GTA4 problems

Anyone get this game?

I got hooked to GTA when I decided to actually try San Andreas, it was a lot more fun than I thought.

I bought GTA 4 for the PC and like a lot of other people I'm unable to play it right now. There is a graphics glitch that makes rendering anything in front of you invisible. There is a work around using Nvidia's 180 beta drivers, but you still get odd glitches like the lights/radar not showing up, or everything in the menu not showing up. According to Rockstar the problems have to do with the Nvida 7900 series, but mine is 7600GT.

On top of that the FPS rate is horrible. Funny thing though, is that I do a benchmark test in the game and it runs smoothly, but when I try playing it it's choppy as hell. Maybe I get 12 - 19 FPS and that is a big maybe.

I just got a new motherboard about a few months ago. It isn't the best but you would think that a AMD dual core 6000+ with a little over 3 gigs of ram would be able to play this.

On top of all that you have to jump through a million hoops when installing the game. You need to have a windows live account, a "social club" account and you have to be online to play (or you can't save your game), even though I have no intention of playing multiplayer. I guess people like me are going to buy it anyways and Rockstar wanted to see how much DRM they could put into their game without causing a major revolution in the public. It sorta sucks because I was rooting for them when EA was trying to take them over, but it turns out that what they did is a lot worse than anything I've seen EA do. Spore wasn't even this bad.

If you think I'm overexagerating here then lets put it this way even Steam is offering a refund to anyone who bought the game through them.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/43399/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC-How-To-Get-A-Refund

If you like the series and are planning to get this I would wait until at least the first patch comes out or you can take your chances and like me and keep checking their forums for any workarounds or news on the patch, but for now I give up. I'm going to play SOZ for awhile and maybe in a month or so they'll have a fix.

One of the German print mags estimates that 75% of all customers have problems with GTA 4. So you're certainly not exaggerating.

A GeForce 7600GT is low end though.

GTA4 is already legendary for it's bugginess. I had always said that I was going to purchase it when it came out for PC, but now I'm going to wait until it hits the bargain bin, if I even get it at all.


*Edit* Just to be clear, I'm only referring to the PC version.

I have it for 360 and I love it. I highly recommend playing cops 'n' crooks online.

Previous GTA PC ports were pretty solid, so i already ordered the game before hearing about the problem. It is disoppointing that once venerable series end up with those kind of issues.

The other port i'm annoyed with is Gear of War. The game itself is excellent but it's the porting that troubling me. Until this day the problem of random game save lost is still a mystery and no confirmed solution available. I'm suspecting it has something to do with the Game for Windows registration (log-in when playing) as before that i didn't experienced game saves lost.

GfW is adware-like crap if not an useless piece of shit.

*Edit - i installed Fallout 3 yesterday and noticed the game also automatically installing GfW. What is the use of that crap? Fallout 3 is single player game and i don't need constantly stroking my ego with the online achievement shit with GfW. And i'm not aware that you can play with co-op with Fallout 3 through the GfW.

* Edit - From my experience navigating the GfW software, it just felt unwieldy to browse with mouse or keyboard than gamepad. It just felt different with rest of Windows applications.

So far, my time with GTA4 has been a disaster. I will note my system is modest but it meets minimum specs comfortably (C2D 2.4, 4Gb RAM, 8600 GT)...it's pretty close to unplayable. I didn't expect anything fantastic but I expected to be able to select my native resolution and dial down shadows etc and find a modest compromise. Unfortunately, the game controls the settings - it caps them to what it thinks the system can do and it just won't get to my native resolution (just 1280x800 - nothing amazing), plus there are no settings for shadows or much else. You can really only choose the texture quality and draw distances. The net result is the ugliest game @ 800x600 I've possibly ever played. The textures are easily worse than the late 90's.

Add the hoops with mandatory Live (wtf?) and the Social Club - one of the worst purchases I've made.

San Andreas wasn't that bad of a port. Although I got it waaayyy after it was released, I kept thinking anything that popular with the console crowd has to be stupid But it surprised me how addicting it was. All the little details like those sidemissions involving the ambulance or firetrucks. I can't tell you how many hours I put into finishing that stupid ambulance sidemission, but it still was fun even after I kept failing to finish it. I think they do what Bethesda tries to do, but they make it more fun. All Beth needs to do is put in some horceracing :BIGGRIN:

With GTA4 I tried using my brand spanking new Logitech gamepad that I just bought for this game alone and it doesn't even recognize it, lol. Oh well, I tried it out with Devil May Cry 4 and it works just fine and it's a lot easier to play that game now than it was on the keyboard so at least it's not a complete waste.

@Dhruin - Didn't you love the part where they forced you to be online to save the game? I know the gaming companies are parnoid about pirates but come on they took it too far this time. If Rockstar is trying to annoy their fan base then they are off to a good start.

I've had no problems with GTA4. It runs great on my rig (Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 @ 2,4Ghz, 8 Gigs Ram, Ati 4870 1 gig ram). Of course Rockstar did lie a bit about the recommended system requirements. I'm playing it with everything on max, except maybe shadows. The only time I get fps drops is at nighttime when there's plenty of shadows and other weather effects. Oh, and yeah it doesn't look marvelous, but it does look great.

My only complaint is that sometimes during the day shadows are jagged. I don't know why. If I return to the same location a bit later in the day, the shadows are smooth.

As for the actual game, I'm really impressed with it. I personally think it's great. I like the story, love the main character and like the city a lot. Cars handle much better (more realistically) and I love the physics. I'm also starting to get into the cover system which is a nice addition, considering that in previous GTAs I'd always and very easily die during shoot-outs. Oh, and I love the TV. I usually kick back to watching TV after a few missions. They're always really funny. There's even a comedy act by Katt Williams. The radio talk-shows are also as funny as in previous GTAs.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've had no problems with GTA4. It runs great on my rig (Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 @ 2,4Ghz, 8 Gigs Ram, Ati 4870 1 gig ram)

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What OS are you using?

there is interview with Rockstar developers on the PC port problem over voodooextreme, and also nvidia beta driver for the game.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've had no problems with GTA4. It runs great on my rig (Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 @ 2,4Ghz, 8 Gigs Ram, Ati 4870 1 gig ram).

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That's a pretty serious rig, though.

JDR13 said:

What OS are you using?

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Windows Xp x64

Dhruin said:

That's a pretty serious rig, though.

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Yeah, I'm quite proud of it.

The interview is at IGN, voodoo links it
http://pc.ign.com/articles/936/936304p1.html)

I'm glad they're aware of the problem, but I have a problem with flat out lies from them.

Quote from Jeronimo:
Jeronimo Barrera: Let's not beat around the bush here. There's a lot of noise like this game doesn't run at all or there's missing textures and everything else. From what we've gathered a lot of those problems are either out of date drivers or we don't support that type of card or you're underspecced or whatever, it's always a combination of one of those things,

Obviously when you start talking about high-end PC games people want to tweak with their drivers and everything else and we've found some situations where people have modified their drivers by going to sites where you can customize drivers, and we've found problems with that. We're seeing some of the things that people are complaining about but they're so peripheral of the target audience.

Uh huh, so it's either the low end PCs or the high end tweaked PCs that are the problem and it's not poor coding? Ooookkk. The interview is the normal PR bs you usually hear "It's only a handful of people" "people have outdated drivers" etc...

I highly doubt that it is only a few of the more vocal people that have a problem running this game like they say. I just wish they would quite the BS and flat out say they rushed it out in time for the holidays.

Arthur Chiang at least acknowledges that they had to use the Beta 180 drivers from Nvida. I guess it's time to get a new video card for me. It's been a year or so since I bought it but I didn't think it was low end yet, everything runs smoothly on it except for this game.

Of course the interviewer had to interject the one question all interviewers love to ask. "How do you think this will affect PC gaming?" LMAO. I knew at least one of the questions would be about that.

Dhruin said:

I've had no problems with GTA4. It runs great on my rig (Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 @ 2,4Ghz, 8 Gigs Ram, Ati 4870 1 gig ram).

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That's a pretty serious rig, though.

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I wouldnt call that serious - it more like average ~ 2,4Ghz quadcore. They even announced the closing down of the production of Q6600. 4870 is highend budget card - the crown prince like gtx260. The high end aka kings are gtx280 and 4870x2. Next month nvidia is launching new cards so even those loose their high end status very soon. And we are not talking of SLI/CF or secondary nvidia cards running physx yet even. Next years comes the first dx11 cards. ATI plans to launch its own in 6-7 months.

8 gigs of ram is totally awesom though. And with good mobo it should be easy to OC that q6600 to 3,0 - 3,2 Ghz.

GTA4 runs like crap though. A true unoptimised console port. And it seems to be very buggy too.

Nvidia has released some drivers specifically for GTA4.
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html

Not sure if it works or not yet, but there seem to be some people that have noticed an improvement and others that say it didn't do anything.
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=380118

zakhal said:

Next years comes the first dx11 cards. ATI plans to launch its own in 6-7 months.

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Is this a good thing? I happen to like my Windows XP dang it

Hmm, I just notice something in the interview with Rockstar. Where did they get the part about the game not offering AA because they didn't use Dx10? Dx9 games have had AA for a long time, at least to my knowledge. Seems like a badly thought-out lie.

danutz_plusplus said:

Hmm, I just notice something in the interview with Rockstar. Where did they get the part about the game not offering AA because they didn't use Dx10? Dx9 games have had AA for a long time, at least to my knowledge. Seems like a badly thought-out lie.

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I thought that was odd too, but I don't know enough about AA to say anything. However, I only use DX9 and I can use AA on a lot of games, even has a little switch in the control panel for it and everything.

skavenhorde said:

Is this a good thing? I happen to like my Windows XP dang it

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Next year they will launch windows7 too so that might be a good upgrade if you wanna dx11 OS. But you dont need to buy it until dx11 games actually start to arrive. It could take until 2010-2011 before we see any dx11 games worth of upgrade.

The current recession is slowing down all development so all timetables are most likely doomed to delay. Nvidia has delayed the launch of its new cards the whole fall - they even missed the xmas sales.

skavenhorde said:

I thought that was odd too, but I don't know enough about AA to say anything. However, I only use DX9 and I can use AA on a lot of games, even has a little switch in the control panel for it and everything.

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Yeah, I know you can force it from outside the game, but I remember games having that in-game too. Crysis I think, which I've ran in Dx9 mode, had a AA setting in-game.

EDIT:
Proof that Direct3D 9 offers AA support.
I knew they were bs-ing.

The driver seems to have gotten rid of a lot of the graphic glitches. The FPS is still horrible but at least playable if I set it to the lowest settings, 800x600 and force it to start in windowed mode. It's ugly but playable. I've read that the shadows with this game was horrible and now I know what they mean. I wish I could just shut them off completely.

I've got a G15 keyboard that lets me know how much of the CPU is being used and my god this thing is taking a lot, 80 - 90% I've played a lot of games and never seen it running that high for that long before.