Sorry about this...

Alright, so GTAIV is like $8. I'm not sure i should buy it because of my specs (see sig) Will it run well? if at all? what could I play at? Low Med, High? Sorry for making anoughter topic about it, its just my 8800GT that I'm worried about...

It isn't your 8800gt that you should be worried about with GTA 4 it is your processor. Since it is just a dualcore processor I would say you are probably looking at 20fps to 30fps on low to medium settings at 1280 x 720. The game would be "playable" but not exactly pretty and then with all the graphic glitches and bugs I personally don't think it is even worth $8 but you might get something out of it.

Ive got my copy working with an E6400 at 2.13 GHz, 2GB memory, and an 9800GT.

Just turn down all processor-intensive settings (physics, etc). It runs fairly well.

If you are desperately wanting to play GTA IV get it for the consoles (360, PS3). The PC version of GTA IV is poorly optimized. savetehhaloz

you must remember consoles version ran at 720p or lower and around 25-30 fps with screen tearing for the 360 version and they had a view distance of 20 and detail setting of 10. I think his pc can surpass thatnaval

Yeah but the console version wasn't produced by a bunch of retarded drunk morons like Rockstar Toronto. The PC version is incredibly poorly ported so even though his PC is "better" than the consoles in many ways the game will run worse than the consoles because of Rockstar Torontos laziness.

In the TC's case he only has a dualcore processor which will limit the frame rate of GTA 4 simply because of the way Toronto did things. As I said he may just be able to hit the same settings that the console did on this machine but the framerate will be worse than the consoles because of the poor optimisation.

[QUOTE="naval"]you must remember consoles version ran at 720p or lower and around 25-30 fps with screen tearing for the 360 version and they had a view distance of 20 and detail setting of 10. I think his pc can surpass thatcharmingcharlie

Yeah but the console version wasn't produced by a bunch of retarded drunk morons like Rockstar Toronto. The PC version is incredibly poorly ported so even though his PC is "better" than the consoles in many ways the game will run worse than the consoles because of Rockstar Torontos laziness.

In the TC's case he only has a dualcore processor which will limit the frame rate of GTA 4 simply because of the way Toronto did things. As I said he may just be able to hit the same settings that the console did on this machine but the framerate will be worse than the consoles because of the poor optimisation.

[QUOTE="naval"]you must remember consoles version ran at 720p or lower and around 25-30 fps with screen tearing for the 360 version and they had a view distance of 20 and detail setting of 10. I think his pc can surpass thatcharmingcharlie

Yeah but the console version wasn't produced by a bunch of retarded drunk morons like Rockstar Toronto. The PC version is incredibly poorly ported so even though his PC is "better" than the consoles in many ways the game will run worse than the consoles because of Rockstar Torontos laziness.

In the TC's case he only has a dualcore processor which will limit the frame rate of GTA 4 simply because of the way Toronto did things. As I said he may just be able to hit the same settings that the console did on this machine but the framerate will be worse than the consoles because of the poor optimisation.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - 45 fps, can assume 20% lower for E6600 ? Obviously they haven't mentioned other things like Graphics cards, but as GTA IV is CPU intensive game so fps may not be much lower than 25-30 fps also, Medium settings at 1280x1024 is higher the console.

Finally if it is poorly optimized, is graphics the only things that makes a good port ? What about custom tracks, video editor, mod support etc ?

I would take those benchmarks with an oil tanker load of salt, I have a Q6600 and no way in HELL do I ever see 50fps in this game unless I am looking directly at the sky. It is likely Toms Hardware just used the benchmark program that comes with GTA 4. If that is the case then those are complete bull, GTA 4's benchmark is not representative of ingame frame rates.

As for "are graphics the only indicator of a good port" erm no but they are a pretty big part of it, as is having game altering glitches like no moon, reduced driver spawn and no gun recoil. I could go on and list another 20-30 other faults with the port but this isn't the topic for that kind of thing. If you want to see just how **** a port this is then feel free to pop over to GTAforums were you will find thousands of topics and posts by people with very capable systems unable to get this game running at "console" settings.

As for the custom sound track option, hmmmm nice except half the time it doesn't work and just ignores your custom music. Oh the mod support, yeah that is great and every time Rockstar releases a patch they try to kill all modding ...... got to love that mod support from Rockstar eh. OH and a whoppey doo video editor that is totally gimped and can only record the last 30 secs of gameplay.

I've previously tried running the game with an 8800GT and E6600. Performance was poor to say the least. At the very best I could get 30 fps (and that was with low-med settings).

Yeah of course you did, I should believe you over the experiences I have had with this game on 2 different PC's and having dealt with hundreds of complaints about the game on GTAforums. The fact is nearly every person with an ounce of common sense accepts the PC version of GTA 4 is an absolute travisty of a port.

Yet again we see "oh so such and such doesn't work boo hoo" that is not a get out, you asked me to tell you what doesn't work. Just so you know the moon is present in the console version, just so you know gun recoil is present in the console version, just so you know driver spawn is better in the console version. So in other words the PC version has LESS gameplay features than the console version and it still runs crappier than the consoles on PC's with hardware 2 to 3 times better, I would say that is a pretty good example of a crap port.

As for using mods offline, yeah but you can kiss your MP goodbye which you might as well since Rockstar choose GFWL which has no cheat protection whatsoever and MP is pretty much dead anyway now. As for the video editor, guess how many people actually gave a **** whether their FPS or TPS game had a video editor ? I will give you a clue it is a nice round number, I only used the editor once and then turned the replay feature off to try and get this turd running acceptably.

Run fine on my pc without any problems or slow-downs, my only gripe was the graphical limitations, its sort of annoying but nothing but a minor annoyance.

Edit:you have an 8800GT, hmm, try running the benchmark before you fire it up.

This is the thing the lack of the moon may not be "major" but it represents just what a lazy job they did on this game. The fact they missed such a huge honking celestial object in the sky is staggering but what is even more staggering is a year later after 5 patches they still haven't fixed an albeit "minor" but pretty damn obvious glitch.

As for the recoil situation it went like this, a few months ago (before Patch 4) someone discovered that when playing GTA 4 with joypad you had recoil but when playing with a mouse and keyboard you didn't. Now pretty simple thing to rectify you would think eh ? No guess what they did at good ole Rockstar they just removed the recoil from the joypad too :shock: . This is a gameplay feature that exists on the console and it should exist on the PC.

I haven't seen you comment on the ridiculously low driver spawn issue either an issue that Rockstar has known about for well over a year and still have not fixed it. Again this is another dynamic of the game that changes the way the game plays on the PC and makes it a weaker experience to the consoles and there is no excuse for it.

The fact that the general opinion from pretty much every major game site is that GTA 4 is an awful port which kinda goes against your "decent enough" argument. This port is anything BUT decent enough, the game is full of gameplay glitches, graphical glitches, audio glitches and performance glitches.

However I am not going to convince you, you are happy with GTA 4 then that is your problem. This topic is about whether the TC can run the game and since he has a dual core this game will NOT run great, it certainly will not run it at the console equivalent settings which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it but hey it's a "decent port" isn't it :roll:

Yeah of course you did, I should believe you over the experiences I have had with this game on 2 different PC's and having dealt with hundreds of complaints about the game on GTAforums. The fact is nearly every person with an ounce of common sense accepts the PC version of GTA 4 is an absolute travisty of a port.

charmingcharlie

i dont judge ports on such trivial bull**** as the reasons you mention. if those things you mention bother you then... unlucky. i didnt notice them at all and the game ran great for me

This is the thing the lack of the moon may not be "major" but it represents just what a lazy job they did on this game. The fact they missed such a huge honking celestial object in the sky is staggering but what is even more staggering is a year later after 5 patches they still haven't fixed an albeit "minor" but pretty damn obvious glitch.

As for the recoil situation it went like this, a few months ago (before Patch 4) someone discovered that when playing GTA 4 with joypad you had recoil but when playing with a mouse and keyboard you didn't. Now pretty simple thing to rectify you would think eh ? No guess what they did at good ole Rockstar they just removed the recoil from the joypad too :shock: . This is a gameplay feature that exists on the console and it should exist on the PC.

charmingcharlie

umm.. it is feature that is barely noticeable and does not has even a fraction of affect which something like a video editor would have, which you were so ready to diss

hold on, what do you mean by recoil ? do you mean the controller movement or recoil of guns ? I really doubt that recoil of guns would be affected by input methods --- as once you issue the command to fire the behaviour is pretty much the same.

I haven't seen you comment on the ridiculously low driver spawn issue either an issue that Rockstar has known about for well over a year and still have not fixed it. Again this is another dynamic of the game that changes the way the game plays on the PC and makes it a weaker experience to the consoles and there is no excuse for it.

charmingcharlie

I didn't got the issue, care to elaborate ?

The fact that the general opinion from pretty much every major game site is that GTA 4 is an awful port which kinda goes against your "decent enough" argument. This port is anything BUT decent enough, the game is full of gameplay glitches, graphical glitches, audio glitches and performance glitches.

However I am not going to convince you, you are happy with GTA 4 then that is your problem. This topic is about whether the TC can run the game and since he has a dual core this game will NOT run great, it certainly will not run it at the console equivalent settings which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it but hey it's a "decent port" isn't it :roll:

charmingcharlie

Every major site :shock: GS gave it 9.0 (they didn't gave it any demeritemblem) , IGN - 9.2 or Eurogamer 9.0 because it is an awful port, right (and that was before the 3 patches to improve performance) ? I guess 9+ games represent crap ports from now onwards, thanks for the info. thanks for all the glitches which you mentioned -- zomg no moon what could I do

Yeah, pelase don't convince me -- I can live fine the problem that GTA IV runs fine for me.

Again as far as I think tc will be able to run at 25-30 fps after applying the 3 patches at mid settings which is more than console version

umm.. it is feature that is barely noticeable and does not has even a fraction of affect which something like a video editor would have, which you were so ready to dissnaval

It is pretty evident that no matter what bugs, glitches or errors I demonstrate to you, you will simply go "oh that isn't important". No ONE bug isn't of any great importance but GTA 4 is infested with bugs, glitches and errors. You don't find the moon missing all that important then woohoo, it is just ONE example there are plenty more.

hold on, what do you mean by recoil ? do you mean the controller movement or recoil of guns ? I really doubt that recoil of guns would be affected by input methods --- as once you issue the command to fire the behaviour is pretty much the same.naval

When you fire a gun in the console version of GTA 4 you get bullet spread the longer you hold down the trigger. You try it on the PC go up to a wall aim at the wall and every single bullet will hit the exact same place. In the PC version there was bullet spread if you used the joypad. However when they discovered that mouse users didn't have bullet spread they simply removed it from joypad users too.

I didn't got the issue, care to elaborate ?naval

Yes you do have this issue everyone has this issue, in the console version the distance at which a driver spawns into a car is incredibly high. In fact on the console version you can be all the way down the end of the road and snipe a driver whilst they are in the car. You try and do that in the PC version and you stand no chance because there is NO driver in the car till the car is practically on top of Niko. It has been said that the driver spawning distance is actually 2 - 3 times greater on the consoles than it is on the PC.

Now let me guess you are going to say "well turn your settings up", give it a go see what happens. You can max view distance and draw distance to 100% and it will not affect the driver spawn distance it will stay the same. Now it is fair to say a PC gamer that hasn't played the console version wouldn't know this. I owned GTA 4 on the 360 and PC and as embarrassed as I am to say this the 360 version is superior in some pretty important ways.

Every major site :shock: GS gave it 9.0 (they didn't gave it any demeritemblem) , IGN - 9.2 or Eurogamer 9.0 because it is an awful port, right (and that was before the 3 patches to improve performance) ? I guess 9+ games represent crap ports from now onwards, thanks for the info. thanks for all the glitches which you mentioned -- zomg no moon what could I donaval

Yeah isn't it curious how major sites all gave GTA 4 high marks yet the metascore from users is 4.5 out of 10. There is a gross disparency their isn't there ? So someone is spouting bull, I wonder is it the people that bought the game or websites that have vested interest in keeping chummy with Rockstar ?

Oh and it hasn't been just "3 patches" it has been FIVE patches. Seriously at least get your facts straight. This game has received 5 hefty patches and nearly all of the glitches present on launch are still present today. I used to be a major GTA fan, hell I used to defend GTA 4 to the hilt but the screw up that was patch 5 or rather patch 1.0.0.4 (they couldn't even get the version number right) screwed the game up that much I am past caring now.

Again as far as I think tc will be able to run at 25-30 fps after applying the 3 patches at mid settings which is more than console versionnaval

Again you are wrong he has a dual core which means he will be lucky to get past 20fps at console settings. Anyway I am done here I don't need to show people why GTA 4 is a bad port any one with some common sense can tell that GTA 4 runs like an absolute turd on the PC and it is a damn disgrace what Rockstar have done to GTA on the PC.

It is pretty evident that no matter what bugs, glitches or errors I demonstrate to you, you will simply go "oh that isn't important". No ONE bug isn't of any great importance but GTA 4 is infested with bugs, glitches and errors. You don't find the moon missing all that important then woohoo, it is just ONE example there are plenty more.charmingcharlie

And all of them, no major memory leaks, ctd or unplayble bugs -- these are what makes the bad. Dragon Age has a memory leak issue which increases the load time to 10 minutes --- now would you call it also crap version (this is issue is much more severe than any of the ones you mentioned)?

When you fire a gun in the console version of GTA 4 you get bullet spread the longer you hold down the trigger. You try it on the PC go up to a wall aim at the wall and every single bullet will hit the exact same place. In the PC version there was bullet spread if you used the joypad. However when they discovered that mouse users didn't have bullet spread they simply removed it from joypad users too.

charmingcharlie

Okay I checked, but the implementation is quite poor -- the longer you check wider the circle grows, this is not how recoil works -- maybe that's why they removed it. Secondly this is not really a missing feature as you can still get it, just need to controller and version 1.0.3

Yes you do have this issue everyone has this issue, in the console version the distance at which a driver spawns into a car is incredibly high. In fact on the console version you can be all the way down the end of the road and snipe a driver whilst they are in the car. You try and do that in the PC version and you stand no chance because there is NO driver in the car till the car is practically on top of Niko. It has been said that the driver spawning distance is actually 2 - 3 times greater on the consoles than it is on the PC.

Now let me guess you are going to say "well turn your settings up", give it a go see what happens. You can max view distance and draw distance to 100% and it will not affect the driver spawn distance it will stay the same. Now it is fair to say a PC gamer that hasn't played the console version wouldn't know this. I owned GTA 4 on the 360 and PC and as embarrassed as I am to say this the 360 version is superior in some pretty important ways.

charmingcharlie

okay, I agee this issue is bad, but how much does it really affects your gameplay ? I mean I never mostly needed to do this. That's why I said , it's not a perfect port or anything.

While #60 may have this feature, but it doesn't means PC doesn't has it's advantages. I really loved listening to independence FM and changing from KB + m on the fly. And with my PC, game runs amazingly and looks breathtaking

Yeah isn't it curious how major sites all gave GTA 4 high marks yet the metascore from users is 4.5 out of 10. There is a gross disparency their isn't there ? So someone is spouting bull, I wonder is it the people that bought the game or websites that have vested interest in keeping chummy with Rockstar ?

Oh and it hasn't been just "3 patches" it has been FIVE patches. Seriously at least get your facts straight. This game has received 5 hefty patches and nearly all of the glitches present on launch are still present today. I used to be a major GTA fan, hell I used to defend GTA 4 to the hilt but the screw up that was patch 5 or rather patch 1.0.0.4 (they couldn't even get the version number right) screwed the game up that much I am past caring now.

charmingcharlie

If only Metacritic user's score meant something, that is just a place for kneejerk reactions. For example , take Hellgate London -- it 10 times more buggy than GTA IV, but the score of users -- 6.7. I find it much more curious. I know about 5 patches, but I think only 3 of them enahnced performance.I think GTA games are crap and along with CoD is one of the most overrated game series ever -- I just defend it's performance simply because it gets too much undeserved hate. If GTA games never come to PC gain, I would not bat an eyelid

Again you are wrong he has a dual core which means he will be lucky to get past 20fps at console settings. Anyway I am done here I don't need to show people why GTA 4 is a bad port any one with some common sense can tell that GTA 4 runs like an absolute turd on the PC and it is a damn disgrace what Rockstar have done to GTA on the PC.

charmingcharlie

Yes, common sense will tell people that GTA IV runs like turd even when they see it running pretty well themselves. My friend has dual core (mind you i am talking about the crap Pentium D processor) and 8800GT and he runs at console settings (actually medium which is higher than console settings) at around 25 fps average