GTA 4 Minimum Requirements

[smarteyeball]

I know I said I was not going to buy this game but that option was taken out of my hands and Hyde bought it, oh well, he wasted my money again poor performance even with the patch, still I did'nt read anything in it about it fixing performance other than something about memory, but for me its made little to no difference

Jekyll and Hyde

Try lowering the resolution, setting the textures and render modes to medium and lower the draw distance to 25 or less. The draw distance is a big FPS killer. Keep tweaking mate

I know this is stretching the min requirments, i wonder how mine setup will run GTA 4.

2.67 gigahertz Intel Pentium D
1 gig ram
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256 mb

?

Honestly? Pretty poorly. You'd most likely have to run everything at it's lowest settings.

 

[Hume de Bruyn]

Well GTA4 use to lag a bit too much to be playable, but I've went and tweaked some of my Windows Services etc, as Vista takes up allot of performance, specially if you have only the standard RAM requirement met like I do (2gig ram). But since I tweaked Vista here and there (specially under the Vista Services tab), the game is perfectly playable with no lags for me, if it's of interest, here is my benchmark and system info:

Statistics
Average FPS: 37.28
Duration: 37.39 sec
CPU Usage: 62%
System memory usage: 83%
Video memory usage: 67%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (85 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 37

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 3870
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.630
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

 

[Everlong]

I had similar settings in mine, but was at 1680x1050 resolution, and it benchmarked at 40fps average, but doesn't play at 40fps in game. Playing the actual game is more of a benchmark

The patch helped a bit though, got around 30fps average while playing and that was playable.

 

[Everlong]

Found something very interesting for Nvidia 8 series and Vista users that game me a dramatic increase in FPS. I now get 50-60fps average when I was only getting 20-30fps average.

Go to the GTA 4 directory and go to common>shaders.

Backup the win32_30_nv8 folder (I just copied and pasted it and renamed it to win32_30_nv8.old)

Go to the win32_30_atidx10 and copy the entire contents to the win32_30_nv8 folder (not the backup one).

Try playing the game and see if you get a performance increase.

The lowest my fps goes now is around 45 in the busier areas and averages around 60 at 1680x1050, medium textures, high render and all the sliders at about quarter.

I'm not sure if it's only this high because of my SLI, but it is a big improvement. Hopefully others will see an increase, too. If you see worse performance, then just recopy all the files from the backup you made.

Not sure if this works for 9 series/GTX series users though.

 

[Timford]

Shall I buy it on this or PS3 though, I guess the PC mods were always good for the GTA games

 

[Majkel]

Found something very interesting for Nvidia 8 series and Vista users that game me a dramatic increase in FPS. I now get 50-60fps average when I was only getting 20-30fps average.

Go to the GTA 4 directory and go to common>shaders.

Backup the win32_30_nv8 folder (I just copied and pasted it and renamed it to win32_30_nv8.old)

Go to the win32_30_atidx10 and copy the entire contents to the win32_30_nv8 folder (not the backup one).

Try playing the game and see if you get a performance increase.

The lowest my fps goes now is around 45 in the busier areas and averages around 60 at 1680x1050, medium textures, high render and all the sliders at about quarter.

I'm not sure if it's only this high because of my SLI, but it is a big improvement. Hopefully others will see an increase, too. If you see worse performance, then just recopy all the files from the backup you made.

Not sure if this works for 9 series/GTX series users though.

I noticed that when doing this "changeover" the colors that game is rendering are slightly diffrent - less vibrant, colorful... For me performance hasn't changed - I'm still running it at 45fps average, and in busy areas I get about 30. Going back with original folder backup

 

[MrNeeds]

Found something very interesting for Nvidia 8 series and Vista users that game me a dramatic increase in FPS. I now get 50-60fps average when I was only getting 20-30fps average.

Go to the GTA 4 directory and go to common>shaders.

Backup the win32_30_nv8 folder (I just copied and pasted it and renamed it to win32_30_nv8.old)

Go to the win32_30_atidx10 and copy the entire contents to the win32_30_nv8 folder (not the backup one).

Try playing the game and see if you get a performance increase.

The lowest my fps goes now is around 45 in the busier areas and averages around 60 at 1680x1050, medium textures, high render and all the sliders at about quarter.

I'm not sure if it's only this high because of my SLI, but it is a big improvement. Hopefully others will see an increase, too. If you see worse performance, then just recopy all the files from the backup you made.

Not sure if this works for 9 series/GTX series users though.

imma test that theory for you everlong, i got a 260gtx but i got a slightly higher resolution, mine is at 1920x1080, il see how it goes, i usally get about 45fps average at the moment, with everything about 1/4 and textures @ medium, render quality @ high

Edit:
Guess what, i got 60fps in most areas with this, 45fps in busy areas, shaders do look a bit less defined but its very minimal, and something i can live with for a better framerate. Nice find Everlong

 

[Everlong]

Yea I tested the fps with fraps, the xfire fps counter seemed to have bugged out on me when I was testing the fps with that, but I was getting around 45fps average with fraps (give about 5fps overhead for the fps drops fraps gives). I don't notice much difference in visual quality, it is there but hardly noticeable considering the performance improvement it can give.

Glad to see it helps some

 

[MrNeeds]

Yea I tested the fps with fraps, the xfire fps counter seemed to have bugged out on me when I was testing the fps with that, but I was getting around 45fps average with fraps (give about 5fps overhead for the fps drops fraps gives). I don't notice much difference in visual quality, it is there but hardly noticeable considering the performance improvement it can give.

Glad to see it helps some

wow, have you tweaked with the new nv options on nv control panel, the pre-rendered frame option, if you set that to nvidias recommended of 3 then you will be surprised at how smooth it feels, i think its using the same technology as the samsung tvs with 100hz, filling in the extra frames with the a mixture of the next frame and the previous frame. making a brand new frame, thats pretty good.

 

[Everlong]

Well it was already set to 3 as the global setting, but setting it to the Nvidia recommended 3 seems to play smother. Thanks for the tip

 

[bljuzgo]

Re:Gta IV on my pc

i have a amd Athlon 6000+ and 4,5 gb DDR 3 Ram.My graphic card is Geforce 8800 2x sli mode the game runs on all details and max resolution on 35 fps.The graphic is amazing.im playing on 2048x1536 resolution

 

[skunksmash]

here's my results, with sig rig......



very playable, pretty much maxed out, 8gb of RAM certainly helps...



SK

 

[Everlong]

The thing is though, I get 40fps average on my benchmark, but that isn't the fps I get in game, even if I ramp everything up to full. It's not a very accurate benchmark.

More VRAM helps more than RAM, as SLI isn't supported yet, I'm still only on 512mb of mine.

 

[Majkel]

the new NVidia WHQL driver (181.20), at least for me, improved the shadows to the point that they look 'almost' real and soft :D anyone got the same feeling ?

 

[Everlong]

I noticed that last night when I was playing. Looks a bit better, though I'm still doing that ATI shader trick, so I'll have a test with the Nvidia shaders later.

 

[skunksmash]

the new NVidia WHQL driver (181.20), at least for me, improved the shadows to the point that they look 'almost' real and soft :D anyone got the same feeling ?

right thats it, im installing them today.

cheers all...



SK

 

[Everlong]

Just tried playing with the Nvidia shaders and the shadows do look a lot better.

 

[xkrntoyx02]

Hey guys.
im running on Vista Home Premium 32bit
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz.
4GB of ram
256mb GeForce 8600M GT.

i know my graphics card isnt the best, but gta 4 is almost impossible to play because of the lag. do you think anyone can help me? maybe recommend me which driver i should update to? thanks

 

[skunksmash]

Hi xkrntoyx02....... welcome to the forums.

what driver are you currently using..?? you can try the modded XtremeG 185.20 drivers optimized for GTA4, but to be honest mate this game is a pig for faster H/W

a C2D @ 2.4ghz & an 8600m just are not gonna cut it for this game, you could knock the resolution down & GFX settings to claw a few frames back...

there are a few cmd line tweaks you might try (at your own risk) from HERE



SK

 

[Everlong]

My friend has similar specs on his laptop, just his CPU is a bit slower, and his 8600m doesn't do well with the game, even with the lowest graphics.