GTA 4 on Low End PC! Tips and Tricks(With no mods!)

[SpaceJelloYT]

Hello everyone, i will be showing you all how to get GTA 4 to run on pretty low-end computers using commandline.txt commands.

 

For the tests im am using my 2nd PC(Arctic Cat), that has these specs

A Pentium e5300 dual core CPU at 2.66Ghz

6GB DDR2

1TB 7200RPM hard drive

and a GT730 2GB DD3

Not the best specs but as you will see, will work

 

First test: Lowest settings

I turned everything down to low and i got around 15-30FPS so not great.

 

Now here comes Commandline.txt, this is a file in your GTA 4 directory that can be used to put all sorts of commands that are executed on startup

 

Creating commandline.txt is very simple

Just go to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV

Then create a text document called commandline.txt

 

Here are the commands i used, just paste then into your text document

 

-nomemrestrict -norestrictions -minspecaudio -noprecache -safemode

Second test: with the commandline.txt commands

I was getting around 30 to upwards of 70FPS with 40 as the avg, so overall i went from barely playable to a pretty enjoyable experience

 

Thanks for reading!

External links:

All Commandline commands https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386442407

 

[VollgasPilot]

I think commandline improves nothing (with latest patch).

 

Just be sure to lower viewing distance (i set it to 30). You can also set water quality to "medium" because it looks better than higher setting.

Use latest patch 1.0.8.0 / 1.0.3.0 for best performance.

 

Also be sure to use the graphical fixes provided here in the forum:

 

http://gtaforums.com/topic/812542-movement-on-the-steamdb-page-for-both-iv-and-eflc/page-12?do=findComment&comment=1070181121

 

I have AMD Phenom II X4 940, 4GB DDR2 RAM and Radeon HD7870 and GTA IV runs great.

[skau]

I was never a fan of commandline. Most of the folks who claim it gives a performance boost don't have any idea of what the commands do and I'm pretty sure that most of them are placebo at best, except for minspecaudio maybe.

 

Also, ignoring the 'no mods' part, you should try ColAccel, it won't give you any fps but it makes the game load faster.

Edited April 30, 2018 by skau

[SpaceJelloYT]

don't have any idea of what the commands do

Well i know what all of my commands do.

-nomemrestrict Doesnt place restrictions on video memory

-norestrictions Doesnt place restrictions on everything

-minspecaudio - loads a lower audio quality

noprecache No Vsync

-safemode Loads the game with lowest settings and very little visual effects

[ArkhamDeadp00l]

Interesting.

[Nihilist.]

Honestly, with your hardware, you should be able to run the game on medium settings with no problems, albeit maybe without stable and high FPS. Even one that's so horribly optimized as GTA IV. 15 FPS just doesn't seem right; back in the day I was running the game on a 1GB GTS 250, 4GB of RAM, and I believe 2.2 GHz Athlon II. Your PC is more than enough to handle 7th gen games.

The first thing I'd do is cleaning all the system trash and registry, defragmenting the HDD (and checking if it has any bad sectors, which often are the reason of slowdowns), and I guess scanning everything with a proper anti-virus software, just to be certain everything's dandy. After that, I would check the game and try to do something with it.

[TWIST_OF_HATE]

I can share with you my recent experience,will be useful atleast for AMD video card users.

First, you can turn on MLAA (Morphological Anti-Aliasing) in driver settings. This is post-process AA method, have generally no impact on fps, but does good job on eliminate these jaggies everywhere.

Second, I have 50-60 fps in almost all cases, but game stuttering for no obvious reason. Enhanced Sync option in driver settings helped me to solve this problem too

Just turn in-game vsync off, and set Enhanced sync option in AMD driver settings, you will enjoy it )
P.S. This is what was helpfull to me, no garanties it will work for you same way, but worth a try.

[VollgasPilot]

SSD also gives a good boost in smootheness.

[ArkhamDeadp00l]

SSD also gives a good boost in smootheness.

 

i notice a difference to.

[Akara]

Your command line made everything worse for me. Now no building loads and I can’t even see what’s in front of me 

[santosvagos]

16 minutes ago, Akara said:

Your command line made everything worse for me. Now no building loads and I can’t even see what’s in front of me 

Here is my command line and it works : 

-nomemrestrict
 -norestrictions
 -percentvidmem 100 
 -availablevidmem 17.0

+ I play IV with an old laptop . Its spec :

I3 3110m 2.4ghz

ram 8gb DDR3 1600

HDD 500gb 

Intel hd 4000 .

Edited June 10, 2019 by santosvagos

[Antonio79866]

Hello??? I really need some help trying to run my gta iv it lags everytime I leave my Safehouse I’m using a Lenovo idealad 110 so any help would be greatly appreciated