Lag issues, Framerate drops, etc.

[Pachuli714]

Okay, I'm no expert even though I've been working with PCs in one form or another for over 20 years. This is my first post here on this forum but since buying GTA IV last month, I've been plagued by what some with similar issues have described as serious memory leaks and ridiculous framerate drops. I have found some solutions that have helped me and just wanted to share them with others.

 

I've read everything I could regarding the problems and tried many of the advised fixes. Nothing worked for me. Updating graphic drivers (Nvidia GeForce 9500GS installed with 2 GB RAM/512 VRAM) only made things worse. I had the game set to 800x600, 60 Hz with everything set to low or 1 and the best I could manage was about 8 to 10 FPS. It was always the same. Would start out with about 30-35 FPS then dramatically drop down to 8-10. If it began raining, it would drop down even further to around 4 or 5 making the game completely unplayable. But I would notice an improvement if I Alt-Tabbed out to the Desktop for a few minutes. This got me thinking that the video card might be having some problems.

 

Some details about my system. Newly purchased back in June 2008, I have an HP Pavilion Elite m9340f with an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66 Hz, 6 GB RAM, the above-mentioned graphics card and a 750 GB HDD. I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Oh and I have a POS 350W power supply.

 

I installed GPU-Z, RealTemp and SpeedFan. Surprise, surprise! Turned out one of my fans was dead. My power supply's fan had stopped working, result: case was overheating. CPU (all four cores) were running slightly hotter than normal because of the heat. What saved them was the working fan attached to the CPU. Another case fan was working but was hardly strong enough to do the job for the whole case or its components.

 

I took off the side panel, cleaned up inside and set up an external fan to help cool things down in there. Ran some tests, definitely noticed a performance improvement. I decided to try running GTA IV again. I was getting 25-35 FPS at the old settings so I tried bumping things up a bit. I now have them set at 1024x768, texture quality=medium, render quality=very high. The rest of the settings are: view distance=35, detail distance=40, vehicle density=30, shadow density=16. I'm now getting 20-25 FPS consistently without any unreasonable drops in framerate (barring heavy rain or very dark areas with ultra-bright areas). While my system should be capable of running the game at an even higher resolution (1280x1024 at least), I'm incredibly happy with things as they are now. Visually, it looks so much better and Niko's finally running instead of jogging in slow motion everywhere! I can't believe how easy it is to get a strike in bowling or win at pool now that the framerate is decent. Inside buildings, the FPS rises to around 30-35. Cut scenes are now in sync with the voices instead of lagging.

 

HP will be sending me a new power supply as I'm still under warranty. When I get and install that, I'll be contacting them to replace the video card as well. I tried to get them to consider sending both at once but they insist that the video problems will be resolved with the new PS. We'll see about that but I very much doubt it. The 9500GS is known to have serious fan issues. Since it's still overheating, even with an external fan blowing directly onto it and it's also still hot to the touch, it definitely needs to be replaced. Another fight for another day.

 

Very long post and my apologies for that but I thought it was worth a read as others may be experiencing similar issues which might be addressed by checking your case fans and video card GPU temps. My GPU was running as hot as 112 degrees C at times. Even when idle, it was running around 80-85.

 

Hope this proves helpful to someone. Good luck.