Gta4 pc runs fine whay all the fuss?

I didnt buy this game for a long time, after reading how bad it ran on the pc. Found it for 20 bucks the other day so I grabbed it. I have everything on high 2 on ver high and the game runs at 40/50 fps half way tru the game with no problems. I had the 360 version a few years ago. To me this is the superior version, I remember the load time on the 360 being very long, overall the GTA4 "port" dosent seem to be as bad as I had read

1920/1080, dual core e8400, 4 gigs ram, vista 64, bfg gtx 285 ocx, not a monster rig, actually going to be upgrading cpu and gpu very soon.

Ummmm duh it runs fine NOW. when its all patched up it runs just like any other game.

It's fine with a quad core and a moderate gpu. I don't understand the fuss though either, I get much better fps than in Crysis. GTA4 with everything maxed with enhanced gfx mods and tweaked cfg files at 1920x1200 and I get 50-70+fps without overclocking my card. The mods kick ass too, driving around Lambos, Ferraris, McLaren F1's etc. BeavermanA

Ummmm duh it runs fine NOW. when its all patched up it runs just like any other game.

JangoWuzHere

ok :| pc gamers on these forums seem to have a bad rep for a reason:roll:, didnt realise it was known knowlege that it ran fantastic now.

[QUOTE="BeavermanA"]It's fine with a quad core and a moderate gpu. I don't understand the fuss though either, I get much better fps than in Crysis. GTA4 with everything maxed with enhanced gfx mods and tweaked cfg files at 1920x1200 and I get 50-70+fps without overclocking my card. The mods kick ass too, driving around Lambos, Ferraris, McLaren F1's etc. Gamartto

Ok firstly no disrespect to the op but I would like to know how you are monitoring frame rates in GTA 4 ? If you are going by the GTA 4 benchmark then I can tell you now that is a load of bull. On the benchmark I get 60fps in game I see massive drops to under 20fps and this is on a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz and a GTX260. I suggest you get a copy of Fraps or install xfire and use the frame rate monitor in there. I find it very hard to believe you run GTA 4 on High/Very High settings with a dual core.

Now as to your question, I was there right at the start of the whole GTA 4 fiasco, I was one of the millions that eagerly awaited GTA 4 on the PC. I loved GTA that much I even bought an xbox 360 to play GTA 4 whilst I waited for the PC version. Then the PC version arrived and what a mess it was, did you know the console version had around 150 testers/quality assurance people ? Have a guess how many people were in charge of quality control for the PC version.... it was FOUR. The PC version of GTA 4 was tested on a massive total of four PC's that is it.

On release people were shocked to find they had to install 3 to 4 additional programs just to run the game (Securom, Social club, Visual C++ and GFWL). The social club didn't work for nearly two days the majority of people couldn't play GTA 4 online because the social club was broke for the PC. The first version of GTA 4 was also plagued with horrendous memory leaks, people could only run the game for a short period of time before the memory leak manifested itself in either slow fps or just plain crashing.

There was also a massive lack of options in the game, even basic options like getting GTA 4 to run in a window couldn't be done from the menu ..... nope we had to create a text file called "commandline.txt" and put "-windowed" in that text file. That is incredibly unprofessional and lazy if you ask me. Then we started to notice there were things not quite right with GTA 4, here is a brief list :-

1. Several game assets were missing, including the ticker tape displays, clock on the clock tower and no moon. The ticker tape and clock tower got fixed in patch THREE. The moon has yet to be fixed.
2. In an effort to improve things Rockstar released patch 1.0.2.0 that gave people some extra performance ......... oh yeah and removed about 50% of the in game assets. After patch 1.0.2.0 there were no hotdog stands and precious few street side objects they all got removed (and put back in a couple of months later with patch 1.0.3.0).
3. No gun recoil, in the console version when you fired a gun you got "bullet spread" on the PC version you don't, if you used a controller in the PC version you got bullet spread but use a mouse and your bullets never deviated. This was rectified in patch 1.0.4.0, guess how they rectified it ? they just took out bullet spread for the controllers.
4. Worse driver spawning than the console version, the drivers spawning into the car happens practically under Niko's nose on the console version you can actually snipe a driver in the car when the car is nearly 100ft away. You can't do that on the PC, the driver spawning is around 20ft and no setting alters that.
5. Car shadows turning off, the shadows in this game have been the bane of Rockstar. Since release the shadows have never worked properly on the PC version. At 8pm every night in the game your car shadows turn off (they don't in the console version) then at 6am they turn back on. Oh it gets better at first we didn't even have a shadow for Niko if he drove a bike. They fixed that in patch 1.0..0.4 so now when Niko steals a bike you see a shadow of him when he rides the bike. The only problem is this shadow stays on whereas the car shadow doesn't. So at 8pm the car shadow turns off and you are left with a disembodied driver shadow stuck to your car.
6. The latest patch 1.0.0.4 has also introduced NEW graphical glitches, the major one is road textures actually showing through the car.

I could carry on listing faults, bugs and errors with GTA 4 but we would be here all night and that is even before I got to mention what a complete mess multiplayer was on the PC. The PC version of GTA 4 has rightly earned it's title as one of the worst ports ever on the PC. To this day GTA 4 is the only game on the PC that needs a 2gb Vram equipped graphics card to run with all settings maxxed, even Crysis does not need that much Vram. I loved the GTA franchise and I loved GTA 4 but the PC version was such a god awful mess that I won't touch another thing from Rockstar on the PC platform.

GTA 4 runs fine for me as well TC.

it runs ok, just not as good as it should. It ran like complete crap on 360 (and looked horrible compared to pc), so we should give them some credit.

Ok firstly no disrespect to the op but I would like to know how you are monitoring frame rates in GTA 4 ? If you are going by the GTA 4 benchmark then I can tell you now that is a load of bull. On the benchmark I get 60fps in game I see massive drops to under 20fps and this is on a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz and a GTX260. I suggest you get a copy of Fraps or install xfire and use the frame rate monitor in there. I find it very hard to believe you run GTA 4 on High/Very High settings with a dual core.

Now as to your question, I was there right at the start of the whole GTA 4 fiasco, I was one of the millions that eagerly awaited GTA 4 on the PC. I loved GTA that much I even bought an xbox 360 to play GTA 4 whilst I waited for the PC version. Then the PC version arrived and what a mess it was, did you know the console version had around 150 testers/quality assurance people ? Have a guess how many people were in charge of quality control for the PC version.... it was FOUR. The PC version of GTA 4 was tested on a massive total of four PC's that is it.

On release people were shocked to find they had to install 3 to 4 additional programs just to run the game (Securom, Social club, Visual C++ and GFWL). The social club didn't work for nearly two days the majority of people couldn't play GTA 4 online because the social club was broke for the PC. The first version of GTA 4 was also plagued with horrendous memory leaks, people could only run the game for a short period of time before the memory leak manifested itself in either slow fps or just plain crashing.

There was also a massive lack of options in the game, even basic options like getting GTA 4 to run in a window couldn't be done from the menu ..... nope we had to create a text file called "commandline.txt" and put "-windowed" in that text file. That is incredibly unprofessional and lazy if you ask me. Then we started to notice there were things not quite right with GTA 4, here is a brief list :-

1. Several game assets were missing, including the ticker tape displays, clock on the clock tower and no moon. The ticker tape and clock tower got fixed in patch THREE. The moon has yet to be fixed.
2. In an effort to improve things Rockstar released patch 1.0.2.0 that gave people some extra performance ......... oh yeah and removed about 50% of the in game assets. After patch 1.0.2.0 there were no hotdog stands and precious few street side objects they all got removed (and put back in a couple of months later with patch 1.0.3.0).
3. No gun recoil, in the console version when you fired a gun you got "bullet spread" on the PC version you don't, if you used a controller in the PC version you got bullet spread but use a mouse and your bullets never deviated. This was rectified in patch 1.0.4.0, guess how they rectified it ? they just took out bullet spread for the controllers.
4. Worse driver spawning than the console version, the drivers spawning into the car happens practically under Niko's nose on the console version you can actually snipe a driver in the car when the car is nearly 100ft away. You can't do that on the PC, the driver spawning is around 20ft and no setting alters that.
5. Car shadows turning off, the shadows in this game have been the bane of Rockstar. Since release the shadows have never worked properly on the PC version. At 8pm every night in the game your car shadows turn off (they don't in the console version) then at 6am they turn back on. Oh it gets better at first we didn't even have a shadow for Niko if he drove a bike. They fixed that in patch 1.0..0.4 so now when Niko steals a bike you see a shadow of him when he rides the bike. The only problem is this shadow stays on whereas the car shadow doesn't. So at 8pm the car shadow turns off and you are left with a disembodied driver shadow stuck to your car.
6. The latest patch 1.0.0.4 has also introduced NEW graphical glitches, the major one is road textures actually showing through the car.

I could carry on listing faults, bugs and errors with GTA 4 but we would be here all night and that is even before I got to mention what a complete mess multiplayer was on the PC. The PC version of GTA 4 has rightly earned it's title as one of the worst ports ever on the PC. To this day GTA 4 is the only game on the PC that needs a 2gb Vram equipped graphics card to run with all settings maxxed, even Crysis does not need that much Vram. I loved the GTA franchise and I loved GTA 4 but the PC version was such a god awful mess that I won't touch another thing from Rockstar on the PC platform.

charmingcharlie

tl;dr

He thinks GTAIV sucks because he can't run it

tl;dr

He thinks GTAIV sucks because he can't run it

rben21232

If you can't be bothered to read what I typed then how about you do the board the courtesy of not quoting my post eh ? You could have simply indicated to me that you had something pointless to say. Oh and yes I could run it, I have two PC's that can run it. However just because I can run it does not change the fact the game is full of bugs, errors and faults but then you couldn't be bothered to read the post could you.

[QUOTE="rben21232"]tl;dr

He thinks GTAIV sucks because he can't run it

charmingcharlie

If you can't be bothered to read what I typed then how about you do the board the courtesy of not quoting my post eh ? You could have simply indicated to me that you had something pointless to say. Oh and yes I could run it, I have two PC's that can run it. However just because I can run it does not change the fact the game is full of bugs, errors and faults but then you couldn't be bothered to read the post could you.

I hit the sweet spot!

CC is right, GTA IV is a crappy port.

I hit the sweet spot!

rben21232

lol sounds like someone pissed in his wheaties the morning he picked his copy of GTAIV on PC up!

I had no troubles at all with the game on day 1.

Stay away from console sandbox/open-world game ports on PC.

The game runs fine for me too. Its had its problems on release i just got a 4870 1gb but i couldn't max it (View distance) and ran bad it was a shock for alot of ppl. PC gamers hate not being able to max settings with a high end gaming rig. But with patches it got alot better but still stained from the bad launch. I dont care what any1 says i clocked GTA for the 4th time yesterday the game is epic graphically stunning in some parts and the open world phsyx kick ass.

Runs fine on the settings I have it as (everything maxed except draw distance/car density )

Ummmm duh it runs fine NOW. when its all patched up it runs just like any other game.

JangoWuzHere

that

I didnt buy this game for a long time, after reading how bad it ran on the pc. Found it for 20 bucks the other day so I grabbed it. I have everything on high 2 on ver high and the game runs at 40/50 fps half way tru the game with no problems. I had the 360 version a few years ago. To me this is the superior version, I remember the load time on the 360 being very long, overall the GTA4 "port" dosent seem to be as bad as I had read

Advid-Gamer