GTA4 on HD6870+E7500 >= 30 FPS ?

[damon88]

Hi Guys,

I have recently upgraded my RIG

Here are my computer specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.9 Ghz (Stock)
HD 6870 Sapphire.
2 GB Ram
Windows 7 32 Bit
Cooler Master 600 W Thunder

GTA 4 Version 1.0

I was hoping after the upgrade i will be able to play GTA at a acceptable frame rate but my dreams have kinda shattered . Strolled thru the forums here at Tom's and found out GTA is a beast really... I have read some forums asking for advice on how to increase performance and all , i know it has been asked quite some times but i have a different thing to ask ..

Keeping in mind the specs of my RIG , what do you guys think of the FPS i should get, (yes, the worst and the best on tweaked settings)


And is my system powerful enough to atleast play the game without struggling with FPS ?




I will be modest here, i am not expecting 50's or anything , i just want to be able to play this game on a steady fps around

28 FPS -> During high traffic n stuff
35 -> usually riding thru the city n all

I want to ask is there a way i can tweak GTA settings, and create a sweet balance between quality and performance.


Right now i am getting 25 - 28 FPS at 1152x864 rez on all sliders at 10 percent and texture and rendering at high.


Any suggestions ?

 

[bystander]

From everything you read around the net, the game is a poor console port, which stresses the CPU the most. If you really care about that game, your only solution is to get a modern Intel CPU and motherboard.

 

[Sunius]

Update the game to at least 1.0.4.0. It will improve the performance.

 

[Supernova1138]

If possible, try bumping up your resolution to put more pressure onto your GPU. At that low a resolution you are definitely CPU bound. An E7500 may not be the best CPU to run GTA IV with, as it's an older dual core, though still reasonably fast. GTA IV really likes fast quad core CPUs, and lots of RAM. You may want to move up to 4GB of RAM, GTA IV can use 2GB on its own. It can use even more if you remove the memory restriction in the command line. As said above, for optimal performance, you pretty much need a new CPU, RAM, Motherboard combo.

Basically, GTA IV is one of the worst ports ever to come out on the PC platform. Even four years later, high end rigs built just this year can struggle with it at times. With my rig (seen in my sig) I can get relatively smooth performance (ranging between 30 and 50 FPS) provided I don't turn the shadows up to ultra. GTA IV does not properly support more than 1GB of VRAM,, so any graphics configuration that exceeds 1GB will stutter. Getting 60FPS solid is pretty much an impossibility. The best you can hope for is that you can tweak the game to get it to run with 30FPS as a minimum framerate.

 

[damon88]

Update the game to at least 1.0.4.0. It will improve the performance.

Ok i updated the game to version 1.0.7.0. Surely it did increase some performance and addressed the glitches. Now the game runs almost without any glitch even though its on low FPS but still its way better and playable.

If possible, try bumping up your resolution to put more pressure onto your GPU. At that low a resolution you are definitely CPU bound.

Oh is that so !! . Ill give it a try but i dont think i can go past 1152x864 without lowering the refresh rate (75 at this rez). But ill give 1280 x 1024 a try too.
Can you explain why is it so that at lower rez the load is cpu bound ?

An E7500 may not be the best CPU to run GTA IV with, as it's an older dual core, though still reasonably fast. GTA IV really likes fast quad core CPUs, and lots of RAM. You may want to move up to 4GB of RAM, GTA IV can use 2GB on its own. It can use even more if you remove the memory restriction in the command line. As said above, for optimal performance, you pretty much need a new CPU, RAM, Motherboard combo.

Basically, GTA IV is one of the worst ports ever to come out on the PC platform. Even four years later, high end rigs built just this year can struggle with it at times. With my rig (seen in my sig) I can get relatively smooth performance (ranging between 30 and 50 FPS) provided I don't turn the shadows up to ultra. GTA IV does not properly support more than 1GB of VRAM,, so any graphics configuration that exceeds 1GB will stutter. Getting 60FPS solid is pretty much an impossibility. The best you can hope for is that you can tweak the game to get it to run with 30FPS as a minimum framerate.

Hmm.. Yes, i think i am quite close now , last night gave the game a try and i think after patches its more playable now.

Can someone suggest me the settings i should set ? The thing here is , i cant see much difference fiddling with the Render settings and Texture settings. The fps almost remains the same . Although the Draw distance and Distance detail has the major effect.

Amidst all this ups and downs in FPS i cant seem to figure out with correctness that Texture and Render settings do have impact on performance. Can someone gimme an insight on this ?

 

[bystander]

Except in some oddly coded games, increasing the resolution or graphics settings will not improve FPS, however, if the game is CPU limited, you often can increase settings without losing any FPS. If it is CPU limited, that means the CPU is what is holding back performance, and not the GPU.

If you are CPU limited, as most of us believe, you should increase visual settings until you start to lose FPS, then go back a notch.