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
Topic on Talk:Grand Theft Auto IV
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...)
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.
I've added your suggestions to the first post.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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).