GTA IV - any tweaks to force it to use system RAM?

One thing I don't understand is that since games are designed and developed on PCs and then ported to consoles (lowered settings); why these very same games run like crap on PCs?
 
KatanaDV20 said:
I saved up to get a decent gaming rig and now Im in the ridiculous position of having mates over (who have consoles) who snigger when they see GTA IV on my "gaming rig " stutter....it wont even let me put the detail-levels sider past 25!!
Click to expand...

I think the problem is that you have an average (by enthusiast standards) graphics card trying to run at 5040x1050 on one of the most demanding games out there. As mentioned you would have seen far better performance from having got 6GB RAM and spent the extra on the GPU.

Make sure you've got AA disabled and lower the texture details as hopefully that should free up some VRAM.
 
WingZero30 said:
One thing I don't understand is that since games are designed and developed on PCs and then ported to consoles (lowered settings); why these very same games run like crap on PCs?
Click to expand...

They are designed on PCs for consoles. With the consoles being low powered, they spend a lot of time getting the game to run properly just for that CPU/GPU. The end result doesn't always run as good as it could on the PC
 
You can make the game more compliant by using the -nomemrestrict command appended to the shortcut. Then you can increase the details over the limit imposed according to your VRAM. Try it and see what happens. It'll probably cause issues if you go too far over.
 
You can make the game more compliant by using the -nomemrestrict command appended to the shortcut. Then you can increase the details over the limit imposed according to your VRAM.
Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks. I will try that out!

I still cant believe they released the game coded like this for PC. You even see the console carry-overs ("Saving data, please dont turn of your system")

I just saw an commercial on TV for La Noire lets hope its not the same GTAIV-like business...
 
KatanaDV20 said:
Interesting, thanks. I will try that out!

I still cant believe they released the game coded like this for PC. You even see the console carry-overs ("Saving data, please dont turn of your system")

I just saw an commercial on TV for La Noire lets hope its not the same GTAIV-like business...
Click to expand...

I don't think LA Noire is coming to PC at all. :(
 
GTA IV was just ported over lazily and bad. The amount of work required to get to run right on a PC most likely didn't out way the cost. It's designed to run on a system with a 3 or 4 threaded CPU with no more than 512MB of shared memory. More than 2GB system RAM won't really do anything since it can't utilize it properly.
 
Margaret said:
GTA IV hates ATi - it stutered on my 4870 despite having a high framerate.

Silky smooth on my GTX 470
Click to expand...

This is very true based on my experiences of both brands. My lower powered GTX280 ran it better than my HD5870 does. Lots of little stuttering as you say. Not sure if it's a driver thing, but I noticed if you set CCC to defaults and play the game again, it'll be silky smooth. Play it for a couple of hours and it goes back to stuttering, even if you've not changed any settings. Even after a reboot, it's like that until you reset the drivers to default settings.

I'd be interested if this applies to everyone, so if you have a Radeon card, try it out and let me know if it does the same for you.
 
AWPC said:
You wanna max out GTA4 all you need is a decent Quadcore/Core i7 + GTX480/580. It only needs 1.2GB Vram for max gfx with everything 100% @ 1920x1200. Any GPU with 1.5GB Vram should be ok though as its more about CPU Cores than GPU speed.

PC is the only way to play this as intended the console version looks like low setting on PC but even then they are running sub 720P & it still looks terrible with low uneven FPS R* really gave console owners a glitched beta version :eek:

Search on here in the screenshots thread for DennisK4 he has some amazing looking mods which make GTA4 look a lot better than the stock settings in some places it looks photorealistic :D
Click to expand...

Just put this to the test but with 1920x1080 res instead. Computer is a i5 sandybridge cpu at 4ghz, 580gtx at stock (1.5gb one) and 8gb 1600MHZ ddr3 ram. Installed the game on my raid 0 array as thats where all my games go on this machine (OS is on a crucial M4 SSD) and upon loading the game up, put everything to very high and all sliders to 100 and was surprised by the results. The amount of video card RAM the game wants (which it tells you in the options) was around 1300mb and it ran flawlessly at these settings.

Quite impressed as my last computer couldn't run it that well without some serious tweaking.
 
Ok check this out guys - shows just how strange the coding of this game is (well at least on this rig lol).

I updated to Patch 1.0.3. Heres were the weirdness starts (but in a good way). In the Graphics options I did these (leaving everything else maxed)

Vsync:Off
Shadow Density: 0
View Distance: 30
Detail Distance: 50
Click to expand...

And heres the odd part:

Resource Usage: 1025/986MB [Resource warning]


Yes. For me going OVER the resource value and LEAVING it there as given me a performance gain along with the 1.0.3 Patch. And I tested this in the hardest way possible: High-speed low-level flight over Liberty City in a helicopter.

I need a drink!
 
Last edited:
Have you done a proper comparison since installing the patch though?
GTA4 patches gives a performance boost so you might find it you set View Distance and Detail Distance to 1 that you get even more performance. If you are comparing unpatched vs patched then it's not a valid test because e.g. the shadow rendering was changed.
 
HangTime said:
Have you done a proper comparison since installing the patch though?
GTA4 patches gives a performance boost so you might find it you set View Distance and Detail Distance to 1 that you get even more performance. If you are comparing unpatched vs patched then it's not a valid test because e.g. the shadow rendering was changed.
Click to expand...

Good points. I went from Patch 1.2 --> 1.3 primarily because of better Shadow control. However setting shadow on anything below Very High = flickering shadows :( But the good thing is even with shadows=very high Im getting good performance. I would say with Patch 1.2 I had stutters. With 1.3 I have *INFREQUENT* micro-stutters.

As for setting View Distance and Detail Distance to 1 - you are correct I did try that and got good performance but the visual tradeoff was something I did not like :( Trees, road-signs etc were popping into view.
 
Does this game just always run badly?
With everything maxed at 1920x1080 I get between 20-40fps but with loads of stuttering and textures dissappeaing and when it rains there are artefacts in the raindrops (they flash red).

Is it just because I'm using an AMD card and GTA hates AMD?
 
gropingmantis said:
Does this game just always run badly?
With everything maxed at 1920x1080 I get between 20-40fps but with loads of stuttering and textures dissappeaing and when it rains there are artefacts in the raindrops (they flash red).

Is it just because I'm using an AMD card and GTA hates AMD?
Click to expand...

Hey dude what patch are you running the game with?
 
Oh yea that would be the 1.7 patch. Theres been a lot of complaints about that one - it seems to increase stuttering on a lot of peoples systems. It basically crippled my GTA and thats one reason I downgraded and and now Im keeping it at Patch 1.3 although many say that Patch 1.4 is the best. If you want to do this you will have to uninstall-reinstall your game. Dont forget to backup your savegames.

Check out these threads:

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=392912&st=20
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=404147
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1269228
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom