Video memory problem

[LTomi]

I got an older computer, but the GTA IV runs on it with minimal detail. I have an nVidia GeForce 8600 GT graphic card, with 256 MB of video memory. When I check my graphic options in the game, it always detects lower memory. Sometimes it detects 200 MB, 186 MB or only 170 MB. Why my game isn't using all of the graphic memory?

 

Thanks to all who anwsers!

Edited September 1, 2009 by LTomi

[Girish]

The game can only detect the amount of VRAM that is available. Some of your VRAM is already consumed by applications running in the background, your operating system, themes, resolution, etc. You really can't expect much with such a weak graphic card.

Still, you can try deleting all files from the Settings folder and see if it changes anything. More info here.

 

Also, if you're using Vista, then switch over to XP immediately.

[uk_john]

I had this problem when I installed ENB, so if you have that in your GTA IV folder, take it out.

 

If not, in your commandline.txt in your GTA IV folder (create one with notepad if you haven't) put the following options:

 

-minspecaudio

-DX9/High

-width 800

-height 600

-refreshrate 60

-texturequality 0

-renderquality 0

-viewdistance 0

-detailquality 100

-shadowdensity 0

#-availablevidmem 1.50

-novblank

#-memrestrict 230686720

-fullscreen

 

take out the # to activate either of these lines, but don't activate both at the same time. Try them one at a time and see what's better for you.

 

I have an 8600 256mb nvidia card too, with 2gb ram and a dual core 5600 AMD CPU. I have lots of other tweaks though from this site and others, so you may find this doesn't help you a lot unless you search for tweaks too.

[mkey82]

Some of your VRAM is already consumed by applications running in the background, your operating system, themes, resolution, etc. You really can't expect much with such a weak graphic card.

Are you sure about this? Why would background applications use up VRAM?

[Girish]

Some of your VRAM is already consumed by applications running in the background, your operating system, themes, resolution, etc. You really can't expect much with such a weak graphic card.

Are you sure about this? Why would background applications use up VRAM?

I'm not hinting at all background applications/processes. It can be any working application like video converters or any imaging application (these are just examples). We do not know what applications the member is using so it's better to assume that the member is running some VRAM intensive applications and hence, the suggestion to turn those apps off.

[mkey82]

I consider VRAM to be a very valuable resource and as such I don't think the system would allow some background app (one that isn't currently in the focus and that isn't actually displaying anything on the screen) to grab hold of it. It's much more probable the system would just flush the VRAM into RAM and allow the foreground app to use as much resources as it can and then, when needed, restore the previous VRAM state from RAM. Actually, this is what I believe is going on

 

* you use your system for something and some of the VRAM is populated

* you load the game, it flushes VRAM (and stores everything in memory, maybe)

* if you for instance, alt-tab out of the game it again clears VRAM and restore the previous state (this is why in some cases when you alt-tab out of GTAIV the game restores some of it's stability as you force it to unload and reload the VRAM)

* same goes for vice-versa

[Girish]

That's why I gave the example of a video converter. It's easy to understand as we know a GPU boosts video encoding/decoding and it consumes some of your VRAM to use as buffer along with system RAM. Now, consider a situation where you're converting a video and it's taking a lot of time so you decide to play a game in the mean time without realising that your GPU is being shared by the converting application. This is type of scenarios I was referencing.

[mkey82]

1) Well, this should be easy to test. Do you know of any conversion program that uses the GPU for acceleration?

2) If you encode video and play GTAIV at the same time, I am pretty sure one wouldn't ask "oh why, oh why don't I have all of my VRAM available", he would be asking "what the f*ck is all of this jerking and stalling about?!!!11" instead :XD

 

As an example, I accidentally loaded GTAIV with a few FAH clients running in the background. Even if they were set to run on low priority, the game jerked a lot (and it actually took me a while to figure out what's going on ).

[uk_john]

The OP hasn't come back with another post, so probably solved his problem. SoI ain't going to bother with this thread any more!

[LTomi]

I don't use Vista, I'm using XP SP3, and I always close all other applications when playing IV. I'll try some tweak, maybe it can help. If not, there isn't a really big problem, because I can play the game, it just uses a lower amount of memory.