The usual: invisible textures

[Tritous]

Well I've had GTA4 sitting on a shelf for a while waiting for me to get some free time (and for that matter a new computer). Now I know I've got a decent piece of kit, it should be having no problems with GTA 4.

 

At first the performance was a joke, but that's because installers STILL seem to copy files across in fragments. A defrag sorted out a lot of performance issues (although the HD is the weak point in the performace and will be until Solid States become affordable). I setup the settings, although I was rather shocked at how it stopped me from having a decent draw distance on the high graphics with my Sapphire HD4870. Still, it was very high graphics, it was understandable....

 

And then about 5 minutes later I'm driving on an invisible road between invisible walls, I can see every car and lamppost in the city, but nothing else but water. Need it be said that is impossible to navigate. It seems this isn't an unheard of problem either, possibly related to a memory leak overfilling the GRAM and taking up room for needed textures? This seems supported since it lasts longer before glitching with the textures on low (except shadow, low shadow detail really looks lousy). It is also supported by the fact that when I minimise then reopen the game (the context shift clears out and reloads the 3d environment) the textures restore mostly.

 

Obviously this isn't an impressive view of the game. Now there have been PLENTY of similar complaints it seems but I've not managed to see any real solutions or fixes. Has a solution been found but I've not found it? or is the game still FUBAR?

 

Before anyone suggests it I am up to date on drivers, updates, game patchesm service packs and bios flashes. The game is running off the original genuine cd (had to disable my daemon tools, but as useful as that was for installing my computer from predownloaded service packs, i've not used virtual drives since) and is a legal copy without cracks, modifications or any other deviations from original.

 

 

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Q9400 (quad, 2.66 GHz)

Asus P5Q3 Duluxe motherboard, onboard SoundMAX HD audio

2GB Corsair DDR3 ram (2x1GB matched, 1333Mhz), 5GB VRAM (with a limit of up to 11GB) with most of it on my spare HD to avoid it hogging the primary disk.

Sapphire HD4870 graphics card: 1GB RAM (and if this card isn't enough to run the game then there aren't many single cards that can)

Usual extras: dvd drives, HDs, etc.

 

Running Windows XP64, latest everything, .net 3.5, my catalyst control centre is working nicely, latest media player codec updates. Only other big system install is visual studio 08, but I wouldnt expect that to effect graphical issues

[Subversion1337]

if you turn up the settings beyond the memory capacity of your video card you will get missing textures.

 

don't use command lines and keep the memory usage green.

 

P.S. there is no video card on the market that can run GTA IV at max settings. you would need a single card (not dual core) with 2 or 3 GB RAM... that doesn't exist.

[Tritous]

well as you can see I've got a 1gb card and with low settings such as I'm at I'm only using 433mb (or so it claims, if it is a memory leak thats just the amount it starts off at using)

 

I did try the "windowed mode" method but since that was no help either I'm back to running normally without command line parameters and having to minimise every 5-20 minutes (depending on how fast im travelling) to force a reload of textures

[Subversion1337]

 

well as you can see I've got a 1gb card and with low settings such as I'm at I'm only using 433mb (or so it claims, if it is a memory leak thats just the amount it starts off at using)

 

I did try the "windowed mode" method but since that was no help either I'm back to running normally without command line parameters and having to minimise every 5-20 minutes (depending on how fast im travelling) to force a reload of textures

u still get missing tectures with low settings? hmm.

 

have you tried toggling vsync?

 

can you run crysis for an hour without issues and without overheating?

 

can you run prime95 for 15 minutes with no errors and no overheating?

Edited March 11, 2009 by Subversion1337

[Hydro_PT]

P.S. there is no video card on the market that can run GTA IV at max settings. you would need a single card (not dual core) with 2 or 3 GB RAM... that doesn't exist.

A Nvidia 8800 Ultra can run GTA IV on maximum without any problem. A friend of mine does it, and he has a great framerate and no missing textures.

 

It's funny how people still believe that there is no hardware capable of running GTA IV on maximum. LOL

 

Do you believe Rockstar words when they say that the game is meant for future hardware? That's bullsh*t... when the first reviews were coming out, I remember reading this (November 2008): "Even with all the graphics options cranked and the resolution set at a ridiculous 2560 x 1600 the game still ran well as we sped through the city and blew up as many things as possible. We checked out the specs on the rig and it turns out there was some pretty powerful hardware in there: a Core 2 Extreme X9650 CPU, GeForce GTX 280 graphics card, and 3 GB of RAM."

 

This was back in November 2008. The game was released in December 2008, a month later. So there was already hardware capable of running the game without a problem. Yes it's a powerful rig, no doubt. But it exists. Now we are in March 2008, 3 months after the release. Do you think there is still no hardware capable of running the game? The problem is not on the hardware: it's on the poor work Rockstar Toronto did with the port. If they had done it properly, we wouldn't be seeing so many complaints about crashes, freezing, missing textures, etc.

 

 

[Subversion1337]

P.S. there is no video card on the market that can run GTA IV at max settings. you would need a single card (not dual core) with 2 or 3 GB RAM... that doesn't exist.

A Nvidia 8800 Ultra can run GTA IV on maximum without any problem. A friend of mine does it, and he has a great framerate and no missing textures.

 

It's funny how people still believe that there is no hardware capable of running GTA IV on maximum. LOL

 

Do you believe Rockstar words when they say that the game is meant for future hardware? That's bullsh*t... when the first reviews were coming out, I remember reading this (November 2008): "Even with all the graphics options cranked and the resolution set at a ridiculous 2560 x 1600 the game still ran well as we sped through the city and blew up as many things as possible. We checked out the specs on the rig and it turns out there was some pretty powerful hardware in there: a Core 2 Extreme X9650 CPU, GeForce GTX 280 graphics card, and 3 GB of RAM."

 

This was back in November 2008. The game was released in December 2008, a month later. So there was already hardware capable of running the game without a problem. Yes it's a powerful rig, no doubt. But it exists. Now we are in March 2008, 3 months after the release. Do you think there is still no hardware capable of running the game? The problem is not on the hardware: it's on the poor work Rockstar Toronto did with the port. If they had done it properly, we wouldn't be seeing so many complaints about crashes, freezing, missing textures, etc.

Its not a problem of framerate but a problem of video ram memory.

 

What exact settings are you talking about? Please list them.

 

How much video memory is used?

 

Are command lines being used?

 

---

 

I'm simply saying that without command lines there is no video card with enough memory to run gTA IV at max settings

 

 

[Tritous]

All settings set to low except for shadows on high and render quality on high (it can make up rubbish about GRAM use, but the 4870 isn't much behind the GTX 280 from what I remember so I have the processing power to say the least). Draw distance is relatively low (somewhere in the low 40s? Mem usage claims to me 433 MB, a touch over 40% of what my card has.

 

As for their test rig...Check the price on the Core 2 Extreme. It's one of the only 1600MHz FSB processors around without overclock and the price matches

 

That said, my rig isn't warming up particularly. Air is coming out fairly cool, and the smart fans still haven't had to pump up to max speed yet but are cruising at a nice moderate, dipping to low when I minimise the game. I can't hear the VGA fan so easily and haven't the monitoring gear, but a minute after game close and all airflow out of my box is cold, and all parts are cold (not cool or warm, actually cold) to touch. I'm still fairly convinced this is a weakness in the game engine. It SHOULD NOT be loading that many textures into view when there are less than 1/4 of them in view of vision. The PCI-E bus is more than capable of handling the dataflow to the GFX card as the player turns and DDR3 comes with both the speed and capacity to handle that sort of changeover. Rely on the GFX card to do the projection calculations and other specialised processing, but to expect that much of the GRAM is daft when the game is barely using 1GB of my system RAM and isn't yet taxing my processor (only my harddrive)

 

I'm taking it from the various comments so far there isn't some definitive patch or fix yet that solves this problem and it's still in the field?

[Subversion1337]

 

All settings set to low except for shadows on high and render quality on high (it can make up rubbish about GRAM use, but the 4870 isn't much behind the GTX 280 from what I remember so I have the processing power to say the least).  Draw distance is relatively low (somewhere in the low 40s?  Mem usage claims to me 433 MB, a touch over 40% of what my card has. 

 

As for their test rig...Check the price on the Core 2 Extreme.  It's one of the only 1600MHz FSB processors around without overclock and the price matches

 

That said, my rig isn't warming up particularly.  Air is coming out fairly cool, and the smart fans still haven't had to pump up to max speed yet but are cruising at a nice moderate, dipping to low when I minimise the game.  I can't hear the VGA fan so easily and haven't the monitoring gear, but a minute after game close and all airflow out of my box is cold, and all parts are cold (not cool or warm, actually cold) to touch.  I'm still fairly convinced this is a weakness in the game engine.  It SHOULD NOT be loading that many textures into view when there are less than 1/4 of them in view of vision.  The PCI-E bus is more than capable of handling the dataflow to the GFX card as the player turns and DDR3 comes with both the speed and capacity to handle that sort of changeover.  Rely on the GFX card to do the projection calculations and other specialised processing, but to expect that much of the GRAM is daft when the game is barely using 1GB of my system RAM and isn't yet taxing my processor (only my harddrive)

 

I'm taking it from the various comments so far there isn't some definitive patch or fix yet that solves this problem and it's still in the field?

I was asking Hydro_PT this time

 

I agree that the game is stupidly coded in PC terms though. I don't think its something that they could fix in a patch, I'm guessing it would require re-coding the game from scratch to make it run efficiently.

[logitechdog]

2x1GB is not enough for a 64bit system... or is it 1 x 2g and 2 x 1g?

 

5GB VRAM (with a limit of up to 11GB)?

Edited March 12, 2009 by logitechdog

[Tritous]

I've got a couple of apps where I've needed some extreme amounts of memory (a few memory hungry data mining algorithms) That said, except for that I've not yet had a case where my memory usage has exceeded my system RAM. And 2GB is plenty of ram in an XP system, it's Vista that guzzles it. It's in duel channel as usual, matched pair of 1GB. Since the amount of memory isn't the limiter it's more relevent, that and the memory is compatible with the motherboard without issues

 

I'm fairly convinced this isn't an issue with my machine or it's setup/software

Edited March 12, 2009 by Tritous

[Hydro_PT]

Its not a problem of framerate but a problem of video ram memory.

 

What exact settings are you talking about? Please list them.

 

How much video memory is used?

 

Are command lines being used?

 

---

 

I'm simply saying that without command lines there is no video card with enough memory to run gTA IV at max settings

I'm sorry but that preview (from IGN) does not state if they're using any command line. About the settings, I think it's pretty clear that they were playing with everything on the highest possible settings: "Even with all the graphics options cranked and the resolution set at a ridiculous 2560 x 1600 the game still ran well".

 

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, there is hardware out there capable of running GTA IV on its highest settings. Like I said, a friend of mine plays with everything on maximum with a 8800 Ultra and the game runs perfectly. No missing textures, no crashes, no freezing, great framerate (+40 FPS while recording with FRAPS - imagine when it's not recording).

 

There are video cards out there with enough memory to run GTA IV at max settings, believe me. The problem is that the game was badly optimized for the PCs... I dunno how or if Rockstar will be able to fix that, but I doubt... unless they release a very good patch... I don't know, it's hard to tell. They should have done a better work while porting the game. Now maybe it's too late...

[Subversion1337]

 

Its not a problem of framerate but a problem of video ram memory.

 

What exact settings are you talking about? Please list them.

 

How much video memory is used?

 

Are command lines being used?

 

---

 

I'm simply saying that without command lines there is no video card with enough memory to run gTA IV at max settings

I'm sorry but that preview (from IGN) does not state if they're using any command line. About the settings, I think it's pretty clear that they were playing with everything on the highest possible settings: "Even with all the graphics options cranked and the resolution set at a ridiculous 2560 x 1600 the game still ran well".

 

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, there is hardware out there capable of running GTA IV on its highest settings. Like I said, a friend of mine plays with everything on maximum with a 8800 Ultra and the game runs perfectly. No missing textures, no crashes, no freezing, great framerate (+40 FPS while recording with FRAPS - imagine when it's not recording).

 

There are video cards out there with enough memory to run GTA IV at max settings, believe me. The problem is that the game was badly optimized for the PCs... I dunno how or if Rockstar will be able to fix that, but I doubt... unless they release a very good patch... I don't know, it's hard to tell. They should have done a better work while porting the game. Now maybe it's too late...

I hate to disagree but I must.

 

My monitor won't let me go up higher than 1280 x 960 resolution but even at that sh*t resolution cranking everything up to max, including view distance, requires 1.5 GB VRAM... With 2600 x 1600 this would at a guess require 2 - 3 GB VRAM! There is no card that can do that. Please check out this thread for confirmation of this where they talk about the upcoming galaxy card: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=396645

 

---

 

With command lines you can make it so you use system ram as video ram, but this is less stable and not so smooth, and can only be pushed so far (about 1.5 x VRAM as far as I know). So actually commandlines wouldn't alllow you to play at max settings either.

Edited March 12, 2009 by Subversion1337

[Tritous]

Well did they ever say they ran a single card solution? I know my MB has triple PCI-E x16 and supports triple crossfire, just I'm steering clear of that because I dont have that sort of budget.

 

[Subversion1337]

Well did they ever say they ran a single card solution? I know my MB has triple PCI-E x16 and supports triple crossfire, just I'm steering clear of that because I dont have that sort of budget.

SLI/crossfire or dual core gpus don't double/triple your memory, they only increase fps.

[Tritous]

i've never seriously looked into it, but a triple card solution has 3 times the cards. To me that means 3 times the processing power, 3 times the memory, a little over three times the power, and some overhead for sync and intercommunication which reduces its performance.

 

Now if you are saying it doesn't fully utilise the additional memory that is a different matter

[logitechdog]

sli mirrors the same data in each card memory... all you get is more processing power...

 

that is what subversion is trying to tell you... thats why he is saying you don't get 3 times or 2 times the memory...

[Hydro_PT]

I hate to disagree but I must.

 

My monitor won't let me go up higher than 1280 x 960 resolution but even at that sh*t resolution cranking everything up to max, including view distance, requires 1.5 GB VRAM... With 2600 x 1600 this would at a guess require 2 - 3 GB VRAM! There is no card that can do that. Please check out this thread for confirmation of this where they talk about the upcoming galaxy card: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=396645

 

---

 

With command lines you can make it so you use system ram as video ram, but this is less stable and not so smooth, and can only be pushed so far (about 1.5 x VRAM as far as I know). So actually commandlines wouldn't alllow you to play at max settings either.

But that is what the game indicates lol. You can easily program the game in a way that it will show those numbers.

 

GTA IV does not need 2 or 3 GB of VRAM to run properly. That's Rockstar bullsh*t. My friend's 8800 Ultra has around 700/800 MB (dunno the exact amount) and the game runs perfectly good. It doesn't run at 2500 x 1600, but it's a very high resolution (2000 something x 1400 if I'm not wrong - I don't remember the exact values, but he has a really big screen xD). So if his single graphics card can run the game (and it's already an outdated card) imagine what a 280 GXT can do (like the one used in the preview).

 

He doesn't use any command lines: I asked him that and he told me he didn't even know what's that. lol

 

I was really amazed how the hell he could have +40 FPS while recording with FRAPS with all the settings on the maximum and that resolution. The game looks beautiful, and you don't see a missing texture anywhere, nor the game crashes or freezes.

 

The problem with GTA IV is simple: it's a bad port. They put those high VRAM numbers so you believe in them. They say you need "future" hardware to run the game, but that's bullsh*t. To put it simple, Rockstar Toronto f*cked up the game and they knew it, so they just decided to send some dust to your eyes. So far it seems to still work with a lot of people...

 

 

 

[logitechdog]

the game won't let him go above his vram without commandlines

 

And i tryied it with my 8800gtx on full settings, my ram was allready maxed out and was using the pagefile

[Hydro_PT]

He goes.

 

See? That's why you don't need a that great video card. He maxed out the game without any problem. So if the game doesn't restrain his video card, how the hell current high end cards don't run it properly? Simple: bad port.

[Tritous]

thats the annoyance, my card DOES run it, just after a very short time (the higher the settings teh shorter) it overloads the memory and starts showing transparant textures. The complaints about how they badly coded it and need 3x the memory they actually should are bad, but a memory leak like this, with a reasonably amount of time since release, is unforgivable

[Subversion1337]

thats the annoyance, my card DOES run it, just after a very short time (the higher the settings teh shorter) it overloads the memory and starts showing transparant textures. The complaints about how they badly coded it and need 3x the memory they actually should are bad, but a memory leak like this, with a reasonably amount of time since release, is unforgivable

the question i ask myself is why is it happening on your system and not on others? if we can answer that perhaps we will find a fix.

[Tritous]

generally looking around the web it seems to be happening to quite a lot of people, just I've not found any answers as to how to fix it. Now it's possible that some info has been found on how to fix it and I've not bumped into it yet, it's possible that it is the same bug as others are getting except mine isn't crashing to desktop, it could be something different.

 

That's what I want to find out