GTA IV Performance sucks on decent PC?

[GodlessAstronomer]

I remember hearing about GTA IV performance issues when the game was released, but I figured it wouldn't be an issue because my gear is pretty much as good or better than the top of the line at the time of release of the game. Well I was wrong, the performance sucks.
Specs:
AMD Phenom II 955BE
XFX 4890 XXX 1gb
4gb

Is it just my PC, or does performance just plain blow for this game? I'm on medium settings all around and it hovers around ~30fps and dips well below that often. Any fixes? The game seems fun but the performance is kind of ruining it for me. I should note that the game doesn't even look very good, the performance issue is baffling TBQH.

 

[zerocool84]

It's another crappy port. You need to turn off a lot of the distance/shadows/water effects to get it to run well.

 

[DangerAardvark]

I knew there was a reason this shit was $7.

 

[Modular]

I remember hearing about GTA IV performance issues when the game was released, but I figured it wouldn't be an issue because my gear is pretty much as good or better than the top of the line at the time of release of the game. Well I was wrong, the performance sucks.
Specs:
AMD Phenom II 920BE
XFX 4890 XXX 1gb
4gb

Is it just my PC, or does performance just plain blow for this game? I'm on medium settings all around and it hovers around ~30fps and dips well below that often. Any fixes? The game seems fun but the performance is kind of ruining it for me. I should note that the game doesn't even look very good, the performance issue is baffling TBQH.

This is what I've found too. I have a similar setup:

Phenom II 920 @ 3.2 Ghz
4 GB RAM
HD4850 512MB

I'm behind you in the video card department, but still. The game doesn't look that great with the details having to be turned down. I got it for cheap, so I really don't mind that much, but this one is probably better played on a console unfortunately.

 

[Attic]

I assume you have shadows set to Medium or High. I suggest turning them off.

For me it nearly doubles my framrate.

Note that there are two mentions of shadows in the Graphics settings, one that is represented by a number and one that can be set to Off/Low/Medium/High. Setting to 5-8 and Off is my reccomendation.

The game also begs for quad core at 3ghz+

Game is fun,.. but there are some pretty big hurdles that the PC gamer has to overcome to enjoy it.

1) Cumbersome launch system. It's got it's on software app that runs in the system tray in addition to GFWL shenanigans it uses. It's a lousy and uneeded process that can't be bypassed.

2) Lousy save location and difficulty in backing up and/or replacing functional saves. In addition to locating the save in a hidden folder on the root of your system drive, you also need the Xlive folder from a hidden folder in the root of your system drive. No sense in this (GFWL Achivement related i'm sure...)

3) Insanely steep system requirments even for minimum comfort of play and visual fidelity.

 

[Udgnim]

hovering around 30 FPS is good for GTA 4

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Oops the OP should say 955BE not 920, the CPU should most certainly not be a bottleneck.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Is your phenom II overclocked? This is one of the few games that either needs a seriously overclocked dual core CPU or a quad core CPU.

*edit* never mind just saw you have a 955be.

Try going through this tweaking guide: http://www.overclock.net/pc-games/442325-gta-4-tweak-guide.html

http://www.tech-forums.net/pc/f15/gta-4-tweaking-performance-fixing-issues-guide-194514/

There's a few settings in particular ( I don't remember which) that make a HUGE difference performance wise, with little to no visual difference.

 

[Raduque]

We need a stick that just says:

PSA: GTAIV NEEDS A QUAD CORE.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I have a quad core, I accidentally mistyped my CPU in the OP.

 

[zerocool84]

We need a stick that just says:

PSA: GTAIV NEEDS A QUAD CORE.

Well that and if you try to run everything on high you need a video card with lots of memory. All that stuff in the distance hogs a lot of memory.

 

[Praxis1452]

It seems to run fine for me with my measly 2gb of memory, 3.8ghz dual core e8500, and my 512mb 4770. Of course the draw distance is relatively low, but I get most of the time a smooth 30fps. I mean, the game is hardly needs the really quick reaction time of fps', at least that's what I find.

 

[QueBert]

We need a stick that just says:

PSA: GTAIV NEEDS A QUAD CORE.

GF has a dual core and it ran wonderfully, I don't remember what her graphic settings were, but the game looked great. Didn't have any way to measure FPS, but the game never slowed down or had jerky moments. It was very playable to me. Her C2D is 3.0 and isn't overclocked at all.

We need a sticky that says the game doesn't need a quad core at all.

 

[Rifter]

My rig gets 55-60 FPS at 1080P and is pretty much the same as yours, with high settings, shadows are off and set to 5 as mentioned above, gets 30-35 if not set that way. Now if i could just figure out how to increase the draw distance i would be in business.

 

[Coldkilla]

Its probably just me but even with an i7 920, 6gb ram, gtx285 I got 10 fps on a win7 32-bit system (graphics maxed), but shot right up past 55-60 once I went to 64. I can even run high resolution textures and other graphic enhancement mods with hardly any performance hit.

 

[Fox5]

The game is very cpu intensive. It seems to use the cpu for things that the graphics card should be used for (acceptable on the SIMD multi core consoles that only aimed for 30 fps anyway), such as geometry.

The view distance setting greatly effects performance in the game, while not effecting visuals much. Turn it down to 10.
Also, I get the feeling some of the special effects (such as water shininess) may be cpu calculated. Even if they're not, they scale with resolution (ie, the texture/shader resolution is equal to the output resolution of the display), so they kill performance that way.

 

[tviceman]

I bought this off the steam sale but haven't had a chance to play it. After reading this, though, I did want to see how it would perform on my machine. I've got a gtx260 216 OC, an e8400 c2d @ 4.1 ghz, and with all settings high, texture filter quality very high, shadows off, and all numbered settings at default I averaged 60 fps in the benchmark utility. The game showed me using about 820/896 mb of video memory.

 

[Maximilian]

GF has a dual core and it ran wonderfully, I don't remember what her graphic settings were, but the game looked great. Didn't have any way to measure FPS, but the game never slowed down or had jerky moments. It was very playable to me. Her C2D is 3.0 and isn't overclocked at all.

We need a sticky that says the game doesn't need a quad core at all.

Yeah thats you though, theres people who think company of heros is playable at 5fps online, i know because they join my frickin game half the time and bring it to a crawl. For a decent frame rate GTA IV needs a quad.

 

[TheKub]

Hmm.. Im not so sure on the quad core requirement it ran fine on my dual core e6750. I dont remember what all my settings where (havnt played it in months) but I did get a very noticable performace bump by turning shadows off.

System Specs
E6750 (stock)
8GB Mem
Vista 64
GT8800 or GTX260 (not sure which I had at the time)

 

[Vampirrella]

Ive been playing GTA4 just fine on high settings and my system is no longer considered "great". Its not even a quad core. Its playing fantastic actually. (see in sig)

Best 7 bucks ive spent in a while!

 

[fatpat268]

Another step (which most people don't think of) is to bump the resolution down. GTA4 being a console port doesn't benefit that much from huge resolutions. Bump it down a notch or two and you might get acceptable frame rates.

 

[tviceman]

Yeah thats you though, theres people who think company of heros is playable at 5fps online, i know because they join my frickin game half the time and bring it to a crawl. For a decent frame rate GTA IV needs a quad.

Did you not read my post directly before yours?

Statistics
Average FPS: 60.87
Duration: 37.10 sec
CPU Usage: 90%
System memory usage: 63%
Video memory usage: 84%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: Highest
View Distance: 31
Detail Distance: 51

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Video Driver version: 195.62
Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

 

[Udgnim]

GTA benchmark != GTA performance in-game

a duo core OCed to 4 Ghz+ can play GTA 4 though. framerates are probably between 25-40

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I play GTA IV at 1920x1200 with no problems on an e6850, 8800gtx, 8gb ram, 64 bit 7 and it runs fine.

However, I have to keep textures at medium (you need a >1gb vid card to even be able to select high)

 

[MStele]

I use a C2D-E6850 @ 3.0 Ghz, 8 GB ram, Geforce 260-216 and win64-pro at 1920X1200. I can play on high with no problems.