GTA IV: Low FPS on High-End PC

[Domenic Lang]

GTA IV : Low FPS on high-end computer

My setup is as follows

Windows 8 64-bit
Sapphire OC HD7950
AMD Quad-Core processor 3.2GHz (A8-5500)
8GB Ram
1TB HDD
Antec 450w

in task manager, gta eflc says its (32 bit)

When I play at all very high settings AA x16 and distances at 100 i get only 15 - 35 fps with average in the low 20s.

view distances at 30 i get 25-55/60 fps with the average being at about 28-34. it can lag down into the steady mid 20s in deep city areas.

i hate playing with the distances on 30 though. it just looks terrible on high resolutions compared to maxed 100.

changing quality/shadow settings has barely any effect whatsoever, with no noticeable increase in fps even when all settings are on low.

i understand this game is a terrible port with barely any optimization at all, but i was wondering what i would need to play with the bare minimum fps being 30/35, and average fps being like 50/60 when all settings are maxed with all distance at 100.

gpu usage is at very low %
cpu usage is at like 70%

if anything i would think it would be my cpu, but it isnt even at 100% usage, and it is a quad core which should be good enough. however i hear that upgrading to the FX 8350 (8-core), the fastest AMD gaming cpu, still has about the same amount of trouble with this game that i am having.

what is needed to run this game maxed out smoothly?

 

[andy610]

As you said it is a terrible port, there isn't much that can be done to be honest but my friend found that he had a huge fps increase between 40 and 60 when lowering the resolution a bit. I have heard that lower end PCs seem to run it better for some strange reason, and my friend is running on a 6670, even that plays it better than my 6950 which struggles to reach 30

 

[bigj1985]

It's your CPU. I had the same problems with GTA 4 on my P2 965 system. Even at 4.0 ghz it chugged along like a hot mess. GTA 4 is similiar in a way to skyrim as that it is heavily CPU bound but not in a good way. It taxes 2 cores heavily and the game is extremely responsive to a processor with strong instructions per clock.

With my 2600k even at stock I can peg the game close to 60 fps @ 1080p with the same GFX card I was using with my phenom. However even with the I7 the game will scale along with the processor all the way up to about 3.9 ghz. Which is a Phenom 2 running @ about 4.7 ghz probably more. High IPC is a requirement for GTA 4.

 

[Mysticalsam-1354750]

Lower down the view distance to near about 10.
turn shadows off.
and few more tweaks like bloom = 0, lower the rain density in visualsettings.dat file made my game a boost of 15-20 fps.

 

[chrissmartin]

Try lowering the view distance or draw distance and AA to off.GTA IV is an inefficient game if there is a new version update it to newest version and all other drivers like AMD Catalyst

 

[Mysticalsam-1354750]

Update Patch Version 1.0.4.0 is better then 1.0.7.0

 

[ChairmanSaab]

Try contig.exe and some other tweaks. 20+FPS will definately increase.