GTA IV Win7 64bit Subpar Performance

[xsylus]

Greeting fellow gamers.   I recently installed GTA IV on Win 7 64bit.  I'm running an AMD FX 8150 Eight-Core Processor with 8GB of DDR3 Memory and an ATI Radeon HD 5850 graphics card with 1GB of RAM.  

 

I installed GTA IV as well as all the patches from 1 to 7.  Upon running it I left all the graphics settings default and it looked great and ran smooth.  The day after that was the same story.  Then just today I got home from work, booted my computer, browsed a few websites and then started the game.  Loaded the saved game got into the car and started driving and instantly noted that the game seemed jittery like the frame rate was lower than normal.  I hadn't changed any settings.  I hadn't added any mods or done anything different.   I then decided maybe it was a fluke so I quit the game without saving and it closed to a blank black screen.  I waited a while but eventually opened the task manager to see that GTA IV was listed as not responding so I forced closed it.  Rebooted the computer and then ran it again.  Not only was the lag still there but once again upon exit it got stuck on that black screen and stopped responding.

 

I've already searched several sites.  I've tried adding the memory "trick" by adding the string to the desktop shortcut; didn't change anything.  I tried disabling Windows Event Log and Windows Event Collector.  I decreased the shadow texture quality in the graphics settings.  I've tried pretty much every trick I found that sounds logical but in the end I'm still having BOTH the lag issue and the not-responding on exit issue.

 

While I'd love to know of any other possible fixes my real question is simply this, how can an install go from running perfectly to running subpar without any changes being made to the configuration?

[Huckleberry Pie]

The game's notorious for being a shoddily-made console port, and I'm not sure as to what might be wrong on your end, but have you checked your system drivers and/or DirectX?

[xsylus]

Well I re-ran the #6 patch based on some info I read in another forum and the game runs a lot smooth once again, it also doesn't crash on exit.  I do, however notice the occasional lag from time to time.  I'm not sure what else might be causing this.  I've disabled a bunch of Win 7 services.  I guess just the fact that this game wasn't fully intended for PC is the culprit and I shouldn't expect it to run flawlessly.  I only hope GTA 5 runs better.

[BlackListedB]

I don't know how the above helps, delete that inane SPAM SHITE! hahaha

 

Anywho, my take is not about how Rockstar contracted a shoddy PC port from console, you can say it needed refinement, but the game DOES work and has been a modding favorite for some time. My experience is GTA IV is better suited to more PC variables then Episodes from Liberty City is, it runs a lot smoother.

Also, I just bought a copy of GTA IV for PC from the Goodwill, a very nice deal there!! As it happens

 

I'd say two things to try, make sure you have a beefy power supply and graphics card, they recommend nVidia, which is what I'm after, but ATI Radeon just rolled out new graphics cards that eschew the previous HD line that's been in place since early 2007

nVidia like Intel, corner the PC market in the past 3 to 5 years.

 

Try a slim, Win only hard drive without your standard apps and surfing, email antivirus software that ALL clogs a systems' performance. Bottom line, people may run games on one computer they use for everything, but it's not the best way to go about that. Performance requires all available resources, ALL of them. As well, GTA is not geared to 64 bit, so when you install it, try and get it loaded under compatibility mode and see if that does better. Also, try Windows 8 for gaming, it's supposedly come along way since it's inception and married Xbox features more and more, a convergence I believe they're still working on.

 

Specific to your hardware, I use an HD 5450 that's a budget Radeon with the same graphics RAM, 1GB. The downside for all those decisions is that the first two numbers denote the series lineage, the last two denote the performance range, so the higher the numbers the better, but since yours and mine are both 50, they're now introductory graphics cards, they're not the GAMERS choice for high performance advantage.

 

System drivers, as pointed, out, DirectX, or the game install files as well, like all software CODE, it can be corrupted easily, so the best bet in those cases is reinstall, portions at a time until you've got a better replacement, this is a last ditch effort in my book, but video and audio drivers can often fail and the best thing to resort to on laptop or PC is your Device Manager and remove, search, and reinstall anything problematic from there. Or you can run the software installer app, or try and remove from the START menu going to a specific app and seeing if it has one, but ultimately, with so many programs and the OS juggling of hardware available resources, any number of things can go wrong, and at times, more then one thing! That's the maddening aspect of computers versus consoles. However, consoles can drive you mad at times as well.

 

My latest Xbox360 has a wonky ODD, the optical disc drive, and can fail to initialize the disc at any time, until it stops engaging the disc, I live with it as is, but I'd have to replace the belt most likely. I also got it acting strange when it shuts down, and I believe this is the Gamestop wiring mod they put in to add cooling time to it, RROD, YLOD, in which case hardware could fail in multiple areas or play the same role a computer problem entails

Edited December 12, 2013 by BlackListedB