Grand Theft Auto IV Perf and IQ @ [H]

I think Rockstar really dropped the ball as far as minimum requirements go. This game is such a beast on CPU's. This game needs a lot of CPU power and an old Intel Pentium D or AMD X2 is not good enough to get a decent experience in GTA IV. I have an [email protected], 4GB RAM and an 8800GTX and I'm playing this game at 1600x1200 with high textures\rendering, Draw distance at 20 and everything else at half. The CPU usage is almost always at 90%+ usage.

Although I love GTA IV PC, it was released way before it was ready and doesn't respect the PC at all. In fact you could say it's downright disrespectful to the PC. I think people have a right to be upset but at a certain point all you can do is try to find solutions to your problems instead of whining on and on.

To me the bottom line is GTA IV was rushed to stores in time for Christmas , tied to InSecuROM, RGSC and GFWL. It's not a great port and the interface is very dumbed down. Limiting video settings is pretty stupid and forcing players to use command lines to get around them is ill advised. Maybe it was poorly optimized for the PC, I don't know I'm not a programmer but I can tell you this. No other PC game has ever had so many AI paths, sounds, textures and geometry to render all at once. To top it all off, to be able to roam around the entire outdoors part of the city without a single loading screen is undeniably amazing.

Love it or hate it.
 
ati didn't release any driver for gta unlike nvidia which already did second one thats the problem not because 4870 is half of 4870x2
 
I read your review, you say that with a GTX 260 Core 216 (I assume it's the 896 MB VRAM card), you can play at 1920x1200, with High texture, high render, view distance 20, detail distance 60, vehicle density 60 and shadow density 5

I tried running at 1680x1050, and it runs fine

I have GTX 260 Core 216 SC 626 Mhz, and I am running OC'd at 700 Mhz each card, SLI mode, so I got a nice 60 FPS in the benchmark

However, if I go to 1920x1200, the game goes back to windows, out of memory

How did you managed to get those settings under 896 MB of RAM?


I think what you are experiencing is one of the many bugs. The one I encountered most was an out-of-memory crash upon exiting...Not generally a big deal, but annoying anyway.
 
Mark_Warner Main Article said:
Texture Quality and Render Quality
The Texture Quality option decides the resolution of textures that Grand Theft Auto IV uses to draw the world. Available options are "Low", "Medium", and "High." The Render Quality option determines the quality of shader-based options like water, HDR lighting, and reflection mapping, and includes "Low", "Medium", "High", and "Highest" as options.

On GTAForums.com one of the Rockstar Toronto developers said that the "Render Quality" option is what we would know as anisotropic filtering. He also said that the shader-based options like water, HDR lighting, and reflection mapping are tied directly to the resolution. The reason they did this was that apparently users who tested GTA IV PC were "Confused" by all the options that were originally made available. So they decided have them scale with resolution instead. Which to me seems like just about every other PC game where the quality of the graphics scales with resolution.

Below is an IGN interview where they basically say it but also on GTAForums.com they reiterated the same. I'll try to find the link and post it for you is you want.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/936/936304p1.html
 
pffft no AA and no AF. If this is what they consider a valid PC game release they should stick to making console games only with Cliffy B
 
AF is addressed and obviously from the screen shots something other than bilinear or trilinear filtering is going on. As for the AA part, I could not agree with you more. I will not buy this game.
 
you can play it.

If he's using the rig in his sig he couldn't. The rig in my sig couldn't get playable settings with everything set to low at 1280x800. Tried everything possible, including a fresh install on another HD with just the game and all updated drivers on it, nothing worked.
 
I got it as an early christmas gift, that's the only reason I'm satisfied with it.

It's horrible, but it still runs smoother than GTA:SA PC most of the time. They're quite shit - and arrogant - about PC ports.

I've foreced it down to 1280x720, everything on lowest but the amount of cars on the road which is at 50 so it's not impossible to find new vehicles. Still get moments when no cars simply spawn at all, and on some bridges effects like I'm driving through a stormy sea of muddy textures.

And Rockstar Physics of the kind that kills escort NPCs when I nudge into them, bounces and flips cars when I back over styrofoam cups, and makes me wish it had PhysX because that would make it worth the trouble as long as the FPS wouldn't take a hit which it's not supposed to do in the first place.

Port 2/5
Game 4/5
 
Yup that confirmed my thoughts that although my 4850 does decent @1680x1050 with a quad core it runs crap on my quadcoreless system.
 
I honestly don't know what all the fuss is about concerning FSAA. I don't even use it for any game. It just didn't awe me. Matter of fact I got more thrill out of the potential effects a PPU can dish out over less jagies. Seriously what is it am I missing something here? At high resolutions how can you guys actually feel you "need" 16x AA? I can understand wanting some AF in there but AA? Is this how you guys can justify $600 video cards? It is like you guys refusing to drive a car because it dosen't come with leather seats LOL...
 
I'm so glad I got burned on one game a long time ago, Master of Orion 3, so that I don't get the hyped up fanfare mentality to go buy another PC game when it comes out, Spore, GTA4, FarCry2... I was looking forward to this, but after hearing about people with systems way more superior to mine getting such crappy frame rates at relatively low detail/resolution levels, it would have been another $50 thrown away, since this game is quite a bit of upgrading (hardware wise) from being super cool.

I recall playing GTA:VC on a Viper V770 video card and it being all mediocre... went to a GForce Ti4200 and WAMMO everything set to max, ENGAGE! This shit? Oh boy...

Seriously though, I'm glad I'm old enough that I don't have too much time for games, if this is the future of gaming.
 
I honestly don't know what all the fuss is about concerning FSAA. I don't even use it for any game. It just didn't awe me. Matter of fact I got more thrill out of the potential effects a PPU can dish out over less jagies. Seriously what is it am I missing something here? At high resolutions how can you guys actually feel you "need" 16x AA? I can understand wanting some AF in there but AA? Is this how you guys can justify $600 video cards? It is like you guys refusing to drive a car because it dosen't come with leather seats LOL...

actually I am very much concerned over AA, to me it adds to the games effect. In fact I used to disagree with the H reviews a lot because I will not sacrifice eye candy for resolution. and yes I pay for it. the min I usually like is 8Xaa
 
actually I am very much concerned over AA, to me it adds to the games effect. In fact I used to disagree with the H reviews a lot because I will not sacrifice eye candy for resolution. and yes I pay for it. the min I usually like is 8Xaa

Would you be able to do me a favour then? Could you please post a random screenshot in this thread of a game your choice of the gaming res you use with no AA and 8x AA and show me the differences? I would really like to see what "you" see....
 
I honestly don't know what all the fuss is about concerning FSAA. I don't even use it for any game. It just didn't awe me. Matter of fact I got more thrill out of the potential effects a PPU can dish out over less jagies. Seriously what is it am I missing something here? At high resolutions how can you guys actually feel you "need" 16x AA? I can understand wanting some AF in there but AA? Is this how you guys can justify $600 video cards? It is like you guys refusing to drive a car because it dosen't come with leather seats LOL...
Well in some games you won't notice if you decide not to use AA. In GTA IV you definitely notice. Nearly every object shows aliasing. On the bumpers of cars, curbs, structures and especially on the bridges is where it bothers me the most. Unless you play at 2560x1600 you will always notice, even then I'm not so sure it's completely hidden.
 
Well in some games you won't notice if you decide not to use AA. In GTA IV you definitely notice. Nearly every object shows aliasing. On the bumpers of cars, curbs, structures and especially on the bridges is where it bothers me the most. Unless you play at 2560x1600 you will always notice, even then I'm not so sure it's completely hidden.

I personally think it is a bunch of hogwash myself. Not worth the performance hit. I honestly can't ever remember saying to myself while playing a video game on my PC.."man, I need some AA on these jaggies are just way too much for me" hehehehe...
 
Anyone else notice the indoor performance sucks too? I was standing in the strip club last night and noticed that although the graphics look 3 or 4 years old in there and I couldn't see for miles (invalidates the view distance argument), my FPS was still in the 40s.... WTF? that is purely bad optimization.
 
Would you be able to do me a favour then? Could you please post a random screenshot in this thread of a game your choice of the gaming res you use with no AA and 8x AA and show me the differences? I would really like to see what "you" see....

Try this article for lots of screen shots for comparison. AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Custom Filtering AA
It's a guide to some fancy stuff AMD did on it's latest graphics cards, but later in the article they show Nvidia and ATI at high AA levels look the same. Lots of good pictures though.


Here's an image:
image.html


Look at the tree, scalfolding, etc. Look from the far left (0AA) to the far right (24X CF ADAA) and you can't tell a difference? The only difference between the shots is the AA level.
 
Here are my settings with a pair of GTX 260's:

GTA4SETTINGS.jpg


in order to get 28 viewing distance i have to change it to 28 first under medium texture quality, then change it to high quality - otherwise the max i can pull off is 23.

i'm also using -norestrictions and -nomemrestrict in a custom shortcut for launchgtaiv.exe

the game does run very smoothly though, and although the lack of anti aliasing is a bit appalling, it does not in the least bit interfere with the incredible gameplay.

i must say though that before nvidia released the 180.84 drivers, the game did not recognize SLI and it was awful to play.

i recommend [H] runs some SLI tests :)
 
this review pretty much agrees with my experience playing GTA IV since launch.

I play at 1280x1024, and it is very playable with:

Q6600 @ 3.6
8GB RAM
ATI 4850

I put the textures and rendering quality on medium (or high, if I want. it doesn't make a huge difference).

View distance does impact performance, however.

I dunno, I'm happy with the game, because I just happen to have a CPU that can play it! lol

Something tells me this game is using the CPU to do a bunch of stuff it's not supposed to be doing. I could be wrong though. eh, who cares. the game is fun.
 
Good review guys..........I will not be picking this one up because i have it for my 360, and it seems like it would eat my core 2 up! Glad i went and bought a GTX 260 last week.....i feel prepared for all the top notched games for 2009. Hope they release a demo though, i would like to play GTA IV on pc.
 
I also wont be picking this one up unless it's patched to the hind legs.
I think it's absolutely ridiculous that in order to play this game at decent frames and at decent settings (I'm not talking maxed out) you need PC hardware considerably more powerful than the 360?!
WTF's going on there?!
Optimsed for the PC my ass. AA, AF? Where be they?
 
seems like rockstar is purposely trying to destroy their pc gaming market with this crappy console port. first it was the months of delay from the console versions, now this horrible excuse for a pc game that cripples high end systems. seems like they will do anything to crap on the pc gamer.

very dissapointing as i have been waiting for this game for a very long time....might just have to skip this one entirely---which is just mind-boogling to me as such a big fan! piss off rockstar...hope someone buys you out.
 
first it was the months of delay from the console versions.

If you look at their past three GTA games, this has always been the case. Yeah it sucks it was released several months after the console release, but that's what happened with their last three GTA games.
 
I personally think it is a bunch of hogwash myself. Not worth the performance hit. I honestly can't ever remember saying to myself while playing a video game on my PC.."man, I need some AA on these jaggies are just way too much for me" hehehehe...

Well personally I can and know a lot of other people who do the same as well. It's a personal choice but if you don't mind poor image quality cool. I think most people do notice.
 
If you look at their past three GTA games, this has always been the case. Yeah it sucks it was released several months after the console release, but that's what happened with their last three GTA games.

I agree about GTA3 (although ran decently once you turned off the horrible motion blur) and San Andreas, however Vice City was surprisingly well optimised.
 
Been trying to play it off and on, but the game seems to randomly pause here and there, even when every single setting is set to it's minimum -_-


Luckily, I've already finished it on the 360, but still, this game seems to have a bunch of random technical issues that should not exist for a publishing the likes of Rockstar.
 
Statistics
Average FPS: 35.37
Duration: 37.12 sec
CPU Usage: 96%
System memory usage: 67%
Video memory usage: 95%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 720 (75 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 37

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Video Driver version: 180.84
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz

i have my E6400 running @ 3.0 and that Average FPS: 35.37 IS A LIE!! the benchmark is light on the system...unlike actual game play. i like the game, but its to un-optimized for it to get my $50 luckily i tried it out under my cousins steam account. when the game gets more patches and/or i get a better computer, ill give it a try. so far i think the game is kinda shit, but i know its because im not having fun playing it because its very choppy.
 
Good review. I'm passing on the PC version since I already have it on the 360, but its at least nice to know that my system can run it well. :)
 
Ditto have it for 360 which i got for free, my PC doesn't need a cardiac arrest trying to play this one.

Next.....
 
seems like they will do anything to crap on the pc gamer.


With the recommended system requirements along with unbelievably poor performance, what more can we infer ? And I'm sure it will get pirated 10 times for every 1 copy sold and they'll say, see PC games don't sell, so we got the interns to port it! :rolleyes:

very dissapointing as i have been waiting for this game for a very long time....might just have to skip this one entirely---which is just mind-boogling to me as such a big fan! piss off rockstar...hope someone buys you out.

I'd be a lot more pissed if I had upgraded recently and expected my system to run it well. As it turns out, it won't run it at all. I get 10fps 800x600 everything on low. As a fan, that's sad if you skip this one. I can't say it's worth buying a console to play, but I'm glad I enjoyed the PS3 release and didn't wait.

It wasn't the best game in the series, SA takes the cake for sheer number of crazy things to do. But Liberty City felt like a coherent and realistic world. The detail, considering the scale, is staggering. I still haven't seen every alley and walkway. And I liked the driving and shooting a lot. It's a big improvement from the 3 series.

The optimization is really a joke. I guess they did as little as their legal dept estimated they can get away with, and not get sued for a defective product.
 
would love to see [H] throw the new 295 into this test along with 2 280's and 260's in SLI.. :D
 
GTA 4 is indeed a good game. Fun, adictive all that. Its sucess on the consoles is proof of that.

Rockstar's GTA popularity also made it a bit "invulnerable" to harsh criticism. I've seen other less hyped games filled with great gameplay but placked with bugs that were simply anihaleted due to press crticizing they're bugs.
Somehow GTA 4 is surviving all this. But this doesn't take out the responsability of the firms behind GTA 4 for the PC.
Sorry, but it is completely unacceptable GTA IV performance out of the box.
They may say that it provides better graphics than the console version and that may be so, but at least they should have put up an option where you could set graphics at a level compared to the console version. And this option should run flawsley on core 2 duo with at least a geforce 8.
I also have to put some very very harsh criticism to Microsoft of this. They have created the Games For Windows brand suposely as an investment on pc gaming on they're SO.
The idea was also to bring the certification process that exists on the consoles to the PC.
I frankly don't know what amount of testing they have conducted on this but it was clearly insuficient. Had they certified GTA IV on the consoles in the same condition they have done on the PC and GTA IV would probably be in the dust.

Frankly I'm starting to believe that it is not PC gaming that is dieing because people are leaving the platform. I think companies due want PC gaming to die and they're making sure that it gets killed.
I'll tell you more..I think MICROSOFT IS actively killing pc gaming because they now have a console they can control. But in my opinion this is a very bad business decision for them. This will only lead to less people getting other products they have, such as the new operating systems and so on. And if they end up loosing a console war, they end up with nothing.
 
Statistics
Average FPS: 55.89
Duration: 37.07 sec
CPU Usage: 44%
System memory usage: 73%
Video memory usage: 99%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 27
Detail Distance: 43

Hardware
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Service Pack 3
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Video Driver version: 180.84
Audio Adapter: SB X-Fi Audio [8C00]
Intel Pentium III processor


Pretty funny since I have a QX9650 running at 3.6ghz
Evga 280 FTW stock speeds
4gb ram running winxp pro sp3

I dont have any problems with the way the game runs.
 
Well, if you guys have a ps3 or xbox 360 i recommend stopping by your local blockbuster. I don't know how it is where you guys live but at my local blockbusters they're having huge used game sale at several locations where they're selling this game for $15, not to mention if you buy it or any other used game you get another one free : ). Try blockbuster.
 
i gotta have at least 2xMSAA
even in crysis, im willing to lower other IQ stuff for it rather than play with 0xAA.
jaggies are soo unnatural, and ruin the good look of the game. but i suppose if your used to running games at low res and low settings, AA is the least of your problems.
 
Statistics
Average FPS: 50.80
Duration: 37.16 sec
CPU Usage: 76%
System memory usage: 59%
Video memory usage: 74%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 70
Detail Distance: 70


Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Video Driver version: 180.48
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 3.20GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli
 
When i had it installed i kept getting random graphical glitches, textures wouldnt always load completely. I would turn around, and then a second later the buildings and the details would enter the pictures. This was crap! along with the patch fucking my sound and computer performance i decided to uninstall. Another thing i noticed is that ATI cards are not doing so well with the GTA game... wtf?

I have a 4870 512mb, and i feel as if the game is worthless on it. My cpu is a e7200 @ 3.6ghz. Later on in the next month or so I might buy a quad core but dont know just yet.

Anyone elses ati system not doin so well?
 
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