# Gta Iv?



## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

Guys i have 2 4870x2 working on crossfire.

im trying to play gta iv full graphics 1920 resolution but i cant. i have lag why??
and i have 4gigs ddr3 1600mhz by crucial


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## kurosagi01 (Jul 18, 2009)

do you have vsync enabled?


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## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

i think so yes.


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## kurosagi01 (Jul 18, 2009)

disable it and you shouldn't get much lag


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## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

much? i think i should have NO lag this cards is bomb together how can i have lag and with the vsync disabled damn


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## AltecV1 (Jul 18, 2009)

because gta 4 is UNoptimised game!!!!!!!


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## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

i saw many ppl playing without lag gta iv with only 2 gigs of ram and a 3870x2 what u have to say?


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## DreamSeller (Jul 18, 2009)

gta IV needs higher end procs which one do you have ?


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## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

what do u mean


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## kurosagi01 (Jul 18, 2009)

his basiclly asking you what CPU do you have


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## AltecV1 (Jul 18, 2009)

well you need like 3.5Ghz i7 to play gta 4 with out any lagg! gta 4 is cpu hog


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## MaximusE (Jul 18, 2009)

i have a intel quad 9300 no overclocked 2.4 ghz


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## kurosagi01 (Jul 18, 2009)

the game is very unoptimised like altec said,did you try disabling vsync off because vsync syncs to your monitors framerate


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## AltecV1 (Jul 18, 2009)

there is your problem!


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## Yukikaze (Jul 18, 2009)

MaximusE said:


> Guys i have 2 4870x2 working on crossfire.
> 
> im trying to play gta iv full graphics 1920 resolution but i cant. i have lag why??
> and i have 4gigs ddr3 1600mhz by crucial



Are you trying to set viewing distance to 100 as well ? If you are, forget about it. The engine wasn't even built to be able to render that on a modern PC. For comparison, the consoles have a view distance of 10 set in the game. I can play the game maxed out on all other settings at 1920x1080 with no lag, as long as I keep the view distance around 20 or so. I also suspect your CPU is holding back your quad CF setup since GTA IV is quite CPU dependent.


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## Jaffakeik (Jul 18, 2009)

With my rig i dont have any lags in this game all on max


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## Duncan1 (Jul 18, 2009)

try to overclock your CPU.


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## AltecV1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Arciks said:


> With my rig i dont have any lags in this game all on max



looking at your rig i cant figure out why it that


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## francis511 (Jul 18, 2009)

The patches really help with the gameplay as well (and fix the nasty shadows !)


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

Looks like CPU is the bottleneck.

With my Q6600 @ 3.6 GHz, its just enough to stop GTA IV maxing out all the cores.

They average around 70% across all 4, going up to 80 or even 90% when there is a lot happening.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

Yes people can play GTA IV with lesser video cards e.g. 3870X2 but they are not playing at the same resolution or with the same detail enabled.

Its not a CPU bottle neck, its not a GPU bottle neck, the game is just badly optimised. You shouldn't have to overclock high end components to play one game. Although I would advise overclocking the CPU anyways for free performance but I certainly wouldn't do it with the sole intention of playing GTA IV.

You have two options:

1.) Lower the detail and/or resolution.

2.) Sell the game until the GTA development team learn how to optimise their games properly.

Edit:


I forgot to ask, have you patched the game up to the latest version?

if yes, then see option 2


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## TheGuruStud (Jul 18, 2009)

You do need a quadcore to play it, though. I couldn't play it with my old dual core at all (like 20 fps). Slapped in the 940 and it was pretty smooth, then O/Ced and it's really smooth.


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

I wouldnt say the game is poorly optimised. I get an average framerate of 55, with default viewing distances, and everything else maxed at 1920 x 1200 in the benchmark tool.


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## ov2rey (Jul 18, 2009)

my intel Q9450 @ 3.8 ghz / 4870 1gb ddr5 can play super smooth res 1440x900


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> I wouldnt say the game is poorly optimised. I get an average framerate of 55, with default viewing distances, and everything else maxed at 1920 x 1200 in the benchmark tool.



You've just reinforced my opinion. 

Only 55 frames per second on a quadcore @ 3.6 GHz and a overclocked GTX 285 1GB, and you call that optimised?


What hope do normal enthusiasts have at playing GTA IV?


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> You've just reinforced my opinion.
> 
> Only 55 frames per second on a quadcore @ 3.6 GHz and a overclocked GTX 285 1GB, and you call that optimised?
> 
> ...



So games are just supposed to hold back?

Crysis is not omptimised. Have you seen the amount on screen in GTA IV?


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> So games are just supposed to hold back?



Are gamers forced to upgrade to quad cores and Nvidia's highest end GPU only to perform overclocks to these high end components just to play one particular game smoothly?

Edit:

I know you are going to say they are not "forced" its their choice, which is true but it still means the game is unoptimised regardless.




alexp999 said:


> Crysis is not omptimised. Have you seen the amount on screen in GTA IV?



Crysis is not optimised either, yes I've seen GTA IV and played it. Its still unoptimised when you're forced to do the above mentioned things for it to run as intended.


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

Overclocking the CPU will help alot. 

GTAIV is fine optimization wise just don't complain if you don't have the hardware necessary to run it at the highest settings. In the OP's case your GPU is fine but it is the CPU holding you back. For me at 3.6ghz like alex pointed out the game runs perfectly well.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> Overclocking the CPU will help alot.
> 
> GTAIV is fine optimization wise just don't complain if you don't have the hardware necessary to run it at the highest settings. In the OP's case your GPU is fine but it is the CPU holding you back. For me at 3.6ghz like alex pointed out the game runs perfectly well.



I'm not compaining, the thread starter is complaining.

The thread starter has* two *4870x2's working on crossfire, which is supposedly one of the fastest and high end video cards working together in concert and a Q9300 quadcore which is also high end by today's standards. If you think the threadstarter shouldn't complain because_ "he doesn't have the necessary hardware"_ despite having a stupidly high end rig even in an enthusiasts community like TPU and is yet still forced to overclock just to play *one* game or maybe two games if you include Crysis, despite all other games playing well - then you call this normal and a well balanced and optimised game


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## Lillebror (Jul 18, 2009)

Unoptimized is if the game cant even run at medium settings with highend hardware. And thats not the case with gta4. They just futureproffed it for future hardware


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

No offence to the OP but a Q9300 isnt that High End IMO.

Its a budget quad.

You cant expect a game like GTA IV to keep up with two 4870X2s at only 2.4 GHz.

Look at it this way, the PS3 and 360 have 6 logical processors available to GTA IV running at 3.2 GHz. With fairly old GPUs.


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## Yukikaze (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> What hope do normal enthusiasts have at playing GTA IV?



There are normal enthusiasts ?


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## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

@Darren: GTA:IV is very optimized.  You don't need a quad-core to play it, and you don't need a high end graphics card either.  I played it perfectly smooth on my Athlon X2@2.8GHz with a HD4670 and 2GB of RAM@1280x720 and it looked better than the console version.  You just have to realize that the game developers put settings in the game that far exceed what most hardware is capable of, but they also allowed the setting to be dropped down to the point where pretty much any decent mid-range PC could handle it and the game would still look good.

The game is very CPU dependant, and with all the things going on at once, it isn't surprising.  View distance and traffic/pedestrian density really take a toll on CPU power.  Lowering those settings is usually enough to get it running on a dual-core CPU with no overclock just fine.  As already mentioned, the console versions had the view distance set at 10, and the traffic density at 25(IIRC), so jacking both up to 100 means that you are pretty much loading the whole city and filling it to the max with cars and people, all of which the CPU has to track and manage.

I have never been forced to overclock a thing just to play one game, GTA:IV and Crysis included, and both games run smoothly on the above mentioned unoverclocked PC.


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## DRDNA (Jul 18, 2009)

francis511 said:


> The patches really help with the gameplay as well (and fix the nasty shadows !)



Okay this post is the money post! Why it was ignored is beyond me..All these issues are fixed for higher end rigs with the most recent patch!Please download the most recent patch and amaze yourself with "WOW its working pretty damn good now" !!!!!!!Oh ya did any one say install the latest patch? Yes they did in the quote above! If your running the latest patch then say so.. so trouble shooting can begin in the correct area.Good Luck!


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## AsRock (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> I'm not compaining, the thread starter is complaining.
> 
> The thread starter has* two *4870x2's working on crossfire, which is supposedly one of the fastest and high end video cards working together in concert and a Q9300 quadcore which is also high end by today's standards. If you think the threadstarter shouldn't complain because_ "he doesn't have the necessary hardware"_ despite having a stupidly high end rig even in an enthusiasts community like TPU and is yet still forced to overclock just to play *one* game or maybe two games if you include Crysis, despite all other games playing well - then you call this normal and a well balanced and optimised game



x2 is a fast card but only if CF is working and then it works really bad OR the OP or who ever disables CF and actually gain performance.

Overclocking the CPU helps a great deal due to all the things on screen..


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## DRDNA (Jul 18, 2009)

francis511 said:


> The patches really help with the gameplay as well (and fix the nasty shadows !)



Install the 9.6 cats and install the latest patch for GTA IV.The report back .I bet the report back is way better!When I was fiddling about with GTA unpatched with my rig in the sig I couldn't use the mac daddy settings . I would end up with the error ran out of memory and slam...before the error lag here and there and stutter here and there.Installed the Patch last night and I received a big WOW this game runs pretty damn good and all hi settings(mac daddy settings)no lag , no stutter and three hours and still no "ran out of memory error", also no more corrupts graphics around face rendering.Works now the way I would have expected it to.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> @Darren: GTA:IV is very optimized.  You don't need a quad-core to play it, and you don't need a high end graphics card either.  I played it perfectly smooth on my Athlon X2@2.8GHz with a HD4670 and 2GB of RAM@1280x720 and it looked better than the console version.



Indeed, I agree you do not need the highest end rigs to play todays games well, even Crysis played @ 30 FPS constant with m 3800+ X2 @ stock and old x1600 with a combination of medium and low settings, I'm sure GTA plays well on low end rigs too at reasonable settings. 


newtekie1 said:


> but they also allowed the setting to be dropped down to the point where pretty much any decent mid-range PC could handle it and the game would still look good.



Exactly, this makes sense if you have a "midrange rig", the threadstarters rig is far from midrange. Its high end so he shouldn't be forced to drop the detail! (or perform overclocks)




newtekie1 said:


> I have never been forced to overclock a thing just to play one game, GTA:IV and Crysis included, and both games run smoothly on the above mentioned unoverclocked PC.



The fact that your rig should perform similarly to the threadstarters rig when both at stock yet you get smooth game play and he doesn't screams unoptimised, a game should play the same on similarly spec'd rigs consistently. Maybe a small minor difference +/- 10 FPS because of the varying hardware but it shouldn't be laggy on one rig and smooth on the next with similar set ups.





alexp999 said:


> No offence to the OP but a Q9300 isnt that High End IMO.
> 
> Its a budget quad.
> 
> ...



There is nothing budget about the Q9300 considering that the it costs way more than the fastest Phenom II and is almost priced the same as much as the i7 920



AsRock said:


> x2 is a fast card but only if CF is working and then it works really bad OR the OP or who ever disables CF and actually gain performance.
> 
> Overclocking the CPU helps a great deal due to all the things on screen..



Indeed, I'm not disputing that his CPU isn't bottlenecking the game, I'm just saying that it shouldn't bottle neck the game if it was coded correctly.
Its crazy to think that we put together high end rigs to run games, yet in reality to run these games we have to perform additional overclocks, it defeats the entire purpose of the high end rig?


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## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> Exactly, this makes sense if you have a "midrange rig", the threadstarters rig is far from midrange. Its high end so he shouldn't be forced to drop the detail! (or perform overclocks)



That is where you are wrong, with a game like GTA:IV, where the highest settings are completely insane, even high end rigs might need the settings to be lowered.  The game still looks amazing with some of the settings slightly lowered.




Darren said:


> The fact that your rig should perform similarly to the threadstarters rig when both at stock yet you get smooth game play and he doesn't screams unoptimised, a game should play the same on similarly spec'd rigs consistently. Maybe a small minor difference +/- 10 FPS because of the varying hardware but it shouldn't be laggy on one rig and smooth on the next with similar set ups.
> 
> There is nothing budget about the Q9300 considering that the it costs way more than the fastest Phenom II and is almost priced the same as much as the i7 920
> 
> ...



The difference is that he is trying to run the game with every setting maxed out, while I lowered the settings to get smooth framerates.  The rig I was talking is no where near as powerful as his.  It has nothing to do with the game being unoptimized, the game is very optimized, the problem is that the developers put in the option to raise the settings to insane levels.  You can't expect mid-range rigs to run these settings.  You can't call any game that doesn't run smoothly on a mid-range rig using max settings unoptimized.  If the developers had just made the max settings half of what they are, no one would complain about the game being unoptimized.  Instead, they gave us the ability to raise the settings far beyond what the needed to be.

Just because you found an overpriced Q9300, that doesn't make it high end.  The Q9300 was never high end, it was a mid-range quad-core, outperformed by dual-cores...


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

@ Darren 

What you dont seem to get is that regardless of what has been spent, 2.5 GHz is too slow for a high end game like GTA IV to run maxed with two 4870X2s.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> @ Darren
> 
> What you dont seem to get is that regardless of what has been spent, 2.5 GHz is too slow for a high end game like GTA IV to run maxed with two 4870X2s.



I know its too slow, I'm agreeing with you guys that its too slow. I'm just saying it _wouldn't_ be to slow if it wasn't for the coding and hence why I think its "unoptimised"

The games other Crysis, GTA IV and perhaps Farcry 2 that do not pukes at a 2.5 GHz quadcore are optimised better.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> I know its too slow, I'm agreeing with you guys that its too slow. I'm just saying it _wouldn't_ be to slow if it wasn't for the coding and hence why I think its "unoptimised"
> 
> The games other Crysis, GTA IV and perhaps Farcry 2 that do not pukes at a 2.5 GHz quadcore are optimised better.



Any game is probably going to choke with a 2.5GHz quad with 2xHD4870x2's, or at least hold them back.  What is that $1000 of GPUs paired with a $180 CPU?

And again, lower a few settings in GTA:IV and it will be fine.  The max settings were never really meant to be used other than to show that they could be.  There is no point in using them, the game doesn't look any different between 100 view distance and 50, but the game runs a hell of a lot smoother.


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## DRDNA (Jul 18, 2009)

here is a link to the most current patch>>>  http://fileshack.com/file.x/13934/Grand+Theft+Auto+4+Patch+

the patch name is: GTAIV_Patch_1030 and is 56+MB .Hope this helps some that are struggling.
I believe this is the 3rd patch.


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> I know its too slow, I'm agreeing with you guys that its too slow. I'm just saying it _wouldn't_ be to slow if it wasn't for the coding and hence why I think its "unoptimised"



It's not unoptimised though there is a massive amount of physics calculations done in GTA every second. Just walking in the game is done using the euphoria physics engine as is the same with bullet physics, car physics, NPC physics and their walking physics. Hence why quad cores at a very high speed are required. If they were able to offload that work onto a gpu the OP would have a much smoother experience.


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

@ DRDNA, thats not the latest patch

The latest patch is 1.0.4.0 and as with every GTA IV patch it can be found here:

http://www.rockstargames.com/support/IV/PC/patch/


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## AltecV1 (Jul 18, 2009)

i hate when people with 3.5Ghz quad cores and high end gfx cards are convincing use mid gamers that gta 4 and crysis are optimised games Take your head out of your ass and see the nasty truth


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## DRDNA (Jul 18, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> @ DRDNA, thats not the latest patch
> 
> The latest patch is 1.0.4.0 and as with every GTA IV patch it can be found here:
> 
> http://www.rockstargames.com/support/IV/PC/patch/



My bad ...that is the one I installed last night that made this game a pretty damn good game! Thanks for keeping me honest.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Just because you found an overpriced Q9300, that doesn't make it high end.  The Q9300 was never high end, it was a mid-range quad-core, outperformed by dual-cores...



Actually it was numerous overpriced Q9300s - but point taken perhaps it was n't marketed in the high end domain despite it high end price.





newtekie1 said:


> That is where you are wrong, with a game like GTA:IV, where the highest settings are completely insane, even high end rigs might need the settings to be lowered.  The game still looks amazing with some of the settings slightly lowered.



I know 




newtekie1 said:


> the problem is that the developers put in the option to raise the settings to insane levels.  You can't expect mid-range rigs to run these settings.



That i my exact iussue, I can understand allowing the user to raise the detail to allow for the next generation of card, but when the next generation of card come and the games still run like crap at highest settings even in crossfire and SLI then I get start getting suspicious.

We are almost at DX 11 and we still get people complaining about bad Cryisis frame rate at highest after all this time. The DX11 high end card will probably struggle too, but we'll see.




newtekie1 said:


> You can't call any game that doesn't run smoothly on a mid-range rig using max settings unoptimized.  If the developers had just made the max settings half of what they are, no one would complain about the game being unoptimized.



Apart from the threadstarter Q9300 which is debatable as to which category it belong in everything else in the threadtarter config is high end



newtekie1 said:


> Any game is probably going to choke with a 2.5GHz quad with 2xHD4870x2's, or at least hold them back.  What is that $1000 of GPUs paired with a $180 CPU?



That is a bit of an exaggeration, most game will play fine at high setting on a quadcore @ 2.5 GHz and a 2xHD4870x2's, the few game which cry should have slight dip in frame rates at certain point in the game, but for it to be laggy throughout is unacceptable on that type of hardware.

With your guys logic at the back of the box under the requirement it should say.

Medium
ATI/Nvidia highest end  video card
Intel/AMD highest end processor
2 GB of ram

High
ATI/Nvidia *highend video two generation from now*
Intel/AMD *highest end processor two generation from now*
*Knowledge to overclock processor beyond specification
Knowledge to overclock video card  beyond specification*
4 GBs of ram


If you think the part in bold are acceptable, then I'm lost for word.


Edit:



AltecV1 said:


> i hate when people with 3.5Ghz quad cores and high end gfx cards are convincing use mid gamers that gta 4 and crysis are optimised games Take your head out of your ass and see the nasty truth



Agreed


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

AltecV1 said:


> i hate when people with 3.5Ghz quad cores and high end gfx cards are convincing use mid gamers that gta 4 and crysis are optimised games Take your head out of your ass and see the nasty truth



Our quad's cost £120 and to overclock them to 3.6ghz was incredibly easy. I don't see how our heads are up our arse at all.


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

AltecV1 said:


> i hate when people with 3.5Ghz quad cores and high end gfx cards are convincing use mid gamers that gta 4 and crysis are optimised games Take your head out of your ass and see the nasty truth



TBH you need to take your head out of your ass, and realise that people with the high end hardware want it pushed to its limits and see what it can really do.

An unoptimised game would be one you cant scale down in lower end PCs and as has been said time and time again, GTA IV can do that.

Why should people with higher grade PCs go without really good graphics and demanding games at high spec, just so "mid range" PCs can run it "maxxed out" ?


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> Our quad's cost £120 and to overclock them to 3.6ghz was incredibly easy. I don't see how our heads are up our arse at all.



Urrm, because £120 processor i not a midrange price, its a high-midrange processor pricerange. The Q6600 may be £120 now but it wasn't 3 years ago on release (I believe it closer to £150 at the moment). Thirdly and most importantly you shouldn't have to overclock a extortionately overpriced processor to play one game.


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> Urrm, because £120 processor i not a midrange price, its a high-midrange processor pricerange. The Q6600 may be £120 now but it wasn't 3 years ago on release. Thirdly and most importantly you shouldn't have to overclock a extortionately overpriced processor to play one game.



You don't need to overclock it to play the game though  You get better performance on higher settings and it's free. Also the Q6600 is from 2007 which was two years ago and is no longer considered high end. Any core I7 is considered high end while Q9550 and down is now mainstream.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> You don't need to overclock it to play the game though  .



Indeed, but the threadstarter does apparently? Apart from the overclock to your processor the threadstarter has a better performing rig than you. If you claim to run the game without a overclock with a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz/GTX260 why can't the threadstarter do the same with a Q9300 @ 2.5 GHz/two 2x4870s - if the game was optimised well it wouldn't perform worst on the better rig. If anything it should perform the same or better on the OPs rig.



DrPepper said:


> high end while Q9550 and down is now mainstream.



It an enthusiast component, you will not see the average joe with prebuilt rigs with a Q9550 typically.

I can not believe you guy actually defend games like GTA IV and Crysis, next time when the sequel comes out and I see a 10 page thread about "how you get low FPS" with your high end rig I will have a field day with laughter.


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## Cheeseball (Jul 18, 2009)

> http://www.rockstargames.com/support/IV/PC/patch/



I decided to give the game one more shot, this time with the patch installed...

... I'm now enjoying it on a X2 5000+ Black Edition at 3GHz with a 512MB HD4770. Holy shit, this 4th patch works wonders.


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

Right he can play it at stock with his system with lowered graphics even if he had 20 4870X2's because it's the CPU's processing power that is the bottleneck. If he want's higher settings the CPU needs to be faster thus come's overclocking = better performance which can be turned into higher visual settings. 

Also there is a general trend that people ignore when the play graphically or physics demanding games. 

Better graphics and physics = Less performance regardless of how much you payed for the hardware. 

I never complained at all when crysis came out and I couldn't run it at very high because my hardware wasn't fast enough at the time. I upgraded to a 8800GT which still wasn't fast enough but now two generations onwards my GTX260 can handle crysis on very high. Most people on midrange systems say a game is unoptimised because they don't want to face the fact that they need more powerful hardware to run the game maxed out. For example if a midrange part performed the same as a high end part then what is the point of even releasing a high end part for a computer.


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> Indeed, but the threadstarter does apparently? Apart from the overclock to your processor the threadstarter has a better performing rig than you. If you claim to run the game without a overclock with a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz/GTX260 why can't the threadtarter do the same with a Q9300 @ 2.5 GHz/two 2x4870s - if the game was optimised well it wouldn't perform worst on the better rig. If anything it should perform the same or better on the OPs rig.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I wont defend Crysis because that truly is poorly coded, but GTA IV is not poorly coded.

i7s have 8 threads and 3+ Ghz stock frequencies. Thats more high range.

Can we also remember the fact that the OP is running the most expensive quad fire setups imaginable, next to a stripped down 45nm quad at only 2.5 GHz.

I mean come one, am I the only one that can see its an obvious bottleneck.

I cant see to get through either that games progress with hardware, if you want to run it maxed you should have the best. If not expect to turn it down.

GTA IV is very scalable, I dont see the big fuss.


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## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

I agree, both GTA IV and Crysis are very scalable, I actually respect the game developers for that as people with a range of hardware from lowend to high end component can play the game well at modest detail whilst maintaining good frame rates and visual quality. 

My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now. Nvidia are already 3 generations of video cards from Cryisis' release, there was the 8800 GT/9800 GT/GTX 2xxx series and the games still struggle two year on. GTA IV will be just the same. 


And my unoptimised stance stretches from both the GPU and CPU front as far as GTV IV and Crysis is concerned.

Edit:

In essence its like buying the Transformers movie on DVD, but you couldn't watch the edited scenes for 3 years until the DVD player became more advanced, you'd be pissed?


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

But GTA IV plays fine 

As others have said, the options for LOD are mearly there as more of an open ended thing

Id rather devs made the game scale beyond hardware capabilities so it still has something to offer in days to come and is a graphical marvel.

Even the creators of Crysis said that the max settings were not what the game was designed to look like they are beyond that.

I think its good the games max settings are unatainable when they launch. It means the e-penis machines have soemthing to do than score X50,000 in Vantage


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## DRDNA (Jul 18, 2009)

I run these settings and its in the red beyond my cards capabilities and still it runs with 40-90FPS ...smooth as silk....no corruption..superb(Very playable)!


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## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> I agree, both GTA IV and Crysis are very scalable, I actually respect the game developers for that as people with a range of hardware from lowend to high end component can play the game well at modest detail whilst maintaining good frame rates and visual quality.
> 
> My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now. Nvidia are already 3 generations of video cards from Cryisis' release, there was the 8800 GT/9800 GT/GTX 2xxx series and the games still struggle two year on. GTA IV will be just the same.
> 
> ...



Unoptimized has nothing to do with the highest settings being usable when the game is released.  If the game looks better than anything else available on high or even medium settings, and is entirely playable on current hardware at those settings, the game is not unoptimized.

You can't claim a game is unoptimized simply because the highest settings available in the game make the game unplayable on current top-end hardware.

So what you are saying is that if the devs had changed nothing in the game other than to lock the highest settings to half of what they currently are(so that essentially, medium settings in the game become max), then you would say the game is optimized because "max" settings runs smoothly on high-end hardware?  How would that make the game any more optimized?  Because they took 60 seconds to change the options screen to limit the maximums the settings are allowed to go?


----------



## phanbuey (Jul 18, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> But *GTA IV* plays fine
> 
> As others have said, the options for LOD are mearly there as more of an open ended thing
> 
> ...



  graphical marvel... gta IV .  This game looks like gaAAAAarbage, max settings or not... the shadows are whack, the models are about the same quality as those in quake 4, the cars look almost identical to the previous releases. No AA...  Everything gets stipled in the distance so that when you drive an looks ahead you can see trees appearing using the same effect quake 1 used to render water.

There is nothing visually 'stunning' about this game.  And yet it still runs like crap.  It runs worse than games that look 10x better with AA enabled - that is pretty much the definition of unoptimized.  I mean look at Prototype and GTA IV - the visual differences favor GTA IV only slightly, but Prototype runs 2x faster even with AA.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/prototype-performance-benchmark,2350.html


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## DrPepper (Jul 18, 2009)

I thought GTAIV looked really good on the pc 

I think it's time we get back on topic


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## alexp999 (Jul 18, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> I thought GTAIV looked really good on the pc
> 
> I think it's time we get back on topic



Uh so did I.

Name me one other game with so much dynamically going on, on screen at the same time. With all the reflections and complex world.

Graphical marvel doesnt have to mean shiny textures and tight shadows.


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## erocker (Jul 18, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> There is nothing visually 'stunning' about this game.  And yet it still runs like crap.  It runs worse than games that look 10x better with AA enabled - that is pretty much the definition of unoptimized.  I mean look at Prototype and GTA IV - the visual differences favor GTA IV only slightly, but Prototype runs 2x faster even with AA.
> 
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/prototype-performance-benchmark,2350.html



I disagree. I think Prototype looks like garbage. GTA IV's textures are better and oh you can use the game settings to make the game run fine on a PC. I think Rockstar did a good thing by giving the options to make this game bring any PC to it's knees. Then again it may have been better to just rename "medium" setting to "high" setting so people wouldn't complain so much that it can't run on their PC.


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## 3volvedcombat (Jul 18, 2009)

*Gta 4*

Gta 4 when i first herd about the game i herd it wasnt optimized for multi Gpu'z + it hoged and raped cpus at the same time. I belive patches have optimized it for HD 4870x2s, but a q9300 at 2.4Ghz terrable. Overclock it! I haz a core 2 duo e5200, when its at stock clocks my vid card dies and bottle necks, when its at 4.0Ghz the video card could be the bottle neck. Im moving to a q9550 (hopefully 1.36 volts E0 Steps at 4.0Ghz with no trouble ). Sense you had the cash for the rest of the rig, fill it up with a q9650 if your a beast, or a q9550 if your a MEGA BEAST. .


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## phanbuey (Jul 18, 2009)

Settings or not, if the game looks good and runs well - then it is well optimized.  That isn't the point.  IMO, which of course you are entitled to your own, the game doesn't look good enough to perform the way it does.

Things happening dynamically on the screen is its one saving grace.  One of the reasons that I upgraded to a quad core... it did make the game run better, a little - driver optimizations did the rest.  But I still feel that if Nvidia or AMD were involved with the porting process that it would have looked alot better (no stippling for distant objects or shadows) and maybe even some AA...  I think it could have been alot better - the massive jump in performance after the first few patches are a testament to that.

The reflections, on the other hand, are not that impressive at all... The effect is so subtle that having it maxed is barely noticeable, especially when stippling is used to have objects appear in front of you.  Its like having a KIA Sportage with really really nice rims.


----------



## erocker (Jul 18, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> http://montaraventures.com/pix/11.jpg
> 
> 
> Settings or not, if the game looks good and runs well - then it is well optimized.  That isn't the point.  IMO, which you are entitled to your own, the game doesn't look good enough to perform the way it does.
> ...



Well, GTA IV is made differently, I'll say that. They decided to go with using a bazillion (huge made up number) textures. While yes the end result isn't Crysis looking, it does have it's own unique look and looks like nothing else. They've been making the game like this since GTAIII. Like I said though, they should of just not given people the option to turn the settings up so high and people would know what they were getting from the console versions. Hopefully the next generation of video cards will be able to tear through this game and hopefully force some AA.


----------



## phanbuey (Jul 18, 2009)

I know it sounds like Im bashing this game (and apologies to going off topic - you need to OC your CPU and turn down reflections to get better performance)...

I really do like the game.  The gameplay itself is awesome.  I've have owned every GTA game ever made - and will buy the next one if they release it for the PC without a doubt.


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## mastrdrver (Jul 18, 2009)

AMD disables any gpus over 2 in this game because it causes problems.

Quote from [H] when they did their Quadfire vs Quad SLI comparison for GTA IV:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYyMyw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==


> AMD’s Greg Ellis indicates what we were thinking as well –
> 
> “We have intentionally limited GTA4 to using at max 2 ASICs, to overcome the performance degradation that was observed when running more than two. That’s a symptom that comes up sometimes when an app is heavily CPU bound. The driver team still has this title high on their priority list, and I’m sure we’ll make further progress in the future if that’s possible.”
> 
> ...


----------



## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> So what you are saying is that if the devs had changed nothing in the game other than to lock the highest settings to half of what they currently are(so that essentially, medium settings in the game become max), then you would say the game is optimized because "max" settings runs smoothly on high-end hardware?  How would that make the game any more optimized?  ?






newtekie1 said:


> Unoptimized has nothing to do with the highest settings being usable when the game is released.





newtekie1 said:


> You can't claim a game is unoptimized simply because the highest settings available in the game make the game unplayable on current top-end hardware.



I actually gave numerous examples, it wasn't just one reason and it wasn't just related to the highest settings being unplayable, you are trivialising what I said into just one area of concern in regards to GTA's optimisation. 



newtekie1 said:


> If the game looks better than anything else available on high or even medium settings, and is entirely playable on current hardware at those settings, the game is not unoptimized.




But this is what I'd call scalable, the ability for it to play on a range of varying peices of hardware.

I guess in my last post I got lazy as I said that the game was not optimised which is untrue.  The game is not "optimised well" is the better phrase that I used previously to describe to the issue as I acknowledge the developers must of did optimisation and hence the frame rates would most likely be even worst than current and because the numerous patches actually boosted performance so indeed optimisation occurred, but whether it was "well optimised" in comparison to other other games or in comparisons to their customers initial expectations, I doubt it.


I refuse to agree that one can call a particular game "optimised well" if the game which is more than a full year old and is still unplayable after two generation of Nvidia video cards. As far as CPU goes there are some people with i7s with 8 thread which struggle at the highest detail and resolution. I'll be damned if I have to wait year and years for the hardware to catch up to the game developer's unrealistic expectations and then invest hundreds of British pounds in the latest and highest end video card and processor to revisit a "old game" to find it still does not play as expected with the utopia of hardware in the case only to be faced with overclocking my hardware further to play such a vintage game.


----------



## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> I actually gave numerous examples, it wasn't just one reason and it wasn't just related to the highest settings being unplayable, you are trivialising what I said into just one area of concern in regards to GTA's optimisation.



Now you are just double talking, read your last post.  That is specifically the reason you gave.  Your whole argument is based entirely on the fact that the top end hardware can't play the game when it was released.  Again, I quote you:



Darren said:


> My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now.






Darren said:


> But this is what I'd call scalable, the ability for it to play on a range of varying peices of hardware.
> 
> I guess in my last post I got lazy as I said that the game was not optimised which is untrue.  The game is not "optimised well" is the better phrase that I used previously to describe to the issue as I acknowledge the developers must of did optimisation and hence the frame rates would most likely be even worst than current and because the numerous patches actually boosted performance so indeed optimisation occurred, but whether it was "well optimised" in comparison to other other games or in comparisons to their customers initial expectations, I doubt it.



Again, I don't know how to make this any more clear.  Being optimized has nothing to do with current, or even future, hardware being able to play the game on max settings.

You claim that modern video cards can't play either GTA:IV or Crysis is plain wrong, both games are more than playable with current video cards, and they were more than playable on the video cards available the day they were released.  Again, I was playing GTA:IV the day it was released on a HD4670,far from the best available at the time...

Customer expectations mean nothing when talking about optimization.

Compared to other games GTA:IV was very optimized.  However, the problem becomes that it is hard to compare games like GTA:IV and Crysis to other games, becuase there really are no other games like it.  Yes, there are other first person shooters, and third person games, but none with the amount of detail or objects included.  No game really gives you the distruction of Crysis with the graphics, and no game gives you the amount of objects on screen as GTA:IV with the same detail level.  So what games have you compared GTA:IV and Crysis with to come up with your "unoptimized" claim?



Darren said:


> I refuse to agree that one can call a particular game "optimised well" if the game which is more than a full year old and is still unplayable after two generation of Nvidia video cards. As far as CPU goes there are some people with i7s with 8 thread which struggle at the highest detail and resolution. I'll be damned if I have to wait year and years for the hardware to catch up to the game developer's unrealistic expectations and then invest hundreds of British pounds in the latest and highest end video card and processor to revisit a "old game" to find it still does not play as expected with the utopia of hardware in the case only to be faced with overclocking my hardware further to play such a vintage game.



Again, your argument essentially comes down to if the devs has simply made the medium settings the Max, you wouldn't say GTA:IV was unoptimized.  This is exactly what you are saying here.  At medium settings, even the hardware the existed the day GTA:IV was release could easily handle the game.  So that is your argument exactly.  If the devs had simply done that, the game would have still looked amazing(in fact it would look almost identical to the game at max settings), and you would have never said it was unoptimized because the high end hardware available at the time of release would have handled "max" settings with ease.


----------



## Darren (Jul 18, 2009)

Between your post and my post "My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now." was edited to  "optimised well" that was my intended phrase. I acknowledge that the game is optimised, just not well.


----------



## newtekie1 (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> Between your post and my post "My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now." was edited to  "optimised well" that was my intended phrase. I acknowledge that the game is optimised, just not well.



It doesn't matter what you call it unoptimized or "not optimized well".  It still comes down to the fact that your entire argument is that because Max settings aren't playable, the game isn't optimized well.  So you would consider the game optimized well if the devs had made the medium settings the max.  You don't like the idea of needed to move a sligher down half way, so you label the game not optimized well.

If they had spent 60 seconds to change the options screen slider from 100/100/100/16 to 50/50/50/8, then the game would be optimized well in your eyes, when that small change does nothing to actually optimized the game...


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## erocker (Jul 18, 2009)

Darren said:


> Between your post and my post "My dispute is that although its scalable I can not call it optimised otherwise the very highest settings would be attainable now." was edited to  "optimised well".



I understand what you are saying, but it comes down to whether you mind they made a game that's basically ahead of it's time. Two games have come up in this thread:

Crysis: Lots of textures, beautiful graphics and lots of different graphical enhancements and effects - very hungry for system performance.

GTA IV: While not as pretty as Crysis this game uses and insane amount of textures unparralleled (I'm pretty sure anyways) with any other game on the PC market. - loves to eat today's high end systems up, though i7's, 6bg of RAM and a high end video card(s) can handle it. Same with Crysis.

Really, the only way they could of "optimised" the game any more would of been to just reduce the overall graphics settings. Instead, we get something a little more to play with when we upgrade our hardware. Just my take on it.


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## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> It doesn't matter what you call it unoptimized or "not optimized well".



It does because the "well" changes the significant of the sentence 100%.

Hence I can debate, but debating well is above and beyond the mediocre. 

Whereas a 5yr old can debate but it doesn't have to vocabulary to do  it "well"


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## Soylent Joe (Jul 19, 2009)

I have an E8400 and a 4870 running at 1920x1080. I'm using the recommended setting with little to no lag. I probably would lag if I put everything on max, but it's very pretty the way it is. I reckon I get about 45FPS, I've only ran the benchmark on there, no FRAPS yet.


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## 3xploit (Jul 19, 2009)

@ Darren look at it this way: with my old 3.2ghz c2d and 8800 i could run this game 20-30 fps at medium settings @ 1440x900. after upgrading to a quad at 3.9ghz i can run it maxed out at 40fps+ at 1680x1050 while still using my 8800. gpu doesn't matter in this game nearly as much as cpu (unless you play at insane resolutions).


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## newtekie1 (Jul 19, 2009)

Just for Darren, I made GTA:IV "optimized well":





BAM!!! GTA:IV is optimized in the eyes of Darren!


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## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Again, your argument essentially comes down to if the devs has simply made the medium settings the Max, you wouldn't say GTA:IV was unoptimized.  This is exactly what you are saying here





newtekie1 said:


> the fact that your entire argument is that because Max settings aren't playable, the game isn't optimized well.



That was not my entire argument, I made numerous arguments in this thread, from the top of my head in no particular order:

1.) Both GTA IV and Crysis are scalable and optimised, but it is not optimised well.
2.) You shouldn't need to overclock high end processors and GPUs to play one game
3) The purpose of high end components are that its the elite of components and hence such overclocks shouldn't be necessary for one game, the card or processor should be fast enough at stock.
4.) The Q9300 is an enthusiast processor, although I agree it was marketed as a mainstream quadcore despite its high end price tag.
5.) An enthusiast component should be suffice for gaming generally speaking.
6) We should not have to wait a full year for the next batch of high end quad cores e.g. i7 and Phenom IIs to play GTA IV and/or Crysis at very high detail/resolution
7.) We shouldn't have to wait for two generation of Nvidia video cards to play GTA IV and/or Crysis at very high detail/resolution
8.) We shouldn't have to wait for DX11 cards to play a DX10 game at highest detail.

Only the last 6,7, and 8 are related to highest detail specifically. 



newtekie1 said:


> So you would consider the game optimized well if the devs had made the medium settings the max.  You don't like the idea of needed to move a sligher down half way, so you label the game not optimized well.





newtekie1 said:


> If they had spent 60 seconds to change the options screen slider from 100/100/100/16 to 50/50/50/8, then the game would be optimized well in your eyes



I did not say that. 

I would consider the game "optimised well" if the developers were more efficient with their coding so that the game uses as little resources as possible whilst looking visually the same at highest and hence the highest detail would remain visually intact whilst benefiting from increased frame rate.



newtekie1 said:


> You claim that modern video cards can't play either GTA:IV or Crysis is plain wrong, both games are more than playable with current video cards, and they were more than playable on the video cards available the day they were released. Again, I was playing GTA:IV the day it was released on a HD4670,far from the best available at the time...



That is not my claim and that is not what I'm implying. 

I know Crysis can play reasonably well on a range of hardware as admitted earlier as tested on my very own old x1600 Pro.  But you are now talking about scalability, perhaps optimisation comes into play but just because a game has been optimised to be scalable on a variety of rigs is not the _only_ indication of a "well optimised" game there are other factors which I've previously explained that can not be ignored. 



newtekie1 said:


> So what games have you compared GTA:IV and Crysis with to come up with your "unoptimized" claim?



I've already said in many posts that GTA IV and Crysis are indeed optimised, "optimised well" is what I'm disputing.



newtekie1 said:


> Customer expectations mean nothing when talking about optimization.



According to Crysis online the system specifcation is:

CPU: Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better
RAM: 1.5GB
Video Card: NVIDIA 7800 Series, ATI Radeon 1800 Series or better
VRAM: 512MB of Graphics Memory
Storage: 12GB
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
ODD: DVD-ROM
OS: Microsoft Windows XP or Vista
DirectX: DX9.0c or DX10

As a customer if the game is released and I have a smoking hot high end Nvidia 7800 series and a high end Core 2 Duo then the game gets released and it plays well e.g. decent frame rates but only at low detail and resolution. I'm going to be pissed. Although the game is scalable but I'm pissed at Crytek did not say in their recommended specification "future dualcore/quad core recommended overclocked above stock recommended" and/or "future highend GPU recommended". My point is the game should be optimised for the specification given, I understand that they are trying to push barriers but in this case the barriers were over estimted and hence their recommended specification was way off.




3xploit said:


> @ Darren look at it this way: with my old 3.2ghz c2d and 8800 i could run this game 20-30 fps at medium settings @ 1440x900. after upgrading to a quad at 3.9ghz i can run it maxed out at 40fps+ at 1680x1050 while still using my 8800. gpu doesn't matter in this game nearly as much as cpu (unless you play at insane resolutions).




Interesting to hear. 

I know that GTA IV is CPU intensive, quadcore specifically. 

I just do not think such a quadcore intensive game is ethical to develop. We may be enthusiasts but it doesn't mean we all overclock our quad cores to 4.1 GHz. Such a processor and overclock wasn't in Crytek's or GTA's "recommended specification".



Soylent Joe said:


> I have an E8400 and a 4870 running at 1920x1080. I'm using the recommended setting with little to no lag. I probably would lag if I put everything on max, but it's very pretty the way it is. I reckon I get about 45FPS, I've only ran the benchmark on there, no FRAPS yet.



E8400 and a 4870, two years later with components which are in a different league to Crytek's recommended of a Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better and Nvidia 7800 series. You'd think they'd edit the recommendation to a more realistic rig, ah well I suppose they've got your money now so they're fired the web editor.


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## CDdude55 (Jul 19, 2009)

Try lowering your resolution, and maybe even a driver reinstall.

But ya GTA IV its very optimized as it should be.


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## Nick89 (Jul 19, 2009)

I have 2 4870's 1GBs in Xfire and dont get any performance increase with Xfire.

I still get 45 FPS avg. With all high settings and a few on highest, Res@1920x1200. View distance at 45, detail distance 70. There is just no performance increase with Xfire enabled or disabled.


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## js01 (Jul 19, 2009)

The thing that ruins GTA for me is the extreme jaggies in the game, even at 1920x1200 they stick out like a sore thumb.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 19, 2009)

Darren said:


> That was not my entire argument, I made numerous arguments in this thread, from the top of my head in no particular order:
> 
> 1.) Both GTA IV and Crysis are scalable and optimised, but it is not optimised well.



Yes, we get that you think the game isn't optimized well, and the reason you claim this is entirely based on the fact that the highest settings aren't playable on current hardware.



Darren said:


> 2.) You shouldn't need to overclock high end processors and GPUs to play one game



You don't, I have yet to come across a game that I _had_ to overclock to play.  Neither Crysis nor GTA:IV required overclocking to be playable on the day they were release.  As already stated, GTA:IV played just fine on my stock HD4670 and while my Athlon X2 was overclocked, it was only to 2.8GHz, and there were already stock Athlon X2's available at faster speeds than that.  Crysis required no overclocking on either my 7900GTs or my E6600 when it was release.

What you don't seem to get, is that overclocking is not required if you simply lower settings.  Again, your statement only applies to the max settings.  You have to overclock to play the game on max, which again leads to my argument that if the devs simply locked the max settings and called medium settings "max" you would say the game was optimized well.




Darren said:


> 3) The purpose of high end components are that its the elite of components and hence such overclocks shouldn't be necessary for one game, the card or processor should be fast enough at stock.



See #2



Darren said:


> 4.) The Q9300 is an enthusiast processor, although I agree it was marketed as a mainstream quadcore despite its high end price tag.



Not by a long shot.  The Q9300 definitely wasn't an enthusiast processor.  The Q9550/Q9650 were enthusiast processors, not the Q9300.  The Q9300 was the budget quad-core to get people to buy quads, until the Q8000 series came about that is...



Darren said:


> 5.) An enthusiast component should be suffice for gaming generally speaking.



Even though the Q9300 isn't an enthusiast component, we'll assume it is:  The Q9300 and any other "enthusiast" component will surffice for gaming.  GTA:IV and Crysis are both completely playable on weaker processors than the Q9300, just not on max settings.



Darren said:


> 6) We should not have to wait a full year for the next batch of high end quad cores e.g. i7 and Phenom IIs to play GTA IV and/or Crysis at very high detail/resolution



Which again leads to my argument that if the devs simply locked the max settings and called medium settings "max" you would say the game was optimized well.  However, that would have NOTHING to do with how well optimized the game really is.



Darren said:


> 7.) We shouldn't have to wait for two generation of Nvidia video cards to play GTA IV and/or Crysis at very high detail/resolution



See #6



Darren said:


> 8.) We shouldn't have to wait for DX11 cards to play a DX10 game at highest detail.



See #6 again...



Darren said:


> I did not say that.
> 
> I would consider the game "optimised well" if the developers were more efficient with their coding so that the game uses as little resources as possible whilst looking visually the same at highest and hence the highest detail would remain visually intact whilst benefiting from increased frame rate.



Your opinion one what "well optimized" is is wrong, you have no clue what optimized means.  If the game looks better than anything else on the market on medium, and is perfectly playable on current hardware, then it is very well optimized.  Both Crysis and GTA:IV fall into this category.



Darren said:


> That is not my claim and that is not what I'm implying.



It most certainly is:



Darren said:


> I refuse to agree that one can call a particular game "optimised well" if the game which is more than a full year old and is still unplayable after two generation of Nvidia video cards.



That is exactly what you are saying in that quote.  Saying that the game is unplayable after two generations of nVidia video cards is saying that it was unplayable when it was release.  That claim is wrong, I've already explained why.



Darren said:


> I know Crysis can play reasonably well on a range of hardware as admitted earlier as tested on my very own old x1600 Pro.  But you are now talking about scalability, perhaps optimisation comes into play but just because a game has been optimised to be scalable on a variety of rigs is not the _only_ indication of a "well optimised" game there are other factors which I've previously explained that can not be ignored.



Yes, we know your definition of "well optimized" is that the game is playable on max settings on current hardware when it is released.  Again, I've already explained why you are wrong here.




Darren said:


> I've already said in many posts that GTA IV and Crysis are indeed optimised, "optimised well" is what I'm disputing.



*Sigh* Unoptimized and "not well optimized" are the same fucking thing.  Don't try to worm you way out of your BS statements by trying to say they aren't.  Obviously we all know every game has some level of optimization, so when we say "unoptimized" we obviously mean "not optimized well".  Don't be idiotic.

If you must I'll rephrase: So what games have you compared GTA:IV and Crysis with to come up with your "not optimized well" claim?




Darren said:


> According to Crysis online the system specifcation is:
> 
> CPU: Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better
> RAM: 1.5GB
> ...



We all know recommended settings are BS.  If you are a PC gamer and actually think the recommended setting will run the game maxed out, you are a fool.

That being said, I actually owned a 7800GTX when the game came out, and medium settings@1280x1024 was playable with an E4300.  You have to remember that since the 7800 series was DX9, the game would run in DX9, and it actually runs rather well in DX9.  I was certainly not disappointed about the performance the Crysis showed with my 7800GTX.

And really the recommended config has nothing to do with your claims of "not optimized well".  When Crysis was released, the 8800 series was already on the market(two generations past the 7800 series).  In fact the G92 8800GT was already on the market, and the 8800GTS 512MB came a month after.  If I owned a 2 generation old card, I would be happy the new games looked as good as Crysis and were still playable with it.

But again, I don't see what customer expectation has to do with how optimized the game is.  So because the customer expected better performance than they got, that makes the game not optimized well?  Sorry, that isn't what optimized means, customer expectations have nothing to do with how well a game is optimized.  If the customers expected crap performance, and got slightly better than crap performance, that doesn't change the game code, or how well the game code is optimized, one bit.


----------



## erocker (Jul 19, 2009)

newtekie, Darren.. Why in the hell do you guys even bother?  It's getting to the point where it's just funny!


----------



## newtekie1 (Jul 19, 2009)

Good point...


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## Steevo (Jul 19, 2009)

How does one "optomise" the blatent need for vram?


Face it, it just needs alot of fucking video memory, no matter how fast your CPU, GPU, or your fans spin, it just needs more video memory. My 4850 plays it fine at high settings, and it only loads my lowly $200 quad to 40-50%, so that blows your whole unoptomised theory out of the water. Even with 1GB of video memory, it still needs more to play at maximum settings, and frankly I am glad. I'm sorry of seeing a game that gets thrown together and requires you to use really high dollar hardware to run and enjoy and when you are don you can nit pick at what you would hale like to see, this game has more than pretties, and offers a experiance all its own, and one that i will enjoy on future hardware at higher settings, makeing it a fun game to play again, at those high settings and resolution.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102847


Try this and see how it goes.


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## bpgt64 (Jul 19, 2009)

To the OP;
Consider this;  Everygame isn't coded the same, they use different engines, and are designed for certain hardware, and are designed differently depending on the target audience, and the goal of the game.  

Valve games, I would argue and I think most would agree are designed to be played on almost every level of hardware.  They focus on making sure their games play really well on most hardware, and most game makers do allow there their games to scale back, again it depends on the game maker, and the coding. 

Conversely I'd argue that the makes of Crysis were attempting to push the DX10 envelope.  If you have ever seen either the original or Warhead on really expensive hardware cranked up, their really beautiful games.  I would also say Crysis 1's multiplayer, however slightly unbalanced, was quiet fun.

My point being, is that GTA IV for example, runs really well with Dual GPU solutions and a more beefy Processor;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-sli,2298-11.html

I myself just recently dropped my HD 4870 X2 for Dual GTX 275s, because I found myself playing games that ran better on Nvidia hardware, that and i7 920's were 200 bucks at micro center.  At those resolutions you might need to think about the games you play before picking hardware.  Trust me, I made that same mistake.


----------



## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Yes, we get that you think the game isn't optimized well, and the reason you claim this is entirely based on the fact that the highest settings aren't playable on current hardware.



Did you read any of my post? It wasn't based entirely on that although some of my argument was related to high settings specifically.



newtekie1 said:


> You don't, I have yet to come across a game that I _had_ to overclock to play.  Neither Crysis nor GTA:IV required overclocking to be playable on the day they were release.  As already stated, GTA:IV played just fine on my stock HD4670 and while my Athlon X2 was overclocked, it was only to 2.8GHz, and there were already stock Athlon X2's available at faster speeds than that.  Crysis required no overclocking on either my 7900GTs or my E6600 when it was release.



Did you read my last post? I was actually in agreement with you. I even said that both games are scalable and plays on older hardware well. I even went to the trouble of saying that my old x1600 Pro played Crysis well  at 1024x768 with low/med detail and it looked fantastic.  I never had to overclock my x1600 Pro because the game was scalable to accommodate my low end hardware.



newtekie1 said:


> What you don't seem to get, is that overclocking is not required if you simply lower settings.  Again, your statement only applies to the max settings.



I just merely said that a lot of people on this forum have stupidly overclocked dual cores or quad cores near or above 4GHz so their statements are not valid when they say that they achieve good frame rates at highest settings in Crysis or GTA IV because they are in the minority. 

 




newtekie1 said:


> Not by a long shot.  The Q9300 definitely wasn't an enthusiast processor.  The Q9550/Q9650 were enthusiast processors, not the Q9300.  The Q9300 was the budget quad-core to get people to buy quads, until the Q8000 series came about that is...



You'd be hard pressed to find a Q9300 in a typical PC world computer so its hardly a mainstream processor. Regardless I said this area is debatable and that it could because this particular CPU can be put into either category depending on how you view things.


 



newtekie1 said:


> Which again leads to my argument that if the devs simply locked the max settings and called medium settings "max" you would say the game was optimized well.  However, that would have NOTHING to do with how well optimized the game really is.





newtekie1 said:


> If the devs simply locked the max settings and called medium settings "max" you would say the game was optimized well.




Renaming the medium settings and calling it maximum might make create the perception of an well optimised game, the game would be "more optimised" but it wouldn't be "well optimised".  One instance of a game being well optimised is if the is a manipulation of the code to influence the rendering.  For example the  artificial intelligence and interaction are adjusted in real time, for example the quantity of pedestrians and commuters in vehicles  could increase or decrease depending on the frame rate at that particular time e.g.  As the system maintains a >40 frame rate allow a minimum of x amount of pedestrians whereas  if the frame rate dips to or below a 9 frame rate the pedestrians discretely walk out of the view of render until there is a random fixed quantity of pedestrians between a lower range of Y and Z temporarily. 

^
In essence if the game managed its rendering on the fly and adjusted accordingly the frame rate would be generally higher and hence allowing for high settings to be attainable whilst not suffering the low frame rate penalty as severe. This principle can be applied to medium and low settings and hence does not just conform to improving the highest settings. This is just one instance from the top of my head which I expect a "well optimised" to include amongst other stuff, especially from a big budget next generation game.  







newtekie1 said:


> if the game looks better than anything else on the market on medium, and is perfectly playable on current hardware, then it is very well optimized.  Both Crysis and GTA:IV fall into this category.



Did you read my previous post?

Although I'd call that scalability and perhaps it is a sign of optimisation, the degree of optimisation is what I'm arguing. Just because a game is optimised to a grade C standard it doesn't mean its well optimised some of us have expectations of optimisation to a grade A standard.  Just because it runs well and looks fantastic on medium on current hardware is not enough to award it a grade A, you need more than just one good positive.




newtekie1 said:


> What is exactly what you are saying in that quote.  Saying that the game is unplayable after two generations of nVidia video cards is saying that it was unplayable when it was release.  That claim is wrong, I've already explained why.



Its pretty straight forward what I'm saying, two generations of video cards later and Crysis still has instances of slight lag or dips in FPS in certain areas of the game . Obviously I'm presuming one is attempting to run highest settings, 8x AA, 16 AF, at around 1920 x 1200 or 2560 x 1600.  For some people that might seem like an extreme setting to play games at and I would normally agree but two years later with the most expensive GPU one should be able to run this ancient game at whatever settings they wish.  - But I guess not.

 


newtekie1 said:


> Yes, we know your definition of "well optimized" is that the game is playable on max settings on current hardware when it is released.  Again, I've already explained why you are wrong here.



No its just one of my definitions.




newtekie1 said:


> *Sigh* Unoptimized and "not well optimized" are the same fucking thing.  Don't try to worm you way out of your BS statements by trying to say they aren't



Its not the same thing, the degree of optimisation varies.



newtekie1 said:


> Obviously we all know every game has some level of optimization, so when we say "unoptimized" we obviously mean "not optimized well".  Don't be idiotic.


Every game has a level of optimisation, the degree which the optimisation is carried out and works in reality determines whether it is "optimised well" amongst other things.
 



newtekie1 said:


> If you must I'll rephrase: So what games have you compared GTA:IV and Crysis with to come up with your "not optimized well" claim?



No particular games come to mind, although I must admit that when Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 it was one of the most ground breaking games graphically and its physics was much praised at the time. Obviously the game is almost 5 years old so we can not compare it to GTA IV or Crysis  which are much newer games. However Half Life 2 was very scalable just like GTA and Crysis and hence it played on a range of hardware.  What made HL2 "well optimsed" is that it played on any rig even at high settings. I can remember maxing out the detail on my Celeron 633 MHz with ATI 9600 and 512 MBs of ram with decent frame rates.  My rig was extremely low end for the time yet it traversed the most high end game at the time with ease without sacrificing visual quality, I guess the source engine is lightweight and uses little resources and hence is one aspect of a "well optimsed game". 




newtekie1 said:


> But again, I don't see what customer expectation has to do with how optimized the game is.  So because the customer expected better performance than they got, that makes the game not optimized well?



The game might be optimised well in other areas such as scalability etc. However the fact that customers expectations of performance were not met as promised means that particular aspect of optimisation was neglected.  So the game could be optimised well still but well to which degree a grade C standard or a grade A standard? I'm not going to award a game grade A for failing to meet customers expectations that would be unethical for a lecturer?


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## Lillebror (Jul 19, 2009)

> No particular games come to mind, although I must admit that when Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 it was one of the most ground breaking games graphically and its physics was much praised at the time. Obviously the game is almost 5 years old so we can not compare it to GTA IV or Crysis which are much newer games. However Half Life 2 was very scalable just like GTA and Crysis and hence it played on a range of hardware. What made HL2 "well optimsed" is that it played on any rig even at high settings. I can remember maxing out the detail on my Celeron 633 MHz with ATI 9600 and 512 MBs of ram with decent frame rates. My rig was extremely low end for the time yet it traversed the most high end game at the time with ease without sacrificing visual quality, I guess the source engine is lightweight and uses little resources and hence is one aspect of a "well optimsed game".



Umm.. Being able to max out Hl2 is only cause the Steam engine uses alot of static rendering. Theres no heavy calculation behind anything actualy. Most of the physics in hl2 is "pre defined". Theres already some calculations done for it. But you cant really compare Hl2 and Gta IV - Your in a predefined space in hl2, while your free roaming in gta IV.


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## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

Lillebror said:


> Umm.. Being able to max out Hl2 is only cause the Steam engine uses alot of static rendering. Theres no heavy calculation behind anything actualy. Most of the physics in hl2 is "pre defined". Theres already some calculations done for it. But you cant really compare Hl2 and Gta IV - Your in a predefined space in hl2, while your free roaming in gta IV.



Indeed, which is why I said they can not be compared.

But regardless the source engine was optimised well for 2004. In my opinion


----------



## Lillebror (Jul 19, 2009)

The source engine wasnt optimized in 2004 - it was actualy quite bugged and slow. And theres still lots of problems with it in 2009. Only reason it feels - in your words - optimised, is cause it uses predefined stuff and static rendering. Neither Crysis or Gta IV does that.


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## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

Lillebror said:


> The source engine wasnt optimized in 2004 - it was actualy quite bugged and slow. And theres still lots of problems with it in 2009. Only reason it feels - in your words - optimised, is cause it uses predefined stuff and static rendering. Neither Crysis or Gta IV does that.



Whether it used predefinited or stastic rendering is irrelevant because static rendering was the norm at its time of release, even so the game was graphically ground breaking because there were few other game comparisons at the time which did a better job.

The intension was to name a well optimised game not to compare it with Crysis and and GTA IV. My post was clear and concise the only fair comparison can be based upon the perception of each game during their respected release period. Comparing Cysis and and GTA IV with Half-Life 2 today makes little sense, the 5 year gap alone wouldn't make it unethical let alone the fact that the source engine is old and consumer expectations of visuals, A.I and physics have changed in those 5 years. 

Very few game developers today have the budget or motivation to produce ground breaking games that push the barriers enough to challenge Crysis or GTA IV which is why I said "No particular games come to mind". But a ground breaking game does not making a game well optimised in every aspect.


----------



## Lillebror (Jul 19, 2009)

Optimization is when you take a peice of code, remove some of the overhead and make that particual code faster. What your talking about is ground breaking stuff. Its not really the same. Awesome graphics that runs with high fps dosnt mean its optimised, that just means that they focused on the graphics and have skimped on something else.


Ever heard of the frase "TWIMTBP"? Nvidia's The Way Its Meant To Be Played thing is all about optimising the games for a certain graphics card or a certain series. Thats optimization at its best.


----------



## Darren (Jul 19, 2009)

Lillebror said:


> Optimization is when you take a peice of code, remove some of the overhead and make that particular code faster.



In essence this is what programming is about, removing redundant code, reducing the lines of code so its extra efficient. 



Lillebror said:


> Ever heard of the frase "TWIMTBP"? Nvidia's The Way Its Meant To Be Played thing is all about optimising the games for a certain graphics card or a certain series. Thats optimization at its best.



Yeah I've heard of it, and experienced it.



Lillebror said:


> What your talking about is ground breaking stuff. Its not really the same. Awesome graphics that runs with high fps doesn't mean its optimised, that just means that they focused on the graphics and have skimped on something else.



I'd call it well optimised visually and in scalability. But you're right if they have skimped elsewhere if the game is not well balanced which means it could be potentially less optimised in the audio or story or elsewhere.

I'm I wrong for wanting games like GTA IV to turn off 1 or 2 of the 15 street lamps in an outdoor environment as the frame rate decreases, after all street lamps bulbs do not last forever and it's a convenient way of reducing the rendering at that specific time and hence improving FPS. In an open area such as GTA IV where the streets are full of pedestrians have it only render less visually appealing clothes e.g. shorts instead of trousers to reduce rendering time when the frame rate is in a specific low range i.e. 20-30 FPS.


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## Lillebror (Jul 19, 2009)

I get what you mean with that  Having better LoD could mean alot for a game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_(computer_science) - You should try to read the stuff under "Trade-offs", "Bottlenecks" and "When to optimize".


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## erocker (Jul 19, 2009)

erocker said:


> I understand what you are saying, but it comes down to whether you mind they made a game that's basically ahead of it's time. Two games have come up in this thread:
> 
> Crysis: Lots of textures, beautiful graphics and lots of different graphical enhancements and effects - very hungry for system performance.
> 
> ...



I'll just stick to my opinion. Breaking down and quoting someone's post bit by bit isn't going to help either. You say tomato, they say tomatoe, potato, potatoe. ;p


----------



## joshiers8605 (Jul 19, 2009)

do you maybe have something else running in the background taking up a lot of resources?


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## Steevo (Jul 19, 2009)

$650 will get you hardware to play this at (probably) maximum settings


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## js01 (Jul 20, 2009)

Steevo said:


> $650 will get you hardware to play this at (probably) maximum settings



I never thought I'd see the day when you need a 2gb card to max a game out, but I guess it's true with GTA IV if you want all of the view distance and high textures.


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## bpgt64 (Jul 20, 2009)

At that resolution your demanding alot from the game.  One of the things where Dual GPU solutions start to come in handy.  I run GTA IV on Dual GTX 275s and get about 55-60FPS constantly, with an i7 920@ 3.6ghz @ 1900x1080.  When you get up into those resolutions you need more horsepower from your GPU.


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## phanbuey (Jul 20, 2009)

bpgt64 said:


> At that resolution your demanding alot from the game.  One of the things where Dual GPU solutions start to come in handy.  I run GTA IV on Dual GTX 275s and get about 55-60FPS constantly, with an i7 920@ 3.6ghz @ 1900x1080.  When you get up into those resolutions you need more horsepower from your GPU.



what gfx drivers are you using?


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## bpgt64 (Jul 20, 2009)

The newest ones, off the nvidia website.


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## samijokipuu (Jul 22, 2009)

I have to agree with a lot of people on the fact that this game is "dumb", look at my pc
i7 965 ext.edi. oc to 4.0 ghz
x58 mobo
6 gigs of 1600mhz triple channel
2 gtx 295
1500w toughpower
24* wide, asus screen
i can pretty much say that my pc has the best hardware possible, maybe excluding x58 classified and a 3rd 295 (insanity) more ram and more oc, and i dont wanna start debating 'bout this.

now if i put all the settings to max excluding draw distance(which i leave at 40, cuz this fucking game DOESNT SUPPORT SLI, this is 2009 and they make a game that doesnt support it), the game runs inside places at max 60 but when ya go outside it slows to 19-25, i didnt spend 6 gees on a pc so i could play games at 19fps, i mean i can run crysis at max but this game thinks it's better than my pc, blow me Rockstar.


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## DRDNA (Jul 22, 2009)

samijokipuu said:


> I have to agree with a lot of people on the fact that this game is "dumb", look at my pc
> i7 965 ext.edi. oc to 4.0 ghz
> x58 mobo
> 6 gigs of 1600mhz triple channel
> ...



ouch! Somthing is not right with the rig either if it hit FPS that low..


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## samijokipuu (Jul 22, 2009)

Mah rig is fine, this is the only game that gives me shit, fps wise.


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## MaximusE (Jul 22, 2009)

just /delete game


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## AsRock (Jul 22, 2009)

samijokipuu said:


> I have to agree with a lot of people on the fact that this game is "dumb", look at my pc
> i7 965 ext.edi. oc to 4.0 ghz
> x58 mobo
> 6 gigs of 1600mhz triple channel
> ...



You tried disabling SLI for the game ?.  As with some games that don't support or support well your better of disabling CF \ SLI..


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> TBH you need to take your head out of your ass, and realise that people with the high end hardware want it pushed to its limits and see what it can really do.
> 
> An unoptimised game would be one you cant scale down in lower end PCs and as has been said time and time again, GTA IV can do that.
> 
> Why should people with higher grade PCs go without really good graphics and demanding games at high spec, just so "mid range" PCs can run it "maxxed out" ?



Because I think some enthusiast buy high end rigs today so that they can run still games 2 years from now at max settings.  BTW, I agree with this thinking.  They (and I) don't want to buy a high end rig to see a "today's or last year's game" game or two to "push the rig's limits".  We are at least 10 years beyond the stage where software used to be ahead of its time vs the respective hardware.

I have 2 8800 gts640 for a *long time* now, and still runs games like COD4/5, Fallout3 and TF2 above 60+fps @max settings @1080p.  Yes, these games are older and less complex, but it not as if GTA4 and Crysis are like "light years" ahead of its time.  You don't need to be a PhD in CPU/GPU to see that games like these are not exactly OMGWTFBBQHOTDOGS amazing.

Like I said, we can beyond the software > hardware.

IMHO, games like GTA4 and Crysis are not optimized "fine", more like so-so optimized.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 23, 2009)

High end rigs today, ARE mid-range rigs 2 years from now.  Game developers shouldn't have to purposely retard their games just so that people with mid-range rigs, who think they have high end rigs, can play them maxed out.

IMO, a more important measure of if a game is optimized or not, isn't how playable it is on Max settings on high end rigs, but what it looks like when the settings are lowered to playble levels on high end hardware, and perhaps more imporantly what it looks like when the settings are lowered to playable levels on mid-range hardware.

And for anyone that thinks a game has to be playable at max settings on current high end hardware to be considered optimized well or fine again I post:






BAM!!! I just optimized GTA:IV well/fine.  

I just modified the options screen, did nothing else to the actual code of the game, but now the Max settings run perfectly fine on the high end hardware when the game was released.  Now it is optimized to your liking.


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> I just modified the options screen, did nothing else to the actual code of the game, but now the Max settings run perfectly fine on the high end hardware when the game was released.  Now it is optimized to your liking.



Then explain this




samijokipuu said:


> I have to agree with a lot of people on the fact that this game is "dumb", look at my pc
> *i7 965 *ext.edi. oc to *4.0 ghz*
> x58 mobo
> *6 gigs *of 1600mhz triple channel
> ...



<<his rig looks pretty high end to me. Yet he claims unsatisfactory and low frame rates, you can not blame his hardware, this is a high end rig right, and this is optimisation at its best?

His original posted here


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## LifeOnMars (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> Then explain this
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I gotta call bs on his post. Unstable overclock? I've seen plenty of stock i7 owners getting stable framerates with lesser graphics cards. Either that or the quad gfx setup is creating an issue with his framerates(driver related)


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## DrPepper (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> Then explain this
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I can it run it maxed out no problem with a single GTX260. Well could I sold my rig but I could play it fine. Quad SLI doesn't exactly mean 4x more performance in most cases its the opposite. Disabling SLI would probably fix some issues.


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> High end rigs today, ARE mid-range rigs 2 years from now.  Game developers shouldn't have to purposely retard their games just so that people with mid-range rigs, who think they have high end rigs, can play them maxed out.
> 
> IMO, a more important measure of if a game is optimized or not, isn't how playable it is on Max settings on high end rigs, but what it looks like when the settings are lowered to playble levels on high end hardware, and perhaps more imporantly what it looks like when the settings are lowered to playable levels on mid-range hardware.
> 
> ...



I think the problem with this discussion is each of us seem to have our own definition of "optimize".  In your "BAM" comment, you consider optimize to be running at a certain setting while still maintaining a subjective beauty and playability of "50%".

What some of us are saying is:  if you cannot run games like GTA4 (for example) on a $5k, $6k, or hell even $10k rig will the most powerful metal in the world at least 60 fps with everything cranked up max with out flinching... that is not optimized.  Now that's an extreme example, but you get my drift.

I agree, highend of today is mid-range 2 years from now.  BUT you missing the point... this is not 1990's anymore.  Software is trying to catch up with hardware, where as in the 90's, it was the other way around.  For example: look at how 32bit OS is laggy everyone, 64bit hardware has been around for quite some time and establish.  So it is not unreasonable to expect high end rig of today to still play games 2 years from now at cranked max.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 23, 2009)

Sanhime said:


> I think the problem with this discussion is each of us seem to have our own definition of "optimize".  In your "BAM" comment, you consider optimize to be running at a certain setting while still maintaining a subjective beauty and playability of "50%".
> 
> What some of us are saying is:  if you cannot run games like GTA4 (for example) on a $5k, $6k, or hell even $10k rig will the most powerful metal in the world at least 60 fps with everything cranked up max with out flinching... that is not optimized.  Now that's an extreme example, but you get my drift.
> 
> I agree, highend of today is mid-range 2 years from now.  BUT you missing the point... this is not 1990's anymore.  Software is trying to catch up with hardware, where as in the 90's, it was the other way around.  For example: look at how 32bit OS is laggy everyone, 64bit hardware has been around for quite some time and establish.  So it is not unreasonable to expect high end rig of today to still play games 2 years from now at cranked max.



And that is exactly my point, I know exactly what your opinion is, and your opinion has nothing to do with how Optimized a game really is.  It has nothing to do with the coding of the game.  Just because a game was coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware, that doesn't make it unoptimized.

My point with that screenshot was that if the devs had simply locked the settings to a max of 50/50/50/8 instead of 100/100/100/16 you wouldn't be claiming the game was unoptimized, when that has no real affect on how optimized the game code really is.

Your opinon one what optimized means is wrong, get used to it.

And yes, it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs of today to play games released 2 years from now on Max.  Just like it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs from 2 years ago to play current games at max.


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> And that is exactly my point, I know exactly what your opinion is, and your opinion has nothing to do with how Optimized a game really is.  It has nothing to do with the coding of the game.  Just because a game was coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware, that doesn't make it unoptimized.
> 
> My point with that screenshot was that if the devs had simply locked the settings to a max of 50/50/50/8 instead of 100/100/100/16 you wouldn't be claiming the game was unoptimized, when that has no real affect on how optimized the game code really is.



And how would you know the game is optimized?  Your screen is not proof positive of anything.  That screen can also be used as evidence of crappy coding in a court of law.  Do you work for Rockstar?  Have you seen or written the code?  

Your opinion is based on a perceived notion that you are more of an expert than others about these sort of matters, while I'm just looking at the from a "laymen's" perspective.  And from a layman's perspective, GTA4 does not looks as technological "big shot" as people claim it to be visually, physically, or whatever adjective you like to put it.  You say my opinion has nothing to do with optimization, but you have not demonstrated that your opinion as anything to do with optimization either.  That's why I said it seems that everyone have their own opinion of what optimized is, because none of us here create GTA4.  

What makes my opinion more valid than yours is, I'm using the context of every other today's game as my baseline that out would appear to any "layman" *look* as, or if not more, complicated than GTA4 (or even Crysis for that matter).  Do you think GTA4 (and/or Crysis) is the most "beautiful" game on the planet currently?  People who are in the industry observe this as well, games like GTA4 and Crysis, don't *look* as optimize as it could have been.



newtekie1 said:


> Your opinon one what optimized means is wrong, get used to it.



Mine might be wrong, but yours is not valid.  You just prove it with that screen shot and your self description.



newtekie1 said:


> And yes, it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs of today to play games released 2 years from now on Max. Just like it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs from 2 years ago to play current games at max.



I play COD5 at 1080p maxed on my C2D and 8800gts 4gb ram without going below 60fps.  Is COD5 not current enough for anyone?  Disclaimer:  I don't use AA.  Why?  Because on a 52" screen playing from 10 ft away, unless you have eyes of a eagle, AA doesn't mean anything to you.


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Just because a game was coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware, that doesn't make it unoptimized.



One could argue that if a game is "coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware" the developers are essentially optimising the game for hardware that does not exist, which is silly because know one can predict the direction hardware will take in advance.




newtekie1 said:


> it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs of today to play games released 2 years from now on Max.  Just like it is unreasonable to expect high end rigs from 2 years ago to play current games at max.



I agree. 

However I'd expect high end rigs of today to play games of today on max.


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> One could argue that if a game is "coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware" the developers are essentially optimising the game for hardware that does not exist, which is silly because know one can predict the direction hardware will take in advance.



Companies cannot forecast that.  Look how  for every series generation of GPU that came out, package with it, with weeks to months worth of post-release patches and driver updates for both hardware and software.  When the Geforce 200 series first came out.  Everyone was complain about how dismal the performance was compared to the prior series.   Not the mention the changes in Directx.  people already talking about Dx11.  Hell most of our games are still not even dx10 yet.  Like 10%?

That's why I keep saying: software is slow to catch up with the hardware, that includes games.


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

Sanhime said:


> Companies cannot forecast that.  Look how  for every series generation of GPU that came out, package with it, with weeks to months worth of post-release patches and driver updates for both hardware and software.  When the Geforce 200 series first came out.  Everyone was complain about how dismal the performance was compared to the prior series.   Not the mention the changes in Directx.  people already talking about Dx11.  Hell most of our games are still not even dx10 yet.  Like 10%?
> 
> That's why I keep saying: software is slow to catch up with the hardware, that includes games.



Indeed, so you are in agreement with me.


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## AsRock (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> One could argue that if a game is "coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware" the developers are essentially optimising the game for hardware that does not exist, which is silly because know one can predict the direction hardware will take in advance.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



RockStar have already said the game was made for better hardware than whats available today.  That was the idea of such high settings.


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

AsRock said:


> RockStar have already said the game was made for better hardware than whats available today.  That was the idea of such high settings.



Companies can say a lot of things, which is which they have a marketing department.  

Besides, what game isn't being made for "tomorrow's" machines? *sarcasm*

Remember when Q4 cores became mainstream, people thought:
 4 Q's > 2 Qs therefore more performance.

Look that the disappointment because most games are not opt on 4Qs


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

AsRock said:


> RockStar have already said the game was made for better hardware than whats available today.  That was the idea of such high settings.



Yes but they never stated the mysterious future hardware it was optimised for, it sounds like an excuse for making a product that doesn't run as intended. Its like game developers do not need to release performance enhancing patches any more all they have to say is "its for future hardware" and we have to accept it.


At least with Alan Wake, the developers told us it was for future hardware and then told us specifically "quad core" or better was in the optimisation agenda years prior. Why couldn't RockStar specifically tell us the future hardware they optimised it for

Edit:

My theory is if GTA IV runs any better on future CPU/GPUs, its because it will be able to push out more raw processing power than the previous generation of hardware, nothing to do with GTA's coding having additional support and instructions for those future CPU/GPUs.


----------



## AsRock (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> Yes but they never stated the mysterious future hardware it was optimised for, it sounds like an excuse for making a product that doesn't run as intended. Its like game developers do not need to release performance enhancing patches any more all they have to say is "its for future hardware" and we have to accept it.
> 
> 
> At least with Alan Wake, the developers told us it was for future hardware and then told us specifically "quad core" or better was in the optimisation agenda years prior. Why couldn't RockStar specifically tell us quad future hardware they optimised it for



GTA4 just needs a hell load of CPU power and in coming years they be more powerful.  So common sense the game will run better..

Alan Wake counted it's egg's before they hatched...  Now it's been put on hold..  Well done to them...


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## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> My theory is if GTA IV runs any better on future CPU/GPUs, its because the video cards will be able to push out more raw processing power than the previous generation of hardware, nothing to do with GTA's coding having additional support those future CPU/GPUs.



Yes, the "next" GPU (or CPU) running GTA4 better will most likely be due to raw power because you cannot opt on something that does not exist.  And every generation, it has always been like this.  Its not until after the GPU is release do the optimizations begin.

Edit*
Unless Rockstar has been doing collaborative R&D with the GPU companies for future hardware, the "made for future hardware" is nothing but marketing ploy.  Not since 3dfx do you see hardware companies share proprietary info with software companies (due to its proprietary API).  This is very rare nowadays.  Why?  Obvious reason: intellectual property.  This has nothing to do with CPU/GPU, this is about money and legality.  First rule for any company: never share your intel!


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

AsRock said:


> GTA4 just needs a hell load of CPU power and in coming years they be more powerful.  So common sense the game will run better.



Exactly you've just proved my point.

So the CPU has become more powerful and hence GTA IV runs better. Nothing to do with Rockstar games putting specific instructions in the coding to take advantage of that future mysterious CPU they (sarcasm) optimised it for.





AsRock said:


> Alan Wake counted it's egg's before they hatched...  Now it's been put on hold..  Well done to them...



What has that got to do with anything? They told us it supported quad core long before quad core was the norm. I'd rather know what the game I'm running is being optimised for than to take a wild guess because the developers have kept this mysterious future hardware which they've managed to get their hands on years in advanced secret.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 23, 2009)

Sanhime said:


> And how would you know the game is optimized?  Your screen is not proof positive of anything.  That screen can also be used as evidence of crappy coding in a court of law.  Do you work for Rockstar?  Have you seen or written the code?



Do you work for Rockstar?  Have you seen or written the code?  Then how can your claim of it being poorly optimized hold any more weight than mine?  What do you base it on?  



Sanhime said:


> Your opinion is based on a perceived notion that you are more of an expert than others about these sort of matters, while I'm just looking at the from a "laymen's" perspective.



My degree in programming makes it a little bit more than just a perceived notion...



Sanhime said:


> And from a layman's perspective, GTA4 does not looks as technological "big shot" as people claim it to be visually, physically, or whatever adjective you like to put it.



That is specifically why "laymen" shouldn't be labeling how optimized code is.  Every person that walks into a resturant doesn't instantly become a food critic.



Sanhime said:


> You say my opinion has nothing to do with optimization, but you have not demonstrated that your opinion as anything to do with optimization either.



Actually yes I have.  I've looked at how the game plays on various hardware setups, I and others have shown that it plays above what is expected on weak hardware.  You on the other hand base your entire claim on the fact that max settings are unplayable on high end hardware.  That has nothing to do with optimization of game code.



Sanhime said:


> That's why I said it seems that everyone have their own opinion of what optimized is, because none of us here create GTA4.



Everyone can have there own opinions, that doesn't make them correct.  I've dealt with code for years, been a part of creating several programs.  Programs that when the simulation settings were set as high as possible, the clusters they were run on would have taken 100s of years to finish.  The code wasn't optimized poorly in any way, the hardware just wasn't capable of running them.  That was 10 years ago, guess what, current hardware can complete them in far more reasonable time.



Sanhime said:


> What makes my opinion more valid than yours is, I'm using the context of every other today's game as my baseline that out would appear to any "layman" *look* as, or if not more, complicated than GTA4 (or even Crysis for that matter).  Do you think GTA4 (and/or Crysis) is the most "beautiful" game on the planet currently?  People who are in the industry observe this as well, games like GTA4 and Crysis, don't *look* as optimize as it could have been.



There are no other games on the market that look as good as GTA:IV with as many dynamic objects.  So you couldn't have compared it to anything.  The same goes for Crysis.  What game have you compared it to exactly?  What game allows you to walk around and blow up buildings, with all the pieces flying everywhere, and all the objects in the building interacting?  None...so how can you compare them?  You can't.



Sanhime said:


> Mine might be wrong, but yours is not valid.  You just prove it with that screen shot and your self description.



Actually mine is very valid.  My screenshot proves how wrong yours is.  Optimization has to do with game code.  Simply changing the options screen to purposely retard the game engine, doesn't make it optimized any better.  However, by your definition of optimized, it does, which is why your definition of optimized is wrong.



Sanhime said:


> I play COD5 at 1080p maxed on my C2D and 8800gts 4gb ram without going below 60fps.  Is COD5 not current enough for anyone?  Disclaimer:  I don't use AA.  Why?  Because on a 52" screen playing from 10 ft away, unless you have eyes of a eagle, AA doesn't mean anything to you.



COD5 is COD4, the engines are identical, they just reskinned the game with new textures and levels.  So no, it is not current enough for me, as it is a game that is already close to 2 years old.



Darren said:


> One could argue that if a game is "coded beyond the capabilities of current hardware" the developers are essentially optimising the game for hardware that does not exist, which is silly because know one can predict the direction hardware will take in advance.



Actually, yes we can predict the direction.  It will always progress, we aren't sure how fast, but it will always progress.  If there comes a time when technology stops progressing, and starts reversing, then mankind is in far more trouble, and we really shouldn't be worrying about games at that point.



Darren said:


> I agree.
> 
> However I'd expect high end rigs of today to play games of today on max.



Again, playing the games on max has nothing to do with how well the game is optimized.  So you can expect it all you want. Like I've said, if your only requirement for the game to be considered optimized well is that current hardware can play it at max, then see my screenshot above, as I've just optimized the game to your liking.  I didn't actually optimize the code in any way, but according to your definition, the game is now well optimized.

I'm done with this argument, we are just going around in circles now.  You are wrong.  If you don't like that your hardware can't run the game, too bad.  Just because the hardware isn't capable, that doesn't make the game unoptimized.


----------



## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> So you can expect it all you want. Like I've said, if your only requirement for the game to be considered optimized well is that current hardware can play it at max, then see my screenshot above, as I've just optimized the game to your liking.



That is one aspect of optimisation, its a large topic which extends beyond just mere scalability, although it is a valid area of one area of optimisation. I just feel one area of optimisation is not enough to justify an overall picture.




newtekie1 said:


> I didn't actually optimize the code in any way, but according to your definition, the game is now well optimized.



No because if you bothered to read any of my posts, you'd of realised that I have said numerous time your definition of optimisation is correct, however my definition is correct too and both our definitions are just small parts of optimisation. Also if you took the time to understand my posts you'd heard me state numerous times that GTA IV * is* optimised its the level of optimisation I'm concerned about.



newtekie1 said:


> You are wrong.  If you don't like that your hardware can't run the game, too bad.  Just because the hardware isn't capable, that doesn't make the game unoptimized.



I'm wrong? 

You sound like a child, at least I've been objective, I've acknowledge and agree with the areas in which could be perceived as correct on your side i.e. it running on numerous rigs well, as an attempt to make an impartial analysis and view things from someone else's perspectives. Throughout this entire thread I've never said that you were wrong because I'm definitely not entirely right either, I acknowledge that optimsation is a larger topic that neither of us have discussed in depth and hence the limited conversation we've had here isn't in detail enough to make a conclusive decision.

But I guess a one dimensional thinkers see things as "right and wrong" opposed to "to what extent  is one right or to what extent is one wrong"


----------



## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

the game is poorly made, coding sux donkie balls


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## CDdude55 (Jul 23, 2009)

Really, the simple explanation is that optimization is the ability for the game code/engine to run on a wide variety of systems with out much bog down/change in performance on each system. If the game is not optimized it doesn't scale well with most systems(sometimes even high end systems, like when Crysis came out and the 8800's could barely keep up at the time).

Now, when something is unoptimized, alot of the time its just the game uses up alot of resources and the hardware out now isn't up to par where in which keeps us at a stand still till the new line of hardware's out, again with Crysis, almost every high end system today can play Crysis with about 35 and up FPS, a rig like 2x GTX 295's in SLI with a OCed Core i7 could easily crush Crysis.http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-295,2123-4.html. Now, you have those games which GTA IV could possible be where the game in general just can't run no matter the system, the code/engine is poorly written or lacking in lots of areas. These games get/need updates and patches to the engine and code to optimize the game for normal operation.

Looking at HardOCP's GTX 295 SLI review(with 4870 X2's in Crossfire) with the game GTA IV, they say the game gets very bogged down in  different areas and that the 2nd patch helped in some areas, saying that the game is CPU limited and the having 4 GPU's makes little difference and sometimes even worsen the performance of the game, now im not saying there super reliable, but it was said. Whether its just the hardware of today that something it down or a poor coding is really all up to your opinion, i mean for all we know in the next 5 years GTA IV will be running smooths as butter, or maybe in a couple years the game is still unplayable due to bad coding, who knows.(unless there's some serious patch)

From what i do know, is that yes none of you work at Rockstar, which in turn is all opinion, i don't know the ins and out of the games code or engine and i doubt any of you guys do, all the things i said above could be all a lie in the next couple years. What we do know is that the game isn't performing up to task for some and thats all we can say about it.(So your all wrong unless you work for Rockstar.)

Just my 2 cents.


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## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

still runs ok fairly smooth with system in sig, or second rig, running amd 2400be 8800gt 4gb kit of memory, still get a steady 30 to 40 fps, with setting at meduim, to low, ive found it starts to lag with the rain


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## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

CDdude55 said:


> you have those games which GTA IV could possible be where the *game in general just can't run no matter the system, the code/engine is poorly written or lacking in lots of areas*. These games get/need updates and patches to the engine and code to optimize the game for normal operation.
> 
> *Looking at HardOCP's GTX 295 SLI review(with 4870 X2's in Crossfire) with the game GTA IV, they say the game gets very bogged down* in  different areas and that the 2nd patch helped in some areas, saying that the game is CPU limited and the having *4 GPU's makes little difference and sometimes even worsen *the performance of the game,



I agree.



The_Real_DeaL31 said:


> still runs ok fairly smooth with system in sig, or second rig, running amd 2400be 8800gt 4gb kit of memory, still get a steady 30 to 40 fps, with setting at meduim, to low, ive found it starts to lag with the rain



Indeed, although the game *is* very optimised. 

Ideally I would of liked the development team have configured their code to recognise a bogged own rig in real-time and temporarily stop the rendering of rain in replacement for sunshine and hence increase the frames per second.


----------



## phanbuey (Jul 23, 2009)

In deciding whether a game is optimized or not one must ask:

Can the graphics of the engine be improved? - Yes... 
Can performance be improved through further patching? - Almost certainly.
Are console ports less optimized than games designed for PCs? Yes, with few, if any, exceptions.

So is GTA IV badly optimized?  Depends on your frame of reference... it is badly optimized compared to games which were made exclusively for PC, thats obvious - no physX, no AA (something consoles don't do), no DX10.1, awkward rendering engine, 3 threads (coded for Xbox processors), idiotic settings and limits regarding Vram.

I mean if you think that this game runs as well as it _*could*_ on PC then you are smoking something, because its obvious that the PC version was not designed for PC hardware.  So yeah, the game not really optimized for the PC.


----------



## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> I mean if you think that this game runs as well as it _*could*_ on PC then you are smoking something, because its o*bvious that the PC version was not designed for PC hardware*.  So yeah, the game not really optimized for the PC.



I agree.

Although, where I differ is that I acknowledge optimisation occurred to an extent, I just do not believe its implementation covered all areas of desirability.


----------



## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

i disagree darren, Ive found to my knowledge, if i raise graphic settings high or low i still get leg in some parts of the game,that's with my first rig, benchmark test in game says i score a average of 65fps, that's mostly all high settings, 1280x1028 75hz, draw distance 10


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## phanbuey (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> I agree.





Mine is a really obvious post, but what ppl here are arguing is that you can turn down the game to make it playable.  And I can.  And yes optimization did occur... they applied full makeup, not just lipstick to the pig.


When I turn down the game to what I consider "playable" my textures look like soup, and sh*t materializes 10 ft in front on me via 100,000 little dots.  Does that look good? no its terrible... And even at those settings I don't get above 30 FPS 100% of the time... if thats not crap optimization then I dont know what is.


----------



## Darren (Jul 23, 2009)

The_Real_DeaL31 said:


> i disagree darren, Ive found to my knowledge, if i raise graphic settings high or low i still get leg in some parts of the game,that's with my first rig, benchmark test in game says i score a average of 65fps, that's mostly all high settings, 1280x1028 75hz, draw distance 10



Strange, so why does the benchmark vary in such a large contrast to the in game experience?

65 FPS in the benchmark is good, yet you get the _same_ experience at low settings and high settings with lag in the actual game. 

The benchmark system is obviously not a perfect measuring stick. Don't ask me why lol


Edit:




The_Real_DeaL31 said:


> the game needs qaud core, or a real fast dual core overclocked high, then put all settings to medium, draw distance to 10 etc, take v sync off, and clip capture, *know ones to blame but rockstar*



I agree.


----------



## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Do you work for Rockstar?  Have you seen or written the code?  Then how can your claim of it being poorly optimized hold any more weight than mine?  What do you base it on?
> 
> My degree in programming makes it a little bit more than just a perceived notion...
> 
> That is specifically why "laymen" shouldn't be labeling how optimized code is.  Every person that walks into a resturant doesn't instantly become a food critic.



Nice try, you're trying to make me into something I never claim to be.
I never said i am nor claim to be.  I'm simply asking the question.  I'm also simply making my opinion based on *looks* which is why I keep emphazing the workd *looks*.  Do you see how I bold the word *looks*?  It *looks* very pretty, don't ya think?



newtekie1 said:


> Actually yes I have.  I've looked at how the game plays on various hardware setups, I and others have shown that it plays above what is expected on weak hardware.  You on the other hand base your entire claim on the fact that max settings are unplayable on high end hardware.  That has nothing to do with optimization of game code.



Ok now, back to the question, what qualifies you to *know* if GTA4 is already optimized if you're not the creator?  Not all games are created the same?




newtekie1 said:


> Everyone can have there own opinions, that doesn't make them correct.  I've dealt with code for years, been a part of creating several programs.  Programs that when the simulation settings were set as high as possible, the clusters they were run on would have taken 100s of years to finish.  The code wasn't optimized poorly in any way, the hardware just wasn't capable of running them.  That was 10 years ago, guess what, current hardware can complete them in far more reasonable time.



You just said, my opinion was wrong; if-so fact-so, mean you're correct.  Which one is it?  And you're agreeing about the software vs hardware in the past.  But it does not take a computer-experience person such as you claim yourself to be to realize, software has not catch up to hardware yet.  I think we can all agree that GTA4 is made for 32bit ported to 64bit.  Now had it been the other way around would have been a difference story.  There is not native 64bit game existing.




newtekie1 said:


> There are no other games on the market that look as good as GTA:IV with as many dynamic objects.  So you couldn't have compared it to anything.  The same goes for Crysis.  What game have you compared it to exactly?  What game allows you to walk around and blow up buildings, with all the pieces flying everywhere, and all the objects in the building interacting?  None...so how can you compare them?  You can't.



I compare it to Source, Unreal, COD.  Dude, I just play the game.  You're the one who seem to have the eagle-eyes and know the intricacies on coding, so you claim.  So now you're talking about physics?



newtekie1 said:


> Actually mine is very valid.  My screenshot proves how wrong yours is.  Optimization has to do with game code.  Simply changing the options screen to purposely retard the game engine, doesn't make it optimized any better.  However, by your definition of optimized, it does, which is why your definition of optimized is wrong.



Don;t mince words with me, you may have program stuff in your garage, you're speaking to a scientist.  Just because you see a result, you still need to validate the result.  That screen shot is not proof positive.  *I didn't say it doesn't support your argument, I said that screen is not proof positve.*  Do you know what proof positive mean?



newtekie1 said:


> COD5 is COD4, the engines are identical, they just reskinned the game with new textures and levels.  So no, it is not current enough for me, as it is a game that is already close to 2 years old.



Okay?  Fine.  Like I said, I just play the game.




newtekie1 said:


> Actually, yes we can predict the direction.  It will always progress, we aren't sure how fast, but it will always progress.  If there comes a time when technology stops progressing, and starts reversing, then mankind is in far more trouble, and we really shouldn't be worrying about games at that point.



Predicting and optimize are not the same thing.  We know how fast technology is improving, its also exponential.  When you optimized you need to validate your code so that it works. (duh).  And for that to happen, you need to hardware in front of you.  If you don't have the hardware, you cannot validate, when you cannot validate, it is not optimized.  

Its like the global warming argument.  There are people who believe, but not one piece of study could be validated (due to various reason, mostly related to protocol).

Just because you have a new GPU/CPU, does not mean you automatically have 2x or 3x performance.  Look at the 9 and 200 geforces when they first launched.  Their real-world performance were abismal compare to the white paper and compared to the prior generation.  It took weeks to months of *optimizations* to get it right.  Does that mean, software has caught up?  No.  Look at the transitions from single core to multi CPUs when it comes to games.  More than half the time, the prior core ran better than the latter core.  I'm sure we've seen in the past benchmarks how a C2D outperformed a Q4.  Of course, mult CPUs are, on white paper, better than C2D... in servers... because they were design specifically for that to begin with.  Look at how people are struggle to get the most out of their games that were *designed* on 32bit platform playing them on 64bit OS.  Youre' still restricted because of its a 32bit app.  Now I know people will say, "well there are 64bit versions of GTA4 and Crysis.  Just because you have a 64bit exe doesn't make the game itself 64-bit.




newtekie1 said:


> Again, playing the games on max has nothing to do with how well the game is optimized.  So you can expect it all you want. Like I've said, if your only requirement for the game to be considered optimized well is that current hardware can play it at max, then see my screenshot above, as I've just optimized the game to your liking.  I didn't actually optimize the code in any way, but according to your definition, the game is now well optimized.
> 
> I'm done with this argument, we are just going around in circles now.  You are wrong.  If you don't like that your hardware can't run the game, too bad.  Just because the hardware isn't capable, that doesn't make the game unoptimized.



No, you optimized to *your* liking, not mine.  Its your rig and your game, not mine.  I don't care how you play your games.  you still missing the entire point of this discussion.  I'll go back to it again "we each seem to have our own definition of optimizing." You have not done anything according to my definition, because I just gave you my definition and you chose to ignore it.  Because of that, I have come to the conclusion, you suck at discussions.  not because I disagree with you.   because you keep going in circles trying to revise what people have said.  Or maybe you're just repeating yourself because you have not paid attention to what people are saying.  btw, my liking is max all, not max halfazz.



Good day.


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## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

the game needs qaud core, or a real fast dual core overclocked high, then put all settings to medium, draw distance to 10 etc, take v sync off, and clip capture, know ones to blame but rockstar


----------



## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

CDdude55 said:


> Really, the simple explanation is that optimization is the ability for the game code/engine to run on a wide variety of systems with out much bog down/change in performance on each system. If the game is not optimized it doesn't scale well with most systems(sometimes even high end systems, like when Crysis came out and the 8800's could barely keep up at the time).
> 
> Now, when something is unoptimized, alot of the time its just the game uses up alot of resources and the hardware out now isn't up to par where in which keeps us at a stand still till the new line of hardware's out, again with Crysis, almost every high end system today can play Crysis with about 35 and up FPS, a rig like 2x GTX 295's in SLI with a OCed Core i7 could easily crush Crysis.http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-295,2123-4.html. Now, you have those games which GTA IV could possible be where the game in general just can't run no matter the system, the code/engine is poorly written or lacking in lots of areas. These games get/need updates and patches to the engine and code to optimize the game for normal operation.
> 
> ...



YES!  Precisely!  I guess people don't realize I'm trying to look at this from an outside perspective.

Its just like my rig, I had to for who know how long (or years), I cant remember.  ee6600, 8800gts640 and 4gbram.  Back then, at first, Source games ran like ...meh.  Now, silky smooth.  I knew my hardware didn't suck, the sources games hadn't catched up yet.  I have not changed my hardware since.


----------



## phanbuey (Jul 23, 2009)

The_Real_DeaL31 said:


> the game needs qaud core, or a real fast dual core overclocked high, then put all settings to medium, draw distance to 10 etc, take v sync off, and clip capture, know ones to blame but rockstar



Bro I have a quad core... Q9650... 3.9Ghz 24/7 - 1043Mhz DDR2 at 5-5-5-15 with dual WC'd GTX 260's with the pants clocked off of them.  I get 70FPS minimum in the benchmark.  Game still runs like @ss .  I don't know why... everytime i drive through chinatown to buy guns I'm at 29FPS - 24 if its raining.  And its not a steady 24.


----------



## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

i hear ya phanbuey, a pinch of lag hear and there will happen on any system, what res u using put settings on medium, i but it will run almost smoothed


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## phanbuey (Jul 23, 2009)

The_Real_DeaL31 said:


> i hear ya phanbuey, a pinch of lag hear and there will happen on any system, what res u using put settings on medium, i but it will run almost smoothed



Im using my native - 1680x1050... shadows at 1, detail distance at 50, rendering distance at 50, reflection rez low, and high textures.  Im gonna play with the settings on medium to try and smooth it out...

I already beat the game tho haha, now im just running around causing mass chaos.


----------



## Sanhime (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> But I guess a one dimensional thinkers see things as "right and wrong" opposed to "to what extent  is one right or to what extent is one wrong"



Well there is a right and wrong, but thats in politics... I wont go there.   >.>


----------



## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

lol sweet bro, i got stuck at one of last mission with some boat that disappears on me for know reason, so i am forced to start whole game from the beginning, i used cheats maybe that explains it, cause i heard if u enable cheats it wont let u beat the game, i guess i gotta beat it the hard way lmao


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## Nick89 (Jul 23, 2009)

Darren said:


> Yes but they never stated the mysterious future hardware it was optimised for, it sounds like an excuse for making a product that doesn't run as intended. Its like game developers do not need to release performance enhancing patches any more all they have to say is "its for future hardware" and we have to accept it.
> 
> 
> At least with Alan Wake, the developers told us it was for future hardware and then told us specifically "quad core" or better was in the optimisation agenda years prior. Why couldn't RockStar specifically tell us the future hardware they optimised it for
> ...



/FACEPALM. Your lack of understanding gives me a headache, I cant fathom why you cant understand what newtekie is saying.

Its very simple I'll spell it out for you. Rockstar made GTA4 VERY demanding on max settings on purpose so that when a GTX390 Comes out people will be happy their new 800$ card can run a very demanding game at max settings..

I run GTA IV on all high settings with 50,100,100,16 @1920x1200 I optimized these settings for my system. I get 54 FPS average. I dont see how you even have a valid foundation for your argument about high end systems not running the game at max settings. My machine is not a very high end system and it runs the game fine.

GTA IV was coded well considering how much goes on in the game.


----------



## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 23, 2009)

phanbuey try this
shadows off
detail distance 10
rendering distance 30
reflection off
vsync off
clip capture off 
leave rest at medium except for texture at high looks alot sharper then medium i've found


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## Darren (Jul 24, 2009)

Nick89 said:


> I cant fathom why you cant understand what newtekie is saying..



I fully understand what newtekie is saying, I actually even agree with most of his statements. I never once said I didn't understand him, he communicates well and I understand good communicators. Although I agree with him, its to a certain extent.




Nick89 said:


> Rockstar made GTA4 VERY demanding on max settings on purpose so that when a GTX390 Comes out people will be happy their new 800$ card can run a very demanding game at max settings....



You haven't said anything new, we all know that.

What is in dispute is:

A.) Is it ethical to cater for $800 future graphics cards, when the priority should be for current $800 graphics cards?

B.) Is it ethical to cater performance for a card which does not exist? The GTX390 is not out in retail and its very likely that Rockstar's development team own a GTX390, so they have no idea how the GTX390 performs in reality without owning the physical card they are only merely guessing the performance of the GTX390. One would presume that you'd actually have to use the video card (GTX390) on the game (GTA IV) before you can say it caters for it?



Nick89 said:


> I don't see how you even have a valid foundation for your argument about high end systems not running the game at max settings. My machine is not a very high end system and it runs the game fine.
> ....



That wasn't my argument, you made that up, sorry.



Nick89 said:


> GTA IV was coded well considering how much goes on in the game.



I agree with you, as I said to newtekie numerous times in this thread,  GTA IV is well coded indeed. To the extent "well" is definited is debatable.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 24, 2009)

Sanhime said:


> Because of that, I have come to the conclusion, you suck at discussions.  not because I disagree with you.



Just FYI, the person that resorts to insults, is usually the one your has lost the argument...generally because they "suck at discussion".

Scientist my ass...more like 16 year old in his moms basement...*see I can insult people too!*See I can bold things also!


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## The_Real_DeaL31 (Jul 24, 2009)

be nice all, no need for bad mouthing talk about the topic on hand


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## DRDNA (Jul 24, 2009)

This game is defiantly made for tomorrows hardware at uber settings ...thats why its actually a very good game as far as I am concerned...Although I normally by games that are uber demanding and thats why I buy them ...I am an over-clocker first who love too stress the rig with some fun (FarCry2 ,CRYSIS 1, CRYSIS WAR , GTA IV , S.T.A.L.K.E.R(all of em) All those games were purchased to stress a rig first and have fun doing it second....GTA IV FOREVER !!!!!! But never the less very palyable too.


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## CDdude55 (Jul 24, 2009)

DRDNA said:


> This game is defiantly made for tomorrows hardware at uber settings ...thats why its actually a very good game as far as I am concerned...Although I normally by games that are uber demanding and thats why I buy them ...I am an over-clocker first who love too stress the rig with some fun (FarCry2 ,CRYSIS 1, CRYSIS WAR , GTA IV , S.T.A.L.K.E.R(all of em) All those games were purchased to stress a rig first and have fun doing it second....GTA IV FOREVER !!!!!! But never the less very palyable too.



Well if we all had money or a rig like yours. I don't think anyone would be complaining.

btw if you don't want one of those games i'll take it.lol(tho i already have both the Stalkers.)


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## Sanhime (Jul 25, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Just FYI, the person that resorts to insults, is usually the one your has lost the argument...generally because they "suck at discussion".
> 
> Scientist my ass...more like 16 year old in his moms basement...*see I can insult people too!*See I can bold things also!



Sir, please stop being a smartazz.  Like I said, you either revise what people said, or you didn't pay attention.  The person who started the insulting of people opinion was *you*.  You can't seem to debate people without having to put them down first.  I see you do this with other people on this thread, not just me.  I just ran out of patience becuase you keep revising what other people say or you didn't pay attention.  You probably didn't even realize you were insulting others because your behavior throughout the disussion has been one who thinks too highly of himself and act too full of himself.  People were trying to put up with you nicely.  I bet you didn't realize that.  Do I care about what you think of my profession? No.  Because its not about me, I only mentioned that to test your demeanor. "hehe I program stuff, I build hardware.  hehe"  The way you have been acting throughout the talks is like  "me me me, I'm smart, you're not, my word is the bible" attitude.  
Regardless of your "expertise", you acted like a fool throughout.

16 yr old in moms basement? I can pretty much guess you're a 40+ year old virgin living in your mom's attic.  Lost the argument?  Talk about trying to be the insults of insults.  You lost the argument 20 posts ago. Even if you were correct on everything you said about hardware and games (guess what, you probably are correct about the hardware and games, but thats not the issue), you still lost the argument, because you act like a fool.  This will be the last time I respond to you.


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## CDdude55 (Jul 25, 2009)

I smell a Mod.^


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## phanbuey (Jul 25, 2009)

DRDNA said:


> This game is defiantly made for tomorrows hardware at uber settings ...thats why its actually a very good game as far as I am concerned...Although I normally by games that are uber demanding and thats why I buy them ...I am an over-clocker first who love too stress the rig with some fun (FarCry2 ,CRYSIS 1, CRYSIS WAR , GTA IV , S.T.A.L.K.E.R(all of em) All those games were purchased to stress a rig first and have fun doing it second....GTA IV FOREVER !!!!!! But never the less very palyable too.



BUT ITS NOT! its not made for tomorrow's hardware! its made for today's consoles!

The only reason today's hardware cannot run it is because it wasn't made for that hardware.  Tomorrow's hardware will be powerful enough to deal with the inefficiencies due to that fact.  

In the extreme case, that is like telling me that if this game came out using software rendering (not DX or OGL), and no system could run it until powerful many-core CPU's came out, that it was made for "tomorrow's hardware"... 

Because I would say that it uses an unoptimized and inefficient method to achieve a result that could have easily been achieved using a better technique.  It is playable but IMO (no offense) it isnt designed for tomorrow's hardware - tomorrow's hardware will just be powerful enough to not be bogged down by the inefficiencies.


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## Dark_Webster (Jul 25, 2009)

I've started playing this game last week, and it seems to lag because of the CPU, I barely notice the FPS change on minimum or in almost maximum(35-40fps).

Since I have a dual core, it explains everything.


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## Cheeseball (Jul 25, 2009)

Again, please take note that on today's consoles, it's running on low-medium settings.


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## Darren (Jul 25, 2009)

To all the nut cases that believe and accept that "GTA IV was made with tomorrows hardware in mind", its like equivalent to saying:

Girl: Why can I not achieve orgasm? 

Boy: Do not blame me, god didn't make me with tomorrows hardware in mind!

Your reasoning seems almost as stupid as the statement above.


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## Steevo (Jul 25, 2009)

I don't know why the uneducated have such a hard time understanding that Rock* can make a game that runs on LOW settings that looks good on the 360/PS3, but allows for a massive expansion of quality when brought to the PC, or a next gen console.



The hardware requirements for GTA:SA were kinda high for the day, and yet now we are modding the textures on that game to get more quality, so Rock* makes a game that will run great on the next gen hardware to allow more expansion and mebey story packs for the game later.... and everyone bitches. Congratulations, you sound like my 3 year old son. Now go to your room, stop making these "GTA4 suxxor cuz my uber computer can't play it maxxed out" threads.


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## bpgt64 (Jul 25, 2009)

Steevo said:


> I don't know why the uneducated have such a hard time understanding that Rock* can make a game that runs on LOW settings that looks good on the 360/PS3, but allows for a massive expansion of quality when brought to the PC, or a next gen console.
> 
> 
> 
> The hardware requirements for GTA:SA were kinda high for the day, and yet now we are modding the textures on that game to get more quality, so Rock* makes a game that will run great on the next gen hardware to allow more expansion and mebey story packs for the game later.... and everyone bitches. Congratulations, you sound like my 3 year old son. Now go to your room, stop making these "GTA4 suxxor cuz my uber computer can't play it maxxed out" threads.



I actually had it for PS3 and had to sell it, it looked pretty terrible and hurt my eyes.  Now that I have it for PC and a pretty strong setup, it runs just fine and looks amazing.


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## phanbuey (Jul 25, 2009)

Steevo said:


> I don't know why the uneducated have such a hard time understanding that Rock* can make a game that runs on LOW settings that looks *terrible* on the 360/PS3, but allows for a *massive expansion of quality when brought to the PC or next gen console, which makes it look mediocre.*
> 
> The hardware requirements for GTA:SA were kinda high for the day, *but the game looked really good and ran just like other games with the same graphical quality, allowed for AA and other features common to games during that era*  and yet now we are modding the textures on that game to get more quality, *because it is old as f*ck* so Rock* makes a game that will run great on the next gen hardware, *but will still look like a really crappy DX9 game, since it doesn't allow AA or have any support for upcoming DX11, 10.1, physX or anything else "next gen"* to allow more expansion and mebey[sic] story packs for the game later.... and everyone bitches. Congratulations, you sound like my 3 year old son* who actually played the game and said the same thing*. Now go to your room, stop making these "GTA4 *is so next gen except for the fact that it doesn't support any next gen features whatsoever*" threads.
> ...



Fixed.  If it was so next gen, it would have next gen features.  Which it does not.  It's DX9 and sloppy at that.  Don't tell me its meant for next gen graphics when its obviously a bloated, sloppy, DX9 sandbox port that had a few patches released to combat some massive porting issues.

*But please, tell me*:  What about this game is so next gen that it needs next gen hardware?  - is it the 1000000 dot shadows?  Is it the trees being stippled in the distance because fading is just not an option?  Is it the textures, which look the same as all the other textures in current video games?  Or is it "all the stuff going on in the background" which is basically the same as "all the stuff going on in the background" in GTA:SA?


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## erocker (Jul 25, 2009)

(Directed towards all who are participating in this thread)

Not very "moderator" of me but how about STFU and play.. or don't play the game. The horse is so beaten in this thread there's nothing left but the stick. A stick I'm going to ram up someone's a** (metaphorically) the next time I read another insult directed at another member.

Or perhaps I should just say..

Please post in a respectful manner, and make your point once, not 10+ times...

I hope you get my point.




phanbuey said:


> *But please, tell me*:  What about this game is so next gen that it needs next gen hardware?  - is it the 1000000 dot shadows?  Is it the trees being stippled in the distance because fading is just not an option?  Is it the textures, which look the same as all the other textures in current video games?  Or is it "all the stuff going on in the background" which is basically the same as "all the stuff going on in the background" in GTA:SA?



Replace distant textures with bitmaps. Problem fixed.   ... or not, I'm no programmer/game designer.


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## phanbuey (Jul 25, 2009)

erocker said:


> Replace distant textures with bitmaps. Problem fixed.   ... or not, I'm no programmer/game designer.



*ding*... that gave me the idea to go through all the user mods... there are actually some good ones. (there is an AA mod!!!   ) 


http://www.gtaivmods.com/
http://www.thegtaplace.com/

MODS:  Why PC gaming  consoles.


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## erocker (Jul 25, 2009)

Sweet! GTAIV with AA!!


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## CDdude55 (Jul 25, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> *ding*... that gave me the idea to go through all the user mods... there are actually some good ones. (there is an AA mod!!!   )
> 
> 
> http://www.gtaivmods.com/
> ...



Nice!!

I really need GTA IV on PC.

Starting to play my Wii more tho.


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## samijokipuu (Jul 29, 2009)

This is what i know, i can run crysis at max and still get like 60 fps so if any1 tries to say that gta iv is more "pretty" then sir i call u a liar, granted it probly has more detail and such,

SO THERE BOOOM HEADSHOT ON GTA IV AND THIS WHOLE OPTIMIZED & UNOPTIMIZED THANG.

also my cpu doesnt even exceed 15% when i play the game so another boom headshot, and the benchmark lies everything at max i get 60-75 fps but in-game it's another story

IDKWITA

I grrrrr at this whole post, hahahah.


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## AsRock (Jul 29, 2009)

erocker said:


> Sweet! GTAIV with AA!!
> 
> http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp112/erocker414/gta4_aa.jpg



Cool here's a link
http://gtaivmods.com/index.php/component/content/article/5-enbseries-anti-aliasing-beta-for-gtaiv


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