Radeon 6850 lags on GTA 4

[Lazar_99]

I have a problem with my R 6850. when i run the GTA 4 benchmark test i get average 35 fps on max settings and it says video memory usage: 41% WTF?
it also says 61% system memory usage and 88% cpu usage.
Other PC specs: AMD Athlon II X3 455
8gb if DDR3 RAM

 

[Shayshunk]

Perhaps your drivers aren't up to date?

 

[Helltech]

Its because of your CPU i think. GTA is extremely CPU intensive. It isn't optimized well at all.

 

[Dogsnake]

So what is the problem? By lag if you mean the game pauses or slows I bet it is when you HDD is accessed. You can test a bit by lowering all the settings and if the issues resolves start bumping them up till it reappears. If we knew which settings were impacting performance we could narrow it to the hardware involved.

 

[dicfeynman]

gta 4 is cpu intensive, lower the vehicle density.
or u can overclock the cpu

 

[Lazar_99]

So what is the problem? By lag if you mean the game pauses or slows I bet it is when you HDD is accessed. You can test a bit by lowering all the settings and if the issues resolves start bumping them up till it reappears. If we knew which settings were impacting performance we could narrow it to the hardware involved.

Settings are as high as possible except view distance which is set to 40 and resolution is 1920x1080

 

[mouse24]

I have the same setup, I have to run everything on medium (again except view distance)

I have a 6870 though. If you like I can pop in game and see my settings for you?

 

[Lazar_99]

I have the same setup, I have to run everything on medium (again except view distance)

I have a 6870 though. If you like I can pop in game and see my settings for you?

dude i figured it out a minute ago that my CPU is a bottleneck. its slowing down my GPU because the 6850 is just too fast for it. i noticed that now when i try to record with fraps my frame rate on all games is down to unplayable while it was playable on my old graphics card. i'm gonna get an intel i5 or atleast one of those new bulldozer AMD cpus

 

[mouse24]

dude i figured it out a minute ago that my CPU is a bottleneck. its slowing down my GPU because the 6850 is just too fast for it. i noticed that now when i try to record with fraps my frame rate on all games is down to unplayable while it was playable on my old graphics card. i'm gonna get an intel i5 or atleast one of those new bulldozer AMD cpus

Yeh figured that was the case. You could try unlocking the 4th core for a minor fps boost. If your motherboard supports it that is.

 

[Helltech]

dude i figured it out a minute ago that my CPU is a bottleneck. its slowing down my GPU because the 6850 is just too fast for it. i noticed that now when i try to record with fraps my frame rate on all games is down to unplayable while it was playable on my old graphics card. i'm gonna get an intel i5 or atleast one of those new bulldozer AMD cpus

You still have a decent CPU, its just GTA is so CPU intensive. A 3570K would be a great CPU however.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

dude i figured it out a minute ago that my CPU is a bottleneck. its slowing down my GPU because the 6850 is just too fast for it. i noticed that now when i try to record with fraps my frame rate on all games is down to unplayable while it was playable on my old graphics card. i'm gonna get an intel i5 or atleast one of those new bulldozer AMD cpus

Bulldozer cpu's arent any good for gaming. what was your old graphics card? saying yout 6850 is "too fast" for your cpu is not how it works. If you get a faster gfx card you should get better performance, not worse, regardless of cpu. You do have a cpu bottleneck in this game, but I think you need to look into this more. Try using Driversweeper, it needs to be used in safe mode and remove all nvidia and amd/ati drivers. reboot, and reinstall the latest amd catalyst drivers.

 

[Lazar_99]

Bulldozer cpu's arent any good for gaming. what was your old graphics card? saying yout 6850 is "too fast" for your cpu is not how it works. If you get a faster gfx card you should get better performance, not worse, regardless of cpu. You do have a cpu bottleneck in this game, but I think you need to look into this more. Try using Driversweeper, it needs to be used in safe mode and remove all nvidia and amd/ati drivers. reboot, and reinstall the latest amd catalyst drivers.

hehe i reinstalled my OS when i replaced the gfx card so al nvidia drivers are gone. my old graphics card was a geforce GT 240 1gb GDDR5 but i only have problems in GTA 4, all other games like dirt 3 and bf3 run fine but i mostly play GTA 4. I also noticed the cpu was a problem because on the GT 240 i could record but with this if i start to record it just lags my pc to the verge of death

 

[mouse24]

hehe i reinstalled my OS when i replaced the gfx card so al nvidia drivers are gone. my old graphics card was a geforce GT 240 1gb GDDR5 but i only have problems in GTA 4, all other games like dirt 3 and bf3 run fine but i mostly play GTA 4. I also noticed the cpu was a problem because on the GT 240 i could record but with this if i start to record it just lags my pc to the verge of death

Yeah, I gave up on trying to make GTA 4 look good. Honestly there seems to be massive amounts of gray in the game.

If all of your other games run good no use dropping 300 bucks for a badly coded game. Just finish it and move on is what I did (minus the finishing part lol)

 

[cuecuemore]

@OP Everything you said is right in line with expectations.

 

[leaderWON]

its the cpu. have a pII x4 925 and went from a hd 4770 to a gtx 560. my fps stayed pretty much the same. 35 fps seems about right given your set up, try lowering the shadows if you want it to run smoother (worked for me).

 

[Lazar_99]

its the cpu. have a pII x4 925 and went from a hd 4770 to a gtx 560. my fps stayed pretty much the same. 35 fps seems about right given your set up, try lowering the shadows if you want it to run smoother (worked for me).

yea i'm thinking of getting either the intel i5 2310 2.9GHz or the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 GHz

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem on my laptop.

I have:
GPU: GeForce GTX 675M
CPU: Intel Core i7-3610QM - 6MB Cache - 2,3 GHz(3,3 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0)
RAM: 8 GB PC-12800 - 1600 MHz - Dual Channel

Why does this game lag? :S

 

[cuecuemore]

Why does this game lag? :S

Read the thread, and you'll find out.