[PC] Grand Theft Auto IV
- Thread starter eezing
- Start date
Cartoon Corpse
Veteran
I've barely played my copy of this. i don't even have a gun yet. But then work's been a bitch lately. maybe if i get layed off, i'll drown my sorrows in the MANY games i haven't been into playing much as of late.
Haha, yeah i'm the same. I'm sure about 80% of the enoyment I experience when playing a game is directly related to just watching my hardware in action. Watching what it can handle, watching what it struggles with, just generally seeing what its capable of.
Thats why I find console gaming so relatively boring. There's no fun in watching a fixed set of hardware run a fixed piece of software that was designed specifically for it
Eep, wasn't expecting so many people with a similar 'slump' situation as me.
When I started playing the game I was enthralled - even on my cruddy x1900xt. Had some real fun being chased by the low-level cops, parkour-ing my way around parking lots and industrial areas before hotwiring a cadillac-wannabe and screaming my way into the (then locked) second island only to bring down the wrath of the police force. Ducked about various alleyways, barely dodged SWAT vans trying to ram me with all they got... Eventually found myself one of those oddly 'scary' looking parking lots made out of that big steel girder construction (hard to explain that), hid out there, but the cops eventually found me and I screamed out in another stolen vehicle to have probably a good 30 minute chase through the parklands and whatnot. It was GREAT.
Then it just... died. I think that once I got to know the gameworld that much better, I suddenly felt much less like I was in this sprawling metropolis with endless little places to explore and experience, and more like I was in this confined, limited little world constructed more or less for the purpose of conveying one single storyline and not much else. I mean, once you tear through X amount of streets and blow up X amount of cars or hotdog vendors or SWAT vans or whathaveyou, there's not much beyond it. I didn't (did not and still don't) get this feeling with SA, for whatever reason. Probably has to do with the diversity of the environments.
It's hard to explain... But even with how incredible they built the game world, even with how alive it feels, something is just missing. If it were all twice as big (SA size? Oh drool), I think that would make an amazing difference. As it is I do really really really like it, but all the various areas are quite samey. Maybe I'll see it differently when I get back into it again, whenever.
When I started playing the game I was enthralled - even on my cruddy x1900xt. Had some real fun being chased by the low-level cops, parkour-ing my way around parking lots and industrial areas before hotwiring a cadillac-wannabe and screaming my way into the (then locked) second island only to bring down the wrath of the police force. Ducked about various alleyways, barely dodged SWAT vans trying to ram me with all they got... Eventually found myself one of those oddly 'scary' looking parking lots made out of that big steel girder construction (hard to explain that), hid out there, but the cops eventually found me and I screamed out in another stolen vehicle to have probably a good 30 minute chase through the parklands and whatnot. It was GREAT.
Then it just... died. I think that once I got to know the gameworld that much better, I suddenly felt much less like I was in this sprawling metropolis with endless little places to explore and experience, and more like I was in this confined, limited little world constructed more or less for the purpose of conveying one single storyline and not much else. I mean, once you tear through X amount of streets and blow up X amount of cars or hotdog vendors or SWAT vans or whathaveyou, there's not much beyond it. I didn't (did not and still don't) get this feeling with SA, for whatever reason. Probably has to do with the diversity of the environments.
It's hard to explain... But even with how incredible they built the game world, even with how alive it feels, something is just missing. If it were all twice as big (SA size? Oh drool), I think that would make an amazing difference. As it is I do really really really like it, but all the various areas are quite samey. Maybe I'll see it differently when I get back into it again, whenever.
Actually, a lot of what you describe is part of the infamous GTA4 'backlash'. There's plenty of negativity on this topic in the console forums, and it's part of why I think I really enjoyed Saint's Row 2 so much. It's just a pity that the PC port is such garbage.
I pressed Home several times to see how it affected the sky. It definitely did something to it, but clouds didn't disappear. I have only tried it at night, but I cycled through the different weather types with the weather cheat.
Interesting, it seems I get same perfomance with 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. I picked up a hotspot regarding perfomance impact for screenshots.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/9520/gtaiv2yb2.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2595/gtaiv1hc9.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/9520/gtaiv2yb2.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2595/gtaiv1hc9.jpg
True but still I didn't think my 4870 would with the shadows etc cranked to maximum settings. The strange thing was I got equal or higher framerate than 1280x1024. Despite the VRAM/RAM being even more saturated with the largely increased frame buffer. 
Cant complain though!
Cant complain though!
If you had a slower videocard then turning the resolution up would give you worse framerate, while with your 4870 you are completely CPU bound up to at least 1680x1050.
The strange thing was I got equal or higher framerate than 1280x1024. Despite the VRAM/RAM being even more saturated with the largely increased frame buffer.
You aren't memory limited. Even if you were using a 512MB 4870 it wouldn't give you lower framerate in GTA4 anyway. The game will draw the frame regardless of if it has the texture to sample or not, so exceeding available VRAM will just cause pop-in instead.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Umm......what exactly does the "Resources" show. In my PC it says 500 mb, and ur says 1998 MB. I thought it was the Vram in my Card, which is 4850 512MB, but ur says 1998 MB which is not a card memory. So, what exactly is it?
Anyone tested the 182.06 WHQLs in GTA4?
XP32
XP64
Release notes for XP
Vista32
Vista64
Release notes for Vista
XP32
XP64
Release notes for XP
Vista32
Vista64
Release notes for Vista
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