly expected very little of it, but man was I susprised. I started by firing up the game and increasing my settings (to the best of my recollection) to;
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (100 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
Reflection Resolution: Medium
Water Quality: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
View Distance: 20
Detail Distance: 20
Definition: On (this one is retarded, turning it on turns the blur effects and such OFF, but I can still just hit P to get them back, and vice versa)
VSync: Off
On those settings, the game was... Unimaginably smooth (coming from the old x1900). I haven't actually benchmarked yet, got too caught up in playing, but even with a full batallion of police after me in cars, swat vans and helicopters, flying down a crowded street dropping molotovs and blowing shit up left right and centre, it felt smooooooth. In the absence of a framerate counter, I'm going to say MINIMUM 40fps at all times. It never once got visibly or (feel, uh, feelably?) chunky or bogged down. And believe me, I would spot it, I'm beyond anal about framerates, 100 is my sweet sweet nectar.
So after that experience, I went with these settings;
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (100 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Very High
Reflection Resolution: High
Water Quality: Medium (staying with this because after playing I checked out that comparison on water quality and Medium is sexiest)
Shadow Quality: Very High (Patch 1.0.2.0 has fucked shadows, the higher the better)
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 30
Definition: On
VSync: Off
And it's STILL just as smooth as before. Colour (color, huuurr) me impressed, I'm having a lot of rucking fun with this card. I guess it really helps to have this Q6600 purring along at 3.4+ghz.
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (100 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Medium
Reflection Resolution: Medium
Water Quality: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
View Distance: 20
Detail Distance: 20
Definition: On (this one is retarded, turning it on turns the blur effects and such OFF, but I can still just hit P to get them back, and vice versa)
VSync: Off
On those settings, the game was... Unimaginably smooth (coming from the old x1900). I haven't actually benchmarked yet, got too caught up in playing, but even with a full batallion of police after me in cars, swat vans and helicopters, flying down a crowded street dropping molotovs and blowing shit up left right and centre, it felt smooooooth. In the absence of a framerate counter, I'm going to say MINIMUM 40fps at all times. It never once got visibly or (feel, uh, feelably?) chunky or bogged down. And believe me, I would spot it, I'm beyond anal about framerates, 100 is my sweet sweet nectar.
So after that experience, I went with these settings;
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (100 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Very High
Reflection Resolution: High
Water Quality: Medium (staying with this because after playing I checked out that comparison on water quality and Medium is sexiest)
Shadow Quality: Very High (Patch 1.0.2.0 has fucked shadows, the higher the better)
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 30
Definition: On
VSync: Off
And it's STILL just as smooth as before. Colour (color, huuurr) me impressed, I'm having a lot of rucking fun with this card. I guess it really helps to have this Q6600 purring along at 3.4+ghz.
It is handy for those of us who want it off, previously I had to hit P every time I played.
Granted, if I wasn't getting the image sharpened back up by running 1080p downscaled to a 768p display I wouldn't want it on, but it is still nice they added the option for those of us who do use it.
By the way, is your 4870 only a 512MB model? If it's 1GB you might as well run high quality textures, as doing so won't effect your framerate.
Similar threads
