How To Bypass GTA IV Memory Restrictions

[Chris]

Thought I'd make a pinned topic about this because the way Rockstar stops people from frying their GPU's is by limiting the graphics settings based on your graphics card's memory. Now this may sound like a good idea, however it only takes into account dedicated video RAM the graphics card has.

For example, at the time of writing I have a nVidia GeForce 8800GTS with 320MB of RAM. This card can also make used of shared RAM (memory taken from your system's RAM, of which I currently have a total of 4GB). I'm not sure how much it is possible to use, but DxDiag reports me as having 2GB of graphics memory, pretty awesome, that means it's taken 1.7GB from my system RAM, meaning I've got 2.3GB left, plenty to play GTA IV.
So, naturally I want to play on as higher settings as possible for my computer. But because the game only recognises 320MB of that video RAM, I'm severely limited. Here's what to do to get around those limits:

Retail version instructions

• Create a shortcut on your desktop to the LaunchGTAIV.exe - by default this will be in C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV
• Right click the shortcut and click Properties
• Make sure the Shortcut tab is selected. You should see a field called "Target", edit this to say the following, making sure the path is correct, I'm just using the default here:
  

  "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe" -norestrictions -nomemrestrict

  
  That includes the quote marks and the options coming after the link to the path
• Click Apply
• Double click the shortcut to launch the game.

Steam version instructions

• In steam, right click the game right click the game in Steam and go to Properties > Launch Options
• Add the command: -norestrictions -nomemrestrict
• Launch the game

Screenshot
To prove it works, here's what I ended up with.


What happens if I'm a dumbass and turn up all the settings too high?
Like I showed in the above screenshot? Well, this is what happened to me. There's simply not enough memory available to load up all the textures. Upon leaving the safehouse I was greeted by the following:


However, the player models looked amazing!


NOTE: Remember to be sensible with the settings. If you've got a shitty card then there's really no point turning everything up high, it'll be way too laggy to play. Play around with the settings until you reach a compromise between nice quality, and good framerate.

[JustADummy]

Nice, I'll try this when I get GTAIV

[TM™]

Holy shit, the textures on Niko look fucking nice. Considering I'm on a 9500GT 512mb card, I may not max out everything (Well no one can really), but at medium or low possibly. I may take into account of buying this game.

[Noru]

The player textures do look nice, I may get this game for the PC someday. Even a few friends or mine are telling me to get it.

[Chris]

Just wanna say, the game looks fucking awesome on medium, so much better than the console versions. I think low is the equivalent of the console version, at a resolution near 720p, we'll say 1280x800 as that's the nearest res in 16:10.

[Nissan_Skyline_GTR_R34]

Nice. But it doesnt work on mine, BTW i have vista

[Mehhh]

Those missing textures is what I was experiencing and logically I figured I'm outta video ram but when I was playing, it was doing it w/ exceeded settings ( I dint configure any override - it jus seemt glitchy & would roll to the highest settings), then once I lowered the settings I still had missing roads and everything..

I can play it pretty well on medium w/ other somewhat mid settings.. It still doesnt look anything spectacular as it should.. It still seems like a limit in vid ram, altho I wondered of system ram still .. I've been able to play missions still w/ out the hiccups & missing textrs as b4. I wonder if you can run the game & run DxDiag for a display of updated vid ram info.

[Joelzaar]

How does the game look on the lowest settings? will it look the same as the console versions or worse?

[rappo]

Also instead of creating a shortcut and adding those parameters to the end of the target, you can just make a file called "commandline.txt" to your root Grand Theft Auto IV directory and put the "-norestrictions -nomemrestrict" and whatever else you use in there. That will make it so that you can still launch GTA IV however you want (through the shortcut, through Social Club, etc)

and joelzaar, the best way to explain the low textures is... creamy Everything else looks really clear, though, because render quality doesn't take much of a toll on your graphics card. It's the textures that are the hogs.

Edited December 13, 2008 by rappo

[RaverJeroen1992]

Statistics

Average FPS: 28.70

Duration: 37.28 sec

CPU Usage: 77%

System memory usage: 77%

Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Render Quality: High

View Distance: 32

Detail Distance: 70

Hardware

Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate

Service Pack 1

Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

Video Driver version: 180.84

Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)

Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

File ID: benchmark.cli

And Its working great!, Im using 839mb of videomemory for this:P , Although, I oc-ed my GFXcard a little, its a great improvement thoiugh!

[invinsible94]

hi all

im a noob wen it comes to this stuff so can you please explain step by step how to up the resolution and/or texture quality. wat do you mean by "create a commandline text?" cuz i did that and nothing. how do u work this whole commandline thing that everyone keeps talking about?

[a242j]

Nice. But it doesnt work on mine, BTW i have vista

+1 ... vista x64 ultimate sp1

[davesta]

hi all

im a noob wen it comes to this stuff so can you please explain step by step how to up the resolution and/or texture quality. wat do you mean by "create a commandline text?" cuz i did that and nothing. how do u work this whole commandline thing that everyone keeps talking about?

To create a commandline to change the resolution, create a new notepad file. Type in '-width (whatever your monitor's width is, in pixels) -height (your monitor's height)'. For example, my monitor is 20" and the resolution is 1600x1200, so I would type '-width 1600 -height 1200'. Save it as 'commandline.txt', then place it in the folder that GTA IV is installed in (default C:\program files\rockstar games\Grand Theft Auto IV). Don't expect it to run great if you only have a 256mb graphics card, though.

Alternatively, you could just type in -nomemrestrict (or whatever it is, it's explained in one of the sticky topics) and change the settings for yourself in the game.

Have fun.

[invinsible94]

thanks a lot. it works now!!

[HeReTiC5463]

hi all

im a noob wen it comes to this stuff so can you please explain step by step how to up the resolution and/or texture quality. wat do you mean by "create a commandline text?" cuz i did that and nothing. how do u work this whole commandline thing that everyone keeps talking about?

To create a commandline to change the resolution, create a new notepad file. Type in '-width (whatever your monitor's width is, in pixels) -height (your monitor's height)'. For example, my monitor is 20" and the resolution is 1600x1200, so I would type '-width 1600 -height 1200'. Save it as 'commandline.txt', then place it in the folder that GTA IV is installed in (default C:\program files\rockstar games\Grand Theft Auto IV). Don't expect it to run great if you only have a 256mb graphics card, though.

Alternatively, you could just type in -nomemrestrict (or whatever it is, it's explained in one of the sticky topics) and change the settings for yourself in the game.

Have fun.

Well I have a Q8400 2.66 GHz overclocked to 3.6 Ghz and OCZ Reaper Memory Overclocked to 5-5-5-10 at 1048 MHz, with a HD 4830 overclocked to 650 MHz GPU and ram at 1000 MHz. And I can play this game full blown with 1600x1200 everything either high, very high, or highest lol. View Distance 100, Detail Distance 100, Vehicle Density 100, and Shadow Density 16. With no lag and almost no texture problems. But hell when you build a system that can compare to the new I7 stuff ! But hey this guide really helped.

[_Ray]

Lol I have 896MB VRAM, and by using the bypass I can set EVERYTHING to On/MAX (1600MB VRAM Needed) and nothing locked up or blurrs, and I get steady 30-50 FPS.

[_Ray]

Important Update:

* After the latest patch for the game released on November 10th (1.0.0.4), this method of bypassing the memory restrictions will no longer work. *

Edited November 22, 2009 by Raybob

[Dimitri Rascalov]

My GTA worked fine and pretty smooth untill i had to update to the lastest version 1.0.0.4, now its kinda laggy sometimes

[amazingdude]

Have tested with my 9 series Nvidia thanks chris

[novalife]

i can run GTA IV on highest settings without any lagg.

i even can listen to itunes while playing gta on highest settings.

[Diggy_Diggy_Dwarf]

I kind of have a problem related to this. The same thing happens to me but instead the memory says 206 / 53 Resoarce Usage and everything is at its lowest. My graphics is an AMD Radeon HD 7450A.

[Vaffa]

Can you make a short video? I'm italian, and my english is very bad xD. Thanks for the help

[BlackListedB]

The serious gamers I've seen posting really scoff any notion of Shared System RAM, but I always set my BIOS to share an appropriate amount of RAM, the idea behind that is that when resources aren't requiring the stick RAM you bought and installed, it can go partially toward graphics chores the computer is processing, and though dedicated RAM is always the fastest, easily accessed by the GPU, great strides have been made for memory management on the system by the CPUs in particular, and at any rate. Adjusting RAM and the BIOS shared resources in older machines is the best way to amp up the capabilities without too much expense.

One such person nearly denied that there was any BIOS option to share system RAM, which is ludicrous in my book. I can show anyone a picture or video of such an option, if they think this doesn't exist. And of course, it depends on the BIOS, newer versions of the age old BIOS offer much more in the way of GUI tweaking and board user controls

Edited August 26, 2012 by BlackListedB

[chesda1990]

Hey man,

I've followed most of ur instruction on how to bypass GTA IV memory restrictions but when I log in after typing -norestrictions and -nomemrest on the GTA luaucher shortcut, the memory is cut by haft. But that is not the problem, the problem is that I don't know how to add -norestrictions and -norestrict while it is in the stream after I luach option. So could u please let me know how to add comman into the stream please?

Will be much appreciated and looking forward to see ur answer soon,

Sincerely

Chesda

[chesda1990]

oh yeah, one more thing is that after I edited the shortcut, it won't let me go to the actual game at all. the game only show me the same cover clip of random people like forever. any idea?