GTA IV running like crap on a great PC. Please read, very devastating&

[Pardeep01]

Hello everyone.

 

First of all, my laptop is a Dell Precision M4600. Specs:

 

i7 2820QM 2.3GHz (Quad-Core) The CPU runs at 3.2GHz when playing.

8GB RAM

2GB NVIDIA Quadro 1000M GPU

 

As you can tell the specs are great. I know the Quadro 1000M is a workstation graphics card and is not meant for gaming, but the hardware of the GPU is really similar to gaming GPUs and there is only a difference of drivers. Have a look at this:

 

 

Look, only about half of the video memory is being used, the rest is free, and still I got less than 10 FPS. Are you serious? I tried the in-game benchmarks with these exact same settings, and I got about an average of 17 FPS. I don't know what's happening. When I'm inside the house, it runs smooth, the moment I step out of the door, hell breaks loose. Less than 10 FPS. If it's the GPU's fault, is there any way to optimize this GPU for gaming? Or anything else that can give me smooth FPS at these settings? This is sooooooo unfair!

 

A point to note: when I turn the Shadows to "Low", it runs smooth, "Medium", horrible, "High", you go blind.

 

Thanks BTW.

 

- Pardeep

Edited November 23, 2015 by Pardeep01

[lol232]

GTA IV isn't very well optimized so I wouldn't be surprised, I'm using a 12GB Titan X SC and my game can still dip down to 40 FPS; I would recommend toning down your settings.

[donnits]

I think Shadows are the main problem, especially Night ones. Try those on High, maybe.

[sammystarock]

I daresay that to this day, there is no machine capable of running GTA IV at completely stable and smooth 40+ FPS with completely maxed out settings. Even with a high-end machine you won't get to 60 FPS, and that's with high, but not maximum settings. GTA IV is simply too much of a bad port for more than that.

 

Dramatically lowering your settings is the main thing to do.

[lol232]

I daresay that to this day, there is no machine capable of running GTA IV at completely stable and smooth 40+ FPS with completely maxed out settings. Even with a high-end machine you won't get to 60 FPS, and that's with high, but not maximum settings. GTA IV is simply too much of a bad port for more than that.

 

Dramatically lowering your settings is the main thing to do.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, my machine can run it on maxed out settings at 4K and the lowest it can possibly go is 40 FPS (I see no difference in performance between FHD and UHD). The game is more CPU than GPU intensive, usually overclocking the CPU is what does the trick, but OP, in your case, sadly, your PC is not enough for highest settings. Edited November 23, 2015 by lol232

[Pardeep01]

That's a real real real pity. Guess I'll just have to turn down the settings. Thank you all very much for taking your time to help me.

[sammystarock]

That's a real real real pity. Guess I'll just have to turn down the settings. Thank you all very much for taking your time to help me.

Yes, it is. Hope you'll still have fun with the game!

 

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, my machine can run it on maxed out settings at 4K and the lowest it can possibly go is 40 FPS (I see no difference in performance between FHD and UHD). The game is more CPU than GPU intensive, usually overclocking the CPU is what does the trick, but OP, in your case, sadly, your PC is not enough for highest settings.

I was trying to point out that it's hard to get stable FPS in GTA IV. At least I have never seen a machine run this game at one stable framerate if the settings are maxed out. There will always be frame drops if you don't lower the settings. Correct me if I'm wrong. Nevertheless, GTA IV remains a crap port.

[CodeRedBruh]

 

I daresay that to this day, there is no machine capable of running GTA IV at completely stable and smooth 40+ FPS with completely maxed out settings. Even with a high-end machine you won't get to 60 FPS, and that's with high, but not maximum settings. GTA IV is simply too much of a bad port for more than that.

 

Dramatically lowering your settings is the main thing to do.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, my machine can run it on maxed out settings at 4K and the lowest it can possibly go is 40 FPS (I see no difference in performance between FHD and UHD). The game is more CPU than GPU intensive, usually overclocking the CPU is what does the trick, but OP, in your case, sadly, your PC is not enough for highest settings.

You have a 12GB Titan XSC and the game still dips to 40FPS. That says how absolutely sh*tty is IV PC port. Probably the worst PC port in the last 7 years.

[kvic]

What patch are you using?

[Bean6754]

I would turn down shadows, view distance and detail distance but keep everything else still very high.

 

Also add this to commandline.txt

-norestriction

-nomemrestrict

-availablevidmem "1.1"

-percentvidmem "100"

[Pardeep01]

What patch are you using?

I'm using 1.0.7.0 patch.

 

I would turn down shadows, view distance and detail distance but keep everything else still very high. Also add this to commandline.txt -norestriction -nomemrestrict -availablevidmem "1.1" -percentvidmem "100"

 

Yes! That actually did make the game performance better. Thanks so much breda. I appreciate you!

[Pardeep01]

 

That's a real real real pity. Guess I'll just have to turn down the settings. Thank you all very much for taking your time to help me.

Yes, it is. Hope you'll still have fun with the game!

 

Thanks man. I've turned down the games and now it runs well. I'll still have fun.

[Bean6754]

I'm using patch 1.0.7.0, you could also create a backup of GTA 4 and install a graphics mod such as: ENB, ICEnhancer, etc...

[lol232]

One thing I completely forgot to mention is that 3D models in this game were designed for console's draw distance and detail distance (which is 21 and 11, respectively), if one was to mess with these settings way too much the game's performance would drop drastically.

You should turn them down to that while turning up all the other settings (except for likely shadows),

Edited November 24, 2015 by lol232

[sammystarock]

One thing I completely forgot to mention is that 3D models in this game were designed for console's draw distance and detail distance (which is 21 and 11, respectively) [...]

These values are interesting, didn't know about them!

[Pardeep01]

I'm using patch 1.0.7.0, you could also create a backup of GTA 4 and install a graphics mod such as: ENB, ICEnhancer, etc...

But won't that murder the FPS more?

 

One thing I completely forgot to mention is that 3D models in this game were designed for console's draw distance and detail distance (which is 21 and 11, respectively), if were to mess with these settings way too much the game's performance would drop drastically.

You should turn them down to that while turning up all the other settings (except for likely shadows),

Interesting, I'll definitely try it. Thanks.

[X-Vector]

Also try disabling Clip Capture if your're not going to use it, made my game run a lot smoother.

[Pardeep01]

Also try disabling Clip Capture if your're not going to use it, made my game run a lot smoother.

All right, I'll definitely try it. Thanks breda.

[lol232]

 

One thing I completely forgot to mention is that 3D models in this game were designed for console's draw distance and detail distance (which is 21 and 11, respectively) [...]

These values are interesting, didn't know about them!

 

Another interesting fact, also the "vehicle density" setting is 33 on consoles (which is why most speedrunning communities require GTA IV PC speedruns to be played at that exact value), although it doesn't matter since the affect on performance is minimal, unless you're using night shadows.

 

E: To correct myself, detail distance is 10 and not 11.

Edited November 25, 2015 by lol232

[PhillBellic]

GTA IV is a Complete Mystery. A Low End Computer could run the Game with no problems at all, whilst it bogs down on a High End Computer.

 

Welp.

[Red Hat]

It's just that people with low end computers are not so concerned about FPS, whereas people with high end computers take FPS a bit too seriously.