GTA IV not performing

O goodie, just a thread for me. Alrighty then. First off, I would just want to let you know that I did this test on a "Pentium D"... That's right. The "Pentium D" and if it worked for me, hells sure will it work for you, even better infact. The system also had 2GB of DDR2 800, and the 8800. But my 8800 was the GT edition that was OC'd to 675/2200. I know that the old G80 GTS's where way lower.

Before we start, make sure you have the LATEST patch for GTA IV. Now, go into your settings, and set your settings ABOVE 1024x768. (trust me.) Heres what you need to do to your settings:

Resolution: Above 1024x768 (mine was set @ 1280x1024 for my 19" non-widescreen)
Texture: Medium
Refelection: Low
Water Quality: Low
Shadow: Low
Texture Filter: Medium

Now here comes the very interesting part. You need to try it to belive it. Set the following:

View Distance: 1 (Yes, thats right. 1. I'll explain.)
Detail Distance: 35
Vechile Density: 15
Shadow: 1

Definiton: Off or On. (Which ever looks/plays best for you.)
VSync: Off

Now, regarding the View Distance. This is the most CPU/GPU intensive task there is in the options (I belive.) The only reason 1 is good, is personaly I don't belive you need to see 200 miles down the road as in GTA IV, you can't see past a few blocks due to all the buildings in the way. So it's not needed. Now the very inportant part here is setting your "Distant Detail" to around 35-50. What this will do is make the things around you, and the things that you ACTAULLY see look at its best. - It will give you the feel that your playing the game with high detail.

Go ahead and try it. You can tweak it to what ever matchs your taste. For example, set the Distant Detail to 40 or 50 or 60, go back and forth to which ever gets you the best frames you feel good with. anything above 30FPS is very good.

I was getting 30FPS with a Pentium D Hope this helped.

CPU is too weak. They never took the time to optimize the game for PC. It runs fine on my i7 but u shouldnt have to have a top end CPU to play that game. Pisses me off at Rockstar. My GF has a 8800GTS , Core2 e6550, and 4gb RAM. GTAIV runs like crap on her system. Doesnt matter if she puts the settings on low or high. It runs the same FPS. Then in contrast her system plays Crysis on High settings at about 35-40 fps. Put 2 and 2 together on that bullsh*t.

Hmm, hard to explain (ish). Frames per second is exactly what it says. It is how many video frames are displayed per second. The more frames you have the smoother the video looks. What frames you get depends on your hardware. If you had a high end video for example you would get better frames than you would if you had a low end video card because you would be able to process more frames every second.

I hope this was an OK explanation...

EDIT: Frames also depend on what settings you have. If you have low detail settings you will get higher frames per second than if you have high detail settings.

No problem, I can advise more, but I forgot what I did or tweaked.