Fog/Smoke effects performance problem

[helpmeoutdude]

Hey guys, I'm running GTA San Andreas V 1.01 (Europe) on Windows Vista, 32 bit OS, up to date.

 

I'm running it on a Dell Studio 1555 laptop with the following specs:

 

Pentium P8600 Duo Core 2.4Ghz

4 Gig RAM

ATI Radeon HD 4750 512 MB

 

As you can see, it's a fairly decent laptop. I have no problems with running other games like Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source on it with framerates above 60FPS at high settings, 1366 by 768 res. I'm pretty sure all the drivers are up to date.

 

Okay, well GTA San Andreas would be running really well, but certain smoke transparency effects strangely kill the frames per second. Note this is not volumetric smoke. It's a really wierd problem. When I break my car, for instance, and those transparent smoke sprites appear when the tires screech, my FPS takes a massive hit. When they disappear, it's fine again. The same effects are used when the weather gets foggy and then the game runs really poorly until the weather gets good again. These effects never did anything to my old PC which is a far inferior machine to this laptop.

 

I can take a screenshot to show you exactly which smoke transparency effects are creating this problem.

 

Any advice/solutions? Thank you.

[Girish]

Does this happen even if you lower the display settings?

 

Why v1.01? Were there any issues with the original game? Try reinstalling the game and see if it makes a difference.

[helpmeoutdude]

Does this happen even if you lower the display settings?

 

Why v1.01? Were there any issues with the original game? Try reinstalling the game and see if it makes a difference.

Yes it does happen even on low settings. Any time those foggy 2D sprites appear, it takes a hit.

 

When I installed V1.00 it ran poorly in general. Really crappy framerate. When I upgraded, it ran fine except whenever these stupid sprites appear! Some dude on the Gamespot forums said he has the same problems.

[spaceeinstein]

It does that since III and it happens to a lot of people. I don't exactly know why it does that or why it only does that on certain PCs. At what resolution do you play it?