GTA IV running like crap :( please help noob!

Liampope

Liampope

Liampope

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Hi there,

Bought GTA IV plus DLC in the Christmas sale. I've heard all the stories of how demanding it is, but thought I'd be fine with my rig (see sig).

However it runs like an utter pile of poo. Just left it on auto settings which is a mix of high and very high but the details sliders down quite low. The little message says it'll use about 760MB out of my 1GB. In game (only tried TLATD so far) is fine and smooth if I sit in one place and move the camera around, but as soon as I move around anywhere it's a slide show. But not like the rig just isn't powerful enough - more like it runs fine for half a second, then stutters, then runs fine for half a second etc etc. If i stop and look around again it seems OK-ish. It's almost as if it's struggling to load scenery on the move or something, except why?? Just have a normal WD black drive, not full, no problems with it.

The benchmark runs even worse - oh my god it's horrible!! Same stuttering then it reports about 14 FPS! CPU usage about 20% (huh??), system mem about 65%, GPU mem around 80%.

Oh and I can't see the surface of water for some reason:confused: Just see the bottom plus floating objects seeming to float in mid air.

It installed DX when I first launched so I assume that's up to date. Steam updated my video drivers the other day when I installed L4D2 which I also bought in the sale, so assume that is up to date. I assume steam keeps the game up to date automatically with patches, right? Or any I need to download?

Lowest settings dont really help much.

No problems at all on any other game - I can even max Crysis :) :p

I mean I heard the horror stories, expected not amazing performance, but not this bad!! Seems people with a similar rig are getting 45-60 FPS. Something's definately up but dunno what. Any ideas folks?

I apologise as I expect getting this dog to run well has been discussed to death before. Hope it's a common problem/easy fix then :)

Cheers
 
I'd download the latest patch and install it just to be sure. EDIT: I mean GTA IV patch.

And the first thing I'd do it to put the graphics to console standard:

Xbox 360 settings
Resolution 1280 x 720 @ 20 -30 fps
Texture Quality Medium
Reflection Resolution Medium
Water Quality Medium
Shadow Quality High
Render Quality Low
View Distance 21
Detail Distance 10
Vehicle Density 33
Shadow Density does not exist on the Xbox 360
Definition off
Vsync off
Click to expand...

And then take it from there, slowly tweaking it to make it better.

EDIT2: When you say you've lowered settings: have you tried it on the lowest possible settings to see if it runs? Your cpu isn't on powersaving or anything right?
 
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My setup does the same with GTA4, FPS is in the 50s most of the time though, still has that stuttering. Latest drivers, patch, tried lowest settings in 800x600 and it was the same! The only game I have issues with.

Let me know if you solve it!
 
Hmm thanks guys.

alexhull24 said:
My setup does the same with GTA4, FPS is in the 50s most of the time though, still has that stuttering. Latest drivers, patch, tried lowest settings in 800x600 and it was the same! The only game I have issues with.

Let me know if you solve it!
Click to expand...

Seems we have the same problem :(

Tried those X-box settings - bit better but still the stuttering. And I dont want my PC game looking worse than my PS3 version - lol! Tried shadows off altogether, let alone down - still stuttering.

I can tell from the bench results it's not stressing my system (18% CPU usage last run) - it's not getting a chance to with all the stuttering. Hmmmm something's up. More searching the internets for clues I guess :( :( Maybe find some patches or something. What a pile of crap - glad it was only £6!
 
I think that's the case, it ran a lot better on my GTX280, but it still wasn't perfect. May have been my old CPU (Q6600 @ 3.4GHz) not being up to it. Maybe.
 
Try using '-memrestrict 629145600' as a commandline/launch option - see if it makes any difference, there's a sticky on the steam forum page for the game, I remember doing this (with lower value) stopped it stuttering on my 4870 512mb,
 
It has done this since the recent patch on ATI cards it seems. Trick for me is to set view distance to a high value (70 ish) and set the Ram value setting to about 2Gb. Makes the game stutter like crazy for the first 40 seconds you load in and pan around, and then after that seems to run fine. Benchmark will still run horribly, so try it in-game.
 
something definitely not right there, missing water is probably the clue :O but idk

i just gave it a go with the latest drivers on my 6870 and no problems at all, can speed it from one end of the city to the other without a single stutter, always ran fine on my 4870 too.

could try setting your cat settings to defaults or verifying the game cache in steam, if it was me I'd probably trying stock clocks on gpu/cpu too, it's probably unlikely to be the cause though :o
 
Had same issues on a 5850 myself 15-20 fps regardless of settings. Never found a fix other than buying a GTX460 instead.
 
GTA IV ran really badly on my old 8800GTX but since moving to a 5870 its much better, still stutters occasionally and a few pop in textures but far better than it was(everything is set to medium settings)

The game used to run really well but the most recent patch just messed it all up for me
 
Liampope said:
Hi there,

Oh and I can't see the surface of water for some reason:confused: Just see the bottom plus floating objects seeming to float in mid air.
Click to expand...


Driver issue.....same problems as i had with my 1Gb 4850 on 10.12 Cats...

Dropped back to 10.9's and water was drawn correctly....and as for framerates, my benchmark results tells its own story..

10.12's

Statistics
Average FPS: 14.11
Duration: 37.20 sec
CPU Usage: 43%
System memory usage: 61%
Video memory usage: 60%

10.9's

Statistics
Average FPS: 58.12
Duration: 37.23 sec
CPU Usage: 71%
System memory usage: 60%
Video memory usage: 67%
 
ATI's drivers have been awful of late. I'm still on 10.4a! Tried every version up to 10.11 and each time I end up rolling back.

However, I suspect this is specific to pre-5 series cards as I'm using a 4870.

That's a massive fps change :eek:
 
Treebiter said:
ATI's drivers have been awful of late

However, I suspect this is specific to pre-5 series cards as I'm using a 4870.
Click to expand...

Definately pre 5 series card problems.....

Just gonna have to accept that 4xxx range of cards are yesterdays chip wrappers, so to speak, as far as AMD are concerned.

Improvements made for 5xxx & 6xxx range of cards seem to be having a negative impact on the performance of older cards..

Oh well, i'll probably be moving to the Nvidia 560 in Feb/Mar anyway...:)
 
Im also wondering why my CPU usage is so low.

I have an i7 920 @ stock and a 5770 using 10.12 drivers.
My settings are:
Resolution 1920x1080
Texture Quality High
Reflection Resolution Medium
Water Quality Medium
Shadow Quality Medium
Night Shadows Off
View Distance 30
Detail Distance 30
Vehicle Density 33
Definition On
Vsync On

In the benchmark its saying I am only using 28% of my CPU :S and getting an average of 56fps.

Could the issue be because when my CPU goes idle its multiplier drops and obviously the clock speed drops as well, what setting in my bios do I need to turn off to stop this (energy saving) mode? Or is this not the issue?
 
It seems that the general consensus from this thread is that if you're running an ATI card, to get the game to run smoothly you have to downgrade the drivers. I'm using a gtx 480 and it would explain why I've never encountered the performance issues that so many people report.
 
Thanks for the advice guys.

Well I opened CCC and defaulted everything (even though I'm sure most stuff was on default anyway), and it's running like awesomeness. Think I'm pretty much maxed out now except some of the sliders are still wound down a bit to keep me under my available 1GB vram. 55fps in the benchmark now - woo hoo. Still the odd stutter every now and again.

Perhaps when you update ATI drivers it's always a good idea to go in and load defaults? Seems to have worked for me anyway. A bit like I hear if you flash a mobo bios, you're meant to go in and load defaults before anything else maybe?

I'll put my GPU overclock back on and aim for 60 :) :)
 
Try putting the sliders forward as well, some of them don't really affect memory usage, and I found that it's possible to keep quite close to the memory usage and for the game to still be smooth.
 
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