RodC Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 I have noticed that not all games are equal when I load up GTA4. Sometimes the game starts out pretty smooth, and sometimes it will be a lagfest. Sometimes it will be somewhere in between. This is with all the same settings, no changes whatsoever. Each time I load up the game, it will be hit or miss whether I get a "good start" or not. It can sometimes take 3 or 4 reloads before I get that nice smoothness that lets me enjoy the game. I have an SLI card setup to I was wondering if that has something to do with it. I have also noticed that about 50% of the time, the game will start up all wacky and flickering. It's as if one card renders the game and the other card gets stuck rendering the load screen (the one with the characters). When this happens, I have to quit or the flickering will give me an epileptic fit (and I don't have epilepsy). It would just be nice to have consistency. I know that "Rockstar has stated this game does not currently support SLI", so don't tell me that again. It just seems like the game does give a boost with SLI, but only if SLI engages correctly on startup, and whether or not that happens is completely left up to chance and luck. Anyone else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noid449 Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 i do find mine runs ok mostly , some times i got the rstar start up signs moving slowly back but now with new drivers seems ok has been since 184 84 im using the 185.20 now whql drivers all working , maybe its just the pc is busy doing other tasks sometimes ? altho sometimes the loading screens on the characther pages is longer but never over the music time im loaded and in safe house before music runs out , before it was silent as it loaded Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodC Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 I have killed all unwanted startup processes and all unwanted services so my computer is as "lean" as can be. Idle physical memory usage is only 165MB. I have turned off all scheduled tasks, so the system is not a variable. It is always in a constant state. The only variable is the way GTA4 interfaces with the graphics cards. The usage of my graphics cards varies greatly between each launch of GTA4. Sometimes, on a good launch, the usage will be heavy. Sometimes when I have a laggy launch, the statistics will show that my graphics cards are not being utilized as they should. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noid449 Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 yeah i got ya , it seems that way. i think thats the main issue with the game, it just does what it want when it wants LOL , well sorry i cant help too much just try messing with drivers reinstall them and try different sli setups afr afr2 etc , im sure you already have, but thats what i did and seems to be working ok for now. good luck ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inline6 Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 I have noticed that not all games are equal when I load up GTA4. Sometimes the game starts out pretty smooth, and sometimes it will be a lagfest. Sometimes it will be somewhere in between. This is with all the same settings, no changes whatsoever. Each time I load up the game, it will be hit or miss whether I get a "good start" or not. It can sometimes take 3 or 4 reloads before I get that nice smoothness that lets me enjoy the game. I have an SLI card setup to I was wondering if that has something to do with it. I have also noticed that about 50% of the time, the game will start up all wacky and flickering. It's as if one card renders the game and the other card gets stuck rendering the load screen (the one with the characters). When this happens, I have to quit or the flickering will give me an epileptic fit (and I don't have epilepsy). It would just be nice to have consistency. I know that "Rockstar has stated this game does not currently support SLI", so don't tell me that again. It just seems like the game does give a boost with SLI, but only if SLI engages correctly on startup, and whether or not that happens is completely left up to chance and luck. Anyone else? I have the same issue with the flickering. When I first started playing the game, all I would do is change my res and than change it back again. That would fix it everytime. But now it will not go away. I have been playing the game for two weeks. And to be totally honest, beside the flickering the game ran great. I was really enjoying the game. But, now I am at a stand still. I guess I will just wait for the patch Hopefully they get it soon. I have not downloaded the 181.20 drivers to see of that makes a difference. I would like to see what Nvidia comes up with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSD T Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Weirdly, SLi on definately improves (for want of a better word...) performance, the annoying thing really is the unstable framerates when just in the startup page upon initial load pre-game, it will constantly fluctuate between 56-70 odd, in the options pages it will fly around 200-500FPS, all this while doing nothing with the mouse or keyboard. Incidently, turning on SLi; regardless of shadows settings 1-16, will disable the night time shadows for me (on a few of the driver sets I've used), but thats no loss though still weird. The flickering is known apparently as z-fighting, seems to sort itself out after 2 or 3 seconds, on occasion it wont sort itself at all, hence all your irregular behaviour mentioned above, some games run relatively smoothly other times jusrt a slide show, each occasion a fresh boot of the same OS. My concern is the complete lack of Z-occlusion, the evidence, when in for example the pool game bit, just look at the wall and hardly 1FPS increase, it clearly renders all around you whether it is or is not on display. I recall starting a game in the flat to find it struggling at 22FPS (normal is 70 odd FPS), when I went down the stairs I discovered it was raining, if you can call that slack bitty fuzz on-screen rendered rain that is. Reloaded a different save game in same session and 70 FPS, there was no rain with that save, now that is shocking. Yeah there is plenty of scope for improvement, only we haven't heard a f*cking single word, this alone is enough to cause concern. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodC Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 I have the shadow issue too. When SLI is turned on, all dynamic shadows are lost (shadows of movable objects - trash cans, peds in car headlights, etc.). The framerates are better with SLI turned on sometimes. Like I said above, for me it's just a case of reloading until the SLI engages properly. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck on one card only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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