Cheap Video Card to play GTA 4 on maximum settings?

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Macboy18

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Jul 5, 2010
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i'm building my first gaming PC (trying to keep it under $799) i will ONLY be playing GTA 4 on it because i have a Mac for other stuff. i want to play it at the highest settings possible.

i know GTA IV more processor dependent than GPU dependent, so i picked out a nice processor (Quad Core i5 2.66Ghz 750), and now i'm on to the video card part.

i'm looking for a card under $200 that will be able to easily play it with full resolution and fps. i prefer the quality of Nvidia, but ATI will do if its significantly cheaper (same performance for $50 less)
 
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tviceman

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Mar 25, 2008
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Macboy18 said:
i'm building my first gaming PC (trying to keep it under $799) i will ONLY be playing GTA 4 on it because i have a Mac for other stuff. i want to play it at the highest settings possible.

i know GTA IV more processor dependent than GPU dependent, so i picked out a nice processor (Quad Core i5 2.66Ghz 750), and now i'm on to the video card part.

i'm looking for a card under $200 that will be able to easily play it with full resolution and fps. i prefer the quality of Nvidia, but ATI will do if its significantly cheaper (same performance for $50 less)
Click to expand...

Well the gtx460 comes out in two different versions 6 days, so for your price range I'd wait to see how the gtx460 768mb, gtx460 1 gig, and hd5770 compare against each other before making a purchase.
 
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Macboy18

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Jul 5, 2010
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1920 by 1200 pixels is my resolution. i'm going to be using my 24" Apple Cinema Display with the computer i will build

i will also play it on my MacBook Pro's screen (hooked up to the PC) which is lower res than the ACD.
 
AndroidVageta

AndroidVageta

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Mar 22, 2008
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If you want to play MAX settings you arent going to be able to with a cheap video card. My old desktop PC had dual 4890's in it and even it couldn't play max settings while staying above 30 frames per second.

You will be able to play on medium-high settings...and it will definitely look better than the console version, but dont expect a cheaper video card to play uber maxed.

I mean, depending on what else you have in the system you might could spend $300 on a card or maybe just $150...and there are MAJOR difference between cards at both ends of the spectrum. I see that you said $200...if you can, try upping that up a little bit and see about picking up a 5850:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150494

$290 for uber performance...definitely will play GTAIV at higher settings and much more smoothly than any $200 card can.
 
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pmurgs

Junior Member
Feb 25, 2010
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You will want a gfx card with at least 1Gb of memory to turn all the gfx options on.
 
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hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
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ATI 5850 if you can afford it. Otherwise, look into the 5830 and 5770. You could also wait around for the GTX 460 and see what it's priced at. A GTX 260 or 4870/4890 would also work.
 
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nenforcer

nenforcer

Golden Member
Aug 26, 2008
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This game is over a year and a half old on PC and is not even DX11, just DX 10, so should surely scream on any modern DX11 card.

Isn't it more CPU bound as well and one of the few games to use four cores?
 
toyota

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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nenforcer said:
This game is over a year and a half old on PC and is not even DX11, just DX 10, so should surely scream on any modern DX11 card.

Isn't it more CPU bound as well and one of the few games to use four cores?
Click to expand...
its not even DX10 but that doesnt mean anything. a DX9 game can be demanding or in this case not very optimized as well. and yes this is one of the most cpu intensive games made but you still need a high end gpu to crank settings at 1920.
 
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AlucardX

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May 20, 2000
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stupid question time.. if you only want a pc to play GTA4 why don't you just buy an xbox360 and save about $400
 
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Macboy18

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Jul 5, 2010
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AlucardX said:
stupid question time.. if you only want a pc to play GTA4 why don't you just buy an xbox360 and save about $400
Click to expand...


Because i can get much much better performance on a PC, and i can also modify it with different Car's, guns etc. unlike the Xbox, where you can only use a few DLC's from XBL

i already have an Xbox 360 anyway.
 
Sp12

Sp12

Senior member
Jun 12, 2010
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Macboy, I don't mean to sound trollish but this is your third thread on the issue. I think the build you have in the general hardware thread looks great except for the 200$ Alienware case.
 
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bryanW1995

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
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I don't think it's out of line for him to come here with a specific gpu question.

I'm going to tentative say gtx 460 depending upon how it looks when it comes out
next week. 5850 could drop a bit in price as well, though with your stated nvidia
you might want to stay clear of it. 5830 sucks, it's more like a slightly beefed up
5770 while the 5850 is a slightly cut back 5870.
 
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Rezident

Senior member
Nov 30, 2009
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GTA IV is not a normal game though, it's performance is bizzare, it seems to pretend it's all to do with VRAM but even my card with two gigs of GDDR5 (4890) doesn't perform properly, because the game's more cpu dependent. Although even swapping out my dual core for a quad core didn't fix performance enough, considering the decent - although certainly not amazing - graphics on show.

The game just doesn't perform well compared to other games, considering it doesn't even look that spectacular. It's a shame because there's so much great content in the game.
 
bryanW1995

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
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so it's like nwn2 or, to a lesser extent, crysis? we should start a "poorly optimized games" thread to warn our fellow video forum members.
 
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cschill1290

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Feb 26, 2008
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Yeah, I noticed improved performance when I OC'd my cpu from 2.5GHz to 3.0GHz, but it still doesn't run like it should considering what it looks like.
 
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TheRyuu

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2005
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I've got an i7 @ 3.8ghz and a 5870 and I have to play it on medium settings otherwise the game gets real skippy (like it pauses for a brief moment, less than a second) but the framerates seem to be good (benchmark with everything on very high/high is > 60fps I believe.

It's really weird, anyone else have a similar issue with it?
 
toyota

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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SHAQ

Senior member
Aug 5, 2002
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You will need at least 1200mb of vram to run GTA4 at max settings at 1920. There are only a handful of cards that have that much. I hope you will overclock the i5 as well since even at 4Ghz GTA4 runs poorly at high settings. I cannot turn on night shadows with my rig and keep the frame rate above 30. So it really depends on how much eye candy you want vs. how smoothly you want it to run. The coding in this game isn't the best much like Crysis.
 
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TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
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OP: Basically there is no such thing as a cheap card that can play GTA4 at max settings.
 
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GamerDave20

Junior Member
Jul 9, 2010
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bryanW, I like your idea. I'm curious what an i7 would do on Flight Sim X. Not that I've played it, but I don't recall seeing any framerates over 24 a few years ago at Tom's HW.

I figured it must be a crushing game, fps limited (why?), or just inefficient.

Dave
 
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