GTA4, my ATI X1950PRO and the Patch

[Gangxxter]

I have a Radeon X1800 XT 512 MB and the game runs fine but with very poor performance of course (between 12 - 30 fps ingame). But that's ok, my PC doesn't meet the minimum system requirements.

 

BUT I also have this annoying Z-fighting problem and I some indoor lightings are also missing. Without these 2 bugs I would be pleased with that game.

 

Disabling the shadows helped a little bit with the Z-fighting problem

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=387368

But if you disable the shadows, the game gets very dark and there is no sun anymore.

 

I hope, the Z-fighting problem will be fixed with the next Catalyst release!

[belinda]

hi ppl, just came back from xmas family trip so lets see whats news here.

 

@ genuf & all with missing textures / geometry issues

yea i have missing lights in many (all?) indoor and outdoor locations too. in some places it's evident but in others it's hard to notice without knowing how it should look right. and thanks for your "grey fog" screen genuf, i will add it to my main post. i only have missing textures when driving around like partslinger, no grey fog (=missing geometry). please try MonkeyMhz's Ultimate GTAIV Performance Fix to get rid of that. it's a long post and has some minor side effects (e.g. water reflections get a little more pixelated) but it worked for me so give it a try and report back here.

 

@ ThatsCool

my fps are going down when it's raining. heavy fog is a fps hit too but not as bad as rain. i would love to deactivate weather effects for more consistent fps values. i think the x1xxx cards are not powerful enough for the massive amount of shader calculations when those effects kick in.

 

@ Kamox

you're definitely not reaching playable fps no matter what you try with todays gta 4 knowledge. a singlecore will just not do the trick, sorry mate. do not try to compare with other graphically appealing games like bioshock. it's so much more cpu intense with all the artificial intelligence, physics, resource management calculations going on all the time. bioshock has simple game mechanics and the nice visuals only rely on a somewhat fast gfx card.

 

@ ancalimonungol

without screenshots it's impossible to give you advice. and since many x1xxx card owners like me have correct water visuals, you should look around for other threads here which are dedicated to water rendering issues. those bugs seem to spread across almost all supported gfx card series, not just the x1xxx.

 

@ Gangxxter

your cpu is not potent enough to run it with higher fps. my athlon x2 6000+ is limiting me too and i get identical fps from 800x480 up to 1280x800 (at medium, medium, 20, 15, 15, 0, clip capture off). increasing resolution even further drops fps more and more because my x1950pro reaches it's pixel throughput limit with this game. try lowering car density or using the -minspecaudio switch to gain a few more fps, but i'm afraid it won't help that much. and thanks for the "disable shadows" link. i will try that as soon as possible, but the info there don't sound that good. no fps gain, everything darker than before... seems like the rage engine with it's deferred shading technique is drawing the sunlight upon a fully shadowed world, not drawing shadows upon a fully lit world. so this trick practically will not remove the shadows but remove the sun

 

edit: i revised the main post to integrate new stuff. please keep scouting the forums and report anything useful here. thanks so far to anyone for contributing, and have a good time playing the game

Edited December 26, 2008 by belinda

[wrekker]

I second all those weird visual bugs present on my system, I have x1900

 

The thing that bothers me the most are blacked out interiors, particularly in the pool place and the glitchy internet cafe.

[DominikCZE]

Yeah I can't really get pics, kinda lost, I never used imageshack before, when I upload something under my account logged in, it still says that I have no pictures and it gets lost somewhere in millions of other images impossible to find...

Anyone know what I'm messing up?

[belinda]

just go to http://imageshack.us/ DominikCZE, there is no need to sign up. find the line:

 

upload: X image url video multiploader file exchange

 

below that is a white empty line with a button on the right called "choose" or something, it's labeled "auswählen" here on my german system. click on it and choose the image file on your harddisk you want to upload. then click "host it" and the image is being uploaded. when uploading is done you will see some hotlinks for forums which you can copy / paste here.

[TygerGoose]

Just a minor correction to my previous post. I'm using an x1700 mobility 256 MB. Setting the card to optimize textures for performance does not seem to give an frame rate increases. Seems like ATI cards aren't getting the best deals, especially with the lower type x1xxx models.

 

To date I've tried using the vidmem multiplier to get gta 4 to utilize a bit of my system RAM to be used as VRAM. Benchmarking seems to show that my cpu isn't being pushed very hard so I figured I'd try that.

 

Current bugs/glitches update:

 

1. No indoor lighting for pool hall

2. Frame rate dips upon rain occurring. (9 fps)

3. Messed up internet. Icons are 'corrupted' and so are pictures.

4. Textures don't seem to get drawn on occasion even when I'm very close to them. They remain low-res.

 

Currently playing specs: 800x600, auto, medium, medium, 5, 5, 25, 0. Approximately 16 fps on foot outdoors, 12 fps in a vehicle.

[DominikCZE]

Yeah I did upload some images as I said, but no links and the search doesn't help either

I wish I could just upload right from my hard drive like on some different forums.

[genuf]

BUMP!.

 

Sticky the topic please

[belinda]

i had some gta4-free days so i don't know any news for our problems. maybe the rock* guys get back to work next week and patch some more bugs.

[MâTRîX]

i had some gta4-free days so i don't know any news for our problems. maybe the rock* guys get back to work next week and patch some more bugs.

Does our problems realy get to rockstar by posting on this forums???

[MâTRîX]

Does overclocking HELP at all with GTA4 preformance?

My CPU is overclocked.

My GRAPICS CARD is overclocked.

Both the memory and core is overclocked to maximum with the Catalyst tool itself!!..

Im using a

Saphire ATI X1950 GT 256MB DDR3

And my FPS are 28-38fps.

And i tweaked my commandline to get 1280x1024 75Hz and mem of 9.46 bla bla bla. But the actual ingame resulotion is 1024x768 75Hz or something like that.

I also can overclock my GPU more with ATI Tool but then u start to run at 80Celsuis or 179Farhenheit. Then the computer auto restarts to preven graphic card damage im a overclock freak i even turned that of and took my FAN (the one usauly in a room lol) and opened my case and set it max speed to keep my gpu cold lol.. And overclocked it more but does this help at all?

[Anach]

Some interesting info:

 

I tried MonkeyMhz's Ultimate GTAIV Performance Fix which was suggested a couple posts up, and I must say that I've noticed a definite performance improvement and smoother loading of scenery objects.

 

However, something of note. This was the first time I was able to see the pool table. Although it was only for half the game, as it went dark again after a few minutes. I've noticed that some other areas are also brighter, even though only for a brief time, as it seems it goes back to being dark again after a minute or two.

[Gangxxter]

^The performance fix from MonkeyMhz really helps with the no indoor lightning issue?

 

Too bad that this fix won't work for me. The resolution settings in the settings menu always reset to the settings in the command line. Besides I already have to play at 800x600 because my CPU sucks

[ancalimonungol]

I don't think these bugs will ever be fixed by *ockstar. I also believe it's time for us to buy a better graphics card Mine is beginning to choke with all new games at higher resolutions.

[Anach]

^The performance fix from MonkeyMhz really helps with the no indoor lightning issue?

 

Too bad that this fix won't work for me. The resolution settings in the settings menu always reset to the settings in the command line. Besides I already have to play at 800x600 because my CPU sucks

It's not properly lit indoors, but the pool table is at least visible now, rather than almost totally black as it was before. I can now finish a game, but still cant make out some of the balls.

 

Before applying that fix, I couldnt even see balls on the table.

[belinda]

nice find anach, i used monkeymhz's fix too for some time, but removed it again. i did not experienced any performance gain but had much uglier reflection maps on water. but since i never tried playing pool again i can't verify any light rendering improvements.

 

but i found out something interesting regarding the missing texture or geometry issue many people experience. see this topic in my first post here for details:

-> MYSTERIOUS FOG AROUND NICO (MISSING TEXTURES OR GEOMETRY)

 

settings i'm currently playing with:

resolution: 1280x800 @ 60hz

texturequality: medium

renderquality: high

viewdistance: 23

detaildistance: 17

cardensity: 10

shadowdensity: 0

clipcapture: off

ingame resource estimation: 389 / 480 mb

 

and my commandline.txt:

-novblank

-width 1280

-height 800

-refreshrate 60

-fullscreen

 

i use ati's catalyst without catalyst-control-center (driver only setup) but with ray adam's ati tray tools to manage all my gfx driver settings and game profiles. it has a osd function to blend the actual fps value into the game just like fraps. but it also can display other values like free video memory. so i tried playing gta 4 with that enabled, and watched the free video memory drop slowly. but whatever i did (flying with a chopper around the whole town, driving with a car from north to south or east to west), free video memory never went below 250mb. so gta is only using about half of my vram.

 

what a waste i thought, and began to play around with the -nomemrestrict switch in the commandline file. when using it, i have almost no missing textures or geometry popping in and out while moving the mouse, and gta is using way more than 250mb vram. the free video memory value drops until only 10mb left, but the game is stuttering like hell at that point. not the "memory leak"-like stuttering (1 second complete freeze, 1 second able to move the mouse, 1 second freeze again...) but a constant stuttering with fps dropping to 5-10. the stutter starts when free video memory drops below 80mb here reproducible. ok, so the game is using my whole vram now, but it leads to heavy stuttering.

 

so i started playing around with the undocumented -memrestrict switch a few people here talk about. i read recommendations like using -memrestrict 314572800 on medium textures to avoid the RESC10 error. it's supposed to limit gta 4 video memory usage to 300mb (314572800 bytes = 300mb). i never experienced this error but i used this as starting value to determine how much vram the game uses with this and if it's doing anything at all since it's not mentioned in the game's readme. but after some more testing i found out that 408944640 is the best value for my system. ingame free video memory detected by ati tray tools goes down to 100mb which is right before the stuttering kicks in, with a little security addition. yeah mates, gta 4 is using much more vram now, leading to much less missing or popping in textures & geometry and fps is not higher but seems more stable to me, especially after driving around some time. so please anybody interested and technically savvy enough give it a try, if it's working for some people i integrate it in the first post. and please, don't use MonkeyMhz's Ultimate GTAIV Performance Fix while testing or the results are not comparable to mine.

 

my new commandline.txt:

-novblank

-width 1280

-height 800

-refreshrate 60

-fullscreen

-memrestrict 408944640

Edited January 6, 2009 by belinda

[TygerGoose]

Hi, I was playing around with the visualsettings.dat file and I need some other people to help confirm this.

 

#Values for rain GPU particle effect

rain.NumberParticles.ps3 4096

rain.NumberParticles 4096

 

I set the last line to 4096, down from a crazy level 16000+ initially. Results: No heavy rain fall. Seems more like a light drizzle resulting in less jerkiness and more consistent frame rate during a storm.

 

# Misc Values

misc.CrossPMultiplier.GlobalEnvironmentReflection 1.00

 

Changed 1.00 to 0.5 (or a lower value). I seem to detect less Z-fighting? Again I need some confirmation from others who have tried this.

 

Other things tried. Running at 700x525 resolution. Fps up to 25 and rarely drops below 16 (not experienced rain yet at this resolution). Night seems to perform better than previously at 800x600. Also tremendous eyestrain! I'm going to need a new pair of glasses after this. But this is obvious of course, my GPU is drawing over a smaller area!!!

 

Specs again: T7200 2GHz, 2GB Ram, x1700 mobility 256 MB.

fps: low range 13 to high of 25. Averages at about 15.

 

Bowling in Algonquin seems to be ok, but pool in Hove beach is still black.

 

700x525, medium, low, 2, 20, 40, 0

 

Hope this helps or can help some out there who don't have and aren't going to get future computers anytime soon.

Edited January 6, 2009 by TygerGoose

[TygerGoose]

Sorry! Before editing your files please see the first post about modding GTA 4!

[belinda]

@ all

 

i made a new topic regarding tweaking timecyc.dat for performance or visual improvements. since all we x1xxx users highly appreciate more performance go check it out please.

[genuf]

So, nobody has any success fixing the missing lights inside buildings?

 

No news about the next 9.1 Catalyst?

 

 

[belinda]

maybe r* fixes it with another patch. so far i have no idea where to look to fix or work around this bug. no catalyst news from my side. i will give it a shot as soon as it's released and report any changes for x1xxx users here.

[AsC3]

so.... someone tested the new patch???

 

 

[Gangxxter]

I've tested the 2nd patch already. It changed nothing for me, no FPS increase, in-game internet still f*cked up, no indoor lighting and the Z-fighting problem isn't solved either.

[TygerGoose]

Tried the patch. Removed most commandline options except for -availablevidmem and memrestrict. Seems smoother/just as smooth as before where I had kinda hit a sweet spot by tweaking FarClp, reflections and bloom. With the new patch I reverted to all original settings (FarClp etc) and still runs well. Oddly enough I seem to be using less vram. My initial setup: 800x484, Med, Low, 1, 1, 40, 0 used 251 MB. With the patch, I seem to use only 243-244MB.

 

Personally the memrestrict option worked best for me. But haven't tried indoor areas so I can' tell if they fixed the lighting. Oh, and night seems darker than before.

[tampon_69]

Hey i got an 1950 xtx 512mb and my game wont even start. i get an out of range msg on my monitor. i get sound but my screen is outta range, even in safe mode. Ive tried everything, increasing refresh rate, opening in window, opening at 640x480 res in properties. updated catalyst to 8.12. ive been searching for an anwser to this for some time now .. and all i got out of it was .. wait for the patch. now that the patch is out, it hasnt done sh*tttt. i tried going in thru program files to find where in game resolution is but i couldnt find it. HELP ME PLEASE, THIS GAME IS BEING FACCKKINN DIFFICULT.

[Reignfire]

Patch 2 didn't fix a bloody thing here. Internet still broken, pool hall still impossible to see in on my x1950 Pro.

[ancalimonungol]

The patch didn't fix the flat sea problem and another bug has appeared;

 

It is no longer possible to log on to a computer. The game is no longer completable. Nothing happens when I try to log on to a computer.

[GrumpyComic]

Internet still garbled, mirrors still don't work, pool table worked for half a game then went to darkness again. Still have fogginess on textures.

 

However I did notice a little performance boost but that could be due to clip capture being turned off.

[genuf]

Catalyst 9.1 didn't fix anything either. I really can't believe it. It's so dificult to fix those stupid but important bugs such as dark interiors and internet images?

 

Really R*, why didn't you fixed it in the last patch. Please tell us. We don't have to buy a new videocard beacause you stated that x19xx series will support the game.

[Reignfire]

Catalyst 9.1 didn't fix anything either. I really can't believe it. It's so dificult to fix those stupid but important bugs such as dark interiors and internet images?

 

Really R*, why didn't you fixed it in the last patch. Please tell us. We don't have to buy a new videocard beacause you stated that x19xx series will support the game.

Ugh, seriously? That's it, I'm done. This is a farce that has gone on for far too long, I'm going to stick with Saints Row 2.