Topic on Talk:Grand Theft Auto IV

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Due to the nature of the game's poor optimization, maximum details can be tasking on modern configurations even to this day, causing drops to 38 FPS (1%) in 4K (i5-10400F/RTX 3070) using stock DirectX 9 renderer. In scenarios when e.g. DXVK cannot be used (GPUs below GTX 600 and HD 7000 series) use DXwrapper.

Change the level of details
- Lower the view distance to 25 or lower. Anything higher may cause drops in performance when looking at the city's skyline or densely detailed areas (particularly Middle Park) for little visual gain. - You may also increase your performance significantly while minimising pop-in and graphical glitches by setting the Detail Distance between 10 and 40.
- If you need very high framerates, it is recommended that you disable shadows completely, as they are very CPU-intensive, and also reduce the Vehicle Density to around 40 (33 is the console default if you want a "vanilla" experience).
- Keeping V-Sync enabled (with the shadows disabled and other suggestions above) may help the game maintain close to stable 60 FPS even on old Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs/AMD Phenom II X4.
- (impact only for very low spec configurations) Alternatively, you can also try out disabling Clip Capture in the "Game" option in the main menu and setting -minspecaudio which can unload the CPU to some extent depending on your computer's specifications and -noprecache in some scenarios
(not recommended while using DXVK https://ant-sh.blogspot.com/2020/09/easy-downgrade-gta-iv-to-1040.html?m=1)
and -disableimposters excluding flying.