Any way to improve GTA IV performance?

[Xtreme2damax]

This game is the most unoptimized and poorly ported piece of crap I've ever had the luxury of playing. On the highest settings I only get about 23 - 25 FPS in most areas ingame, sometimes 30 FPS. That's everything turned up on max settings at 1920 x 1080 resolution. If I turn the settings down I can maybe get an extra 10 FPS if I'm lucky, but the performance is absolutely horrendous for a game from 2008 that is not even Crysis quality on the following gaming system:

Core i7 920 @ 4.2 Ghz

6 GB Corsair XMS3 memory in tri-channel mode using the X.M.P. memory/dram settings for overclocking.

2 EVGA Nvidia Geforce 460 GTX Supeclocked EE'srin SLI

Heh, even Crysis and Crysis Warhead don't even run this bad. I'm using the latest Forceware 270.61 drivers from Nvidia with the EVGA SLI enhancement patch. Wth is wrong with this game, does anyone have any tips for achieving better performance without sacrificing quality for this game?

[R1pper]

wow, i remember few years back i thought the same thing, but i had 8800gts+4GBram+amd64 3600, now looking at your spec, i'm amazed on how crappy the game engine is.

update it, if there is an update, and hope for the best.

[Udedenkz]

I take it your are new to the concept of a "Console port".

If you can return it and buy a game that was made to be playable on the PC.

[Blaze_Zewi]

Update to version 1.0.6.0. It should help a bit, but don't know by how much though. You'll have to find out when you patch it.

I am getting 60FPS. With NORMAL setting and shadow/reflection turn off. Hey I am only played for the storyline not the eye candy. :)

And yes I know the game is a crappy port.

[Xtreme2damax]

No, I'm not new to console ports. I have other console ports but they are nowhere near as bad as this on my system, even the famed Lost Planet. As long as a port is done right these issues don't exist, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Condemned, previous GTA games were all good ports to the PC. I've had the game for a year and a half now so a return is not an option. I just want decent performance, my system is more than adequate, there is no excuse why performance should be as bad as it is even on low or medium settings on my system. I was hoping with new drivers, overclocking, a bit of tweaking I might get decent performance than I did when I first built this system. Nothing ever improves for this game, it runs just as ****ty no matter what without turning everything way down which maybe gives me +10 - 15 FPS. I just want decent performance so I can actually play it, I only have a gaming PC and no Xbox 360 or PS3.

:Edit: Game is already patched but it's just as slow. Thinking maybe there is something I'm missing or haven't tweaked, even a year or two ago some people were playing this with ok or decent performance.

@Blaze, what's your specifications?

[Coagulated]

That's pretty strange.

I was running GTA IV recently with the HD mod, settings on max @1920 x 1080 and achieving 15-30FPS, but my rig is weak sauce in comparison. I can't remember what my results were on the standard max settings, but they were definitely better than 15-30.

4Gb DDR2 @ 800Mhz

ASUS 5850

Q6700 @ 2.66Ghz stock

As you can see, I'm hardly running a beast. Make sure your OS & game are completely up to date, monitoring your CPU/GPU loads/temps or try disabling the OC/SLI. I've got a funny feeling it doesn't like either OC or SLI... but it's a good few months since I was last trawling the 'net for performance tweaks for GTA IV, so I could be wrong.

[Elliot B.]

I have an Intel Core i5-750 CPU with 4 GB DDR3 RAM and an EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (896 MB).

I feel it's the video card that's holding me back in this game due to the "low" amount of VRAM. It doesn't take a lot before the in-game VRAM counter turns orange and red in the settings screen.

However, I can almost max. out all settings that don't increase the VRAM value (well, max. apart from AA/AF and shadows) @ 1680x1050 and I run between 40 and 60 FPS. Not too bad. Playable for sure.

[rajputwarrior]

that's pretty weird. i just ran the benchmark on my system and got the following:

Statistics

Average FPS: 43.17

Duration: 36.69 sec

CPU Usage: 71%

System memory usage: 80%

Video memory usage: 81%

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Shadow Quality: High

Reflection Resolution: High

Water Quality: Very High

Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x4

Night Shadows: High

View Distance: 25

Detail Distance: 31

Hardware

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Service Pack 1

Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series

Video Driver version: 8.17.10.1077

Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)

Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz

File ID: TLAD-Benchmark.cli

definitely should be running better on your system.

[Billus]

Watch the GPU usage memory. Once you go over you know you'll get lag. Heck, even I get lag when I turn it up on max settings. Play Mafia 2, far better game with prettier graphics anyway. Better story too.

[bjoswald]

Garbage like that game is part of the reason why people think PC gaming is in a freefall. No matter how much money you blow on your rig,

you're still stuck with a poorly-coded PoS game that doesn't take advantage of it.

Anyway, to answer your question:

When I have a bad experience with a game, the first thing I do is patch it. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But it won't hurt you to

try, and it might even prevent new bugs from popping up later.

After that, I look for "tweak guides" from sites like TweakGuides. These people know the ins and outs of PCs and games better than I ever will,

so you might as well take their hard work and advice into consideration. Don't just jump into the Settings or Options menu and start turning off

**** in vain. You never know what you'll **** up.

If all else fails, you could try the usual routine: drivers, defragmenting, Disk Check, etc.

If ALL the above fails, you're either SOL or in need of something else I may have forgotten.

[Xtreme2damax]

Wow shadows are really a resource hog in this game and they aren't even great. I lower just shadows to high instead of very high and I got +10 - +20 FPS. Why Rockstar didn't resolve the performance issues in a patch is beyond me, just lazy incompetent developers, no genuine reason this game needs so much resources when there are better looking games that run better with the same exact settings or even higher settings.

[bjoswald]

Things like shadows, view distance, AA/AF, post-processing effects, dynamic lighting, and etc. tax a system quite a bit,

so I would take a look for those kind of options first.

[Code.Red]

Yeah, I have also found that shadows are the biggest fps killer in GTA IV. Having shadows on very high is just impossible to play, and dropping it down to just high helps a lot. I find that there isn't a huge gain in fps by having it any lower than high, except for having them off completely, and then the game runs very, very smooth.

Also note that pressing P while in-game toggles the 'Definition' graphics setting. Because GTA IV doesn't support AA, this is what they use to sort of smooth the jaggies (and this setting also toggles motion blur), although it blurs everything else as well. I don't notice a fps change when using it, so it's up to your personal taste.

I guess the horrible port of GTA IV is one reason why Rockstar haven't announced anything regarding a PC version of Red Dead Redemption. :(

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I think getting a better computer is the only solution (It runs fine on mine, but the lack of AA is painful)

GTA4 uses a deferred renderer, so stuff like shadows should be relatively cheap, but you lose out on stuff like AA. The problem is that with GTA4 it runs so badly that you have to start turning off the things that it should excel at.

[Elliot B.]

I think getting a better computer is the only solution (It runs fine on mine, but the lack of AA is painful)

GTA4 uses a deferred renderer, so stuff like shadows should be relatively cheap, but you lose out on stuff like AA. The problem is that with GTA4 it runs so badly that you have to start turning off the things that it should excel at.

It performs poorly with shadows on and needs AA enabled ideally. Ironic, really.

[Udedenkz]

You can also speed up GTAIV startup time by,

- Getting rid of GfWL (there was a GfWL remover for that when I was interested in GTAIV)

- Getting rid of social club interface addition (it is an additional .exe which you CAN remove and still have GTAIV launch)

Games like DMC4 are games that I would not consider "PC ports", even though technically they are ported from consoles.

When I think port, I think bad, like Resident Evil or Halo 2.