Gaming Grand Theft Auto IV PC

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/...t-auto-iv-pc/1

Grand Theft Auto IV PC has finally arrived after a good few months of waiting. Is Niko's quest for revenge and fortune as exciting and interesting as it was the first time around? We take a look to see if GTA is better on PC or console.



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[widmod]

I bought the game yesterday (relase day)
after installing it for over a hour i got a message i have to install a games for windows update to my relase day version!!
then my minimum systems reqirements laptop system produced a message like: heavy error:dd52d. a senseless message
i then installed the game on my broters quad core.
another insallation time later and varoius tweak i finnaly could start the game after the second try. now i have a playable version but it dead slow (on a quad core!!) perhaps its the problem is the GPU.
so don't even think off that the minum system reqirements mean that you can play the game with such a system.
So'll go back to plan A: Build a PC after knowing the maximum requirements of the GTA IV PC version

[Mentai]

So you need the disc in the tray, securom, windows live, and social club constantly running in the background. Oh and you need the best hardware in existence to make sure the game doesn't run like crap, after praying there's no driver error so it doesn't limit you to low settings (it might not recognise new hardware?), not that it'll ever look good with no way of enabling AA.
Gee thanks a lot Rockstar. After the 4 month delay, I was really hoping for a LOT better than this. The fact that there's a game hiding behind this mess is irrelevant, whether it's good or bad. Definitely lost a sale.

[wuyanxu]

is it me or the view distance comparison between 50 and 100 doesn't have any difference??

is this game like Crysis, where the High texture setting is aimed at future hardware? and all current hardware (1GB vRAM) can only use medium texture setting?

[liratheal]

Anyone who wasn't expecting technical issues needs help.

Rockstar can't port to PC well enough for anyone to not expect this kinda thing.

Side note, I disagree strongly with the thought that this game has a 'great' sound track.

Sure, it might be okay, but not great. It's also not helped by that ***** of a cousin, or anyone else for that matter, phoning you every ten minutes to do something that, essentially, gets in the way.

Why the hell does Niko have to babysit the criminals of Liberty city?

[Nature]

"Be warned though that Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC is a real performance hog and may be enough to cripple most systems. We ran the game first on a PC that packed 3 GB of DDR2 memory, a Core 2 Extreme X6800 overclocked to 2.99GHz and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 and we still struggled to get above even 16 frames a second on the highest settings the game would allow. Even scaling back to only use half the resources and have medium texture detail only edged out at around 20 fps. "

What resolution was that at me wonders??

Would you say this game is requires better hardware than crysis at certain resolutions?

[Tim S]

1920 x 1200 (and also 1680 x 1050 as well I believe)

[naokaji]

Others are not, like having to install Rockstar Social Club so that it can have a constantly-running app on your system tray or that you have to create a Games for Windows Live login to be able to even play the game.

Fallout 3 featured Games for Windows Live too and we didn’t hate that, for example.

Thats stupid how they implemented it in GTA4, as you guys pointed out correctly, its done far better in Fallout 3, only 1 login and you can play without being forced into it.

There is, for example, no way to enable anti-aliasing of any kind.

Be warned though that Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC is a real performance hog and may be enough to cripple most systems.

What the hell did Rockstar do in that year? (sorry, dont give a damn about consoles, so not sure about exact time frame), did they just wank over how much money they made?

Seriously, rockstar belongs in the hall of shame for game developers for what they did (or better, didnt do to gt4), I'm sure epic will enjoy their company.

[Bauul]

Well despite everything, at least we have a new super-system-cruncher for benchmarking! Judging by the review, it looks like they created an engine that is amost not supposed to run properly at full graphical ability. I mean, console draw distance set to 10%? No wonder it chugs at 100! Maybe because it's so easy to go totally overboard on the graphical settings is why they put the strange system limiter in. I imagine for sheer polygon count tests, running a demo with draw distance as 100 would be a good test for a good few years.

If all the bloatware doesn't kill the system first.

[notatoad]

wow. after all that waiting, it turns out that not only is the game not worth buying, it's probably not even worth torrenting. what a bummer. maybe i'll pick up a used copy for PS3.

[CardJoe]

Originally Posted by Bauul

Well despite everything, at least we have a new super-system-cruncher for benchmarking! Judging by the review, it looks like they created an engine that is amost not supposed to run properly at full graphical ability. I mean, console draw distance set to 10%? No wonder it chugs at 100! Maybe because it's so easy to go totally overboard on the graphical settings is why they put the strange system limiter in. I imagine for sheer polygon count tests, running a demo with draw distance as 100 would be a good test for a good few years.

If all the bloatware doesn't kill the system first.

Harry actually whimpered when I suggested he should use it for benchmarking. He doesn't like the idea of having to login five or six times to do one test.

My favourite thing about GTA though is the autosave-warning loop that happens if you don't sign in to GFW and it tries to Autosave.

"This game cannot be autosaved because you are not signed in to Games for Windows Live. By signing in you may save the game and win achievements. Would you like to sign in?"

NO

"Warning, if you do not sign in to Games for Windows Live then you will be unable to autosave or win achievements. Do you want to sign in?"

NO

"If you do not sign in then you will not be able to save your progress and autosaving will be disabled. Are you sure?"

YES

"Warning: Autosaving is now being disabled. You will not be able to save your progress or win achievements until you sign in. Do you want to continue?"

YES

"Autosave is now disabled. Please sign in to restore this feature."

CONTINUE

GTA, eh? It's more like UAC: The Game.

[strjms72]

i play this game with my psp last 4 months.

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by CardJoe

My favourite thing about GTA though is the autosave-warning loop that happens if you don't sign in to GFW and it tries to Autosave.
<snip>
GTA, eh? It's more like UAC: The Game.

You.. You didn't want to actually play the game did you?

[CardJoe]

Originally Posted by strjms72

i play this game with my psp last 4 months.

No, you didn't.

[bobbobagan]

I thought I had a powerful PC... I was sadly mistaken after installing and TRYING to play this game. It is far too resource hungry, and for somebody who doesn't have a PS3 or XBox360, I have been sadly let down.

I am unable to get my settings past half way (on a 512mb graphics card), and do not intend on spending money on upgrading for 1 game, I simply do not have that kind of money to throw around.

Not only this, but it is an extremely bad port of the game... I went to find out what all the keys on my keyboard done, and was given a picture of an Xbox 360 controller, and told what all the buttons on an Xbox controller does... THATS USEFUL ROCKSTAR, ISN'T IT!?!?!

GTA IV = The new Crysis (in terms of how hungry it is for system resources). I hope rockstar can fix some things up in future patches they hopefully will release for the game.

[djDEATH]

ok, here's MY experience... (can't read the review yet, because the Gaming part of bit-tech is blocked at work, and google hasn't cached it yet)

SO i pre order it like two months ago.

it arrives yesterday and i'm very excited (prolly the most excited i've goot about a computer game in many years since Gran Turismo 2)

i go home, put disc 1 in the drive and install. Put disc 2 in, then asks for disc 1 again to finish. Throughout this, it informs me that i NEED a Games for WINDOWS live account, then sends me to some Xbox page (i assumed that they are the same thing, but why do i have to make that assumption) and then also created a Rockstar Social club account, and linked the two together.

not a huge deal, 10 mins. ok.

fire up the game, it launches the social club, which tells me i need an update for games for windows live (i thought that was an online account not a program on my PC) no matter, i download and install.

Run game, i get error:

GTAIV ERROR: M11A (somethign along those lines)

and game crashes. I assume its me being a dumbass or something wrong with my pc, so i reboot (it had been seeding torrents during the day, so should have rebooted anyway) same thign happens.

I google the error and find that its the social club that is broken. It says sign out of social club and run game in offline mode. So i try, and the damn game just fires up the social club again. and again. I eventually get it going, by right clickin the social club systray icon AFTER i have launched the game EXE.

what a palarva.

Now, performance issues....

As you can see from ym sig, my machine is not a proper high end beast, its a fairly middle of the road system, about average for most of us here (G92, dual core @ > 2.5 ghz >2GB RAM)

on foot i get about 25-30fps and in a car about 16-20.

After reading some forums and the above posts confirm, it is not the hardware that causes this, if my system can do 16-20 fps, you'd assume a GTX280 would do 40-50 or more, but everyone is saying the same, that 16-20 is about all you're gonna get.

this sounds very much like a problem with the way its written, translated into directx or whatever you wanna call it. i'm gonna do some more tweaking later to try get a few more FPS out of it. I think i have headroom in my card to perhaps lower the texture quality to low (doesn't seem to make a lot of difference quality wise) and then add some AA via nhancer.

all of that aide (because lets face it, those issues WILL get fixed, its just an update/driver update away) this is a pretty cool game (i haven't played or seen the xbox or PS3 versions)

car driving dynamics are finally realistic in a non-driving enthusiast game. I like the dynamic of having to think about what you're doing, not just full throttle all the time. Walking around and up stairs and through buildings, you can tell a lot of effort has gone into making the experience as slick as possible, Niko opens doors as he gets to them, your girlfriend walks equidistant beside you doown the pavement and driving like a lunatic only pisses the traffic off and ultimately wrecks your car meaning it stalls and leaves you in the middle of the road with smoke billowing out from under the bonnet.

all in all, once Rockstar, Nvidia, AMD, whoever, gets their act together and release some sort of patch to fix these issues (and bring the multiplayer back online because lets face it, if i really wanted to ONLY have access to single player offline, i could have warezed this game a week ago).

shame about the technical issues, and the absolute ballache of an install procedure, alll in alll though, i may have just found the new passtime for the rest of this winter.

[CardJoe]

Originally Posted by bobbobagan

I thought I had a powerful PC... I was sadly mistaken after installing and TRYING to play this game. It is far too resource hungry, and for somebody who doesn't have a PS3 or XBox360, I have been sadly let down.

I am unable to get my settings past half way (on a 512mb graphics card), and do not intend on spending money on upgrading for 1 game, I simply do not have that kind of money to throw around.

Not only this, but it is an extremely bad port of the game... I went to find out what all the keys on my keyboard done, and was given a picture of an Xbox 360 controller, and told what all the buttons on an Xbox controller does... THATS USEFUL ROCKSTAR, ISN'T IT!?!?!
.

That's an easy mistake to make. The key config is divided into two parts, with keyboard configuration at the top and Xbox 360 control map beneath. If you take another look you can see and alter the keyboard layout.

[djDEATH]

Originally Posted by strjms72

i play this game with my psp last 4 months.

FAIL

[djDEATH]

Originally Posted by bobbobagan

I went to find out what all the keys on my keyboard done, and was given a picture of an Xbox 360 controller, and told what all the buttons on an Xbox controller does... THATS USEFUL ROCKSTAR, ISN'T IT!?!?!

actually yes, its very useful, because the Xbox 360 controller FOR WINDOWS is the default controller profile for most new games, and the fact that it supports it OUT THE BOX, means no config of my controller, and i;'m straight into the action.

[Jordan Wise]

All the bloatware you talked of on the first page, is that still required when you get the game off Steam? Because won't Steam just send them the data they're looking for? I could live with that.