-omg help- GTA IV unplayable lag on $1200 2012 PC

[wave1039]

Yeah so this game sucks. I bought Grand Theft Auto IV Complete Bundle from Steam today and I'm getting terrible microstutters and low fps (27.6 avg). Even at low resolutions (1280x720) with everything on medium settings and reflections off. My Specs are AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB VRAM, AMD FX 6300 Six-Core 3.5GHz, 16GB Dual-Channel RAM, 850W PSU, Windows 8 Pro 64-bit OS. What is a boy to do? I've tried doing the commandline txt but it only made things worse like texture pop-ins. The game is patched to the latest version.

 

[lostgamer_03]

It's bad optimized for PC and highly CPU demaning.

It's an ordinary issue a lot of people are experiencing. Nothing wrong with your PC. I just got a Little doubt, and that is your CPU. It's quite decent, but don't really match your GPU.

 

[lostgamer_03]

gta 4 needs a core i7 to run anything of smoothness. gta 4 requires a lot of cpu power and video ram. gta 4 is a badly made port. Lower view distance and it should increase fps.

Hyperthreading doesn't really make a big difference in gaming. Which is just about the only difference between i5 and i7.

 

[bystander]

Hyperthreading doesn't really make a big difference in gaming. Which is just about the only difference between i5 and i7.

Contrary to popular lore, hyperthreading does help in a few games, though I don't know if this is one.

 

[HEXiT]

part of the problem with gta 4 not performing is it doesnt like the new hardware. regardless of which manufacturer. it plays on my older system much better than most new and recent 1's with near maxed out everything apart from draw distance (1 gig limits it) and get 40-70 fps on the benchmark and average 50 in game.
my system is in my sig and you can see its not the newest.
all you can do is use the 1.4 patcher and not allow any more updates for it via steam.
you can do this with a downgrade app i think if you have the 1.7 patch already installed.

as for hyper threading it doesn't help with this game in fact the opposite. if its enabled it tries to use it so ends up using 2 cores rather than 4 to run the 4 threads which means slightly slower program execution . 3 for game 1 for audio. so disabling hyper threading will actually improve performance as each core then uses 1 thread on each core. somewhere between 3 and 7fps boost from this alone. the problem here is the lower your fps were to start with the less gains you will see.

also you want to look on gta garage and other forums for gta 4 to see if they have community patches or performance enhancers.

 

[lostgamer_03]

Contrary to popular lore, hyperthreading does help in a few games, though I don't know if this is one.

That is my reason to say, "It DOESN'T make a big difference". There is a difference, but it's not huge or in most cases noticable for the average user.

 

[bystander]

That is my reason to say, "It DOESN'T make a big difference". There is a difference, but it's not huge or in most cases noticable for the average user.

If the question was about the general value of the CPU in gaming in general, you are right. If you are talking about a specific game, then the answer depends on the game.

 

[wave1039]

Thanks everyone. After the headache went away from all the face-palming I toyed with the settings more and found a sweet spot. The main things that seem to effect it (at all) are the shadows, view distance, and reflections. With all those things disabled and vd on 1 it ran cray-tsy good but I don't like it looking like a ps2-era game.

Benchmark Statistics-
Average FPS: 30.53
Duration: 32.36 sec
CPU Usage: 53%
System memory usage: 19%
Video memory usage: 24%
Graphics Settings-
Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Shadow Quality: Medium
Reflection Resolution: Off
Water Quality: Very High
Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x4
Night Shadows: Off
View Distance: 50
Detail Distance: 100

Although the fps is only 30 I've learned to deal with it because I prioritize graphics over performance and the consoles are only getting 30 fps anyway so. The weird lags go away after I'm ingame for a couple minutes. Maybe if I cap it at 30 I won't notice the spikes and drops in performance.

I'm thinking I should have waited and saved more money to get a better cpu. But I didn't realize how far behind AMD is from the competition. Its hard to get the facts with all the fanboys on the internet. I also didn't realize there was a game that would utilize the processing power. I thought I'm a gamer not an enthusiast. It sort of sucks with GTA IV being my fav game and all but oh well I had fun!

 

[wave1039]

Best answer selected by wave1039.