As you can know, I am "RON123" for you, have always wanted to play perfectly GTA IV -the most difficult PC game to run on your computer.
Few days ago I found the last twick that will boost PFS for me, the one that will give me the best GTA IV experience that I have ever had.
Not only that I probably can play better then you and 99% of gamers, I am also getting one of the best quality frames in the world.
First of all the results: I able to play a very smooth gameplay in the next settings:
1920x1200 res, max settings gameplay.
GTA requirements:First I must explain what high edge hardware GTA IV requires.
This is the only game in the market that
requires any 3-4 cores normal CPU and in addition high amount of VRAM.
As a result, one of the above is a common "bottleneck", It means that upgrading your rig without solving the bottleneck won't really improve performane.
I for example, OC my q6600 to 3.00 GHZ (while using the stock cooler) and did'nt get big improvement, and in addition OC my GPU:
core speed 600 to 642
Shader clock 1500 to 1605
memory clock 900 to 1070
Note: numbers in MHZ, OC while using the stock cooler
This upgrades won't change much for me, because my bottleneck in max settings is the 512 VRAM MB.
The normal framerate (not my) depends mostly on the CPU speed.
However, the quality of the frames depends mostly on amount of VRAM, as textures quality and resolution go up then VRAM requirement will increase either. .
Bad CPU will cause low framerate and shortage of VRAM will cause all the known bugs and poor image quality (all bugs can be solved).
There are many performace mods that cost game quality for increasing the framerate, I choose not to use them, because I want to play perfectly as Rockstar originally intended.
Now I will post all the useful twicks that won't harm the quality of the frames:
First, the common twicks:1. Use windows XP/7 ,-Vista is killing the framerate (some 25%-50% in average).
2. Close all running programs, including GTAbrowser.exe and RGSC.exe (social club, if you use it).
3. Download the last driver and patch.
4. Give to GTAIV.exe high priority in task manager
5. Switch off the capture movie option (in game's menu).
6. Clean all the unnecessary services, can be done in two ways:
A. use msconfig: press "start", then "run", type their "msconfig", in "genetal" press "selective startup" uncheck first second and fourth marks, then look in this window for "services", press it, than mark "hide all microsoft services", after it press "Disable all", then press apply and restart windows in a clean mod, you will see that most of your games will run better, in the new mod don't enter the Internet and other programs (only games), from "msconfig" you can choose "Normal startup" for going beck to all of your programs (will restart windows).
B. Download AlacrityPC program (
link ), which allow you do save a clean profile and load it before lunching the game without restarting Windows (my favorite).
Second,the less common twicks:7. use Xliveless mod (
link) just to get rit of social club and windows live, it won't change performance.
8. I using the RMClock to lock the throttle of the CPU while in game, it seems that gta iv doesn't know to do it itself like any other game.(
link)
9. To improve the overall frames quality it better to force AA (I did it from Nvidia's control penal). Do it only if you got some 30 frame in gameplay, because it uses resources and will harm the framerate(the improvement is really nice but not like an original AA)
10. Now I will explain how to use the commandline, the most importent twicks for best performances:
"-norestrictions": will allow the game to use max settings but wont boost performance.
"-novblank": Won't limit your framerate and will allow it to go as high as it can, very useful.
"-availablevidmem x.xx": this command will solve magically all the bugs (missing textures/ slow loading textures/ flickering shadows and more) and can improve any quality of frames. Use it only if you has really bad quality (otherwise ignore it). This twick uses your RAM in addition to your VRAM, as a result it costs in a lower framerate, as more RAM you use then the drop in framerame will be bigger. You don't need to use a lot of VRAM just 200MB-300MB of extra RAM will solve all the missing textures and 50MB-80MB of ram will solve all the little bugs like flickering objects. x.xx is a multiplier of your RAM. For example 2.00 will make 500MB VRAM to "500MB VRAM" + "500MB RAM" = "1000MB totul memory" usage.
"-percentvidmem xxx": I thought that this command is useless, but I found out few days a ago, that this commande is just want I needed for perfect framerate, you must use it while using "-availablevidmem x.xx" in order to get 100% of your VRAM usage, which will boost extremly the framerate for users of ""-availablevidmem x.xx". Set xxx to 100.
11. This is a optional twick, it will change the way your rig uses memory, it should improve the min framerate but will cost in a lower max framerate,I advice to just try it for a 15-20 fps gameplay. Change this: "Open regedit (from "run") and go to hkey local machine/system/current control set/control/session manager/memory management and change disablepagingexecutive and largesystemcache to 1". -you can test it and change it back to 0 like it was before.
My experience: The q6600 2.4 GHZ will give 35-50 frames in any settings, 512MB of VRAM is too low for even 1680x1050 high textures gameplay, the result is many bugs including the missing textures,a 1920x1200 max settings gameplay requires 750MB of memory in order to be free of even small bugs, I set "-availablevidmem 1.5" for usage of 749MB, my framerate drops to 28-32 while driving in an OC Q6600 to 3.00, This OC gave me just extra 3-4 FPS. this is my full commandline: "-norestrictions -novblank -percentvidmem 100 -availablevidmem 1.5".
It's very hard to test the unstable framerate of this game, I advice to test with fraps (benchmark won't give real results) while normaly driving the town in daylight.
proof: here is a gameplay (20-25 fps) in max settings , I used the stock speeds of my CPU and GPU (no overclockig), Fraps takes some 4-5 frames from game, so add them (in your mind).(I used all the twicks above without number 11) -
max settings Gameplay in youtube I hope I really helped to most of you, and if you already knew it all, so this guide is for an average gamer.
Note: I ready to prove all I sayed above, and I will post extra staff in this thread later.
edit :
I said in the post, that this is not a real/original AA, GTA won't support it. forcing AA from nvidia, even a high AA of 8xQ is not the real thing, it is just looks a little better, the camera moves smoother, it is not a big change, just the overall is better, I will try to capture it and post, I dont have an HD camera.
I looked pixel by pixel and this is not a real AA, I shound't even use this word.
it looks like it is filtering better when this option is on, the colours looks sharper.
I just should say better image quality and that is it.
This post has been edited by ron123 on Mar 3 2009, 20:05 
Grand Theft Auto IV
) and his arguments ? mmmmmm top class 
(for me)
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