Late thank you to R* Toronto

[daxlax]

 

 

I was one of those seething gamers when I got my game on release day. I couldn't believe that despite having a fairly powerful machine I couldn't crank the game up to extreme levels without the FPS being in the low 20's range. I ranted at the screen while checking these forums for "magical fixes" and spent weeks on commandlines. I gave up on the game it wasn't enjoyable and none of these fixes did much apart from adding an extra 1 or 2 FPS big whoop.

 

So skipping ahead a few weeks...

 

flicking through the game shelf one day I pulled out GTA IV again thinking what a big dissapointment it had been after the lengthy wait to play it. I sat down at my desk and thought about what my honest expectations from this game was when it was announced.

 

Conclusion : - Straight console port with better resolution,textures and A.A (which is sadly missing)

 

So I turned down all my settings similar to the console settings with slight improvements like this..

 

Screen : 1280 x 1024

View Distance : 25

Detail Distance : 25

Vechile Density : 40

Shadows : 16

Textures : Medium

Render : Highest

 

I'm using a quad setup with a heavy oc 8800gt and at these settings the game is INCREDIBLE I'm loving it! I don't really notice the loss of some cars in traffic or details in the distance being less when your driving along at SMOOTH 30 and over FPS. It's a good added bonus not having to piss about with commandline files and despite what looks like "low settings" I still got more going on my screen at any given time over the console version.

 

Thank you R* Toronto for delivering me the game I was hoping for...it took a while but we got there in the end.

 

 

 

 

[nemesi5]

Umm, 16 Shadow is very very way overboard. Your machine is not that great, people with GTX 280's struggle with this game. I have a 9800GTX+ and I can't play at your framerate

[PacMaan]

I know kinda what he's saying though - once i stopped kidding myself about how good it should look and set the gfx to slightly-above-console settings, i managed to get it to settle down to a playable 25-30fps.

[frodo baggins]

Indeed it's easy to put everything at high settings but it's important to see the bigger picture. I spent ages trying to get things to work at high, but it wasn't worth it, and besides medium doesn't look all that much worse

[konag]

I just used the default it gave and me and I think it looks incredible at medium textures, maybe I'm just easily impressed.

[OabAli]

You might also wanna increase yoor detail distance to at least 50. Only small decreases in framerate, about 1 - 2 FPS, for better rendering of farther objects.

 

Funny thing, my PC runs GTA IV better at 1280 x 960 resolution than at 1024 x 768. I used to get constant framerates of 16 - 18 or 20 - 25 FPS (depending on location), but is now usually 20 - 35 FPS, rarely dipping down to 17 FPS.

[daxlax]

Umm, 16 Shadow is very very way overboard. Your machine is not that great, people with GTX 280's struggle with this game. I have a 9800GTX+ and I can't play at your framerate

 

I didn't mean for my orginial post to sound like I was boasting/bragging it wasn't my intention. I wasn't trying to say my computer competes with the ones at NASA or anything lol. I meant "fairly powerful" as in not the best but good enough when compared to the required specs wanted for GTA IV to run. I don't know why your having problems running the game to console like standard? I don't know the rest of the system though so it's hard to judge on the graphics card alone.

 

my orginial post was basically about my own anal arrogance about how the game "should" be looking as Paccman said. Once I swallowed my pride and turned down the game to console like settings witjh slight improvements...the joy and fun of the game just flowed. It's still the GTA IV that came out back in April that I was so envious of and would of chewed there hands off for a straight PC port - so why is the story different now?

 

Was it Rockstar that was physically holding a gun to my head that I should be playing the game at 10x the settings? no

 

I took the tips from this thread though turned down the shadows to 3 which gave me 1-2 FPS boost and I tried turning up the distance which took it away again lol - but has indeed improved the look of the game so thank you all for those tips .

 

 

 

 

[JeffPwick]

9800gtx+, e8500 @ 4ghz, playing with all to the max, but detail distance @ 70, 0shadow. ~25-30fps

 

this really does not look like a nasa pc, does it.

[nynth.plague]

0 shadow?

 

i must try this...

 

i have the spec in my sig... All maxed out running @ 1024x1280 and i get 25fps... but it dips driving... dips hardcore.

 

i shall tweak... but i love the High Textures to much man.

[ArecBalrin]

As far as I am able to tell, even the highest settings in GTA IV are hardly 'extreme levels'.

 

Regardless of what settings you opt to use, the game does not perform as it should relative to the hardware thrown at it. You might not have thought you were boasting, but the characterisation of critics as people asking for too much is getting old and I expect there will be plenty more people using the "I used to be one of the complainers..." angle.