GTA4 fps

[Kristijonas]

Hello,

I have a new PC and I have a question regarding its performance. My specs are:

intel i3 2120 processor
ASUS GTX 560Ti
random shitty hard disk (temporarely)
4gb 1333mhz RAM

I have set all settings of NVidia Control Panel to highest quality, antialiasing to max, everything for the best graphics. I have set GTA 4 graphics all to max and on. Draw distance is 35. GTA 4 is latest version. NVidia drivers are latest version.

Now when I play, fps is between 20 and 50. 50 is when I'm in a small street in a standing car and 20 (sometimes even lower) when I'm driving a fast car through highway, in a street with lots of cars, etc.

The question is, are these frames per second normal with my GPU for GTA4? I know it's not low because of processor, so it must be GPU. I'd appreciate if someone else with GTX 560ti could reply with their own experience, too!

 

[Firsttime]

GTA4 is a CPU hog, what does it say your CPU usage is at with the benchmark? I went from not being able to play GTA4 at all with a 2.9ghz dual core to being able to max everything at 1080p with an i5.

 

[Kristijonas]

It says:
Avg fps: 60
cpu usage: 73%
system memory usage: 69%
video memory usage: 100%

This is with VSync turned off. Othewise everything is maxed out in game with 35 draw distance. Nvidia panel is set to application control/quality.

 

[LumbergTech]

turn shadows off ..instant huge fps boost
not really noticeable either tbh

 

[minmaster]

gta4 is one of those console ports that are not optimized to run on PC, that is to fully utilize the GPU instead of relying mostly on CPU.

 

[Kristijonas]

Thank you LumbergTech, I will try that.
Also, I don't want to appear like I'm very picky about fps. I actually had a 20x times worse pc just a few days so I'm used to lag. It's just that I want to be sure that it's not a hardware problem or that I do not lack things like .net frameworks, visual studios or directx updates or something like that. It seems that my PC handles GTA4 really fine, considering its poor coding and the fact that I run it on absolute max settings and it's still -perfectly- playable. Also, I tried metro 2033 and it ran perfectly maxed out. Thank you for helping me put my worries away!

 

[mazeroth]

Even though your CPU after the benchmark is showing 73% that doesn't mean much. The built-in benchmark is crap and isn't a true indicator of performance. GTA IV will take as much CPU power as you can throw at it. I upgraded from a nice dual to a quad just so I could really enjoy that game. Yeah, not kidding!

 

[Kristijonas]

Well i3 2120 is the best dual-core processor in the world as far as I know. (please correct me if I'm wrong) So I don't think it bottlenecks my GPU. Unless, as you've mentioned, the game can take as much as you throw at it. But anyway, I'm content with performance of my PC.

 

[Monster_Munch]

I think you're expecting too much. The GTX560 and i3 2120 aren't the most high end parts. You should leave the nvidia control panel on the defaults, and let GTA4 auto detect settings. If that runs smoothly you can try turning up the draw distance etc.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Well i3 2120 is the best dual-core processor in the world as far as I know. (please correct me if I'm wrong)

You're wrong.

Also, your experience with GTA IV is about normal for your hardware. It's not a well-optimised game, so don't expect too much from it.

 

[Zanovar]

try lowering shadows setting,if i can remember rightly this setting hammered my fps,was the setting i lowered in gta 4
ah,lumberg has mentioned this also

 

[Rifter]

get a quad core, GTA 4 runs like crap on dual cores. This is nothing new.

 

[Firsttime]

It's strange that your video memory is running at 100%. Like others have said GTA4 is poorly optimized and seems to just hate some computers.

 

[SlitheryDee]

It's probably processor related lag. The i3 2120 may be an excellent dual core, but GTA 4 really benefits from a quad core. It's far more of a processor hog than it should be given what's going on in the game. The 560ti should be more than enough card to handle the graphics side of things.

 

[Raduque]

GTA4's minimum requirements should really say "Quad core CPU or better". The game is heavily multithreaded and heavily unoptimized.

 

[minmaster]

yup, if you're gonna game you should get at least a quad core as it seems more and more games run like crap on duals

 

[QueBert]

GTA4's minimum requirements should really say "Quad core CPU or better". The game is heavily multithreaded and heavily unoptimized.

No it shouldn't, I played it on my dual core and it was perfectly playable. The only time I ever noticed slow down was when I walked into the bar. If it ever dropped below 30fps anywhere else I sure didn't feel it. Yeah it'll run better on a quad core, but it ran great on my system. And I don't even have that great of a dual core CPU.

 

[WrongTarget]

You're wrong.

Also, your experience with GTA IV is about normal for your hardware. It's not a well-optimised game, so don't expect too much from it.

In what way is he wrong? The i3 2120 is to my knowledge the most powerful two core (consumer) CPU (foremost in games) today.
Since it has got HT it's even passably good in multi-threaded games.
As for GTA IV, the performance is on par with Phenom II x4 965
(as you can see the i3 2100 is on par with Phenom II x4 955BE):

http://www.behardware.com/articles/816-10/intel-core-i3-2100-lga-1155-sandy-bridge-dual-core.html

I must say that it's a bit funny that most people automatically assume that i3 2120 has got poor performance in games since it's a two core processor. They do however not count the advantages the new i3 hold over older two core processors as Core2Duo and Phenom II x2. The i3 2120 has got HT, a higher IPC than any other two core CPU out there and a rather high clock frequency (3.3GHz).

In most games the i3 2120 holds a performance advantage over Phenom II x4 955/965:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2120-2100_5.html#sect0
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-3.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-4.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-5.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-6.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-7.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-8.html

That's why I'm a bit suprised and amused that most people here tend to see the i3 as a crappy gaming CPU, while they feel the Phenom II x4 is a good gaming CPU.

 

[Clinkster]

In what way is he wrong? The i3 2120 is to my knowledge the most powerful two core (consumer) CPU (foremost in games) today.

It's simply the fact that 2 cores is simply not recommended for modern games anymore, ESPECIALLY GTA4, a rather notorious CPU pig.

He says he's play maxed settings, too. When I did that on my i5-750, it was 75% across all cores.

He's got only about half as much processing power, as I did, you can roughly do the math.

 

[Zorander]

Having played GTA4 on a PhII dual-core and unlocked tri-core, I can vouch that the game definitely benefits from the additional core(s). And oh, I suggest setting Shadows to Medium at most (anything higher is instant resources hog).

 

[Mike Gayner]

Epic thread bump newbie. Got that out of your system now?

 

[silvan4now]

I absolutely loved the series but this GTA was such a bad one and only because of the bad optimization....i decided to give the older versions another try...

 

[PrayForDeath]

I think you're expecting too much. The GTX560 and i3 2120 aren't the most high end parts. You should leave the nvidia control panel on the defaults, and let GTA4 auto detect settings. If that runs smoothly you can try turning up the draw distance etc.

It runs perfectly fine on my GT560 and Phenom II 555 unlocked to 4x. I also run the IceHancer mod which is very taxing on the GPU. The settings are mostly maxed except for shadows (high instead of very high)

Only thing I can think of is the OP's dual core processor. It might be holding you back.

edit: oh hey, it's an old post

 

[Martimus]

I get slow downs on my computer running it at full resolution (1920x1200), and I have a more powerful processor and GPU than you. It is just a huge resource hog. Reduce the AA, and maybe lower the resolution and you should be fine.

EDIT: I didn't realize this was an old thread that someone resurected. I appologize for continuing to bump it.

 

[MustangSVT]

You're wrong.

Also, your experience with GTA IV is about normal for your hardware. It's not a well-optimised game, so don't expect too much from it.

is he? whats a faster dual core?