How I play GTA4 smoothly for 5+ hours at a time

[cutthroat_tactics]

Hello there. I signed up for this forum after reading it since the beginning of December, because I'd been having problems with Grand Theft Auto 4 for PC right out of the box. I bought the game about 3 days after it was released, and was annoyed that it caused so many problems but still was determined to get it running smoothly. Then, after a lot of tweaking the options and trial and error, I have solved all problems for my own game and will give the list of things I've done to play the game with PS3 type graphics for hours at a time without annoying crashes or lagging at crucial times. The 3.5 .NET Framework seems to have helped out the stability alot, and I close down all processes in the task manager except the ones you need to keep the computer running, and use that new AMD Fusion program. I also have the side of my tower open, and two desktop fans pointing at my system. One at the video card, and another at the hard drives. This combination has allowed me to play for long amounts of time and make me lose track of hours because I'm on a kickass crime spree.

 

First of all, here are my PC specs-

Windows XP Home Edition

Service Pack 3

.NET Framework 3.5

AMD 64 Athlon X2 2.7 Ghz processor

2 GB Ram

ATI Radeon 3650 512 MB graphics card

 

Here is what my commandline.txt looks like.

-memrestrict 1029145600 -novblank -minspecaudio -availablevidmem 1.0 -percentvidmem 1.0 -windowed -width=1024 -height=768 -DX9

 

Putting a memory restriction on the game seems to help the framerate, but after trying a couple different numbers, this one seemed to work. I play in with windowed mode on, but at 1024X768 for desktop and GTA4 and its still fullscreen, at settings of Medium textures at Low rendering and about 17 view distance and 10-15 vehicle density. I could go higher resolution and settings, but these work for me. My framerate is steady for hours and I don't get that "memory leak" symptom anymore. If you have close to my specs or better, you should be able to play this game even better than a console. Give these settings a try and see if they work for your comp.

Edited January 21, 2009 by cutthroat_tactics

[chngdman]

 

-memrestrict 1029145600 -novblank -minspecaudio -availablevidmem 1 -percentvidmem .99 -windowed -width=800 -height=600 -DX9

 

-availablevidmem 1 <--useless in your CMD

 

-percentvidmem .99 <-- lol

 

-novblank -minspecaudio <--- your main gain, especially vertical sync being set to off in windowed mode.

[cutthroat_tactics]

Well how do you set the command for available video memory then? Not that .99 makes a difference in quality, but the video card only works at 75-80% according to the benchmark test. I'll put both commands up to 100%. the minspecaudio setting stops the weird audio glitches I kept getting, especially starting or switching radio stations. novblank helps too with not limiting the vertical sync for when quickly spinning around with the camera when you're getting shot at.

I also tried out -noprecache a couple times, but I would play a random amount of time, and then buildings would stop loading in front of me and stay the lowest detail and then a couple seconds later would freeze. It needs to cache the textures and objects a couple blocks in front of you or else it will probably crash eventually.

 

I just made this thread to show that it is possible to play a consistent, smooth game session without things going wrong. It's a list of things I installed and set up to get GTA4 running great the way it's meant to be. Also, defragment all hard drives and make sure background stuff isn't running while the game is. Test it out using these kind of settings (And XP service pack 3 and .NET Framework 3.5 for XP) and hopefully it would work for you too. Most serious PC gamers have better systems than mine, and "should" be able to play this better than a console's default graphics. As long as there weren't any errors in the installation. You have nothing to lose, if you can barely play it anyway.

 

edit- (Also, I lowered most voltage settings one notch in my BIOS so that it wasn't shorting out or overworking my CPU and stuff. This might have helped too. The game had caused my comp to restart randomly before from overheating or some kind of voltage problem, so it seemed to work.)

Edited January 21, 2009 by cutthroat_tactics

[FakeJ66]

Hey cool!

It also worked for me.

Before i was playing just for 5-10 minutes and it crashed.

Last time i played 2 h without crashes!

 

 

p.s.: i also cleaned my cpu fan and chassis fan.

[logitechdog]

really if your shooting fans at your pc with a open case, thats just to see if your cooling sucks or airflow, you should think about sorting out its airflow, or seeing if a fan is blowing hot air back into your system, or canceling out the airflow, this can be caused by not cable tying your leads together and maybe placing a fan near the hdd, can pull the front off the pc and stick one there, as they is normally holes near the hdds, and if they is not then just make one to screw the fan on so it blows air over the hdds...

 

[cutthroat_tactics]

Both of the fans I use are pointed at a 45 degree angle towards the back of the tower (one tall narrow fan on my 2 hard drives and another foot by foot wide desktop fan towards the graphics card and RAM), so the airflow is circulating into the tower and then out through any open slots in back. I took that little fan above the PCI slots out also because it was dying, so there's a big square opening with holes for more air movement. The CPU fan is not being restricted, and it blows the warm air into the "air current". I've noticed framerate improvements in PC games, and longer playing times because of it.

 

I see what you mean though logitechdog. If you have fans blowing out, and then another fan blowing straight at the tower, it can't send warm air anywhere and it stays in the tower, not helping at all.

 

And to FakeJ66, good to hear that it's working for some people. It's just a rough guideline, but I figured if I can play it at PS3/Xbox 360 quality with my 'middle of the line' gaming system, then hardcore gamers shouldn't be having this much trouble keeping a smooth framerate. Even though the problem was on Rockstar Toronto's end somehow, not the consumers.

 

P.S. If you have the -nomemrestrict or -norestrictions commands in your commandline, it might be causing more trouble than you think. I had those for a while and every time, I'd play for 5 to 30 minutes and the textures would stop loading and then the game would freeze right after I noticed the textures look like MS Paint hell. The buildings and models would just pop-in at random occasions too. With the -memrestrict command and any number around the one I mentioned above (I cranked it up to around 10 GB i think. Seems to keep every object in the game in system memory then.), the buildings stay loaded after you've been past them once and just go to the lowest Level of Detail when its out of your view range. Stuff doesn't pop up out of nowhere for me at all.