Grand Theft Auto Performance Solutions

[OneOfTheseDays]

Initially when i would turn the FRAME LIMITER option off, i would get extremely jerky movement (high fps followed by low fps) and it was unplayable. I recently downloaded FRAPS to check my ingame FPS. To my surprise when i was running fraps in the background I could actually play with frame limiter off. It was smooth as hell, and i was hittin close to 100 fps at 1280X1024 32 bit color in certain areas. I suggest runnin FRAPS in the background and see if that helps at all. On a side note, anyone figure out how to get FRAPS not to display the framerate in the top corner?

 

[FatAlbo]

Did you turn off "Trails" in the video options? I was getting some pretty choppy motion even at 640x480 on a P3-933 w/ GF2 until I turned it off.

 

[silent tone]

I read about a mod that removed leaves, paper, water splashes etc from the game and made a decent performance boost for some people. Check gta3forums.com to find it.

 

[RudeBoie]

If you're using Fraps 1.7, just select which corner you want at "Overlay Corner"

I'm not sure what Fraps has to do with smooth FPS though.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

this is downright bizzare. It seems like running FRAPS in the background completely smooths things out in GTA 3. It should be causing a slight performance hit, but I find quite the opposite. I am experiencing a nice performance boost by running FRAPS in the background, and i suggest you guys try the same.

 

[holycow]

i tried running gta3 /w fraps.. the game runs a little laggy.. to run gta3 smoothly, make sure you use the nocd executable, turn off trails, and use 'miles fast 2d positional audio' in audio setup/audio hardware.. i had a sblive and i noticed the game lagged very badly when i use 'creative lab eax' as my audio hardware config..

i'm running gta3 @ 1024x768x32(brightness 9, draw distance 10, frame sync off, frame limiter off, trails off, subtitle on, widescreen off) on my p3 600, geforce 2 card.. on fraps, the lowest framerate i got is about 10 or 11, the highest framerate i got is about 60.. the average is framerate anywhere between 22-26.. for me, the framerate i'm getting is playable.. can't complain about it.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

does Miles 2D positional audio sound that much worse than EAX? I really don't even notice EAX at all except when I'm being shot at (i can hear the bullets whizz by me) but I don't think that even matters for a game like this. How much of a performance difference is there between EAX on and EAX off.

 

[holycow]

the main difference i noticed between miles fast 2d positional audio and eax is that eax had stronger bass.. you should try it out and see yourself.. i don't think the audio quality of miles fast is that bad anyway.. for me, i care more about performance than sound quality..

 

[duragezic]

Well sometimes I'll be playing and it'll play fine (at 800x600x32 or 1024x768x32) but then maybe after like 5 minutes it starts getting VERY jerky, like 8-12fps I'd say. But it's not like it's any complex scenes or anything, it just plays very jerky like that for a while then all of a sudden it'll go back to being quite smooth. I don't get it...

 

[Agamar]

I just installed the 29.42 Geforce drivers and that really helped out my frames. I tried running Fraps in the background and saw that I was only getting about 20fps average. I have now bumped that up to about 30fps average @ 1024x768 with brightness on 3/4 and draw distance 1/2, no trails, Sync on and Limiter on. It is so much smoother now. I was using the really old 21.83 driver before. Guess I should keep up with the times.