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

[Andreas]

That's the problem with this game, you can have two the same or similar rigs but you'll get two different scenarios. First I had HD4870 and it was playable, heck, it was nice but after upgrade to GTX460 and now to HD7950 I can't play this game properly...

I have a GTX460 and according to the in-game benchmark I get 66 FPS at average with the following settings:

• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (60Hz)
• Texture Quality: High
• Reflection Resolution: Medium
• Water Quality: Medium
• Shadow Quality: High
• Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x8
• Night Shadows: High
• View distance: 70
• Detail distance: 70
• Vehicle Density: 70
• Sharpness: On

It's 55 FPS in the TLaD benchmark and 50 FPS in TBoGT's one. Also, it is worth to mention though that my GPU is overclocked. The reference model of the GTX460 is running at 675/1350/1800 MHz @ 1000mV. I had purchased the Gigabyte edition over three years ago and overclocked it to 800/1600/1900 @ 1012mV. Edited June 23, 2014 by Andreas

[Skreedi]

This Benchmark is strange thing too... I always had around 60 FPS average (still, no matter if it's low or high, it was, to be exact, 64 FPS oO) in it but it was nothing compared to normal gameplay where FPS was lower.

 

First time I used benchmark after upgrading to GTX460 so I can't tell how it was on HD4870. Now I can't even tell how it is on HD7950 becuase game is going back to homescreen without any errors just before showing me results.

[CharmingCharlie]

Nice to see you're still around.

Ah I like to pop in now and again, see what's what and vamoosh again. Good to see there are still some of the old crew around it was fun times in those days.

 

 

I have a GTX460 and according to the in-game benchmark I get 66 FPS at average with the following settings:

 

Well the accuracy of the benchmark is only slightly less than a benchmark figure giving my Mystic Meg molesting a goat. The figure the benchmark gives bears no resemblance to actual frame rates in the game. But just for a laugh I fired up my copy of GTA 4 and once i got past the sheer and utter shock that this time it actually started up I ran the benchmark using your graphic settings. I got an average frame rate of 65fps. So an average of 1fps less than you which wounded my pride a little bit . Now here is the kicker guess what GPU I have, it isn't a 260, or a 460. Nope I have a bloody 670GTX in my machine which last time I check curb stomps the 460gtx in every over metric known to man. I think this illustrates perfectly just how bad the port of GTA 4 is and how CPU bound the game is.

 

I can't run the benchmark for TLaD or TBoGT because I never bought them but I would expect similar results.

Edited June 23, 2014 by CharmingCharlie

[_FRANKENSTEIN_]

As far as I am concerned, GTA |V section is below GTA V section.

[PhillBellic]

One of my most irritating experiences was the dreaded RESC10 Error. It was so bad I couldn't even pause then resume the game before it would CTD. As the obstructive levels of DRM has already been brought up I wont go into it further.

 

I do wonder sometimes whether Rockstar will produce a new patch to finally get it to run smoothly and properly.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

Cheers.

[RisingRedWolf]

GTA 4 will always be a CPU-bound game.

The GTX 280 in 2008 was enough for GTA 4, adding more GPU horsepower isn't going to help.

So it should run better on a 4770k than a Phenom II dual core right? regardless on what the game relies most on, it should be able to run completely maxed out on my specs. No excuses. I enjoyed the game but there is no denying its a badly optimized port.

[rickyboy123]

Just sloppy overall. Only now in 2014 can I run it on an affordable laptop at medium to fairly high settings with smooth frames. It's like at the time they just thought, "Ah they're PC gamers, it doesn't matter if we make a crappy rushed mess, they'll still buy it, it's the console audience that matters". To be fair it was next gen at the time and they were just getting used to working with it. They did a good job of Max Payne 3 so GTA V should be much better than GTA IV.

[RyanBurnsRed]

Well when the game first came out it was extremely buggy. Some people couldn't start the game, while others that could start it ran into texture problems.

People with dual core CPUs can barely run it because the engine is emulating the Xbox 360's 3 core CPU. This is why it runs so well on anything over 3 cores.

 

It also had horrible memory leaks that I think aren't 100% fixed. The game could still use a patch or two, but Rockstar has completely abandoned it.

[PhillBellic]

It also had horrible memory leaks that I think aren't 100% fixed. The game could still use a patch or two, but Rockstar has completely abandoned it.

I completely agree with you. I have always wished that given Rockstar know RAGE much better now they should produce another patch to sort out the problems once and for all.

 

Cheers.

[Wylight]

It essentially means the game could not run properly even on high end rigs, it was always getting frame drops no matter what, and it also had certain graphical bugs that were not present in the console version.

 

HOWEVER, PC gamers are known to be some very picky and fussy people so some of them will even complain about the fact that they can't reach 60fps, that the game drops to 50 or some exaggerated crap like that.

[Aleph-Zero]

HOWEVER, PC gamers are known to be some very picky and fussy people so some of them will even complain about the fact that they can't reach 60fps, that the game drops to 50 or some exaggerated crap like that.

 

It's not easy playing in anything less than 60FPS when your eyes are used to it. It gets really unconfortable even if the variation is 10FPS.

[hasidichomeboy]

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?

games for windows live. nuff said.

[jackoboy9]

My i5 3470 and R9 280x runs it at 40 fps using only 40% of my cpu and gpu. It never utilizes 100%

Strange. My 1090T and 280X runs GTA 4 at 55+, without full utilization...

[Vicetopia]

Depends on settings. If you max out every slider you'll be somewhere between 40-50fps at best.

Currently there's no CPU in existance that can run it at a constant 60fps.

Edited June 29, 2014 by Vicetopia

[Killerdude]

It ran like a pile of sh*t, it was horribly optimized, but recent patches made it run a lot better, so it's all well and good now.

[Andreas]

HOWEVER, PC gamers are known to be some very picky and fussy people so some of them will even complain about the fact that they can't reach 60fps, that the game drops to 50 or some exaggerated crap like that.

I think that would be one of the smaller problems. As I stated above, I run the game with 66 FPS at average in the in-game benchmark, but that doesn't help when it dips to 30 frames per second or less once there are lots of explosions on-screen. In fact, I know people who are running the game with two HD7970's or two GTX680's and the framerate dips to 12 FPS all the time, which is anything but playable. The fact of the matter is that the framerate is extremely unstable, and even if you force the game to run at 30 FPS at max, you will still experience performance drops for unknown reasons. Strangely enough, that isn't the case for everyone. Edited June 30, 2014 by Andreas

[Killerdude]

 

HOWEVER, PC gamers are known to be some very picky and fussy people so some of them will even complain about the fact that they can't reach 60fps, that the game drops to 50 or some exaggerated crap like that.

I think that would be one of the smaller problems. As I stated above, I run the game with 66 FPS at average in the in-game benchmark, but that doesn't help when it dips to 30 frames per second or less once there are lots of explosions on-screen. In fact, I know people who are running the game with two HD7970's or two GTX680's and the framerate dips to 12 FPS all the time, which is anything but playable. The fact of the matter is that the framerate is extremely unstable, and even if you enable Vsync, which means you force the game to run at 30 FPS at max, you will still experience performance drops for unknown reasons. Strangely enough, that isn't the case for everyone.

 

Vsync locks your FPS to your Monitors refresh rate, so if you're stuck at 30 FPS, Then you can't see 60 FPS since your monitor doesn't support it.

 

I enable Vsync on my game and I get 50-60 FPS.

[Ash_735]

Vsync locks your FPS to your Monitors refresh rate, so if you're stuck at 30 FPS, Then you can't see 60 FPS since your monitor doesn't support it.

 

I enable Vsync on my game and I get 50-60 FPS.

Vsync locks to the nearest multiplier available to keep it locked to your refresh rate.

 

Saying a Monitor doesn't support 60Hz is pretty insane, unless he has a screen from like, 1970, and even that would be pushing it.

 

In that case, the game can't lock to 60fps, so what it doesn't is find the next value, which is 2x, so it will then try and lock to 30fps, failing that, it will then fall back to 20fps, then 15fps. However some developers don't program this correctly and just leave in old target values, which for a lot of console ports seems to be locked at 30fps, which is a big complaint often brought up from PC Gamers claiming they can't play games unless 60fps or else they'll throw up or something, but there are always hacks and stuff to get the value back up to 60 or higher, but the negative side being, depending on the game, it could cause some weird effects as the game wasn't tested and fixed to be running that high.

[Andreas]

My bad. I wasn't meaning Vsync, but locking the framerate with external tools, like nVidia Inspector. I tried it myself once and it didn't help at all with the performance drops.

Edited June 30, 2014 by Andreas

[Kampret]

 

I heard Fallout: New Vegas on PS3 and Skyrim on PS3 are far worse, technically. To be fair most of the early PS3 games up to 2010/2011 were worse than PC ports because of the complex hardware. Even IV had issues on it I heard.

All RAGE 2 and 2.5 games ran worse on PS3 compared to the Xbox 360 versions. RAGE 3 games have been fine though running at 720p.

 

 

So true, hate to say this but the first R* game on PS3 that is better than X360 is GTA V...

Here's the list (from DF's conclusion):

-GTA IV : 1152x640

-RDR: 1152x640

-MP3: Downgraded effects.

 

Thank god GTA V looks better on PS3 now (especially when you use atleast a 7200rpm HDD...)

[Spider-Vice]

GTA IV on PS3 was quite the asset streaming disaster, really. Horrible memory management as well.

Edited July 2, 2014 by Spider-Vice

[Craptasticjack]

My favorite moment from the game was "GTAIV.exe has stopped working"

[Lock n' Stock]

 

So LA Noire is the only rockstar game this gen (yes it is a rockstar game) to not use RAGE engine?

Correct, L.A.Noire does not use RAGE.

I believe that is true, though why is a "Rage Technology Group" mentioned in L.A. Noire's credits? Surely that must mean some trace of the RAGE engine is in the game, though I don't know about it all that much.

[Marty892]

 

Until you've played GTA IV 1.0 to 1.0.3.0 you can't really get an idea of what a mess it was. It was bad.

Hey, there 1.0.3.0 was first good version about performance, I think the only versions has bad performance was only 1.0.0.0 up to 1.0.2.0, but since 1.0.3.0 game was lots better as performance, however for some reason game became again little laggy with patches 1.0.6.0 and 1.0.7.0.

 

 

Some systems perform better with 1.0.7.0 while other are much better with 1.0.4.0 It still confuses me to this day

They changed and visually improved shadows on 1.0.6.0 patch. Very high setting on 1.0.4.0 patch was the equivalent to high setting on 1.0.6.0.

 

Game works almost the same on both patches, ofc if you use high shadow setting on newer patch.

[MisterEd]

It also had horrible memory leaks that I think aren't 100% fixed. The game could still use a patch or two, but Rockstar has completely abandoned it.

I completely agree with you. I have always wished that given Rockstar know RAGE much better now they should produce another patch to sort out the problems once and for all.

The RAGE engine that is being used now for games like GTA V is certainly not the same one used years ago for GTA IV. For all we know it may have been completely rewritten because of past problems with it. If there were memory problems in GTA IV then we have to live with them. Rockstar is not going to go back and spend a lot of time and money just to fix an old game. Hopefully the current RAGE engine used in GTA V has all these problems fixed so we will not have to contend with the same problems as GTA IV had. Of course Rockstar could go back and rebuild GTA IV using the current RAGE engine but I do not see them doing that.

 

Of course that does not mean that the current RAGE engine is perfect. Since the RAGE engine is used in all versions of GTA V then it may be informative to look at any problems reported with the PS3 and Xbox360 versions so far. If there are problems with both versions then we may see similar things with the NG and PC versions.

[Washuchan]

 

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?

games for windows live. nuff said.

 

Exactly, because of GFWL I was not able to connect to multiplayer. It kept on telling me Australia was not supported.

 

And the only advice Micro$oft offered was that I should buy the game again.

[Coolstream]

Securom, GFWL and Social club.

 

Those are the 3 biggest issues with that game, and every other game that utilizes DRM which punishes those who actually purchase the game.

[ddyoung]

GFWL was the sh*ttiest excuse for online gaming ever. It was worse than Origin, and thats pretty bad. I think Steam is the only good online gaming tool. Hopefully GTA V PC will run on that or Rockstar's own thing.

[Choteron]

GFWL was the sh*ttiest excuse for online gaming ever. It was worse than Origin, and thats pretty bad. I think Steam is the only good online gaming tool. Hopefully GTA V PC will run on that or Rockstar's own thing.

Agreed. Games for windows is awful.

Luckly V will be like MP3. Steam and Social Club

[ARC8_1982]

Well,one thing is the quality of the port,and the other is lack of new patches,in my opinion there should be more,until it represents the quality it meant to be,but no.......sadly 1.0.0.7 was their last one and that's what's wrong,seriously.It's not alright.Sandbox games heavily rely on smooth and stable frame rates,and GTA 4 is poor on this field,game is sometimes fast,like it should be,but sometimes frame rates drops in a matter of seconds to gain normal rates,so like i said 1.0.0.7 shouldnt be the last one,as there was so much to do.And just because it's a sandbox game,doesn't mean it cant have stable frame rates.

Edited July 13, 2014 by ARC8_1982