GTA4 and its CPU intensive needs

[Gabb]

is there anything that can be done to allocate more cpu resources to the game while in play?

struggling through it with my E6750 (not OC'd)

well OC your computer mildly like mine ( I define mild OC as stable without having to change the voltage to worry about heat ) and then get all the tunexp programs to optimize xp ( hopefully you have XP ) and besides the obvious of shutting down most of your useless background tasks. I plan to do a clean reformat on my OS hard drive and do a clean SP3 install so hopefully I won't have too much junk clogging up my system like I do now. ( after 1.5 years of life its seemingly inevitable to end up with a bunch of crap in the system )

 

[lukas]

well OC your computer mildly like mine ( I define mild OC as stable without having to change the voltage to worry about heat ) and then get all the tunexp programs to optimize xp ( hopefully you have XP ) and besides the obvious of shutting down most of your useless background tasks. I plan to do a clean reformat on my OS hard drive and do a clean SP3 install so hopefully I won't have too much junk clogging up my system like I do now. ( after 1.5 years of life its seemingly inevitable to end up with a bunch of crap in the system )

what do you mean by tunexp programs to optimize xp?

 

[Gabb]

what do you mean by tunexp programs to optimize xp?

theres various programs that optimize xp performance and such just look em up on google, I can give you specific names later if you want them ( not on my home computer )

 

[Wildside]

So yes a lot of buzz on this months biggest PC game ( that being GTA4 of course ), and pretty much everyone knows by now that the game is very CPU intensive. A lot of reviews I read had a test setup similar to mine ( q6600 at 2.4 ghz with a 8800 gtx or 9800 gt ) and it was stated that this setup really is only capable of running at medium settings to get "decent" fps which I am guessing is around 32 fps average. Since GTA4 is so CPU intensive I was wondering just what other higher end processors can handle this game on high or very high if there is even one that exists yet?

Anyone try out this game with a high end quad core ( Q9xxx ) or perhaps the new Core i7? If so let me know your results, I Haven't been able to find any professional benchmarks just yet.

i get 18-23 fps average, 10-14 fps with a bunch of cars on the screen at one time (chain explosions on the freeway for one thing, so fun to watch ppl burn ).

shadow density all the way, vehicle density all the way (wtf does that even change?), viewing distance lowest, detail distance 15, texture quality locked on medium for some odd stupid reason, render quality high (this is AF for sure, try it out urself!).

Games for Windows - Live acc is xWildsidex if u want to add me .

I play it with most the settings up on my dual core and yes there are slow downs but not when you expect them. e.g. it wont normally slow down when theres a massive gun fights and explosions, but when your driving down the road. But its still really playable !

same. Only slow downs where there are too many cars on screen, see my settings i typed in above post by Gabb i quoted. I still play this game very much!

add me, Games for Windows - Live acc is xWildsidex.

Well, I might try it out and post some results. Is it a DX10 game or only DX9? If it is DX10 I'll put it on Vista and see what quad and 4gb of RAM can do for it.

it used like 74% of my 3GB of RAM, like 2.668GB (not all can be read sadly ). I expect it to use more if ur OS is 64-bit. IT'S A RESOURCE HOG!

according to IGN in an interview with some members who developed GTA4, GTA4 is DX9 with increased visual quality. Quote here to explain things about DX9 and DX10, the graphical features and resolution:

IGN: Rockstar Talks GTA IV Technical Problems

IGN: Before we get into that, a few questions about general graphics options. Why can't you actually through the graphics menu adjust AA (anti-aliasing), turn off shadows, and why is there a resource usage limitation?

Kevin Hoare: Early on we decided we weren't going to support DirectX 10. We were just going to work on increasing the visual quality with what we had with DirectX 9. If we had DirectX 10 support we could have had the AA in there, but we don't have any. The shadows, at least from the forums and what I'm seeing, I think a lot of people don't understand that the shadow density is only designed for a certain type of light in the game. In the daytime there's a general shadow that covers the entire world. That is hooked up directly to the video mode. It scales automatically with resolution. So the higher the resolution you set the game, the higher your shadow, mirrors, water, reflection, everything automatically scales.

We had all those options available and we found that people were confused by so many options so we wound up merging them into the video mode.

IGN: So they're just all merged into the resolution? Ok so…

Jeronimo Barrera: I wish we could go back in time and name some of the settings a little bit differently because when people are playing it on medium, it's actually, I forget how many times higher resolution it is up from the console version, but it's quite significant.

Kevin Hoare: A lot of the settings when I was originally putting them in were based off of what I could actually squeeze into system memory and video memory. In some cases we're just seeing 2 GB video cards come out now. That'd be the only way to really get the absolute highest settings. You don't have to put the game at the highest settings to play it. It seems like a lot of people want to. When we were designing it it was with the intent of having future growth with the game.

 

[Gabb]

thanks for the info wild side...oh and those are horrible FPS numbers, I personally get sick if the fps dips below 30

PS: when I get it in january ( assuming I'm still alive ) we'll play multi for sure

 

[Wildside]

thanks for the info wild side...oh and those are horrible FPS numbers, I personally get sick if the fps dips below 30

PS: when I get it in january ( assuming I'm still alive ) we'll play multi for sure

still alive?

well there is nothing i can do about it except wait for the Catalyst 8.12, upcoming patch from Rockstar, and a big possible purchase of the Phenom II 940 instead of waiting for the 945 (DDR3 is ridiculously high in price, pfft forget it).

 

[tastegw]

what kind of fps should i expect with my specs in sig?

 

[Wildside]

what kind of fps should i expect with my specs in sig?

better then mine is all im gonna say lol.

 

[lukas]

theres various programs that optimize xp performance and such just look em up on google, I can give you specific names later if you want them ( not on my home computer )

Could you please hit me up with a pm and the names please? thanks.

 

[Gabb]

still alive?

well there is nothing i can do about it except wait for the Catalyst 8.12, upcoming patch from Rockstar, and a big possible purchase of the Phenom II 940 instead of waiting for the 945 (DDR3 is ridiculously high in price, pfft forget it).

I don't know anything about AMD processors past the x2 ( I'm under the assumption the phenom was a horrible value ) so how are the new AMD processors going to compare to the core 2 duo and i7 processors?

PS: Tastegw your processor is bottlenecking your GTX 280 BIG time ( GTA4 is really CPU intensive ) so much in fact you'll probably get worst fps then me