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Talk:Grand Theft Auto IV

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We discuss about the article here. 😅

FusionFix only supports Complete Edition?

2
Rouward (talkcontribs)

I don't think the current FusionFix supports older versions after it was previously supported before restricting to Complete Edition only (this is why ZolikaPatch steps in for the older versions), yet the page still says it supports v1070 and v1080.

Patrxgt (talkcontribs)

It does, you just have to change dinput.dll to xlive.dll.

Large frame drops associated with too high details on modern hardware

9
Summary by Macgovern

When combined with the fixes and essential improvements listed on the main article page, the game, in fact, will run well on modern systems regardless of how high the details are set. Information saying otherwise is GTA IV modding community folklore at best, and deliberate misinformation at worst.

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

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 due to lack of Vulkan support (GPUs below GTX 600 and HD 7000 series can resort to DXVK-(async)-1.10.3 [and 1.10.1 for intel iGPUs] as the last versions supported) 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 not big visual gain for everyone, while anything over 60-70 makes the game unstable.
- 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).

Low-end PC recommendations
- 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.
- Alternatively, you can also try out disabling Clip Capture in the "Game" option in the main menu and setting

commandline.txt additions:
- -minspecaudio which can unload the CPU to some extent depending on your computer's specifications
- -noprecache for some configurations
(not recommended while using DXVK https://ant-sh.blogspot.com/2020/09/easy-downgrade-gta-iv-to-1040.html?m=1)
- -disableimposters - although not good for flying scenarios and can affect visuals

Bowi (talkcontribs)

FYI: On my end, without any modification nor DXVK, capping the FPS at 30 and using the "Auto configure" feature gives a good enough experience at 4K. (i5-6600 + Geforce GTX970)

I sometimes set Traffic Density to 100 without any problem. (Sure, frame-pacing seems all over the place...)

Sandemc (talkcontribs)

1. I'm yet to confirm if DxWrapper is any useful. For GTX 600 you can resort to DXVK-(async)-1.10.3 (and 1.10.1 for intel igpu's).

2. "View distance to 25 or lower... anything higher... for little visual gain" ???? you get a noticeable visual gain up to 100. However, anything over 60-70 makes the game unstable.

3. Anything else is just recommendations for dinosaur era PC's lol

4. Disable impostors doesn't affect performance altogether and you'll just ruin your visuals.

5. Auto configure is useless, FYI.

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

I've added your suggestions to the first post.

Rouward (talkcontribs)

Setting vehicle reflection to low or medium and shadow settings on med or high (v1040 and earlier) or low on v1050 and later (medium is equivalent to very high shadows from v1040) are recommended dependin if you can tolerate tolerate blurry shadows and reflections. Medium texture is a good balance like on console version and also less prone to crashes due to exceeding memory usage on 32-bit application.

Sandemc (talkcontribs)

What? Textures are not prone to crashing the game, like, AT ALL. The game managed the RAM and VRAM extremely well. Shadows and reflection resolution is literally hardware-dependant. You don't have to meet the consoles' settings.

Rouward (talkcontribs)

The second TLAD mission where you chase AoD had my game crashing most of the time with high textures and only that part. Tested on many PCs. The rest of missions are fine with high textures.

Joshfreeman (talkcontribs)

Cant say anything "extremely well" for this game (and not for VRAM especially). Just Average well maximum. After 1.0.4 it did much better than on 1.0 (and since some first patches game ignore VRAM limit value allow to set higher (can detect incorrectly)).

The only option really demand powerfull GFX and VRAM (much more than "green" indicator indicate) is Maximize Shadows quality + additional shadows option. And resolution/AA of course.

With patches and shadows on Medium (or which one... turn off sub-option, set one lower than maximum for main shadow option) game indeed can work on stable FPS on very various PC configurations.

Game have constant Weather/Fall-sun filter that highly reduce FPS and increase using of GFX resources. Those filter turn off in some areas (Subway) or inferior of buildings, same as maybe decreased antialising (it did? i didnt play for long time).

It can work average well on very low spec PC/mobile PC. Those filter, green indicator in video settings that lie to you how much games need, in some cases wrong detect. But work well in general. How good it deal with one thing or others not the point to mention on article. Should be mentioned that game work very well in general on low-spec PC too (on maxed out settings except shadows/720p/AA on maximum on GF 950 2Gb). But have those filter and if your PC is low spec reduce settings more than indicator told you.

UPD: i can play with stable fps even on 630m 3Gb (Asus) with almost max setting (same shadows medium/720p and not remember for AA option). How can i forgot, this one notebook is exactly the case when game didnt recognise all available video memory (this happened only in GTA4, i did have doubts notebook have 3 Gb VRAM cause it is too much for 630m, isn't? no else games or benchmark did that)

Joshfreeman (talkcontribs)

since i did mention shadows and patch 1.0.4... Shadows are kinda broken after this update (reduced quality after patch) and very decreased draw detail distance (also noticeable on shadows a bit far of camera).

Save game data location

2
Rustyjohnson (talkcontribs)


Change Windows save game location to two seperate entries and move text in brackets into the system column.


Guide icon.svg
This is a requested edit. This notice will be removed when resolved.
Mastan (talkcontribs)

Wouldn't work. System column accepts only one of the few specific values. Anything else will cause a template error.

Theclaw135 (talkcontribs)

I was wondering whether The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony were released in Japanese for PC, if so how and where. While Rockstar's support article indicates Episodes from Liberty City lacks Japanese support on PC, that doesn't confirm availability of the DLC on the (defunct) original GFWL marketplace.

SargeCassidy (talkcontribs)

I highly doubt the original GFWL version of EFLC included Japanese localization either.

Theclaw135 (talkcontribs)

Okay, though what I meant was I'm not sure whether the DLC was sold for the Japanese GFWL version of GTA4.

A couple of corrections and additions

6
Zolika1351 (talkcontribs)

Since editing is disabled, I'll put a few things that are missing here.


- ZPatch also fixes various FPS timing-related issues

See the feature list at https://zolika1351.pages.dev/mods/ivpatch

Specifically:

Fixed bikes sliding more easily above ~80FPS

Fixed cutscenes having jittery camera motion at high FPS

Fixed cutscenes zooming in at high FPS

Fixed the game speeding up above 300FPS


- ZPatch decreases loading times (and can be combined with ColAccel)

Here's a quick comparison of the loading screen between FastLoading from ZPatch, as well as ColAccel, vanilla and both mods at the same time.

https://streamable.com/slqqsl


- Neither FusionFix nor ZPatch remove mouse acceleration

See https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/blob/master/readme.md for FusionFix and https://zolika1351.pages.dev/mods/ivpatch for ZPatch.

They both claim to remove the mouse deadzone, but not mouse acceleration. Though ZPatch does remove mouse acceleration from sniper rifles, see the feature list linked above.


- Taxi bug solutions

Specifically, RIL.Budgeted https://gtaforums.com/topic/744584-reliv-rilbudgeted-population-budget-adjustertaxi-bug-fix/ and IV Tweaker https://zolika1351.pages.dev/mods/ivtweaker both have an option to increase the vehicle budget on 1.0.8.0 and below. Simple Traffic Loader is only a workaround which can introduce issues that are listed already, but both of these mods (as well as FusionFix) increase the actual amount of available memory for vehicle models (see the RIL.Budgeted thread, specifically "this plugin attacks the taxi bug right at its source, rather than working around the bug by loading models forcibly, it allows you to change the maximum size in bytes the game will allow automatically-loaded vehicles to take up!" the IV Tweaker feature list also includes "Vehicle Budget" in the Supported Limits section which also refers to the same thing)


- A simpler downgrade method

Not sure if this fits here but there is a way lighter downgrade method from CE to 1.0.8.0 available here: https://zolika1351.pages.dev/mods/ivpatch/downgrading

Unlike ItsClonkAndre's tool, this only replaces a few files, and only requires a simple drag 'n' drop and then running the included vcredist file, which should therefore be more user friendly. It also already includes the latest versions of ZPatch and IV Tweaker.


- Out of Commission Helicopter Bug Fix

I just tested the linked mod, I had 80-90FPS and it did not fix the bug.

Sandemc (talkcontribs)

"which should therefore be more user friendly" How? The downgrader only downloads what you need, and it directly leads you through all the steps(additionally, it automatically takes care of configurations and pre-requisities and has a few automated steps like converting the savefile) - being able to read and choose what to download and install is more user-friendly than a pre-determined archive. Ofc, I'll direct this to Macgovern and see if this can be included alongside - I just don't really understand what part is "more user-friendly"

As for other edits, I implemented them, while simultaneously discussing them with Macgovern.

Zolika1351 (talkcontribs)

The keyword there is "should" - this downgrader was specifically made to attempt to resolve issues I've come across while watching and helping others use the current downgrader tool.

For one, it seems like it offers *too much* choice. I've frequently seen people get confused and not know what to do when they get to either the version select screen, or the mod select screen. The mod selection is also fairly easy to mess up by a beginner, by installing incompatible mods or not installing essential ones (ZPatch comes to mind, a downgraded game might not even run without it and the only thing telling you this is a small warning on the very right side of the mod list that you have to hover over to pop up, also you can skip GFWL support and then downgrade without installing xliveless by unticking every mod - why? this is a guaranteed bricked install if you don't have the GFWL redist installed already and it doesn't even give a warning about it) and overall the tool seems to blast people with too much information at times. This is good for experienced people but not so much for a newbie who just wants to get some essential fixes that are only available via downgrading.

The bundled mod list also currently bundles some outdated versions of important mods, this can obviously be fixed down the line but currently ZPatch and Shader Fixes Collection are both missing some fixes (Shader Fixes had artifacting in water on V103 which is what the downgrader currently has, and ZPatch fixed sniper rifle mouse acceleration as well as various issues in cutscenes at high FPS since the v6.9.8.2 version that's currently packed in)

It's also fairly heavy in terms of filesize and amount of files modified (though this is to be expected with the amount of mods you can pack in with it) which has made it receive criticism by other modders for replacing too many files, and complicates the repair process if one downgrades their game in place without making a backup and then Steam updates it for example.

The automatic savefile downgrading does make it have a leg up against any simple archive, though, and that's something that should be taken into consideration.

The downgrade archive that I linked tries to fix the above problems in various ways:

- It goes the entire opposite route with choice, just giving you a basic 1.0.8.0 game with essential fixes included, aiming to make downgrading the game a quick and painless process

- The bundled mods are always kept up to date, I push a new version of the downgrade archive every time I release a new update to ZPatch or IV Tweaker

- The mod only overwrites what's absolutely required to properly run a 1.0.8.0 game (GTAIV.exe and PlayGTAIV.exe) and has minimal bloat, compared to the downgrader tool which at the most basic settings replaces 80-100MB of extra files. It also doesn't add or replace any DRM related files as ZPatch makes that unnecessary, specifically binkw32.dll, DFA.dll, gta4Browser.exe and gtaEncoder.exe. This as well as the inclusion of IV Tweaker should also make the game somewhat more compatible with certain "CE-exclusive" mods, such as ones that modify script.img or american.gxt (both of which the downgrader always replaces) and makes it trivial to fix a game that got corrupted from a Steam/RGL update (you can simply re-extract the archive and everything works again)

- To add to the above point about game files, IV Tweaker is bundled in the archive, and the two optional mods on the page are specifically configured to load from IV Tweaker, making neither Shader Fixes nor pre-CE FusionFix require any files to be replaced. This also means less of a chance that an update breaks them.

I've just seen various people describe downgrading as a "hassle" because of the above issues, and so I wanted to remedy that. Whether this archive actually succeeds at doing so is up to the users to decide as I'm not exactly the average GTA IV player, I just brought it up here so it can be discussed and added if it does. The best solution in my opinion would be if the downgrader tool had an "easy install" button of sorts, but that's neither here nor there.

Sandemc (talkcontribs)

"The mod selection is also fairly easy to mess up by a beginner, by installing incompatible mods or not installing essential ones" As of 2.0, there's warnings to what stuff should(like ZPatch) and shouldn't be installed(and if you ignore the warning signs, I'm not sure what you're even trying to do) - furthermore, I'm yet to encounter a situation where it lets me install incompatible mods, either(there were some issues with 1.0.4.0 previously, but that got fixed).

"The bundled mod list also currently bundles some outdated versions of important mods" - It's updated automatically on server-side. You sound like your packaged downgrade somehow prevents this issue, but it doesn't.

"It's also fairly heavy in terms of filesize" It's really light and only installs what you pick in online version.

"without making a backup" - that'd be a user fault, since the user can pick to backup with the downgrader

"Corrupted from a Steam/RGL update" Steam updates don't change any game files and file recovering is always self-initiated. If you're running the RGL version, you can't downgrade in the first place.

IV Tweaker doesn't really work with Shader Fixes' 3 subfolders, does it?


Nonetheless, I still get your points, and I'll direct it to Macgovern either way. (and please don't think I'm hostile - I'm trying to be nice on everyone's side here)

Zolika1351 (talkcontribs)

I checked on 2.0, you can untick ZPatch and the only warning is that small one on the right you have to hover over, while it does exist, it's still really easy to miss

As for messing up your game with a non-GFWL configured copy and unticking xliveless (or unticking every mod which seems like a likely scenario for someone wanting a vanilla downgraded copy) that doesn't give any warnings at all and still bricks the game if you don't get and run gfwlivesetup.

Your point about the mod list is valid, my argument was that even though it's updated server-side it's currently about 2 weeks out of date (which is quite a long time with the amount of modding progress happening recently) and that the bundled mods in mine are currently up to date, and since they're only my mods, the download on the page will be kept up to date as soon as updates come out, though that's obviously not the same thing as the server-side updates that the tool has.

The filesize isn't really something I personally have a problem with, but I've frequently seen other modders describe it as "overwriting half the game" so I just thought I'd bring that up.

Steam updates can and do change game files, AFAIK there's been at least one update in the past few months that had more than the usual social club redist changes (it definitely replaced GTAIV.exe but I don't know the exact details on what else)

IV Tweaker works with Shader Fixes, it's just a little different. You can simply copy one subfolder into a modloader folder (e.g. copying the contents of common/shaders/win32_30 into modloader/shaderfixes would do the trick) as all 3 of those folders in Shader Fixes include the same exact files and IV Tweaker just loads shaders from the mod folder regardless of your GPU vendor, meaning if Shader Fixes was set up for it (which the optional download on my page is) it's even less files than the FusionFix modloader version

Also RGL does allow you to downgrade as long as you don't launch the game through RGL, launching the game directly via the .exe still works from what I've seen

Sandemc (talkcontribs)

Ah, I see. I thought the three folders had different files, but guess not.

By that logic, you can also just not use Steam to run the downgraded game either.

But oh well, no point in continuing discussion. After some convincing, I got Macgovern to mention your downgrader in the end(i wasn't against it in the first place) - it's worth a mention as much as the tool does, and some people prefer more straightforward approaches.

Is dxgi.dll necessary? If yes what does it do?

3
Lakshay2007 (talkcontribs)

So recently I thought of giving DXVK a shot on my Intel UHD iGPU system. I inserted d3d9.dll into the game's directory but to be sure I looked up "How to install DXVK GTAIV" on YouTube and found several videos putting in dxgi.dll and d3d9.dll. What does dxgi.dll actually do?

Bowi (talkcontribs)
Markie (talkcontribs)

Running GTA IV on modern systems optimally

1
Markie (talkcontribs)

I have created a thread in the PCGW forums about the game under modern systems. It's not supposed to be an in-depth guide, just a discussion thread so people feel more inclined to share their experience with the different tweaks and fixes for the game present in the article, as well as any issues. I encourage anyone currently playing or planning on playing the game to take a look, and maybe share their experience so that any relevant information can be gathered:

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/topic/5015-getting-gta-iv-to-run-optimally-on-modern-systems/

Bowi (talkcontribs)

Is "dxgi.dll" really necessary? -Bowi (talk) 12:32, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

This post was hidden by Bowi (history)
Patrxgt (talkcontribs)

Yes, it is used to inject Vulkan into games. Why are you even asking? You have problems with game, while using it?

Bowi (talkcontribs)

I don't remember why I asked. I think that's because "dxgi.dll" is not mentioned everywhere when talking about GTAIV.

Kms6872 (talkcontribs)

In my experience, it's necessary when using the SweetFX injector alongside DXVK.

I was able to play GTA4 without DXVK's dxgi.dll injector but that GTA4 responds to a dxgi.dll injector to begin with means that it might be best to install the DXVK injector alongside the DXVK d3d9.dll injector. If any potential issues with this configuration are discovered it should be noted in the wiki and reevaluated.

That said, I understand the desire to streamline the wrapper installation. It bothers me when instructions for installing dgVoodoo2 in certain games just tell you to extract all the .DLLs; I want to know exactly what the wrapper is substituting.

104.28.213.128 (talkcontribs)

I tried without it but the game built proper cache and runs the same without dxgi.dll from dxvk. So I don't think it's necessary. the vulkan injection is from d3d9.dll. and gta iv is a direct x 9 game which doesn't load dxgi.dll afaik (could be wrong though) dxgi.dll only loaded on later direct x's game.

Markie (talkcontribs)

dxgi.dll is not required to run the game with DXVK or to allow for ReShade to work over the game with DXVK either.

Bowi (talkcontribs)

Wait... Wait. If that's true, then we should edit the wiki because Step #2 state that players need to extract dxgi.dll.

Bowi (talkcontribs)

THANKS!

Good score in '60 FPS and 120+ FPS' is wrong

3
Summary by Bowi

Frame rates above 60 indeed cause some bugs.

176.222.206.247 (talkcontribs)

Some game script timings are FPS-dependent, and several missions cannot be finished without lowering FPS. Examples: gtaforums.com/topic/950644-gta-iv-a-revengers-tragedy-heli-bug/ steamcommunity.com/app/12210/discussions/0/864957183136775300/

At least 'Revenger`s Tragedy', 'Out of Commission' and 'Truck Hustle' affected.

IAmSkeletor (talkcontribs)

The check mark isn't entirely a score or rating, it's mostly regarding whether the feature is natively supported or not. Since GTA IV doesn't require any mods or tweaks for 60+ or 120+ FPS it is technically natively supported even though it may cause some issues during certain missions.

You could add a note since GTA IV does have various known issues with 60+ FPS gameplay. I remember the final mission having an issue during the helicopter sequence where you have to mash spacebar to climb into it. The only way to get around it was to lock your FPS to 30.

Sammy7912 (talkcontribs)

Given there has been fixes posted for the aforementioned helicopter bug as well as camera handling, are there any remaining bugbears that would prevent us from giving this one the 60+ FPS tick of approval?

"Use more than 2 GiB of RAM"

18
Bowi (talkcontribs)

The source for this entry in the article says that we can use a value as high as "819200". Is this true?

Also... Does it matter if the player uses the latest version of the game (no downgrade)?

Considering this is tagged as an "essential improvement", we need to double-check.

Markie (talkcontribs)

GB, not GiB. The game couldn't use more than 4 GB of RAM even if it recognized values higher than 409600 in that file, since it is a 32-bit application. It does not matter if the game is up to date; I have checked the vanilla stream.ini file in the Complete Edition version of the game on Steam and the file comes with the values set to 204800.

Bowi (talkcontribs)

It does come with such value. I wonder whether it really matters if players don't mod their game... 🤔

Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)

Yeah, think Bowi is right here.

Markie (talkcontribs)

Can't be too sure about it, maybe it didn't matter when the game released but it's actually useful nowadays when running the game maxed out and at very high resolutions. No real reason to remove or change that infobox anyway and it's been removed from the essential improvements section for a while now (which was the original topic of discussion here).

Bowi (talkcontribs)

I don't remember moving it from "essential", but I wouldn't be surprise if I had done it. :P

Uh... Do you know whether the game does use more than 2GB (2 147 483 648 bytes 😆) when using the 409600 value? If not, I might test tomorrow to see if it appears in the Task Manager or another overlay... I only have GPU Tweak III which doesn't display SDRAM, but maybe the Game Bar does... 🤷‍♂️

If it really work, no matter the true benefit, maybe we could consider bringing it back up to "essentials". 🤷‍♂️

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

I did almost 6 hours test of various stream.ini settings on RGL version.
The most interesting results gave me:
virtual 102400
physical 409600
virtual_optimised 153600
physical_optimised 614400


Above, I went further with going with the scheme of better results when virtual value was set to be smaller than virtual_optimised, when it gave better results. A similar approach also seemed beneficial for physical memory.
Doing the opposite (smaller optimised value for virtual) gave worse results before.

It's pretty hard to get completely matching results in one pass in testing the same driving route, like I was doing, because traffic is pretty much random, and only weather remains more or less the same using the same save all the time. Benchmark is useless - average FPS is stupidly high and incomparable with results achieved in the heavy traffic. 2nd pass in benchmark always increases average FPS by ~1FPS.
So I also share settings I got good and better than stock results (204800 everywhere) out of many more tested if someone wants to experiment. Usually more than 1 pass for all settings used for tests.
virtual 102400, virtual_optimised, 153600, 614400 for both physical
614400 everywhere
409600 everywhere
default (204800 everywhere)
It still requires further testing since I couldn't use DSR/VSR this time to max out resolution, and I was stuck to FHD and max details. Used DXVK, ENB, Reshade, W10, 4 cores. Too low virtual memory set (e.g. 512 or even 512000) causes object disappearing (but 0 not, although decreases performance) hence it needs further testing for settings with virtual memory decreased. 102400 for virtual memory was a minimum value for FHD and maxed out details when there was no texture disappearing.

As for an influence on memory of these settings - it is minor. Depending on settings, RAM allocation difference is not bigger than 200MB.
The behavior is generally the same for all these settings (if only objects always appear).
The game can allocate up to 4GB of RAM, but when it's above 3900, it usually drops memory usage to around 3000MB, rarely with a freeze.
I was driving the wrong way on the highway for a long time to get faster memory allocation across the gameplay (in GTASA it was faster to fly by a Hydra to trigger memory related crash on big texture mods, but here I got only 3500MB max). When you press Print Screen, ENB+Reshade screenshots are being taken at the same time, and the memory usage usually jumps by 100MB, and then usually drop to 3K happens shortly afterwards, but the game itself also does it by itself, but rarely. Usually you won't get much above 3800MB (1.4GB used by the OS with the closed game, nothing really memory-consuming opened, 1.3GB used by the game process when minimised, but that value doesn't include pagefile). I never exceeded 9700MB for RAM and pagefile combined (memory compression on).
I have more than 4GB RAM, so it is not the system which limits the game from using more than 4GB in that case. It's 32 bit app limitation, and as someone checked headers in Visual Studio before, also patching the binary with Large Address Aware patch returns the same checksums as before, so it is already built-in with Large Address Aware in mind in vanilla game (RGL version was said to be the same as the others at some point)
Out of curiosity, I updated DXVK to 2.0 after getting the results above. Didn't do it before to avoid stuttering under specific circumstances described in 2.0 changelog, so no new cache wasn't needed to be rebuilt in such worst case. Old is almost 600KB, and new after one testing pass is 66KB. Not much.
Anyway, clean cache with 2.0 version provided the highest FPS in a certain place when I previously had maximum 47 (45-47) FPS. Few more. First time so much in that place.
Compared it with async version with async turned on in config, and it didn't get such an FPS neither with old nor new cache. Haven't experimented with dxvk.numasyncthreads yet. Tried out only maxFrameLatency = 1 which turned out to be beneficial, while VSync and triple buffering set in dxvk.conf wasn't, but actually prevented from one stutter, but I didn't perform additional pass to ensure it wasn't random.
Till the next time.

Bowi (talkcontribs)

You are waaaay more patient than I am. I would have never experimented beyond "409600". 😅

Bowi (talkcontribs)

By the way... I think we should do more test with the Rockstar Games Launcher version... Not everyone want to deal with third party tools, and even less will want to downgrade to an older version. Starting with myself. 😅

I just want to "play the damn game". 😅

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

Its not totally bad, but 1.0.4.0 is said to perform better. Once some YT link benchmarking this and newer version was posted, and I think someone deleted the reference or even whole paragraph saying it's not a real scenario, configuration or drivers shown are old etc. But boy, if even sh*y benchmark like here shows up differences, though it is much less demanding than the rest of the game, then maybe it's not that stupid? But yes, newer versions are more demanding due to new shadows, and I pretty much like them. Also 1.0.4.0 doesn't support episodes, but you can make episodes and main game standalone (probably downgrader irc, or at least installation of retail versions). But yeah, I'm also lazy these days and use RGL version.

Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)

I think that was indeed removed for having lots of caveats, eventually making the claim stated very unreliable. I think due to its unreliability it was deemed to speculative and thus removed. Also, if the decreased performance was caused by improved shadows being implemented, then maybe it is also not a huge negative? Would be a real negative in my opinion if the performance was noticeably decreased with no visual increase. I honestly think that for most people downgrading and having to separate the base game with the expansion is really too much of a hassle for most to only get back a little bit of performance maybe, while missing out on all the later bugfixes, removed GFWL etc. Still, downgrade info is still on the PCGW, so... should be ok right?

Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)

"But boy, if even sh*y benchmark like here shows up differences, though it is much less demanding than the rest of the game, then maybe it's not that stupid?" Btw, honestly don't know what you really mean here haha. But if the benchmark was at the time seen as too unreliable and there is no other similar more reliable proof backing up the made performance claim, then it of course shouldn't be mentioned in my opinion on the PCGW page as we could then be possibly aiding in spreading false information...

Bowi (talkcontribs)

I played the game a bit today and did not manage to reach more than ~1700 MB of RAM. I decided to edit the stream.ini anyway and set everything to 409600 (I don't understand why "00" at the end, but that another topic. 😅)

Performances are OK, but I play at locked 30 FPS by capping with the NVIDIA Control Panel. 😅 4K with maxed out settings, except for the two details sliders which I left to default... I also disable the "Definition" option because I prefer the blurry DoF filter. Finally, Car Density up to 100 is not very hardware intensive...

Even with my current settings, trying to maxed out the details sliders is a very bad idea. I honestly think that the only "remaster" this game need is a patch that would make "maxed out" settings playable on 4-core CPUs. 😅 The game is already quite beautiful, IMHO.

Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)

But if you would unlock FPS you would likely be going over 2 GB of RAM right? Wouldn't surprise me that the two zeros at the end of the command would indeed be wrong and was just never corrected or noticed by anyone from the community haha as of course honestly many people seem to enjoy just throwing random commands against game like this without any knowledge about what it does haha.

Bowi (talkcontribs)

I did my tests with unlocked FPS.

Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)
Mrtnptrs (talkcontribs)

@Deton24 When looking here (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV#Downgrading). You can see the claim is actually still there. I think you are confusing this situation with the note that was removed about the differences with the console version as the comparison video used to back those claims up were deemed to unreliable.

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

@Mrtnptrs "if even sh*y benchmark like here shows up differences, though it is much less demanding than the rest of the game, then maybe it's not that stupid"
I meant that benchmark in GTA IV usually shows much bigger framerate than actual game. I'm trying to say here that it might be much less sensitive to any detail changes, and possibly also patches (at least CPU-wise due to no heavy traffic) but iirc it showed some differences.
But knowing that shadows can be completely disabled, the comparison between various patches might be the most correct using that setting, but it still shows something about game performance if you know what are the differences between shadows and what fits to you. Because even lower shadows settings since 1.0.8.0 are altered vs 1.0.4.0, so it wouldn't be an accurate comparison, but it's also up to someone's taste if they like old shadows (and possibly better performance), but also lowered shadows in new patch can look better.
Here is decent comparison, but I think possibly better place would be near first safe house, when I really don't like how the old shadows looks, at least on certain level of detail. https://gtaforums.com/topic/975079-gta-iv-shadows-pc-version-1040-vs-consoles/?do=findComment&comment=1071629015

@Bowl 409600 "I don't understand why "00" at the end"
Because it is value in KB. Default is 204800.
If you set 512 instead of 512000 in at least virtual fields, it will cause object disappearing (even with 51200, but 76800 is fine but causes FPS drops, so it's still not enough - 102400 was the bare minimum for FHD maxed out to not cause object disappearing - also lowers values slightly lowers RAM consumption) And probably I get bigger memory consumption due to DXVK (that's normal behavior I noticed in the past with DX11 games too).
And yeah, thanks for clarification about the note, wasn't sure here what actually happened...