The game is still pretty much a mess after five patches. The latest patch has actually introduced more glitches and in extreme cases some people can't even play on line any more. About the only "good" thing the last patch did was prepare the PC version for the DLC. The last patched fixed the no biker shadow, added a new command called "uninstall ingame GFWL content" and added the Lost and Damned Achievements to the PC version.

Pretty pathetic really to think after a year of waiting and 5 substantial patches the game still runs and plays like a turd.

Mass Effect 2 should be a decent port the first one was pretty decent, looked good and played exceptionally well. As for Rockstars Red Dead Redemption I doubt that will be ported to the PC (Red Dead Revolver was never ported to the PC) and some would actually breath a sigh of relief that Rockstar won't inflict another heinous pile of garbage on us :shock: .

I would say most ports to the PC are fairly "decent" this is usually down to the power of the PC more than the actual effort developers make. However you are always going to get the odd Star Wars TFU or GTA 4 quality port that screws things up and gets people screaming "PC gaming is dying".

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.

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.

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.

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.

The GT120 is basically a rebadged 9500gt card, these cards are not "gaming" cards I am afraid. If I was to guesstimate the 9500gt is probably 50% slower than the GPU in the xbox 360. It is such a shame because you have the basis for a good system there (a quadcore) your GT120 is really holding you back. I really wouldn't expect GTA 4 to run all that well on a GT120 equipped machine. You might get playable frame rates at 800 x 600 with all settings on low.

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.

Yeah it is a pretty decent port and I would probably say definitely 30fps @ 1280 x 720 with most settings on medium. If you want higher resolutions you might have to drop the odd setting but the game will still look pretty good.

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.