GTA IV is not a bad port. Not even a port.

January 16, 2009

Thales100 - And how do you explain the much higher GFX quality of the game when running on PC ? If it was the same game being emulated it should look very similar, at most.

Much higher?

You clearly have no standards.

The texture resolution increase is the most basic of things to implement, the optimisation, now that's wjhere the work is, however they have done nothing to suggest any work was put into that.

Of course we now have a supa-dupa video editor, an advertising device where we the mugs/customers create the ads on Rockstars behalf.

At best this game is badly ported, and there is nothing in the 'quality' of PC version that disproves the theory of it being emulated.

At worst it's a badly poorly constructed emulation, it's just that the game runs so badly when the machine is so powerful that people feel its emulated, anyone can see that.

Not exactly a dramatic leap in thought process from the sh*t game performance we have to the conclusion it may be a cheap emulation, it's certainly cheaply done whether port or not.

Then again, unfortunately for me, I don't get a massive 40FPS like the others here who claim great performance in the strangely sparse benchmark... so I clearly don't know what it's like to have this smooth trouble free game running, I only get 62+FPS in benchmark, I probably need a better PC or need to work on my configuration skills of the OS et cetera

I honestly believe that there is no problem with coding in GTA IV at all. I guess i'm one of the lucky ones who never had a crash. I do not use any tweaks for vista or have never tweaked the game by moding its files.

My graphic settings:

High/highest/30/30/100/0

commandline.txt

-availablevidmem 1.6

Statistics

Average FPS: 45.66

Duration: 37.06 sec

CPU Usage: 77%

System memory usage: 70%

Video memory usage: 98%

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: Highest

View Distance: 30

Detail Distance: 30

Hardware

Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate

Service Pack 1

Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Video Driver version: 181.20

Audio Adapter: Speakers/HP (IDT High Definition Audio CODEC)

Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

In game it maintains around 35fps in most parts, 27-28 in more dense areas and is still very playable. My quad core cpu helps out alot but i realised that my graphic card is the cause of the slowdowns, its just not powerful enough. I have my eyes on the ATI 4870X2

I have finished GTA IV for the third time yesterday and got to 100%, so in total prob around 150 hrs total play time without a single error or crash, no blurry textures. I can safely say that GTA IV ruined gaming for me. I might probably never go back to playing games like far cry 2, COD World at War and BIA: Hells Highway because of their cartoon like graphics. Yea they run at like steady 60fps but graphically the look so old...

Guess im gonna have to wait for Mafia 2 and GTA V to start gaming again.

btw the graphic quality of the pc version is much higher than that of the xbox360. I have played both versions on the same screen and the difference in texture quality is clearly visable.

January 16, 2009

I'm not going to defend myself as I see no need for it. All I can say is hopefully one of you listen and lower your bloody resolution down, this has a nice jump performance wise...if not, well, continue to bitch and moan about a game that seems to work otherwise fine when you don't expect your PC to be able to run it like a dream at some high ass resolution.

thing is a lot of cards mid to high ends card perform better at higher resolutions as thats what they were designed to do.

i see no performance loss going from the lowest to my old resolution of 1680x1050 and now i don't see any performance loss running in 1920x1080 apart from the game limiting my draw distance to a really low number - which when the limit is removed again i see no performance drop.

it's all well and good saying "drop your resolution" but when the game doesn't act like a normal game when it comes to settings and also doesn;t act the same from pc to pc based on specs there is something going wrong.

I'm not complaining as it runs fine on my mid-end pc also (i would like a bit more performance though), but when the game seemingly doesn't behave the way it should you can't help but think it wasn't optimised that well no matter what side of the debate you stand on.

January 16, 2009

I'm not going to defend myself as I see no need for it. All I can say is hopefully one of you listen and lower your bloody resolution down, this has a nice jump performance wise...if not, well, continue to bitch and moan about a game that seems to work otherwise fine when you don't expect your PC to be able to run it like a dream at some high ass resolution.

thing is a lot of cards mid to high ends card perform better at higher resolutions as thats what they were designed to do.

i see no performance loss going from the lowest to my old resolution of 1680x1050 and now i don't see any performance loss running in 1920x1080 apart from the game limiting my draw distance to a really low number - which when the limit is removed again i see no performance drop.

it's all well and good saying "drop your resolution" but when the game doesn't act like a normal game when it comes to settings and also doesn;t act the same from pc to pc based on specs there is something going wrong.

I'm not complaining as it runs fine on my mid-end pc also (i would like a bit more performance though), but when the game seemingly doesn't behave the way it should you can't help but think it wasn't optimised that well no matter what side of the debate you stand on.

Well that is what helped my performance by a great deal, but figuring from the posts this far...you are the only one that has tried it, figure giving it a try can't hurt, right?

As well I never did say it wasn't poorly optimized, as it is along with just about every game that came out in the last year...the problem is most are comparing GTAIV to the likes of Crysis or some other visually stunning game that doesn't use the same engine, like I explained previously: You can always make a pretty good game out of an engine that has been used over and over because most know how to build with that engine, you cannot expect the same caliber from a completly new engine. There are a few games that are notable for this when the developers used a new engine, BF2 off the top of my head was a piss poor game on release and still has the same bugs graphically that it had when it was released. You can't compare sh*t to sh*t on a wall...it doesn't work like that.

January 16, 2009

I'm not going to defend myself as I see no need for it. All I can say is hopefully one of you listen and lower your bloody resolution down, this has a nice jump performance wise...if not, well, continue to bitch and moan about a game that seems to work otherwise fine when you don't expect your PC to be able to run it like a dream at some high ass resolution.

thing is a lot of cards mid to high ends card perform better at higher resolutions as thats what they were designed to do.

i see no performance loss going from the lowest to my old resolution of 1680x1050 and now i don't see any performance loss running in 1920x1080 apart from the game limiting my draw distance to a really low number - which when the limit is removed again i see no performance drop.

it's all well and good saying "drop your resolution" but when the game doesn't act like a normal game when it comes to settings and also doesn;t act the same from pc to pc based on specs there is something going wrong.

I'm not complaining as it runs fine on my mid-end pc also (i would like a bit more performance though), but when the game seemingly doesn't behave the way it should you can't help but think it wasn't optimised that well no matter what side of the debate you stand on.

Well that is what helped my performance by a great deal, but figuring from the posts this far...you are the only one that has tried it, figure giving it a try can't hurt, right?

As well I never did say it wasn't poorly optimized, as it is along with just about every game that came out in the last year...the problem is most are comparing GTAIV to the likes of Crysis or some other visually stunning game that doesn't use the same engine, like I explained previously: You can always make a pretty good game out of an engine that has been used over and over because most know how to build with that engine, you cannot expect the same caliber from a completly new engine. There are a few games that are notable for this when the developers used a new engine, BF2 off the top of my head was a piss poor game on release and still has the same bugs graphically that it had when it was released. You can't compare sh*t to sh*t on a wall...it doesn't work like that.

i agree except this isn't a new engine it's based off an old engine they've used before custom built by r* themselves and the developers of GTA IV also put input into what they wanted and what they wanted it to do..

i understand they can't get it 100% right on a new engine, but i'd expect them to do a little better on an engine they designed themselves for the specific purpose of this game (and other games but as far as i know majority of development on rage was based around GTA).

I know that using a new engine can be very hard especially if rockstar toronto were not actually included in the development of the engine like r* north were aka they got dumped with a new engine and told to figure it out on the PC in a relatively short amount of time.

But the seemingly random performance issues - along with the complete silence of Rockstar themselves is what i don't like.

i remember bf2 when it first came out my p4 struggled so hard playing it and it slowly got better the more they patched it (still was a laggy POS but that was mainly due to the netcode) - but atleast EA announced patching quickly and kept the community informed. Games are based around the community surrounding them - if you want us to buy future installments, buy add ons etc then talk to us, it's all we want and would put all this to rest.

January 16, 2009

I'm not going to defend myself as I see no need for it. All I can say is hopefully one of you listen and lower your bloody resolution down, this has a nice jump performance wise...if not, well, continue to bitch and moan about a game that seems to work otherwise fine when you don't expect your PC to be able to run it like a dream at some high ass resolution.

thing is a lot of cards mid to high ends card perform better at higher resolutions as thats what they were designed to do.

i see no performance loss going from the lowest to my old resolution of 1680x1050 and now i don't see any performance loss running in 1920x1080 apart from the game limiting my draw distance to a really low number - which when the limit is removed again i see no performance drop.

it's all well and good saying "drop your resolution" but when the game doesn't act like a normal game when it comes to settings and also doesn;t act the same from pc to pc based on specs there is something going wrong.

I'm not complaining as it runs fine on my mid-end pc also (i would like a bit more performance though), but when the game seemingly doesn't behave the way it should you can't help but think it wasn't optimised that well no matter what side of the debate you stand on.

Well that is what helped my performance by a great deal, but figuring from the posts this far...you are the only one that has tried it, figure giving it a try can't hurt, right?

As well I never did say it wasn't poorly optimized, as it is along with just about every game that came out in the last year...the problem is most are comparing GTAIV to the likes of Crysis or some other visually stunning game that doesn't use the same engine, like I explained previously: You can always make a pretty good game out of an engine that has been used over and over because most know how to build with that engine, you cannot expect the same caliber from a completly new engine. There are a few games that are notable for this when the developers used a new engine, BF2 off the top of my head was a piss poor game on release and still has the same bugs graphically that it had when it was released. You can't compare sh*t to sh*t on a wall...it doesn't work like that.

i agree except this isn't a new engine it's based off an old engine they've used before custom built by r* themselves and the developers of GTA IV also put input into what they wanted and what they wanted it to do..

i understand they can't get it 100% right on a new engine, but i'd expect them to do a little better on an engine they designed themselves for the specific purpose of this game (and other games but as far as i know majority of development on rage was based around GTA).

I know that using a new engine can be very hard especially if rockstar toronto were not actually included in the development of the engine like r* north were aka they got dumped with a new engine and told to figure it out on the PC in a relatively short amount of time.

But the seemingly random performance issues - along with the complete silence of Rockstar themselves is what i don't like.

i remember bf2 when it first came out my p4 struggled so hard playing it and it slowly got better the more they patched it (still was a laggy POS but that was mainly due to the netcode) - but atleast EA announced patching quickly and kept the community informed. Games are based around the community surrounding them - if you want us to buy future installments, buy add ons etc then talk to us, it's all we want and would put all this to rest.

Well that and Euphoria, I was on about Euphoria as it isn't a widely used engine right now...and I think the more games that use it will see the same performance wise until they are used to the engine, and by that time a new engine would of came along that they can try and work with which will land right back to this point. Game engines are ever-evolving and with that I would think the community would have more patience with problems, as well some issues (such as not being able to run the game period) should be addressed quickly...and I agree that Rockstar has done a rather terrible job at keeping the community informed.

And EA rarely if ever listened to their community with BF2, trust me...I was apart of that community. They never did fix up the netcode, nor did they ever balance out the absolute crap frags. Though they tweaked with my heli enough to make it damn near useless, lol.

January 16, 2009

I'm not going to defend myself as I see no need for it. All I can say is hopefully one of you listen and lower your bloody resolution down, this has a nice jump performance wise...if not, well, continue to bitch and moan about a game that seems to work otherwise fine when you don't expect your PC to be able to run it like a dream at some high ass resolution.

thing is a lot of cards mid to high ends card perform better at higher resolutions as thats what they were designed to do.

i see no performance loss going from the lowest to my old resolution of 1680x1050 and now i don't see any performance loss running in 1920x1080 apart from the game limiting my draw distance to a really low number - which when the limit is removed again i see no performance drop.

it's all well and good saying "drop your resolution" but when the game doesn't act like a normal game when it comes to settings and also doesn;t act the same from pc to pc based on specs there is something going wrong.

I'm not complaining as it runs fine on my mid-end pc also (i would like a bit more performance though), but when the game seemingly doesn't behave the way it should you can't help but think it wasn't optimised that well no matter what side of the debate you stand on.

Well that is what helped my performance by a great deal, but figuring from the posts this far...you are the only one that has tried it, figure giving it a try can't hurt, right?

As well I never did say it wasn't poorly optimized, as it is along with just about every game that came out in the last year...the problem is most are comparing GTAIV to the likes of Crysis or some other visually stunning game that doesn't use the same engine, like I explained previously: You can always make a pretty good game out of an engine that has been used over and over because most know how to build with that engine, you cannot expect the same caliber from a completly new engine. There are a few games that are notable for this when the developers used a new engine, BF2 off the top of my head was a piss poor game on release and still has the same bugs graphically that it had when it was released. You can't compare sh*t to sh*t on a wall...it doesn't work like that.

i agree except this isn't a new engine it's based off an old engine they've used before custom built by r* themselves and the developers of GTA IV also put input into what they wanted and what they wanted it to do..

i understand they can't get it 100% right on a new engine, but i'd expect them to do a little better on an engine they designed themselves for the specific purpose of this game (and other games but as far as i know majority of development on rage was based around GTA).

I know that using a new engine can be very hard especially if rockstar toronto were not actually included in the development of the engine like r* north were aka they got dumped with a new engine and told to figure it out on the PC in a relatively short amount of time.

But the seemingly random performance issues - along with the complete silence of Rockstar themselves is what i don't like.

i remember bf2 when it first came out my p4 struggled so hard playing it and it slowly got better the more they patched it (still was a laggy POS but that was mainly due to the netcode) - but atleast EA announced patching quickly and kept the community informed. Games are based around the community surrounding them - if you want us to buy future installments, buy add ons etc then talk to us, it's all we want and would put all this to rest.

Well that and Euphoria, I was on about Euphoria as it isn't a widely used engine right now...and I think the more games that use it will see the same performance wise until they are used to the engine, and by that time a new engine would of came along that they can try and work with which will land right back to this point. Game engines are ever-evolving and with that I would think the community would have more patience with problems, as well some issues (such as not being able to run the game period) should be addressed quickly...and I agree that Rockstar has done a rather terrible job at keeping the community informed.

And EA rarely if ever listened to their community with BF2, trust me...I was apart of that community. They never did fix up the netcode, nor did they ever balance out the absolute crap frags. Though they tweaked with my heli enough to make it damn near useless, lol.

lol i know they were actually piss poor at patching bf2 but atleast dice tried - if was an EA employee i wouldn't be able to work to the best of my abilities anyway - EA overworks its staff to the point of collapse.

I remember the heli tweaks lol i couldn't fly them before hand let alone after (i still play bf2 btw), although they never listened to the community they atleast informed us of what they were doing though and fixed bugs and crashes - which is what they should do as a basic level of support, actually listening to the community though is an extra level of support only some games developers bother with, which can be understandable as if they did they would have to wade through loads of utter sh*te posted by 12 year olds about having a secret banana rocket launcher that "owns" everything.

January 16, 2009

All in all, I know for a FACT there are many *educated* people having issues. Now, when you point your finger at me and say"YOU" it makes me a bit cranky because it seems to me as you want to make it about me. Like if I was some stupid kid who based all of his opinions on his own personal experience. Like if the world revolved around me. It doesn't. I'm not that person and I'm not doing that. You also tried to make it about my supposedly slow and weak machine, which in fact it isn't. Even if the CPU load scaling theory is correct (oh god), are the minimum settings in GTA IV too much for my machine to handle? Shouldn't I be getting better performance on minimum no matter what (as opposing some low med settings, if my machine is really to weak to handle medium)? Come on!

Actually posting the load scaling theory was funny. But I think I should clarify this for you guys.

Probably is another reason but it doesn't alter the fact that 70% of 4.2GHz is faster than 70% of 3.0GHz.

If I have a 800 mhz processor playing Age of Empires and gameplay is rather smooth by this point and if you have a quad core 3.0 ghz rather smooth gameplay and we compare cpu usage, we'll notice something interesting.

1.) The game will only use what it is programmed to use.

2.) You can modify this however it still shows code is the source.

Now let's say I get a game that actually has multithreading code, I have a 5.2 ghz single core. And you have a quad-core 2.0. Well well, we both have smooth gameplay. What is there to say now?

Regardless... If I have a quad-core or infinite core... AND if the game was designed to only use one core then it doesn't matter how fast your cpu is. It is NOT using all of it's resources.

So if you wonder why people are not completely using their bad-ass processors to help make GTA 4 run smooth, Please by all means refer to the above.

As for you chngdman, let me make a scenario for you (It's based on what you know and what you have posted all over the threads). A client comes to your door-step and asks that you look at his computer and explain to him why his GTA 4 isn't working correctly and the performance is very poor.

1.) You tried erasing, formatting, and reinstalling Windows XP, and Vista

2.) You tried updating latest drivers, patches and other countless tweaks.

3.) You upgraded the computer with way "MORE THAN COMFORTABLE SPECS".

4.) You repeat the process.

5.) You don't tell the customer why it doesn't seem to work well and that it has performance problems. Instead you argue with him and tell him off.

The client is very MAD, you wasted his time and money. And then he appears at my door-step.

1.) I ask him what you did.

2.) I clearify what he doesn't know and should by this point. I also apologize for the inconvience and wasted time he had to go through.

3.) I tell him you should wait until the game is patched properly. And if it doesn't get a different game.

So?

January 16, 2009