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[TheExodu5]

Anyone here have to Alt Tab in and out every now and then to restore performance?

Oh dear, a memory leak. Rockstar :lol

 

[Tobiasboon]

I'm using norestriction.

How exactly is the shortcut command line supposed to look?

"X:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe" -norestriction

^^^ Is that correct?

 

[Diablohead]

Here are some screens at the max settings my system will allow:



These were all taken with FRAPS, and for some reason the FPS counter isn't showing up. I am not impressed with the visuals.

Your image links took me to an ad page, then when I click "continue to image" I end up with female boobs, not good :/

 

[pizzaguysrevenge]

Oh I did the same thing...it is not playable with every thing set to max....i get less then 10 fps

Well that's why I said that I guess my problems aren't as bad as everyone else's.

How exactly is the shortcut command line supposed to look?

"X:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe" -norestriction

^^^ Is that correct?

Yep

 

[Zenith]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=203262

9.4/10

again no mention of performance issues, installation errors or lack of AA. I'm beginning to wonder if any reviewers played it on their own machines.

 

[Haunted]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=203262

9.4/10

again no mention of performance issues, installation errors or lack of AA. I'm beginning to wonder if any reviewers played it on their own machines.

console reviews all over again

lol games journalism

makes me want to fucking punch someone

etc. etc.

 

[wolfmat]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=203262

9.4/10

again no mention of performance issues, installation errors or lack of AA. I'm beginning to wonder if any reviewers played it on their own machines.

The same old shit all over again. Fuck reviews.

 

[cameltoe]

Well that's why I said that I guess my problems aren't as bad as everyone else's.


Yep

can you run the benchmark? When you set all to high, how far over the 480mb does it go? As you can see below with these settings i am almost at the max. Changing textures to high, it almost hits 600mb (1600x900) which gives awful performance ingame.

Statistics
Average FPS: 34.75
Duration: 37.15 sec
CPU Usage: 67%
System memory usage: 80%
Video memory usage: 99%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1600 x 900 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 100

 

[Visualante]

Blue screen error caused by a device or driver

You received this message because a hardware device, its driver, or related software has caused a blue screen error. This type of error means the computer has shut down abruptly to protect itself from potential data corruption or loss. In this case, we were unable to detect the specific device or driver that caused the problem.

smh ATi, Rockstar, Microsoft.

 

[pizzaguysrevenge]

can you run the benchmark? When you set all to high, how far over the 480mb does it go? As you can see below with these settings i am almost at the max. Changing textures to high, it almost hits 600mb (1600x900) which gives awful performance ingame.

Statistics
Average FPS: 34.75
Duration: 37.15 sec
CPU Usage: 67%
System memory usage: 80%
Video memory usage: 99%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1600 x 900 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 35
Detail Distance: 100

My VRAM usage is 1449/493

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B0TZMiMYGA

 

[kitch9]

Anyone here have to Alt Tab in and out every now and then to restore performance?

If you haven't already try installing NET framework 3.5 SP1.

I swear the game runs better since I have (Placebo?) and I haven't had any issues since.

 

[WickedCobra03]

Cold blooded. :lol

Console reviews all over again? Oh my.

What about console reviews all over again?


Anyways, yeah, I dunno if a lot even played it considering they said nothing...nothing about this. Did they just make sure the menu screen comes up and read the press release before writing up a PC review???

 

[Gully State]

I don't understand why Rockstar gets a pass from reviewers. Didn't they learn their lesson from the last set of GTA4 reviews?

 

[Joseph Merrick]

https://tv.rockstargames.com/mytv/index/id/25820

tested the video thing. one quick clip and one a bit too long with many cuts.

 

[Lyon]

Quick question: How do you set a resolution without entering the game, is there a config? My mate has somehow set it to a res that his 720p TV can't handle. Cheers boys.

Also, I'm installing now.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

Quick question: How do you set a resolution without entering the game, is there a config? My mate has somehow set it to a res that his 720p TV can't handle. Cheers boys.

Also, I'm installing now.

Probably just delete the settings files in Application Data/Rockstar Games/GTA IV

 

[FuKuy]

I have bought the game today... and I have to say I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL RUNNING THE GAME.


Instalation: OK

Activation: OK

Rockstar Social Club account created succesful.

Running the game: NO problem.

Configuration: Medium textures, Render high, shadows at 8 and everything else @ 38.


The game looks better than 360/PS3 version. And benchmark give me 48fps.



My rig:

Q6600
GF8800GTX
4GB
Vista x64

 

[Lyon]

WTF is this now... I'm not happy.

Created an account earlier in preparation, and I cannot login.

 

[Woakes]

I have bought the game today... and I have to say I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL RUNNING THE GAME.


Instalation: OK

Activation: OK

Rockstar Social Club account created succesful.

Running the game: NO problem.

Configuration: Medium textures, Render high, shadows at 8 and everything else @ 38.


The game looks better than 360/PS3 version. And benchmark give me 48fps.



My rig:

Q6600
GF8800GTX
4GB
Vista x64

Running almost exactly the same setup, Q6600, 8800GT, 2gb Ram and Vista 32.
Game runs great and looks awesome. Textures medium, rendering quality very high. 44 fps on average. 1440x900 (19" monitor).

It's probably not the greatest port in the world but it's not bad. I sympathise with people suffering from the bizzare social club and live problems that can crash the game, but I think in a lot of cases people's expectations of what their pc's are capable of are just pie in sky.

It looks great, who cares if the sliders aren't at the end. I'd rather be able to end stop them in a year's time and think "hey this still looks great", than end stop them now and in a years time think it looks shit.

edit: I may be imagining things but I believe I got a bit better performance by turning off the video recording option. I reason that's gotta either thrash the drive or consume RAM, however it's done.

 

[cameltoe]

I have bought the game today... and I have to say I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL RUNNING THE GAME.


Instalation: OK

Activation: OK

Rockstar Social Club account created succesful.

Running the game: NO problem.

Configuration: Medium textures, Render high, shadows at 8 and everything else @ 38.


The game looks better than 360/PS3 version. And benchmark give me 48fps.



My rig:

Q6600
GF8800GTX
4GB
Vista x64

what resolution?

and the norestriction thing no longer works for me!!

edit: answer^

Currently the limit can be told to go fudge itself by adding the command line '-norestrictions' to the path of a shortcut to LaunchGTAIV.exe. However this and any other command line is nulled if you can't log into Rockstar's Social Club network when launching the game.

EDIT2:

Still not working even though I login before starting the game....

 

[Lyon]

Forget my previous issue, just restarted my PC 'cause I couldn't think of anything else. When I got back into XP I was faced with horrible screen corruption, everything turned white and started flashing black artifacts at me. Once that had stopped everything looked normal for a minute, then more corruption, I cant even explain it, then a BSOD. It looked like my GPU was dying, but I've just booted into Vista and I'm fine. Nothing is installed on here though, so I wont be doing any gaming. Gonna try to boot into safe mode, don't know what exactly I will be able to achieve though.

Just so I don't murder everyone, does GTA have to be uninstalled to reclaim the right to install? If I have to do something drastic and eventually find out the game wont even install, there will be murdering.

 

[CabbageRed]

Just so I don't murder everyone, does GTA have to be uninstalled to reclaim the right to install? If I have to do something drastic and eventually find out the game wont even install, there will be murdering.

A reactivation would be needed after installing to a new PC or on a fresh install of Windows, however. there should be no install limitations so you're fine.

 

[FuKuy]

what resolution?

and the norestriction thing no longer works for me!!

edit: answer^

Currently the limit can be told to go fudge itself by adding the command line '-norestrictions' to the path of a shortcut to LaunchGTAIV.exe. However this and any other command line is nulled if you can't log into Rockstar's Social Club network when launching the game.

EDIT2:

Still not working even though I login before starting the game....

I'm playing @ 1680x1050.

 

[brain_stew]

A reactivation would be needed after installing to a new PC or on a fresh install of Windows, however. there should be no install limitations so you're fine.

Oh there most definitely are install limits, otherwise I wouldn't still be locked out of the game.

There's a file in the installation folder that allows you to revoke your license but be careful though, use it more than 2 or 3 times and you'll be locked out of the game. I'm currently trying to get Rockstar and secuROM to sort out this BS for me but they're equally hopeless.

 

[CabbageRed]

Oh there most definitely are install limits, otherwise I wouldn't still be locked out of the game.

There's a file in the installation folder that allows you to revoke your license but be careful though, use it more than 2 or 3 times and you'll be locked out of the game. I'm currently trying to get Rockstar and secuROM to sort out this BS for me but they're equally hopeless.

Yikes. However, Rockstar clearly stated that activation limitations were not to be a part of the retail version so this is hopefully a fluke. Have you run into anyone else with the same problem? I know there have been issues in the past where older version of Securom installed on a PC will screw newer versions.

 

[brain_stew]

Yikes. However, Rockstar clearly stated that activation limitations were not to be a part of the retail version so this is hopefully a fluke. Have you run into anyone else with the same problem? I know there have been issues in the past where older version of Securom installed on a PC will screw newer versions.

This is what I'm hoping my problem is, I managed to find a Securom uninstaller so once my activations are reset, hopefully that will fix the crashing.

However, you absolutely do have to revoke your license before reinstalling, or reactivating, and if that isn't the same as install limits then I don't know what is. Like I say it allowed me to revoke then reactivate a few times at first (as this was the only way I could play without securom instantly crashing) but after the 4th or so time I was locked out so there definitely IS a system in place to lock consumers out of their purchase.

 

[Mr.City]

I'm really conflicted about buying this. Is there a benchmarking tool that I download for this game?

 

[dLMN8R]

Charles Onyett of IGN confirmed that they played a fully released retail copy of the game for their review, and had no problems outside of the performance problems he mentioned in the review.

 

[Death Dealer]

An honest review:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/12/04/grand-theft-auto-iv-pc/1

 

[Nikorasu]

The catalyst 8.12 betas seemed to help a bit with my 4870x2. I still run at medium settings @1080p but the framerate is a lot smoother now, or maybe I just got used to it. Who knows. Either way I seem to be enjoying the game now and 32 player MP is delicious. It definitely looks better than the console versions. People gotta remember to turn that definition filter on by pressing P. The filter helps obscure the jaggies and the motion blur is nice (I've actually noticed 2 types of blur - camera blur when you're on foot and 'speed blur' when you're in a car). They really need to make that a graphics option instead of a button toggle that seems to default to off whenever you boot up the game.

I think a lot of people are really confused about the settings here. The only thing that really affects IQ and performance is texture quality. Running with medium textures doesn't make the game look bad, it just makes the textures on par with the console versions. The game is pretty lacking in options in that respect. You can't turn down geometric complexity on models or tone down effects or anything. For people with decent cpus, vehicle density and detail distance don't have much real impact. My 4870x2 isn't getting much of a workout from this game. It's being bottlenecked by my dual core cpu. The best thing they could do is make a patch that offloads more work to the gpu (and add anti-aliasing).

 

[SIP YEK NOD]

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html

new nvidia drivers

 

[wolfmat]

This is one of those games that will benefit from a crack. Tear out the Social Club mess and the GfWL garbage requirements while you're at it, nameless cracker.

An honest review:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/12/04/grand-theft-auto-iv-pc/1

The review has some facts wrong.

 

[BuddhaRockstar]

Some of these requirements are understandable, like DirectX and Adobe Flash updates. Others are not, like having to install Rockstar Social Club so that it can have a constantly-running app on your system tray or that you have to create a Games for Windows Live login to be able to even play the game.

Is this true? If it is then no buy for me, technical issues aside.

 

[brain_stew]

Is this true? If it is then no buy for me, technical issues aside.

Yup.

 

[Truespeed]

This is the best .NET game I have ever played.

 

[K.Jack]

Can any Nvidia users report on performance gains after installing the 180.84 forceware?

 

[Wollan]

PC : Grand Theft Auto IV, Who's playing it ? And how?

:lol

 

[evlcookie]

Can any Nvidia users report on performance gains after installing the 180.84 forceware?

Going by another forum.

Well new NV drivers did jack shit for the benchmark on my rig. Will actually get into the game tho as it appears theyve gone out of their way to make the benchmark unrepresentative of the actual game.

And the best

i just installed the nvidia driver, now the games running worse, barely any of the textures are loading properly.

I mean lol, my car is floating and the lines on the road are going through my car

http://imagestore.ugbox.net/aview/gtafloatin_c58cbe95b8a1dd8e

So it doesnt look like its an improvement for those 2 guys.

 

[pizzaguysrevenge]

While it may not run as well as it should, the game is perfectly playable and my pick for GOTY.

 

[bee]

Kevin Hoare: A lot of the settings when I was originally putting them in were based off of what I could actually squeeze into system memory and video memory. In some cases we're just seeing 2 GB video cards come out now. That'd be the only way to really get the absolute highest settings. You don't have to put the game at the highest settings to play it

hilarious

 

[lowrider007]

An honest review:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/12/04/grand-theft-auto-iv-pc/1

Interesting review,

"Unfortunately though, our response to these conclusions is simply that the game isn’t any better on the PC. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, the PC version of the game is just not the definitive Grand Theft Auto Iv experience."

 

[K.Jack]

Okay, I'm done with R*, and IGN is obviously slurping Rockstar's dangly bits. IGN: Rockstar Talks GTA IV Technical Problems.

Highlights:

On the phone were a number of Rockstar employees, including Lead QA Arthur Chiang, Technical Director Kevin Hoare, and VP of Development Jeronimo Barrera.

IGN: Just to start out could you give us a sense of how widespread the problem actually is because it's difficult to tell from looking at message boards.

Kevin Hoare: I guess that's really hard to determine. The only thing we really have to go on in that regard is support calls we've been getting which have been quite low or as expected, which I think is roughly around one percent…It seems like maybe these forum posters are the more outspoken percentage of the players. That's really the only thing we have to go on as far as numbers go.

IGN: What sort of issues are you hearing about, both expected and unexpected?

Kevin Hoare: We're on the forums ourselves monitoring the issues people are having. A lot of these issues obviously we haven't seen in our testing and we're working to reproduce them and find workarounds for those issues. Many of the issues that we've found so far haven't been a direct result of the game itself but rather configurations of driver installations or power management software causing issues, various things of that sort.

IGN: Can you say what the patch will address and what sort of timetable there might be?

Kevin Hoare: I think there was an issue with bowling…

Arthur Chiang: We read that some people with sensitive mice were having trouble with the bowling mini-game so we looked into that more and we've got a fix for that. There's a bunch of little UI tweaks because we've come a long way in our video editing prowess and we've been slowly increasing the user functionality to make things easier for what we want to do with it.

Jeronimo Barrera: Let's not beat around the bush here. There's a lot of noise like this game doesn't run at all or there's missing textures and everything else. From what we've gathered a lot of those problems are either out of date drivers or we don't support that type of card or you're underspecced or whatever, it's always a combination of one of those things, it's not necessarily that we don't know what we're doing because obviously we put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of test into this. From what we did and from going through certification with Microsoft and our external QA process we didn't run into the amount of problems that the boards seemed to be saying there are. I know that Nvidia and ATI are constantly…I think they're releasing new drivers pretty soon.

Fear not men! Bowling will definitely be fixed!

And this is only from the first page of the interview!

My favorite:

Arthur Chiang: I've been reading about the texture drop out problem and I've been seeing what kind of hardware they have and it's usually the Nvidia 7900 series.

Oh really?! Fuck you Arthur.

 

[hobbitx]

Seriously, what the fuck with the bowling? I read over the patch update list and they didn't say dick about performance, bugs, or certain drm issues. This situation is looking so bad they almost need to re-release the pc version and apologize.

They also didn't say anything about unlocking the settings, who in their right mind would find that helpful or convenient? They say future proof, but what's going to happen in the future when Rockstar's auto detector misinterprets some newer hardware that's four times as fast as the best card on the market now and locks it on low quality?

 

[Joseph Merrick]

Seriously, what the fuck with the bowling? I read over the patch update list and they didn't say dick about performance, bugs, or certain drm issues. This situation is looking so bad they almost need to re-release the pc version and apologize.

They also didn't say anything about unlocking the settings, who in their right mind would find that helpful or convenient? They say future proof, but what's going to happen in the future when Rockstar's auto detector misinterprets some newer hardware that's four times as fast as the best card on the market now and locks it on low quality?

What lock?

 

[hobbitx]

Based on your hardware, the game will "offer" recommended settings that cannot be changed without a command line switch. If you set an option past what's recommended it will snap right back.

 

[Lince]

Kevin Hoare: A lot of the settings when I was originally putting them in were based off of what I could actually squeeze into system memory and video memory. In some cases we're just seeing 2 GB video cards come out now. That'd be the only way to really get the absolute highest settings. You don't have to put the game at the highest settings to play it

I can't believe a developer said that, I mean, is this guy kidding or just conceding how poor PC coders they are?

 

[Zombie James]

Why the fuck would you ever need to to INSTALL the Social Club and have it run in the background the entire time? Couldn't they just send stats in-game, silently, without annoying anyone?

 

[lowrider007]

In case anyone cares,

Patch Is On The Way

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/43419/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC-Patch-Update

We are working on making a patch available in the next few days. Since Grand Theft Auto IV is a Games For Windows – Live game the patch must be certified by Microsoft before release. The patch is already at Microsoft and we expect a speedy approval.

The patch contains a variety of fixes including:


A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better FX during replays
Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice
Fix for ATI 1900 shadows
Overall savings to memory
Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors
Multiplayer character settings are preserved
Support for DirectInput controllers. Note: The current hack way of supporting these controllers may not work with the improved functionality. So we recommend you remove the hack before upgrading to the patch.
Issues with power management software have also been fixed (slow speed, double speed issues). Even after the patch comes out setting power management software to maximum performance is recommended. We’ve seen cases where power management software does not detect the game is running and puts the CPU in green mode.

Besides the patch we’ve also improved the way the Social Club handles data this should have greatly reduced or eliminated the MMA10 error. If you are still receiving this error after logging in and out of Social Club we would like to know as much info as you can about it.

Driver News

We’re pleased to announce that in co-operation with Nvidia a new driver has been released that improves performance and fixes a major issue with 7900 series cards. If you haven’t gotten the driver yet download it here.

ATI has also agreed to officially release Catalyst 8.12 which will release on Dec 10th from their site. Expect significant performance improvements when using this new driver.

Rockstar Games Social Club Application Info

Due to the high volume of new Social Club users, some users may have experienced periods of time where they are unable to log into their Social Club account using the Rockstar Games Social Club application. If you are unable to log in using the Rockstar Games Social Club application, please skip the login process by clicking "Skip Login" or run in offline mode by clicking "Start in Offline Mode". This is meant as a temporary solution to allow users to play GTA IV PC, so please continue to periodically retry your login as we are working hard to promptly address any lapses in service.

A small number of users have reported the Rockstar Games Social Club application encountering a fatal error, preventing them from playing GTA IV PC. One possible solution is to uninstall the .NET Framework (from Add/Remove Programs) and reinstall it by downloading it from here. If you continue to run into fatal errors in the Rockstar Games Social Club application, please contact Rockstar Games support.

Thank you for your patience as we continue to work around the clock to resolve these issues.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

In case anyone cares,

Patch Is On The Way

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/43419/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC-Patch-Update

Not really. Sorry. :/ Hopefully it will actually fix the problems and not say it will improve things and then not actually do much.

 

[wolfmat]

Come on, if they're actually working on it, you can't STILL give them shit. I mean, the interview is one thing, but if they actually patch the fuckups out, then that's what you want, right?