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What was wrong with the port of GTA IV on the PC?


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I know this section is about GTA V but some people keep bringing up that the port of GTA IV on the PC was bad. That makes them reluctant to buy GTA V until they find out how well it was done on the PC.

 

When people have complained about the port of GTA IV on the PC were they saying that because they were comparing it to the ports on the Xbox360 or PS3? I don't have any game consoles so I can't make any comparisons myself. Could someone briefly explain what the problem was with the port of GTA IV on the PC?

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Alpha Demigod

Good:

 

> Video editor

> High-res textures

> no pop-in

 

Bad:

 

> Poorly optimized. Even if you had a rig that greatly surpassed the reccomended specs you still couldn't get a strong consistent frame rate. During heavy action scenes it would shoot down to even 10 fps sometimes.

 

It wasn't designed to take advantage of the PC at all. If it was, even an ATI Radeon 4350 should be able to run it at 1152x864 and get a decent looking game and a smooth experience.

Edited by Dark Bordeus

Here we go...

 

sh*tty Mouse movement, making aiming very f*cking hard.

 

Bad Optimized (not as bad as Watch_Downgrs, but for the time it was released, it's the same situation...)

 

Games For Windows Live ruinning the multiplayer, it'll be shut down next month, making it unplayable.

 

Too much DRMs (Steam, Rockstar Social Club and GFWL).

 

Memory issues, you need to type a ton of sh*t on the game shortcut to play it as it's meant to be played.

 

Huge fps drops at night and rainning.

 

etc

 

etc

 

etc

 

But the storyline is worth it, and it's on promotion on steam right now :)

Edited by fefenc
  • Like 4

 

Memory issues, you need to type a ton of sh*t on the game shortcut to play it as it's meant to be played.

 

What do you mean, "as its meant to be played"?

 

I mean it shouldn't be needed to type all this sh*t (-nomemblablabla and -blablablacommand) to play the game without graphical issues, the right should be openning the game and playing it.

Going by my experience the main problem GTA IV has is compability really. Like Dark and fefenc said even a beastly computer can get a hard time running the game as expected without using a bunch of commands to alter the way it works.

But then again I havent had a mid/high-end PC until like a year or so ago and while it might not have been running smooth at all times I havent had any of the issues some people claim to have. This leads me to believe that it's optimized fine for the most part, it's just a little skizo when it comes to how it runs on certain computer setups...

 

Oh and yea, the way it handles mouse input makes aiming with low DPI quite a pain, especially when using a sniper. It feels like it has dead zone which doesnt make a whole lot of sense when using a mouse.

xxxtentacion

Oh god, you must ask?

 

F*cking terrible controls, I bought a USB X360 controller just for GTAIV.

 

Terrible MS multiplayer, as in GFWL.

 

2nd Worst Optimization in PC gaming history.

 

Way too much DRM for its own good.

 

Let's just say this was not Rockstar's crowning moment, very f*cking disappointing, not to mention Rockstar did absolutely NOTHING to help it, but they did do EVERYTHING in their power to make it worse.

Edited by Pyroshox

Going by my experience the main problem GTA IV has is compability really. Like Dark and fefenc said even a beastly computer can get a hard time running the game as expected without using a bunch of commands to alter the way it works.

But then again I havent had a mid/high-end PC until like a year or so ago and while it might not have been running smooth at all times I havent had any of the issues some people claim to have. This leads me to believe that it's optimized fine for the most part, it's just a little skizo when it comes to how it runs on certain computer setups...

 

Oh and yea, the way it handles mouse input makes aiming with low DPI quite a pain, especially when using a sniper. It feels like it has dead zone which doesnt make a whole lot of sense when using a mouse.

I'm used to low fps, but the laggy mouse issue is the worst issue on the game for me, I've died a lot of times because I couldn't aim on the guy who were shooting at me and he was 5ft from me, it's really annoying.

 

I haven't mentioned the dumb cover system yet...

The game suffered (and suffers) from a massive CPU bottleneck. On my previous PC i could change the resolution from 800x600 to 1080p and most of the graphic settings and still get literaly the same fps. It felt like they just made the port claiming it was meant to be used on future PCs, expecting people would just be OK playing on lowest settings on rigs that would play other games from 2008 perfectly fine. And then they patched it and made it actually worse.

xxxtentacion

I heard that saints row 2 pc port was far worse than 4, that it was almost unplayable.

 

Absolutely not, I can play SR2 perfectly fine, while GTAIV doesn't get 15 FPS on my PC.

I started with a Nvidia GTS 250 but later upgraded to a GTX560 because of lagging on some games.

 

The only problem I had with GTA IV was configuring the graphics. If I set to use too much memory it would eventually run out of memory and crash. I also had to not set some graphics setting too high or the game lagged too much.

 

After I had GTA IV and EFLC a couple years I installed the Native Trainer for each one. Each game sometimes crashes once in a while. I don't remember if the crashes started before or after the Native Trainer was installed.

Edited by MisterEd

I don't know. I can't call it a good port, but i was always able to run it just fine. With my new rig i can't even complain about anything anymore. I can run it maxed out with graphics mods @ 1080p

Are you seriously comparing 2014 hardware vs. 2008? That is funny. So you will be happy if you will be able to play game "just fine" in 2018 or so?

It wasn't well optimised but once they patched it to v4 it wasn't as bad as a lot of people made out.

 

For a PC that cost £1,000 back in 2010 I could max it out no problem and it ran smoothly.

 

You've got to remember as well it was R*'s first use of RAGE. You'd expect better optimisation this time around, and the dev logs imply it was built from the ground up on the PC, like MP3. V will be more ambitious if the trailer is anything to go by, but I'd expect a mid end rig will get much better performance at medium settings than a similarly priced equivalent back when IV came out.

 

I don't know. I can't call it a good port, but i was always able to run it just fine. With my new rig i can't even complain about anything anymore. I can run it maxed out with graphics mods @ 1080p

Are you seriously comparing 2014 hardware vs. 2008? That is funny. So you will be happy if you will be able to play game "just fine" in 2018 or so?

 

 

I was able to run it just fine when it came out too. On medium though. Maybe it wasn't fair since the graphics weren't all that good, but i couldn't say it wasn't perfectly playable.

Edited by Aleph-Zero
Prodigalsunz

I only had low FPS when I set the shadows to very high, but i had a 1GB videocard back then.

With a 2GB vidcard that I got right now it runs smooth with everything maxed out, almost to smooth.

JasonStatham

Optimisation.

 

I've got 4.5 GHz 4670K, 8GB of ram, GTX 770 and 256GB SSD drive. And GTA IV was running great but EFLC runs like crap. Sometimes there are big frame drops.

 

EFLC runs even better for me tho.

StoProGratis

 

Optimisation.

 

I've got 4.5 GHz 4670K, 8GB of ram, GTX 770 and 256GB SSD drive. And GTA IV was running great but EFLC runs like crap. Sometimes there are big frame drops.

 

EFLC runs even better for me tho.

 

Most people say so. But damn, IV was super smooth but EFLC on my PC run like crap :/

Edited by StoProGratis
Spider-Vice

It was only optimised to use two to three cores of the CPU, and very badly because it was a fast, sloppy port from the Xbox 360. I almost guarantee it won't be the case with GTA V. Why? Because of Max Payne 3. The RAGE engine has changed along the years, and for the first time Max Payne 3 wasn't a port but yes developed in tandem with the consoles. Result? Great optimisation even on slower computers.

I assume V will follow the same ways.

now gta iv sucks? before rockstar announced gta v for pc, about half of this forum said that gta v sucked! you filthy fanboy minges :p

 

Good:

 

> Video editor

> High-res textures

> no pop-in

 

Bad:

 

> Poorly optimized. Even if you had a rig that greatly surpassed the reccomended specs you still couldn't get a strong consistent frame rate. During heavy action scenes it would shoot down to even 10 fps sometimes.

 

It wasn't designed to take advantage of the PC at all. If it was, even an ATI Radeon 4350 should be able to run it at 1152x864 and get a decent looking game and a smooth experience.

I remember that my PC could not handle this game at all on PC with that graphiccard... Could only run it on minimal-medium settings :(

had q6600 quad @2.4ghz

ATI Radeon HD 4350

4gb ddr2 ram

 

cheap cheap gaming pc 2006 style, baby! :D (got that graphiccard some years after)

Edited by Bozzah
make total destroy

Games for Windows Live is pretty much everything that's wrong with it.

  • Like 1

Im glad that this topic started,i want to ask,which one of the patches is better,1.4 or 1.7,or maybe 1.7 is more demanding ? Btw. GTA IV still looks beautiful in 1920x1080.

1.0.0.0 - 1.0.0.2 Runs ok. 1.0.0.3 and 1.0.0.4 best for performance and mods. Around 1.0.0.4 (1.0.0.5) - 1.0.0.7 Performance became more demanding due new shadow system that was introduced at 1.0.0.6.

My main problem with GTA IV is optimisation or even just the way this game was coded.

When I had Q6600 @Stock, HD4870 512MB, 4GB DDR2 1066Mhz it was quite a nice experience, on medium/high I had 45-60FPS. Problem appeared when I changed my ati card for GTX460, after that I had 0-30FPS on lowest settings. Now, on i5 2500K, HD7950 3GB, 8GB DDR3 I have still that problem, It doesn't matter if I'm on ultra, high, low or some custom settings - I can only got 35FPS max.

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