Rockstar reveals GTA4 patch details, ATI Catalyst 8.12 release Dec 10th

[Wildside]

Rockstar says GTA4 patch will arrive very soon

Driver News
We're pleased to announce that in co-operation with Nvidia a new driver has been released that improves performance and fixes a major issue with 7900 series cards. If you haven't gotten the driver yet download it here: Grand Theft Auto IV by Rockstar Games

ATI has also agreed to officially release Catalyst 8.12 which will release on Dec 10th from The Ultimate Experience for Gaming | GAME.AMD.COM. Expect significant performance improvements when using this new driver.

Patch Is On The Way
We are working on making a patch available in the next few days. Since Grand Theft Auto IV is a Games For Windows – Live game the patch must be certified by Microsoft before release. The patch is already at Microsoft and we expect a speedy approval. The patch contains a variety of fixes including:

-A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
-Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays
-Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice
-Fix for ATI 1900 shadows
-Overall savings to memory
-Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors
-Multiplayer character settings are preserved
-Support for DirectInput controllers. Note: The current hack way of supporting these controllers may not work with the improved functionality. So we recommend you remove the hack before upgrading to the patch.

Issues with power management software have also been fixed (slow speed, double speed issues). Even after the patch comes out setting power management software to maximum performance is recommended. We've seen cases where power management software does not detect the game is running and puts the CPU in green mode.

Besides the patch we've also improved the way the Social Club handles data this should have greatly reduced or eliminated the Mma10 error. If you are still receiving this error after logging in and out of Social Club we would like to know as much info as you can about it.

Information Needed For Troubleshooting
We want everyone to experience Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC the way it was intended. To that end, we will continue to monitor the forums for any and all issues users are having, and respond whenever possible. We would greatly appreciate it if people with unresolved problems could post some information about their PC configuration in this thread for us. Please include the following information:

-Where exactly in the game you experienced the issue (start screen, while playing the game, etc.)
-What version of the game you have (retail, steam, other online store)
-What is your OS
-Benchmark info or DxDiag is also helpful

Rockstar Games Social Club Application Info
Due to the high volume of new Social Club users, some users may have experienced periods of time where they are unable to log into their Social Club account using the Rockstar Games Social Club application. If you are unable to log in using the Rockstar Games Social Club application, please skip the login process by clicking "Skip Login" or run in offline mode by clicking "Start in Offline Mode". This is meant as a temporary solution to allow users to play GTA IV PC, so please continue to periodically retry your login as we are working hard to promptly address any lapses in service.

A small number of users have reported the Rockstar Games Social Club application encountering a fatal error, preventing them from playing GTA IV PC. One possible solution is to uninstall the .NET Framework (from Add/Remove Programs) and reinstall it by downloading it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en. If you continue to run into fatal errors in the Rockstar Games Social Club application, please contact Rockstar Games support.

Thank you for your patience as we continue to work around the clock to resolve these issues. Support updates will continue to be posted at Rockstar Games - Support Home as soon as they are available, and we will update this thread with any new information as well. Please send any inquiries about non-support issues to mouthoff@rockstargames.com.

Thanks,
Rockstar Games

bolded text i did to just point things out. Good thing to know is that Catalyst 8.12 is going to be released Dec 10th. Here is what is included in 8.12:

ATI Stream support:
With the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for millions of ATI Radeon graphics processors worldwide.

ATI Stream harnesses the tremendous processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for high-performance, data-intensive computations over a wide range of scientific, business and consumer applications.

ATI Stream enables the hundreds of parallel cores inside AMD graphics processors to accelerate general purpose applications. These capabilities will allow ATI Stream-enabled programs, for a variety of different tasks and from a growing number of software vendors, to operate with optimized performance or with new functionality.
The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now include in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream


ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter:
Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve incredible performance levels in video transcoding.
ATI Catalyst Control Center - Noise reduction for progressive video content:

This release of Catalyst introduces a new advanced video quality control: Noise Reduction for progressive video content, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video. The slider control can be found in the All Settings page of the Avivo Video tab found in the Catalyst Control Center.

Performance improvements:
Catalyst 8.12 Preliminary Performance Notes

* Crysis + 2-7%
* Crysis Warhead + 2-3%
* Devil May Cry 4 + 1-6%
* Far Cry 2
+ noAA scores are fixed for Crossfire configs; this is worth +20% on slower cards, and as much as 70% on faster ones
+ 5-10% gains when AA is enabled
* FEAR + 2-6%
* Left 4 Dead + 2-4%
* Lost Planet Colonies + 3-10%, mostly in Area 2
* Prey + 2-5%
* STALKER Clear Sky + 5-10%, primarily on Crossfire configurations

^^^though this is the improvements on these games, im sure that other games will benefit from this update as well. Keep in mind that the source i linked (or around the announcement if u search google) is just recent, December 4th. More games could of been added to the list like GTA4, who know's im just speculating.

 

[Akubane]

Cool, I couldn't care less about GTA4 but i'm down for some new drivers. Maybe the darned driver failing will stop with these ones. 8.11 Helped a lot, I don't get the river crash even half as often now. Maybe this'll get rid of it ^_^.

The performance gains are always nice too. Though 2-3% of 30-45FPS doesn't really count for much.

 

[Wildside]

Cool, I couldn't care less about GTA4 but i'm down for some new drivers. Maybe the darned driver failing will stop with these ones. 8.11 Helped a lot, I don't get the river crash even half as often now. Maybe this'll get rid of it ^_^.

The performance gains are always nice too. Though 2-3% of 30-45FPS doesn't really count for much.

i cant play GTA4 today until i find out how to get rid of this error code 80070490. I updated Windows Defender to from Definition 1.47.966.0 to 1.49.88.0 (i know not the latest) on 12/5. The latest update is today, which i downloaded but wont install properly. 1.49.88.0 was a successful update but affected the NET 1.1 Framework (2.0 i think actually). I cant update Vista, i cant play GTA4 or even open it because i think i need to be connected to the internet so i can play it. Crysis takes too long to open or hardly does.

oh n i cannot remove the update either. I looked for problems on google and only found a few solutions. One of the solutions im gonna try tomorrow is to do a System Restore. I read what it does but i question is if i should back up my data first or am i safe to for the go ahead?

but anyhow, get GTA4 for PC, lots of fun! I get 18-24 fps average. Still playable though.

UPDATE:

looks like GTA4 can play, just takes so long though.

 

[Oreo]

i cant play GTA4 today until i find out how to get rid of this error code 80070490. I updated Windows Defender to from Definition 1.47.966.0 to 1.49.88.0 (i know not the latest) on 12/5. The latest update is today, which i downloaded but wont install properly. 1.49.88.0 was a successful update but affected the NET 1.1 Framework (2.0 i think actually). I cant update Vista, i cant play GTA4 or even open it because i think i need to be connected to the internet so i can play it. Crysis takes too long to open or hardly does.

oh n i cannot remove the update either. I looked for problems on google and only found a few solutions. One of the solutions im gonna try tomorrow is to do a System Restore. I read what it does but i question is if i should back up my data first or am i safe to for the go ahead?

but anyhow, get GTA4 for PC, lots of fun! I get 18-24 fps average. Still playable though.

Yeh, agreed. You can get away with lower fps in this game, and it's great fun !

 

[Gabb]

thats nice that Rockstar seems very supportive of their PC version of the game and offered exactly the opposite response of Ubisoft when Farcry 2 launched with craploads of bugs ( in otherwords, Ubisoft didn't respond or post a message or make any statement at all until very late ). Still though they should have just delayed the game from Dec 3rd to Dec 15th or whatever, I think the popular opinion that its buggy does more damage to sales then delaying it for another week or two.