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GTA3 Really Choppy??

M

MattStone

Golden Member
I've got a GF3ti200 on an Athlon Xp1700 system, and it's choppy as hell. I can play (generally) any game at 1600x1200, but for testing's sake I started it up at 1024x760x16...and it's still really choppy. I turned off trails, but that made no difference.

Anybody got any ideas?
 
Yeah I noticed that too. From what I've read, it has something to do with the game constantly reading from the CD. You can check out more info here.
 
Yeah, it's choppy---I think it is choppy no matter what. It is going to need a patch, however, I fear that they are so bogged with tech support that it will never get released...I expect new software to be buggy, but this is probably the worst example I have ever seen...I have a 1.0 Ghz Tbird at 1.1 on a GF2Pro and it is just barley playable at 800x600x16...no excuse for that...likely will not buy from Rockstar again. Which is sad, because it would be a ton of fun without the cars lurching all over the place.

I've noticed as well, even if you go get the safedisk hack, that it still constantly reads from the hard drive...I think they made alot of compromises to get the load times down...personally, I'd rather wait thirty seconds than have them do what they did...I end up waiting in the save area for about a minute while the map loads, so the quick load time doesn't really save much.
 
GTA3 can be a bit choppy, but you have to admit that the graphics, maps, and environment are first rate. I've spent days just exploring. The biggest problem with the game, IMHO, may have been that they were too ambitious.
Big hint: Leave the frame limiter ON. If you turn off the frame limiter, the game will become very choppy during times of intense action or whenever it has to calculate vehicle physics (whenever you're driving and you hit a bump), etc.

I'm certain that a patch will be forthcoming. Most of the people who are having problems have AMD cpu's (like myself) or WinXP (which I hate and went back to Win2kPro anyway).

/edit: thought I'd add (as kind of a footnote) that the problem is obviously the graphics engine. It has issues. Changing resolution or even hardware (I tested on both an XP2000+/Ti4400 system and a Tbird1.3G/GF2MX system) seems to make absolutely no difference in performance. Check the task manager, GTA3 doesn't always utilize the CPU 100% like it should (sometimes it does but sometimes, especially when it seem choppiest, it doesn't). Obviously, in famous T2 fashion, we are all in a big public BETA test again. :| Like I said, the biggest issue seems to be with AMD cpu's. People I talk to with Intels (particulary P3's in the 1GHz range) say the game runs great.
 
I fixed the choppiness by turning on Frame Limiter and it also didn't hurt to turn on Frame Sync. I couldn't get the game to play smooth at any resolution before, now I'm playing at 1600x1200 and it's very playable. The game is a bit buggy though from what I've seen.

Also if you want turn Trails off, that's an annoying effect that almost looks like there's something wrong with your graphics card... it certainly doesn't look cool.
 
I know...as I said in my original post, I did turn of trails.

Luckily, I found the game playable at 800x600. I know that rez sucks ass...but it's better than not being able to play the game at all.
 
Here's what I did: Start-->Run "dxdiag" and in the Graphics tab, disabled AGP Texturing. I think it's similar to the <64mb agp memory BIOS setting. It seems to make the choppy places more reasonable. (I'm using XP 1.33ghz with Geforce2 MX for now.)

My friend with Tbird 1ghz (133fsb) and GF2 Ultra runs it quite decently at 1024x768x32 so I don't think resolution is a big problem.

Overall the game is unprecedented in degree of freedom and completeness of detail, IMHO. Truly incredible. Too bad there's no benchmark so we can't measure framerates. The game would be that much more fun if it played smoothly 🙁

PS: GF4 Ti4200 should be here today... oh the impatience.
 
no problems with the game for me running 1024x768x32bit .. running on a xp 1700+ oc to 1.628Ghz and my gf3 ti200 to 250/561..

great game btw..
 
Great game but,
choppy on my p4 1.8a oc 2.20 + geforce 3 512 meg pc2100 oc 123 bus.
and it does not see my audgy sound card (wtf).
great game but needs patch badly.
also runs like sh*t on wifes xp1800 512meg ram 8500 le pro.
two words.
SHITTY SOFTWARE.
now I see why there is no xbox ver.

I have every new game sof2, jedi knight (with new audgy patch) and freedom force and they all run great.

Rockstar need to step up and get with the program.

Hey, do not worry. unreal turnament 2003 is almost here.
 
Got my ti4200 (see my fanless modification thread).

The results are interesting. While I can now max out the resolution & detail indefinitely without slowdowns, the game didn't magically become super-smooth at low resolutions. It just became tolerable, in the 25-40fps range where it used to really stutter. Indeed, the game engine must somehow be compromising performance even on the fastest systems.
 
In my PC, in runs very Smooth (P4-1500, 256Ram pc-800, Intel 850GB, Asus TI 4400 128MB)...

HOWEVER: AT FIRST WAS VERY CHOPPY UNTIL I UNFRAGMENTED MY HARD DRIVE, GTA3, SEEMS TO BE LOADING ALL THE TIME...

I RECOMMEND UNFRAGMENT YOUR HDD, THEN TRY THE GAME, POST RESULTS!!!!!
 
Three things have made my GTA3 run smoothly after suffering the same lags that everyone else has.

First off, use the no cd patch to stop cdrom accessing.

Second, make sure dmi is enabled (this is done from the control panel>system>devices>disk>properties or something like that 😱 menu ). This had the biggest effect for me! DMI people!DMI

Finally, and this probably only applies to my lowly graphics card... I turned down all the graphics settings most important being the distance drawing and it runs very smoothly now.

I think people with the badass systems have been having problems because of DMI and I heard someone say GTA3 is harddrive intensive so that's probably why defragging the harddisk is so important too. Haven't tried that yet though.
 
I can't understand why there is even a trails option. It looks like you are hammered.

A little bit choppy on my rig at high res. as well.
 
Try these things I posted in the other GTA thread:

1. Apply the no-cd patch, copy contents of cd2 to /audio directory.
2. Apply the Direct X patch (if you have Nvidia + Win XP)
3. Change the sound driver to Directsound Hardware.

This improved the game from 1024x768 choppy to 1280x1024 smooth (plus no choppiness when changing radio stations).

Turn on frame sync and frame limiter as well to make it look better.
 
I'm playing at the lowest settings (with all the frill turned off). On my system (XP1700, GF2 GTS, WinXP, etc.) it runs decently well, however I'd like to pump up the settings and take full advantage of all the wonderful eye candy that this game offers. I think I'll be upgrading to a GF4 Ti4200, and possibly downgrading to Win98 (or would that be an upgrade? heh).
 
Hey all,

I have this running half decent on my system now. I have frame limiter and sync on, trails are off, and I have this on 1152x768x32. Audio is on direct sound. This is running on a piii1000 with a gf2 ultra 64mb, so it?s a pretty old system. My only problems right now are trying to figure out how to get the no-cd to work. When I try to load the nocd loader, it loads correctly but there is no audio. In the config menu it lists no audio devices present. I am only trying to use the nocd since it stalls between switching stations. I moved the cd2 audio over too. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Brad
 
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