Core 2 duo 2.8ghz Bottlenecks with GTA 4

[saranath1990]

Hi All,

I have bought GTA 4 complete edition and installed yesterday. The sad thing is the game bottlenecks the CPU.
GTA 4 benchmark specifies that only 68% of GPU is used but the for CPU it uses 98% .

Here are my specs,

24" Samsung LED monitor 1920x1080
Core2duo 2.8ghz
4 GB RAM
ATI HD 6870 1GB gfx card

When I play GTA it stucks like hell and never let me enjoy the graphics. I have invested 20k for this graphic card in my country and if i have to upgrade the CPU i must invest another 20k for a FX Bull and M5A97 evo.

Please advice what can be done to prevent the Lag.

Regards,
Mr. 47

 

[gary1]

Turn down the graphics? Only thing I can think of.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

GTA 4 was a very bad console port to the PC. It was coded very badly and from release needed a quad core processor to run well. It was fixed with patches pretty well but still needs a quad core processor to run decently.

 

[Gman450]

The main problem I can see here is that, your old Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz is bottlenecking that HD 6870.
This problem could arise in almost all of the games you play.
Also, this game is poorly optimized for PC, and don't be surprised that it's using only 68% of your GPU power. Same thing happened for me as well. My GPU usage was around 70-80%.
The game does require a decent quad core CPU to run well.

I have invested 20k for this graphic card in my country and if i have to upgrade the CPU i must invest another 20k for a FX Bull and M5A97 evo.

If you are ready to invest on a better CPU, then I could advise you to not go for a FX chip, at any cost!
Go for either a Intel Core i5 2xxx CPU or a AMD Phenom II X 4 965/975/980 BE or non BE chip.

 

[saranath1990]

Thanks for the info guys..

The fun part is GTA Ballad of Gay Tony and Lost and Damned are working great at 1080p 4xAA.. So GTA4 poorly Optimized for PC.

@Gman450: Can you help me understand why FX chip is bad??

 

[Sunius]

Because it's slow for single threaded tasks, and no game would take use of it's 8 core. The best FX chip vs Phenom vs intel:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-6.html

It's also very expensive for its performance!

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking, the FX is more of a "side grade" than an upgrade. Clocked at the same speed and using the same number of cores FX CPUs and Core 2 Dual / Quad CPUs would perform roughly close to each other. The only advantage would be the extra cores as long as the program is designed to use them.

Most games only use 2 cores and very, very few games can use 4 cores. I don't think even BF3 can make use of more than 4 cores in multiplayer mode. GTA 4 only uses 2 cores. Therefore, the best thing to do is to buy a new CPU that is both more efficient (i.e. process more instructions per clock cycle) and has a higher clockspeed.

I played GTA 4 on both my PC with a C2Q Q9450 and my laptop with a dual core i5-2410m CPU. In both instances the load on the CPU was 50% meaning it was only using 2 cores. The i5-2410m is a dual core CPU with HyperThreading (HT). HT is basically two virtual cores so Windows kinda reports it like a quad core CPU.

My recommendation is to go with at least a Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz) CPU. You can upgrade it in the future if you currently have a small budget. I would generally recommend buying a Z68 chipset or Z77 chipset motherboard for future upgrade and overclocking capabilities. Only Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs with the "K" at the end of the model number are overclockable. If you have money then go directly to the Core i5-2500k or Core i5-3570k (when it comes out which should be soon).

The 1st general Core i3/i5/i7 are basically about 10% faster than the older Core 2 Duo/Quad CPUs. The 2nd generation Core i3/i5/i7 (Sandy Bridge) are about 12% faster than the 1st generation. Generally speaking, the Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz) would be about equal to a Core 2 Duo CPU clocked at 3.7GHz - 3.8GHz.

Ivy Bridge is the 3rd generation Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs that should be on sale by April 23rd I think. I only expect a small increase in performance over Sandy Bridge; 6% at best assuming the same clockspeed.

 

[saranath1990]

Best answer selected by saranath1990.