Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Hi all you awesome people! So I played GTA 4 last week on my old E4600 (2.4C2D) and weren't quite happy with my performance. So I went and got myself a Q8200 which was on special. After installing the CPU, about 7 new case fans etcetc I formatted and got XP Pro on a clean installation as recommended by you guys. I then installed 182* NVIDIA drivers and defragmented both my Windows drive and my games' drive. So when I benched GTA 4 my CPU usage finally dropped from 96% to 53%. My memory used for my GPU (9600GT) is at 79% and for my memory (3072MB DDRII 800MHz) on 65%. My temps are as follow (when idle) CPU - 33 degrees celcius. GPU - 35 degrees celcius. HDD - 25 degrees celcius. So it's not an overheating issue. Yet, I still get bad performance in game, I'm using 380/492 possible memory and still I'm getting constant lag. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeddyH Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 is the 9600GT brand new aswell, cos it maybe a hardware problem with the card Just a guess Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 First of all, the 182.XX drivers are horrible for IV. It's a known thing. Install something like 180.84, 185.20 or 181.22. Those are the best drivers for IV. Uninstall your drivers from Add/Remove Programs, restart your PC in Safe Mode (tap F8 when PC is booting up and select Safe Mode) and run DriverSweeper and then restart and install either the 180.84, 185.20 or the 181.22 drivers. Also, that quad is pretty crappy if you don't overclock it. So go ahead and overclock it as much as you can . At stock speeds, I don't think you'll see much improvement over the old processor you had because the clocks are just too low. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Had the 9600GT for about 6 months, but doubt that its faulty seeing as how it performs in other games. So which one of the NVIDIA updates would you recommend? As far as I know the 180.XX was released partly for GTA IV? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Like I said in my previous post, the 180.84, 185.20 and the 181.22 drivers are the best so far for IV. I've even linked to them . Oh and your card is certainly not faulty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jc84144 Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 What FPS are you getting? I remember after having the game, I upgraded to some new drivers that were released, and I got terrible stuttering, even though I was still getting 40 or 50fps. I reverted back to the drivers recommended by Nvidia for GTA IV and the problem went away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Warlord, I saw the links and downloaded, thanks. Was actually asking which of those 3 will be best. But I'll try the 185 drivers, I've read some people praising it and others hating it, if that doesn't fix my problem I'll give the 180 drivers a go. Thanks a lot for your input guys. @above post: Exactly! I get 30 - 40 fps but the game stutters to an almost unplayable level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkey82 Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 I tried GTAIV on Vista SP1 32bit, Windows7 64bit and XP SP3 (32bit). * On Vista I got rid of the sluttering after a clean install (it was possibly caused by some old ATI driver that left some "residue" that was a major pain in the but for GTA IV * on Windows7 I had rather smooth experience and as of lately (?) best overall FPS even though not with the latest driver. * On XP whatever I tried sluttering was there. Older driver, newer driver whatever. So, if viable for your current situation, try out Vista or Windows7. Do you have 3x1GB of RAM or 2x1GB+2x512MB? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
In_da_Houser=-420* Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Yeah I was on the 180.84 driver and it were ok but then I tried the new 182.08 drivers and I quickly went back to the first one, for me the 180.84 is still the very best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Do you have 3x1GB of RAM or 2x1GB+2x512MB? I have 3 X 1Gb. I only have Vista Business 32bit, will that work? I've been a long time XP user, but if I need Vista to sort this out then I'll install it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Out of the three drivers I recommended, the 181.22 is the best for IV and all games. It beats both of the other drivers in performance . Oh and I don't think this is an OS issue. Try out the drivers first. Oh and have you cleaned out your system lately? Get a can of compressed air and clean out the entire PC, everything including the inside of the PSU . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkey82 Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Do you have 3x1GB of RAM or 2x1GB+2x512MB? I have 3 X 1Gb. I only have Vista Business 32bit, will that work? I've been a long time XP user, but if I need Vista to sort this out then I'll install it. IMO a clean OS install can not hurt. Also, you could get one more gig of RAM and then run 4 sticks in proper DDR. Lek I said, more OS'es you try, more you find out about GTA IV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Warlord: I keep my pc as clean and neat as possible, and that goes for hardware and software. mkey82: It is a clean installation, XP Pro SP3. Let me try the nvidia drivers when I get home and I'll get back to you guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 USING 182.06 DRIVERS Average FPS: 34.16 Duration: 37.24 sec CPU Usage: 61% System memory usage: 56% Video memory usage: 84% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 960 (60 Hz) Texture Quality: Medium Render Quality: Medium Reflection Resolution: Medium Water Quality: Medium Shadow Quality: Medium View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 20 USING 181.22 DRIVERS Average FPS: 44.31 Duration: 37.21 sec CPU Usage: 57% System memory usage: 49% Video memory usage: 77% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 960 (60 Hz) Texture Quality: Medium Render Quality: High Reflection Resolution: Medium Water Quality: Medium Shadow Quality: Medium View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 20 That is literally the ONLY thing I changed, and finally I can actually feel that my fps is what it says, NO more stuttering! I'm going to increase my settings now, since the game runs beautifully. They should sticky a message saying "DON'T USE 182.XX!" Thanks a million Warlord. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 No problem man. Glad to see it worked . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris1508 Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 (edited) ive got Q8200 @ 2.33, GeForce 9500 GS (I Need A Better One, I Think) and 3 gigs of ram, runs at 43 fps average and never drops below 30 since i downloaded the 185.20 driver. Textures, Shadows and Rendering Quality at high and the rest medium, the game is well playable for me and i enjoy it alot! Statistics Average FPS: 43.41 Duration: 37.11 sec CPU Usage: 79% System memory usage: 67% Video memory usage: 100% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1024 x 768 (60 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest Reflection Resolution: Medium Water Quality: Medium Shadow Quality: High View Distance: 30 Detail Distance: 30 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Home Premium Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS Video Driver version: 185.20 Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz Edited March 10, 2009 by Chris1508 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 I have two more questions though: 1) I don't really see a drop in fps when I turn Video Capture on, does it use a lot of resources? Because I can see how it can be awesome to use. 2) Also, I haven't really done a lot of searching for the shortcut key to take screenshots. What is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris1508 Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 I have two more questions though: 1) I don't really see a drop in fps when I turn Video Capture on, does it use a lot of resources? Because I can see how it can be awesome to use. 2) Also, I haven't really done a lot of searching for the shortcut key to take screenshots. What is it? A1) There is no drop at all with video capture.... it is very fun to use and make movies just remember that it only saves your last actions between 30 - 60 secs A2) uhm im not sure, i just use the video editor and get a nice angle and press Print Screen and paste it into Paint lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tajmo Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Wait! Can I change angles etc in the video editor? Like change to cinematic view? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
