Grand Theft Auto IV PC - On a Pentium 4 3.0 HT

[roberto_minosa]

I've been playing GTAIV for almost a week on my PC with an old processor and a couple of new stuff. Here's my setup:

Processor: Pentium 4 3GHz HT, 1MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB
Motherboard: Asus P5GC-MX/1333
RAM: 3GB DDR2-667
Graphics Card: Inno3D GeForce 8500GT 512MB DDR2 RAM
HDD: Maxtor 250GB SATA3

A pretty cheap setup. The benchmark reported around 15FPS with minimum settings, which is ok for a Pentium 4 with an 8500GT. I don't care much about resolution and details, I just wanna play! Maybe a processor upgrade will boost performance.

In this setup, I just upgraded my motherboard from my Inno3D SLN73VM that got its BIOS corrupted. I couldn't flash it. No performance increase on jumping to the Asus with pretty much the same specs! But I did upgrade my graphics from the old 6600LE 128MB. GTAIV also ran on my old setup, but it looked more like a slideshow than a game.

[aga_cruz]

di kaya ng pc ko yan kaya bumili ako ng ps3 para dun laruin

[rion]

your procie is still good. I have a pentium IV 3.2ghz ht 800fsb that could still compete with my 2.5ghz dual core.

it's you video card that needs an upgrade. go for 9600gt and you will be almost 3 times better than a 9500gt.

[roberto_minosa]

Haha, I'm still not eyeing a new VC yet...mine's under a week old. I'm ok with the laggy performance of the 8500GT. Maybe I'll get a 9600GSO when I hit the bigtime.

[rion]

don't get, the GSO. at kung puwede, get the 9800GT.

It's around 4,800 brand new.

[roberto_minosa]

Killer stats!!! Thanks man.

[Burai]

9600gso target ko rin that time for that damn gta4 na laro kaso i ended up with 9400gt dahil sa financial issues hehe. parehas tayo roberto ng processor kaso mine's running with 1gb ddr2 of ram lang so nababagalan ako. need ko at least magka gso at 3gb din na ram to run it somehow smoothly than before

[roberto_minosa]

I also think so! I got 3GBs of DDR2-667 but with the low-end 8500GT, the game's laggy. It's playable enough for me!

UPDATE!

I overclocked the 8500GT using Rivatuner. I'm running 621MHz at the core clock and 430MHz (860MHz) on the memory from the stock clocks reported by Rivatuner which are 459MHz and 333MHz (666MHz) respectively. The benchmark of GTAIV reported that FPS increased from 14FPS to 15FPS. It doesn't seem like much, but while playing it, the difference is quite noticeable. Still laggy, though.

[rion]

TipidPC mode?...

[roberto_minosa]

^Hell yeah!

Oddly, this stuff worked:

http://www.bizzntech.com/2008/12/22/...-iv-pc-version

Tweaks 2 and 3 worked! Haven't tried the other tweaks; I already have patch v1.0.3.

Here are the stats BEFORE tweaking:

Statistics
Average FPS: 15.44
Duration: 37.49 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 59%
Video memory usage: 55%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 800 x 600 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Low
Texture Filter Quality: Low
View Distance: 1
Detail Distance: 1

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Video Driver version: 185.85
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

Here are the stats AFTER tweaking:

Statistics
Average FPS: 16.10
Duration: 37.57 sec
CPU Usage: 95%
System memory usage: 60%
Video memory usage: 28% >>the tweak made GTAIV think I have a bazillion MBs of VRAM. Adjusting once more...

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 848 x 480 (75 Hz) >>this doesn't show the real resolution; it's a side-effect of the tweak
Texture Quality: Low
Texture Filter Quality: Low
View Distance: 1
Detail Distance: 1

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Video Driver version: 185.85
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

Haven't changed anything on the hardware! Even the clock settings were the same on both benchmarks. And mind you, I set the resolution to my new monitor's native resolution of 1366x768 instead of the original ancient 800x600, and I still gained another frame per second! Every last bit of performance counts.

EDIT:

I also found this, which explains pretty much the same process except it's more detailed.

http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.ph...c=163670&st=10

[roberto_minosa]

I can give this a rest...after much testing, I've found out that the best setting for my system to run GTAIV is what I've been using all along! I just changed the resolution from 800x600 to 848x480, which follows the correct aspect ratio for my monitor. The benchmark reported 14.99FPS, which is lower than my previous results. Dunno why! The 1366x768 test reported 16.10FPS. Weird...anyway, it's way less laggy than before I started testing different settings even though the benchmark showed reduced frame rate. Oh well, I'll make do with this setup anyway!

Final Benchmark Results For This Session:

Statistics
Average FPS: 14.99
Duration: 37.16 sec
CPU Usage: 94%
System memory usage: 62%
Video memory usage: 58%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 848 x 480 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Low
Texture Filter Quality: Low
View Distance: 1
Detail Distance: 1

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Video Driver version: 185.85
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

NOTE:

This test differs from the 1366x768 test because I've used [-availablevidmem 2] on that. I'll try that again on low res.