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davesta

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Everything posted by davesta

  1. I didn't look at memory usage, but I noticed that both processor cores were being used pretty close to 100% and were not affected when the game started to slow. I don't know what superfetch is, so I don't know how to disable it. I did notice, though, that removing 2GB of ram didn't have any effect on performance at all. My total memory seemed to be about what I'd expect. I haven't tried removing catalyst, I thought that would make the game not work at all? I shall try it tomorrow. I don't think my GPU needs overclocking - the game runs pretty smoothly between slowdowns. I doubt they are being caused by the clock speed being too low... The thing that I noticed was that LFS and rFactor are digitally distributed versions, therefore I did not have to install them as they were still there on my hard drive (I use a seperate partition for games) only activate them. These games ran fine. GTR2 was installed from a DVD, and this is the other game with the problem. Having said that, the older GTA games were also installed from DVDs and I don't have any problem with them... I was thinking it may have had something to do with the install... I just bought the card, it's PCIe. I doubt it is anything to do with optimisation, surely then it would run slowly all of the time? No results on google, this problem seems to be pretty unique. No mods or cracks, patch installed.Thanks for the help and support but... I'm all out of ideas.
  2. If you're going for NVIDIA, you will need either an 8 or 9 series card, where the second number is either a 6 or an 8, eg. 8600, 8800, 9600 or 9800. The 8800 and 9800 are the best cards to get. You're also better off getting a card with at least 512mb of RAM. A 9200 is an entry level card, not designed for gaming and you can get far better for the price you quoted. If you go for ATi, you will want either a 38xx or 48xx card.
  3. You need Service pack 3 for Windows XP.
  4. Like I said before, I've tried it at medium settings and lowest settings on all resolutions and I still get exactly the same framerates. My monitor is indeed DVI. I've run the game in windowed mode with task manager next to it and tried shutting down all processes and services except those needed for Windows to run and still no luck. I've tried AMD Fusion and dual core optimizer and installed all of the latest AMD and ATi drivers. When I say slowdowns, I don't just mean 5-10fps, I'm talking 1fps here. Completely unplayable, every 5-10 seconds. The strange thing is that only certain games are doing it. San Andreas, Vice City and GTA III all work perfectly, so does rFactor and Live for Speed. It's only GTR2 and GTA IV which have the problems. Obviously I haven't tried Test Drive Unlimited because those bastards at Securom only give me a limited amount of activations. I'm going to try removing one of the 2GB strips of RAM today to see if it's that which is causing the problem. I really hope it isn't, for obvious reasons, but if it isn't then I have no idea what it could be...
  5. I found the savegames, and I reinstalled the game, which got rid of the securom error (it was something to do with having a different version of Visual C++ after I tried reinstalling the ATi drivers). The only problem I now have is with the framerate drop. The game drops to about 1fps every few seconds, which is completely unplayable. However, I have now found after installing more games that excatly the same thing happens with GTR2, so this problem is not specific to GTA IV. If anyone happens to know what the issue is, though, please let me know. I'm really not willing to reinstall windows again especially if i don't know if it will solve the issue. Is it a hardware problem? Perhaps it is caused by having too much RAM for a 32bit OS? Just a thought, I really don't know what it could be...
  6. Reinstalled the game, applied the patch, everything was exactly the same as before. Unbelievable. I have emailed rockstar, hopefully they should get back to me soon before another week goes by without me being able to play the game.
  7. At the moment I'm in the process of reinstalling my game (for the 4th time thanks to the Securom error again) but when I finish installing that, I shall try the patch and let you know if it has improved the slowdowns. I see what you mean. You probably would be able to overclock a 2.9GHz to the same speed (I thought you were talking about a 1.9GHz cause you said "So w/ a cpu thats only 1.2 GHz less"), but to be honest 0.2GHz probably wouldn't make much of a difference.
  8. I managed the find the savegames after a lot of searching (thanks for your advice on the hidden folders. Why the hell did they decide to do that in vista?) so that's all good now. I'll try and find a fix for the framerates, but hopefully the patch will fix that. If I do find a fix, I'll let you know WharHammer. And yes my shadows look pretty horrible. At the moment though, that's the least of my issues... I don't think it has anything to do with heat as the framerates drop pretty much instantly when I start playing. The 6000+ is actually a fantastic processor. I've noticed a huge difference over my old 2.0GHz 3800+ with every game I've played since I got it. I don't know if you'd get the same performance even if you tried to overclock a 1.8GHz.
  9. Okay, so I just bought myself pretty much a new PC to play this game. Here are the specs: Windows Vista 32bit SP1 AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz 4GB RAM (3GB recognised) ATi 3850 512mb Resolution 1600x1200 And let me say that the game now looks beautiful and plays well at full resolution. Huge upgrade from my old 7900GT. I do however have a few problems. Firstly, since reinstalling Windows, I have no idea where mine and my brother's old savegames are. I saved my old C drive, so everything is there, but I can't figure out where the hell they are. Secondly, although I'm getting some pretty good framerates, every 10 seconds or so the game slows right down to unplayable levels for a couple of seconds, then speeds up again. I have checked program manager and there doesn't appear to be anything running which could be doing this (it's a clean install anyway) so I have no idea what the problem is. I have downloaded and installed all the latest drivers etc (including ATi's newest driver). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Edit: I have also tested the game at 1280x1024, 1024x768 and 800x600 and I still get exactly the same FPS drop.
  10. Where is this 'patch thread'? I can't find it anywhere on this forum. Your setup is exactly the same as what my setup will be (if I decide to get that card to upgrade from a 7900GT) so I would like more info on this. Please let me know what resolution you are running at, what framerates you are getting and if you fix this issue. Thanks.
  11. Just reinstall the game. I know it's not an exciting task, but it worked for me.
  12. I would like to know - is the ATI 3850 512MB a decent graphics card (ie the best I can get for that sort of money)? Thanks.
  13. I've been using a 3.1GHz AMD X2 and the game doesn't lag that badly for me. I know of people with poor processors who simply turn up the resolution if the game is lagging and it takes the strain off the processor and instead puts it on the graphics card. The only thing that's holding my system back I feel is my graphics card, which is why I want to know what card to buy.
  14. Can anyone answer my question? I'm looking for a good graphics card for a low price, anyone have any recommendations?
  15. Yeah, the pop in is quite bad. I actually managed to get the game running fairly decently at 1024x760, which doesn't really look too bad (despite the fact that I am playing on a 20" monitor). Some major slowdowns when I get chased by police or the weather is foggy though. Can't wait for the new memory to come. I guess I must be fairly lucky for the 180.84 drivers to have worked for me. Good luck getting the game to run smoothly on your PC - hopefully R* will have done some optimization when they release the patch.
  16. Thanks a lot for your help. Before I reinstalled the drivers, I decided to do a clean reinstall of GTA IV, just to make sure it wasn't the game itself that had in some way been corrupted. It was something that I didn't want to do, but thankfully it worked! I can now play GTA IV with no graphics problems (other than those caused by my crappy graphics card). If anyone else has this problem, it may well require you to reinstall GTA IV after you install the beta drivers. I really hope nobody else has to go through the agony of having a £25 coaster in their DVD drive.
  17. Yw, do you have any like anti-SecuRom apps on your pc ? It seems some software like performance enhancers etc can have a negative affect, if you use dvd copy software, this could be causing a conflict w/ the security feature(s) of the game.. I know I've come across articles relating to SR errors, they related well some to crax, others activation, have you tried emailing their tech support about the securom issue ? There is a link on that page I gave you, about securom errors, basically is about activation, which inturn provides a link to support.. I jus did a quick search, heres a list http://www.google.com/search?q=SecuLaunche...t+application.+[2000]+GTA+IV&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Dunno if these will help but you can search through them .. I looked through all of the links on the search you posted (even the foriegn ones, which I translated), I searched all of the GTA forums I know, but nothing. I've sent an email to Securom, and I'm waiting for a reply.I don't think it's any software on my PC causing it, as I had the game running yesterday. Well, kinda makes you wonder, if you had it running yesterday, what have you done different since then ? Apparently you installed the graphics drivers, you said that fixt the issues with those, so I'm assuming you're saying that once you uninstalled the old drivers, installed new ones, you could get in the game and you could see that the graphics issues you had were fixt by the new drivers ? Then you apparently quit playing at some point, tried to load up again and it now gives you the securom error ? Have you also checked to make sure your disc is clean, & that hopefully nothing else has access to the media drive that your game disc is in ? When it comes to that security stuff, its really fuzzy, jus seems like if you have an error w/ a security measure, then something is attempting to compromise that measure .. I don know, I dint design the game or its security.. I jus hate stuff like this, I want to help, brainstorm but can't figure it out, rrrrr ... Well, hopefully if you find a fix, you'll post back so someone w/ the same prob can fix it .. No, I don't know if the graphics problem was fixed. The error occurred after I installed the drivers. I think I'll try reinstalling the drivers and installing the old drivers etc. and I'll let you know if it helped. Thanks.
  18. I've noticed that the graphics settings in GTA IV are based on the amount of video memory you have, rather than the speed/power of your card. If this is the case, would a 1GB 9500GT be a good buy or would I be better off going with something older, but designed for gaming? Also, for a low price, would you recommend an ATI 3850? or an equivalent NVIDIA card?
  19. Yw, do you have any like anti-SecuRom apps on your pc ? It seems some software like performance enhancers etc can have a negative affect, if you use dvd copy software, this could be causing a conflict w/ the security feature(s) of the game.. I know I've come across articles relating to SR errors, they related well some to crax, others activation, have you tried emailing their tech support about the securom issue ? There is a link on that page I gave you, about securom errors, basically is about activation, which inturn provides a link to support.. I jus did a quick search, heres a list http://www.google.com/search?q=SecuLaunche...t+application.+[2000]+GTA+IV&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Dunno if these will help but you can search through them .. I looked through all of the links on the search you posted (even the foriegn ones, which I translated), I searched all of the GTA forums I know, but nothing. I've sent an email to Securom, and I'm waiting for a reply.I don't think it's any software on my PC causing it, as I had the game running yesterday.
  20. I'm also getting the same error message. Does anyone know how to fix this? Edit: I'm not using steam.
  21. Thanks for your help. I downloaded the new NVIDIA drivers, which apparently solve the issues with the 7900 cards, but now when I open Rockstar Social Club and click Play Game, I get the following error: 'SecuLauncher: failed to start application. [2000]' I'm guessing that this has something to do with Securom, but I can't find anything about this error...
  22. GTA IV for PC arrived for me today, and after going through the most tedious and frustrating installation process I have ever experienced, it was finally time to play the game. Unfortunately it would seem that with my system I am only able to play on the very lowest settings, but this does not explain my problem. The first time I played the game, it played fine, but the map, all of the menus, and certain objects weren't being rendered. This meant that I could not change any settings, change the radio station, see the in-game tips etc. I decided to ctrl+alt+del out of the game (as I couldn't quit from the menu) and have my dinner. When I got back to my PC and tried to play again, the map and menus showed up. Great, I thought. Except for one thing. Nothing beyond about a centimetre in front of Niko was being rendered and all I could see was blank screen with a few objects in the distance. it was like this wherever I went. After a couple of minutes of wondering what was wrong, I alt-tabbed out of the game to search for similar problems. When I went back to the game, it was the same as before - working fine but with no maps or menus. Anyone have any idea what is wrong? Also, it seems that video memory is the most important thing when buying a graphics card. In this case, would it be a good idea to buy a 1GB 9500GT (I had a 512MB 8500GT before, it was crap) just for the memory? Or would I be better off going for an ATI 3850 512MB? Or an 8600? My current system: Windows Vista 32 SP1 AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz NVIDIA 7900GT 2GB RAM (another 1GB should be arriving tomorrow) Thanks.
  23. From what I have read, it would seem that you are better off going for a high-clock dual core than a low end quad. I have just bought myself an AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz processor for £70. That appears to be pretty good value. I'd also recommend getting another GB of RAM, as this isn't very expensive and can make a big difference. I would also like to know, from people who actually own the game, how well do you expect my system to play the game with the following hardware: AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz 3GB DDR2 RAM NVIDIA 7900GT Thanks. I would say you would be playing on Low to Low Medium with that setup. That makes sense. So long as I can play at 1600x1200 or at least 1280x1024 or without slowdowns, I don't mind playing on low settings. That's a good point. In terms of older games, a high clocked dual core is probably better, but if GTA IV actually makes use of all 4 cores, then it would be the better option. They are rather expensive, although I would guess they will hold their value and performance longer than dual cores.
  24. From what I have read, it would seem that you are better off going for a high-clock dual core than a low end quad. I have just bought myself an AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz processor for £70. That appears to be pretty good value. I'd also recommend getting another GB of RAM, as this isn't very expensive and can make a big difference. I would also like to know, from people who actually own the game, how well do you expect my system to play the game with the following hardware: AMD X2 6000+ 3.1GHz 3GB DDR2 RAM NVIDIA 7900GT Thanks.
  25. For Christmas, I think you should probably be asking for a new PC, rather than GTA IV for PC. Just a thought.
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