Bad stuttering?

[Trull]

Hey, I installed 4GB of RAM more (I have 6GB now) and the game doesn't seem to stutter now. Just fps drops sometimes (but I think this is because of the map or the weather, and I also have upped the graphics a little bit), but no stuttering, at least not yet.

[nicotin3]

Hey, I installed 4GB of RAM more (I have 6GB now) and the game doesn't seem to stutter now. Just fps drops sometimes (but I think this is because of the map or the weather, and I also have upped the graphics a little bit), but no stuttering, at least not yet.

Could you tell us how much ram GTA IV is using now?

Simply pause the game, alt + tab, open task manager and tell us how much ram the whole system is using and how much ram GTA IV is using .

[Shiruzu]

I have exactly the same problem: The game runs fine at medium settings, but after 5-15 minutes the framerate is dropping drasticly to 0,5-1 FPS, even in the menues etc. *

 

My System:

- AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+ (=2,6 GHz)

- Zotac GeForce 9800GTX+ 512MB

- 2 GB DDR2

- Mainboard Asus M2V

- WinXP SP3

 

 

What I can tell you, what not worked for me:

 

- Upgrading Processor from Athlon64 3800+

- Defrag the HDD

- get more free HDD Space (now 20GB)

- Install the latest GPU-Drivers (nVidia Forceware 180.48; 180.84 v1; 180.84 v3, ; 185.20 all show no improvement)

- playing the game on lower resolutions

- using the commandline.txt with following parameters: -windowed -nomemrestrict -norestrictions -height 1024 -width 1280 -refreshrate 60 -texturequality 1 -renderquality 1 -viewdistance 10 -shadowdensity 0 -detailquality 10 -novblank (and I played around with that settings but again no improvement)

 

Thats about it. I don´t know what else I could do, and since there is no real evidence of a new patch comming soon, I am pretty hopeless....

 

The support from Rockstar is lousy and this was definitly the last game I ever bought from them!

 

 

 

edit:

 

*according to the taskmanager, the lags come from a 100% usage of the CPUs, which happens "peakwise", therefore the lags ingame and short fluid times between them. The RAM-Usage is at about 60% and the windows cache file also still has over 1GB unused

Edited January 5, 2009 by Shiruzu

[nicotin3]

And i believe i might have gotten rid of the stutter. First post updated .

If you have 2 GB of ram you will experience performance degradation over time (stuttering), you must add more ram to your PC or ensure your ram is being used by your system (task manager). The diference betwean 2 and 3 GB is from unplayable stutter to perfectly stable.

Edited January 6, 2009 by nicotin3

[bip]

ATI readon X1900 XTX 512 MB

Intel core 2 Duo 1.86 2 cpu

3 Gig RAM

Windows Vista Service Pack 1

 

Statistics

Average FPS: 23.29

Duration: 17.56 sec

CPU Usage: 95%

System memory usage: 55%

Video memory usage: 33%

 

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: Medium

Render Quality: Medium

View Distance: 20

Detail Distance: 20

 

Game always lag

 

Do my system meet minimun requirement ? How can i run this game smooth with good setting ? Please help thanks

[logitechdog]

bip define the word minimum

 

 

edit:- oh ye you might want to try this..

 

less farplane, less textures, and polygons in your view frustum would help

 

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=390643

Edited January 7, 2009 by logitechdog

[nicotin3]

ATI readon X1900 XTX 512 MB

Intel core 2 Duo 1.86 2 cpu

3 Gig RAM

Windows Vista Service Pack 1

 

Statistics

Average FPS: 23.29

Duration: 17.56 sec

CPU Usage: 95%

System memory usage: 55%

Video memory usage: 33%

 

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: Medium

Render Quality: Medium

View Distance: 20

Detail Distance: 20

 

Game always lag

 

Do my system meet minimun requirement ? How can i run this game smooth with good setting ? Please help thanks

If your system is using all that ram you shouldnt have any stuttering problems but you just meet the minimum specs CPU and GPU wise.

That means low textures, resolution and everything.

[Arkangel]

by thursday or friday i'll have another ram stick, ill post here my results

[Lastsource]

The game stutters, after playing for some time (about 30min). I have 4GB of ram and tools report that there are about 3GB free before I start GTA.

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6Ghz

GPU: Nvidia 9600GT 512MB

RAM: 4GB DDR2 800Mhz 4-4-4-12

LCD: Samsung 24" 1920x1200

OS: Windows Vista Business 64-Bit SP1

 

GTA4: Resolution 1920x1200, Texture Medium, Render High, View Dist 10, Detail Dist 30, Benchmark 32 fps, Ingame 22-31 fps (and some lags)

CMD: -availablevidmem 2.0 -novblank -minspecaudio -noprecache

 

Pressing ALT-TAB to switch to windows screen and then going back from there seems to solve the problem for another 30min. (Loading a save game or restarting GTA helps as well of cours).

Edited January 7, 2009 by Lastsource

[Hurricane5]

After about 3 hours of play, I start experiencing a small amount of stuttering while flying down a road (A lot of cars, textures, models, scripts, etc being loaded.) But for the most part, I've got my game completely, and enjoyably playable on this machine.

 

Specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4400+

RAM: 1GB DDR2

HDD: 320GB D: (System), 320GB C: (GTAIV)

GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8600 GTS 256mb DDR3 (PCIe)

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro 32bit w/ SP3

 

 

GTAIV Settings:

Video Mode: 1680x1050 @ 32bit @ 75hz on a 24" LCD

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: High

View Distance: 20

Detail Distance: 80

 

 

Screenshot: (Note: This is before I got the game tweaked where it was running completely smooth)(Resized)

 

Amazing, eh?

Edited January 8, 2009 by Hurricane5

[ReS)N-]

After about 3 hours of play, I start experiencing a small amount of stuttering while flying down a road (A lot of cars, textures, models, scripts, etc being loaded.) But for the most part, I've got my game completely, and enjoyably playable on this machine.

 

Specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4400+

RAM: 1GB DDR2

HDD: 320GB D: (System), 320GB C: (GTAIV)

GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8600 GTS 256mb DDR3 (PCIe)

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro 32bit w/ SP3

 

 

GTAIV Settings:

Video Mode: 1680x1050 @ 32bit @ 75hz on a 24" LCD

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: High

View Distance: 20

Detail Distance: 80

 

 

Screenshot: (Note: This is before I got the game tweaked where it was running completely smooth)(Resized)

 

Amazing, eh?

this is amazing what you're saying. first thing - 1 GB RAM? is it really enough? o_O my GTA uses about 1.5 GB of RAM when in use.. what's your average FPS?

[Trull]

After about 3 hours of play, I start experiencing a small amount of stuttering while flying down a road (A lot of cars, textures, models, scripts, etc being loaded.) But for the most part, I've got my game completely, and enjoyably playable on this machine.

 

Specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4400+

RAM: 1GB DDR2

HDD: 320GB D: (System), 320GB C: (GTAIV)

GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8600 GTS 256mb DDR3 (PCIe)

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro 32bit w/ SP3

 

 

GTAIV Settings:

Video Mode: 1680x1050 @ 32bit @ 75hz on a 24" LCD

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: High

View Distance: 20

Detail Distance: 80

 

 

Screenshot: (Note: This is before I got the game tweaked where it was running completely smooth)(Resized)

 

Amazing, eh?

this is amazing what you're saying. first thing - 1 GB RAM? is it really enough? o_O my GTA uses about 1.5 GB of RAM when in use.. what's your average FPS?

No, it's not amazing at all. It's the famous "magic tweak" everyone's been posting since the game was released. Just some useless sh*t.

 

@Hurricane: Your PC cannot run those settings without the "magic tweak" because it doesn't have enough Video-RAM nor RAM nor CPU raw power. I don't even wanna know what setting you have your shadow density at.

[nicotin3]

 

The game stutters, after playing for some time (about 30min). I have 4GB of ram and tools report that there are about 3GB free before I start GTA.

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6Ghz

GPU: Nvidia 9600GT 512MB

RAM: 4GB DDR2 800Mhz 4-4-4-12

LCD: Samsung 24" 1920x1200

OS: Windows Vista Business 64-Bit SP1

 

GTA4: Resolution 1920x1200, Texture Medium, Render High, View Dist 10, Detail Dist 30, Benchmark 32 fps, Ingame 22-31 fps (and some lags)

CMD: -availablevidmem 2.0 -novblank -minspecaudio -noprecache

 

Pressing ALT-TAB to switch to windows screen and then going back from there seems to solve the problem for another 30min. (Loading a save game or restarting GTA helps as well of cours).

I have no idea on how GTA IV will run in a 64 bit environment but it should be running more than fine on those specifications.

Have you checked how much ram both your system and GTA IV alone are using when the stuttering happens?

 

I updated the first post with some information that might be of help .

Also dont use -availablevidmem 2.0. This command is telling GTA IV that you have twice the video memory you actually have, it might be the source or atleast contribute to the problem you are having.

I dont think any of those commands are doing any good anyway...

And that resolution is IMO way too high for your graphics card.

Edited January 8, 2009 by nicotin3

[Lastsource]

The resolution is not too high for my graphics card at all, because: The 9600 GT I use is overclocked from the manufacturer, so it has about 90% of the performance of a 9800 GT card (at least all the published benchmarks say that). Beside this, I gain maybe 5 fps if I reduce the resolution down 800x600, and I loose only about 1-2 fps if I set texture to high instead of medium. This means my frame rate is mainly limited by the CPU. And with all the aliasing artifacts and dithering I prefer to run the game at 1920x1200 with the post processing (blur) on and play at about 28 fps instead gaining 3 fps and runing the image.

 

About the VRAM: GTA says there is about 490MB to be used, my graphics card has 512MB. At the same time the graphics card can use system RAM in shared mode. The Nvidia driver says that I can use up to 2GB of graphics ram if system ram is used additionaly. With the "-availablevidmem 2.0" I give GTA a total VRAM of about 790MB, while at my current settings GTA thinks it will use about 500MB at max. The performance after a fresh start is good. Even if I set textures to high which causes the VRAM usage to increase to about 700MB the performance of the game is still at about 25 fps. So to me this looks like there is really nothing wrong with using shared system RAM for the graphics. Of course all non shared graphics RAM would be better, but GTA is not so graphics performance limited anyway. I think I had the same lag and stutter problems without any commandline.txt and all within specs, but I will retest that once more (also it is quite time consuming to test).

Besides, without the "-availablevidmem 2.0" option GTA seems to have a large problem with loading graphics content to the graphics card, even if I VRAM usage is in the green range. This is visible ingame with textures and geometry being loaded very late and unloaded instantly when not on screen. With all the same settings and VRAM usage in the green range I get the effect ingame that fast turing around I see even the nearest buildings to get loaded (fade in with dither). Not changing view or detail dist and just giving "-availablevidmem 2.0" solves this problem, although there shouldn't be any VRAM shortage in the first place (since GTA thinks it will use about 300 / 490MB VRAM).

 

THe option -novblank should not cause any problems, except that you may see mixed frames on your screen. But I prefer that over slower frame rates. With the -minspecaudio and -noprecache option I tried to reduce the lagging and stuttering problems. It might have improved a little the stability of frame rates. But I am not 100% sure about that. After all it seems not to have hurt either. Still testing on this as well.

 

There is usally about 3GB RAM free on my system before I launch GTA. And GTA seems to use a constant 1.5GB while it is running. When it starts to lag and stutter, it still uses 1.5GB. And after pressing ALT-TAB nothing changes about that (also the stutter goes away for some time).

 

To me the whole stuttering and lagging seems to be caused by some memory leak either in system RAM or in VRAM. It might not cause the RAM usage to increase overall, but it seems to cause of an always increasing shortage of RAM ressourcs in the game engine itself. Like if GTA reserves 500MB graphics RAM and 1.5GB system RAM at startup and then starts to fill this space up with garbage the longer it runs, requireing to manage the content in an always decreasing (usable) RAM environment. Which after some time leads to the point where it constantly loads and unloads content from hard disk / compressed cache or whatever causing lags.

 

I don't know what memory managment GTA IV uses, but the problems look very much like a garbage collection memory managment where the available heap space gets filled up by objects still referenced.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Lastsource

[nicotin3]

The resolution is not too high for my graphics card at all, because: The 9600 GT I use is overclocked from the manufacturer, so it has about 90% of the performance of a 9800 GT card (at least all the published benchmarks say that). Beside this, I gain maybe 5 fps if I reduce the resolution down 800x600, and I loose only about 1-2 fps if I set texture to high instead of medium. This means my frame rate is mainly limited by the CPU. And with all the aliasing artifacts and dithering I prefer to run the game at 1920x1200 with the post processing (blur) on and play at about 28 fps instead gaining 3 fps and runing the image.

 

About the VRAM: GTA says there is about 490MB to be used, my graphics card has 512MB. At the same time the graphics card can use system RAM in shared mode. The Nvidia driver says that I can use up to 2GB of graphics ram if system ram is used additionaly. With the "-availablevidmem 2.0" I give GTA a total VRAM of about 790MB, while at my current settings GTA thinks it will use about 500MB at max. The performance after a fresh start is good. Even if I set textures to high which causes the VRAM usage to increase to about 700MB the performance of the game is still at about 25 fps. So to me this looks like there is really nothing wrong with using shared system RAM for the graphics. Of course all non shared graphics RAM would be better, but GTA is not so graphics performance limited anyway. I think I had the same lag and stutter problems without any commandline.txt and all within specs, but I will retest that once more (also it is quite time consuming to test).

Besides, without the "-availablevidmem 2.0" option GTA seems to have a large problem with loading graphics content to the graphics card, even if I VRAM usage is in the green range. This is visible ingame with textures and geometry being loaded very late and unloaded instantly when not on screen. With all the same settings and VRAM usage in the green range I get the effect ingame that fast turing around I see even the nearest buildings to get loaded (fade in with dither). Not changing view or detail dist and just giving "-availablevidmem 2.0" solves this problem, although there shouldn't be any VRAM shortage in the first place (since GTA thinks it will use about 300 / 490MB VRAM).

 

THe option -novblank should not cause any problems, except that you may see mixed frames on your screen. But I prefer that over slower frame rates. With the -minspecaudio and -noprecache option I tried to reduce the lagging and stuttering problems. It might have improved a little the stability of frame rates. But I am not 100% sure about that. After all it seems not to have hurt either. Still testing on this as well.

 

There is usally about 3GB RAM free on my system before I launch GTA. And GTA seems to use a constant 1.5GB while it is running. When it starts to lag and stutter, it still uses 1.5GB. And after pressing ALT-TAB nothing changes about that (also the stutter goes away for some time).

 

To me the whole stuttering and lagging seems to be caused by some memory leak either in system RAM or in VRAM. It might not cause the RAM usage to increase overall, but it seems to cause of an always increasing shortage of RAM ressourcs in the game engine itself. Like if GTA reserves 500MB graphics RAM and 1.5GB system RAM at startup and then starts to fill this space up with garbage the longer it runs, requireing to manage the content in an always decreasing (usable) RAM environment. Which after some time leads to the point where it constantly loads and unloads content from hard disk / compressed cache or whatever causing lags.

 

I don't know what memory managment GTA IV uses, but the problems look very much like a garbage collection memory managment where the available heap space gets filled up by objects still referenced.

Well i still think you are pushing the limits of your video card with a very high resolution and high textures, o'clocked or not its still a budget mid range card running settings i would only consider on a 260 GTX or higher.

Also you say your system is using physical ram in adition to your video memory to cope with those settings, can you confirm this is happening by monitoring RAM usage?

 

There is usually about 3GB RAM free on my system before I launch GTA. And GTA seems to use a constant 1.5GB while it is running. When it starts to lag and stutter, it still uses 1.5GB. And after pressing ALT-TAB nothing changes about that (also the stutter goes away for some time).

Because according to this you are using the same amount of physical ram i do with medium textures and 1680x1050 (and i have 768 MB of video ram).

 

Is your HD thrashing when the stutter kicks in?

Are all your 4 GB of ram showing in task manager (performance/physical memory/total)?

[Lastsource]

HD is not trashing when the stutter starts.

 

All 4GB shows in the task manager.

 

My normal settings I use are just with medium textures and low view distance.

 

I am not 100% sure that the system ram gets used as vram, but I see a difference ingame wheter I put the -availablevidmem 2.0 or not in the commandline.txt. Without the option geometry really close like the floor I stand on gets loaded and unloaded. Also usually higher detail models of houses behind me get unloaded and blend in with the dither thing when I turn around. With the -availablevidmem 2.0 all this doesn't happen. The only problem left then are thestutter problems.

 

I have now tried to run it all on standard settings, no commandline.txt, ram in the green range and a 1680x1050 resolution. Frame rates are a bit higher, like 5 fps (as to be expected). But even though I have increased the view distance from 10 to 30 (compared to my settings in the sig where all worked, except the stutter and lag thing) houses really close to me get blended in and out visibly with the dither thing (after some time playing this starts to happen). So this is not so great either, also I have not seen the massiv stutter yet.

 

I think there is some problem with the memory manager for the vram in GTA IV. The unloading of the geometry below my feet and replacing it with some grey plane really looks like some panic mode where it is trying to make space in the vram because there has happened something that should not have happened. And this problem occurs with everything within spec and no manual tweaks in commandline. I suspect that some vram memory garbaging is the source of the stutter problems as well. This would make sense as well, since I guess that while pressing ALT-TAB the d3d device gets disposed and by returning to the game a new d3d device is created and the data is sent back to the vram, so all is cleaned up waiting to get messed up again. That the problems are reduced (in general, at least in my experience) with the -availablevidmem 2.0 setting makes sense as well, since then there is more room for GTA 4 to fill the vram (plus the shared system ram) with garbage before GTA runs into trouble cause of vram shortage.

[Arkangel]

just upgraded to 3G keeps closing to desktop after a while or freezing sound and image:

 

ROCKSTAR PLEASE WORK THIS OUT !!! we've all been expecting this game for ages and many have spent a LOT on a new PC to be able to play this game decently, now this is what happens:

 

http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w274/br...mage_freeze.flv

 

PLEASE PPPPPPPLEASEEEE DO SOMETHING QUICK!!!!

 

check this thread for my whole specs+dxdiag+benchmark:

 

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=390227

[nicotin3]

just upgraded to 3G keeps closing to desktop after a while or freezing sound and image:

 

ROCKSTAR PLEASE WORK THIS OUT !!! we've all been expecting this game for ages and many have spent a LOT on a new PC to be able to play this game decently, now this is what happens:

 

http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w274/br...mage_freeze.flv

 

PLEASE PPPPPPPLEASEEEE DO SOMETHING QUICK!!!!

 

check this thread for my whole specs+dxdiag+benchmark:

 

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=390227

.

There is something very wrong with your PC, unplug the power cable, remove all the ram sticks and try to reseat them.

That noise might mean big trouble, you might have dirt on the ram slots (i once had a similar problem, turned out i had a hair caught betwean the ram and the slot ), your ram might not be seated proprerly or you might have faulty ram).

 

Is all your ram the same brand, type (DDRII 667/800) and same timings?

Did this happen before you upgraded your RAM?

[Arkangel]

the sticks are all the same, this is the only game that crashes, the whole computer is new, even didnt had time to accumulate dust! i heard that flashing the GPU card bios might do some help cuz it seems to me that this has something to do with GPU memory, check this thread: it seems very unlikely that everyone having the same problem as me does have bad memory sticks or whatever related to that, besides like i told you, this machine is brand new .... i'm jsut pissed at rockstar big time, i spent a lot of money to enjoy this title and this is waht i get, not being selfish thinking i'm the only one with this problem but i paid over 50€ for this f*cking game!!!

 

 

[logitechdog]

that sound coming from your speakers, as I see the speaker? as that would mean its a audio freeze up... can't tell its that noise...

[nicotin3]

 

I think there is some problem with the memory manager for the vram in GTA IV. The unloading of the geometry below my feet and replacing it with some grey plane really looks like some panic mode where it is trying to make space in the vram because there has happened something that should not have happened. And this problem occurs with everything within spec and no manual tweaks in commandline. I suspect that some vram memory garbaging is the source of the stutter problems as well. This would make sense as well, since I guess that while pressing ALT-TAB the d3d device gets disposed and by returning to the game a new d3d device is created and the data is sent back to the vram, so all is cleaned up waiting to get messed up again. That the problems are reduced (in general, at least in my experience) with the -availablevidmem 2.0 setting makes sense as well, since then there is more room for GTA 4 to fill the vram (plus the shared system ram) with garbage before GTA runs into trouble cause of vram shortage.

Well, you are not the first one to post this problem using a 64 bit OS so it might be a problem with the game.

The strange thing is that the symptoms you describe are exactly what i experienced when my PC was using only 2 GB of ram, except my HD was a swapping madness when the stutter kicked in. 30 minuts or more into the game, stuttering, slow texture loading, etc.

 

I dont think this will help but as a desperate measure... try using only this comand: -memrestrict 314572800 in your commandline.txt and adjust your graphic settings to use as few video memory as possible.

[Arkangel]

that sound coming from your speakers, as I see the speaker? as that would mean its a audio freeze up... can't tell its that noise...

it's image and audio freezing, this seems to be happening to ATI users with 4800 series, trouble is the 4870 users have a bios uodate availabel, 4850 don't i'm one of the 4850 and the only BIOS available are techpowerUP!, i tried flashing my bios but got P/N mismatch, i don't want to force it cuz i'm afraid of computer not booting after that ...

[Arkangel]

Dunno if you can help me but, I mainly get a big FPS drop and stuttering in the middle island, some help please?

 

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3

System Manufacturer: Compaq Presario 061

System Model: EP114AA-ABU SR1719UK GB610

BIOS: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00PG

Processor: Dual Core AMD Opteron Processor 185 , MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.6GHz

Memory: 3070MB RAM

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce 8800 GT

what i used to framedrop and small freezes during the game was:

 

. install memturbo

. set both sliders at 50mb

. uncheck box "don't auto recover bla bla bla"

. run game

 

 

sounded cheesy to me aswel, yet it worked like a charm. That's one of the problems fixed, now all we need is to get the major ones fixed ....

[logitechdog]

arkangel you have this problem before using memturbo?

[ReS)N-]

I am not 100% sure that the system ram gets used as vram, but I see a difference ingame wheter I put the -availablevidmem 2.0 or not in the commandline.txt. Without the option geometry really close like the floor I stand on gets loaded and unloaded. Also usually higher detail models of houses behind me get unloaded and blend in with the dither thing when I turn around. With the -availablevidmem 2.0 all this doesn't happen. The only problem left then are thestutter problems.

can somebody explain me how to "put" this "-availablevidmem 2.0" into the game? i dont really get this commandline.txt etc.. i might try it to see if the stuttering stops.

[logitechdog]

make a commandline.txt just by clicking on your desktop and new, text document...

 

then add:-

 

-availablevidmem 2.0

 

 

 

to it, and then exit and save, cut it and paste it in your gta folder

[ReS)N-]

make a commandline.txt just by clicking on your desktop and new, text document...

 

then add:-

 

-availablevidmem 2.0

 

 

 

to it, and then exit and save, cut it and paste it in your gta folder

lol.

i dont believe it myself, my FPS got improved by ~10..

my average before was 15-25, now its 30.

 

can sbdy explain me what exactly did this -availablevidmem 2.0 do?

[[email protected]]

For me, the stuttering happens all of a sudden - the game uses 100% of one of my two cores (I have an old-ish Opteron 160, with a fancier video card though). I get like 1 frame every 4 seconds, so the game is completely unplayable - the menus either don't appear or appear very slowly. I have to Shift-Ctlr-Esc and use the windows task manager to shut down the game's process.

 

My specs are:

Opteron 160 (dual core)

Radeon 4870 (latest Catalyst 8.12)

2.5GB Ram

Windows XP 64 (with latest service packs and .Net updates)

1920x1600 standard resolution

 

The other issue I notice frequently, which may or may not be related, is that occasionally sounds in a car seem to get into a loop, usually when skidding. So, I hear a looped skidding sound, and when I get out of the car and walk away the sound fades away (as if the car was still skidding, even though it is stationary). When this happens, I often have problems with the in-game dialogues, the audio doesn't get played and the subtitles are displayed one after the other as blips on the screen (I can see them being displayed, but there's nowhere near enough time to read them). The cut-scene audio also usually keeps playing after I leave the cut-scene (e.g. by hitting 'enter' in the cut-scene to skip it). Finally, when all of this happens, textures sometimes go missing for a while and re-appear again, so it appears I'm driving through air. After this happens for a while, the game usually starts stuttering as described above (the stuttering can also start happening without me experiencing any of these problems first though).

 

I do have the first GTA patch applied.

[ThatsCool]

I dont have bad stuttering since i have added the command "-norestrictions" into the commandline

[[email protected]]

Just checked my memory usage before starting the game, during and after the stuttering starts:

 

before starting game: 1.8GB available physical memory, 691MB commit charge

during game (no stutter yet): 645MB available physical memory, 1.59GB commit charge

after stutter starts: 1.043GB available physical memory, 1.57GB commit charge

 

When I switch to the task manager during the game (without stutter), the CPU goes down to 3-4% usage; after the stuttering start, the CPU usage stays at 50% (one of the two cores is showing 100% usage).

 

I'm giving up on GTA4 now - it's too frustrating to play the start of the same mission 3 times only to have to start over because the stuttering starts half way through. I won't be buying the next instalment in the series.